Between a lawyer’s personal principles and professional duties

Hazlan Zakaria, The Ant Daily

Can a lawyer professing to support freedom of the press be involved in a case where a client is suing a media organisation? Does it contradict his personal principles? Or is it dereliction of duty if he abandons his client?

This is the question which seems to have been raised in the out-of-court lawyer vs lawyer rumble between two heavyweights of the legal activism arena, amid reports of a purported suit by Selangor Menteri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim against a news portal.

Khalid’s lawyer had written a letter of demand to the news portal over what he claimed to be libellous content in three commentaries published on the site. The portal duly acknowledged receipt of the demand letter yesterday.

The MB is claiming that the commentaries allegedly featured false allegations against him regarding an out-of-court settlement with a major bank and were designed to attack his credibility and also used to create sensational news to fish for hits by the site.

Incidentally, Khalid’s lawyer happens to be one Edmond Bon of law firm BON Advocates, a well-known human rights lawyer who operates the Loyarburok website.

He is generally believed to be the guiding intelligence behind the site’s lord and master Lord Bobo, a talking monkey well versed in law with critical views about the Malaysian justice system who holds the “minions” or supporters of the site in his trawl.

Bon’s site has sprouted a community of like-minded lawyers who expressed an interest in social and natural justice as opposed to the sanitary legal way of looking at the legalities of things more than the redeeming qualities of cases.

Indeed, when it comes to activism among legal professionals in Malaysia, one will see Bon’s pet project in mind, his initiative of legal and constitutional education having reached out to young lawyers and the public.

The question asked by some in Malaysia’s legal activism community is how his much talked about principles, including his participation in crusades for press freedoms, can allow him to represent a client that is suing a media organisation.

This is especially when it appears that Khalid allegedly snubbed the news portal in question when asked to give his reply to the allegations against him. This is as the site claimed that they already gave Khalid the right of reply.

However, Bon has maintained that as a legal professional he was duty bound to represent his clients in their legal business. Indeed, it is arguable that the right to legal representation is a human right too which extends to everyone.

He also argued that right of reply does not allow the propagation of false allegations. However, in principle the media often would be deemed as having exercised their qualified privilege if right of reply was offered, even if it was not entertained.

PKR lawyer Latheefa Koya lambasted Bon publicly on social media for being Khalid’s legal minion so to speak, Lord Bobo pun intended.

Latheefa is another doyen of legal activism among law professionals and was instrumental in the setting up the Lawyers For Liberty, a clearly present force when it comes to seeking justice for the downtrodden.

The group’s legal volunteers are very vocal in cases of injustices against the rakyat, often representing the downtrodden pro bono in making legal claims against those they deem oppressors, which most times is the BN-led government.

However, some may ask if her vehement attack on Bon has anything to do with her connection to PKR. Does it pose a conflict of interest for a PKR lawyer to criticise another lawyer being engaged by Khalid?

One can ask if she is speaking out of valid principled concern, or if this has anything to do with her own personal feelings about the whole Khalid-PKR mashup?

After all, as she argued against Bon, he is no longer a human rights lawyer if he has the gall to represent a party that is suing a media organisation as his previous support for freedom of the press would be voided by his action.

So is she speaking as a human rights lawyer or PKR advocate? Does representing the party paint partisan colouring to her more altruistic works?

Such concerns aside, the real question here is where do a lawyer’s personal principles end and his professional duties begin? A question often asked of the journalistic profession as well — how does one curate between personal principles and professional duties?

An easy thing to ask, but probably a difficult thing to answer for both professions and indeed for many others at large.

Just as it is difficult to draw the line in this case, it demonstrates how hard it is for us to divorce ourselves from being humans with principles, feelings and emotions as well as a person who must pay the bills and strive to deliver your best product at work.

At the end of the day, we all have our own opinions and principles that we want to stand by. And all of us must make sure we stand true to our professional duties and also get paid so that we can live comfortably to do both.