Lawyers' "Self-Promotional Hype" in Extrajudicial Statements and Its Regulation under Professional Ethics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62517/jel.202614417

Author(s)

Yu Cai

Affiliation(s)

School of Law, Shantou University, Shantou, Guangdong, China

Abstract

Lawyers are an indispensable part of the modern judicial system. Their out-of-court speech not only helps to safeguard the rights and interests of the parties, but also may shape public discussion and promote public supervision of justice. The business promotion and public expression through out-of-court speech is not in itself a violation of professional ethics. However, in the self-media environment, another type of problem has become increasingly prominent: lawyers do not mainly focus on the facts of the case, the focus of the law or the interests of the parties, but use the public expression outside the court to imply special relationships, package personal identities, and manufacture network traffic to expand personal influence or contract business. This article defines such behavior as "self-hype" in lawyers' out-of-court remarks. This is different from the case of illegal speculation handled according to law in the main threat case, and also different from the improper business promotion that mainly disturbs the order of the legal service market. The essential feature of "self- hype" is to use professional identity and public communication channels to transform out-of-court speech into a tool for personal fame and profit. Taking the Tianjin' police sister-in-law lawyer' dispute as the starting point, this paper identifies common forms of self-promotion, including identity packaging, special relationship hints, absolute or exaggerated propaganda, and shaping personal image through public events. Such acts not only mislead potential parties, distort the competition in the legal service market, but also violate the core professional obligations of lawyers, damage the reputation of the legal professional community, and violate the credibility of the judiciary. China's current norms contain a number of applicable provisions, but there are still some problems, such as the dispersion of the focus of the norms, the unclear standards for the identification of misconduct, and the lack of coercive power of local self-discipline rules. Therefore, this paper proposes to establish an independent identification standard for "self-hyping" behavior in the lawyer's out-of-court speech regulation system, and form a collaborative regulation through internal audit of the law firm, supervision and punishment of the legal association, and professional ethics education.

Keywords

Lawyers' Extrajudicial Statements; Self-Promotional Hype; Legal Professional Ethics; Public Confidence in the Judiciary

References

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