When a client kills a lawyer, it destroys the trust relationship between the lawyer and the client

The news that a female lawyer was killed by a client swept the screen in the circle of friends of our legal personnel, and everyone felt irrepressible sadness.

On August 14, 2021, an obituary issued by the Lawyers Association of Fushun City, Liaoning Province, circulated on social platforms stating that Dong Cui, a 50-year-old practicing female lawyer at Liaoning Shunqingman Law Firm, was unfortunately killed at work on August 14.

On August 15, the Shuncheng Public Security Branch of the Fushun Municipal Public Security Bureau issued a notice: The place of the incident was in a legal service office, and the criminal suspect was a 62-year-old male Jin Mou, who was dissatisfied with the service of his lawyer dong mou in the civil case, and injured people with a knife, and cash had been criminally detained.

Because he is not satisfied with the effect or result of representing civil cases, he kills the lawyer who serves him, which is really a long time!

According to news reports, on the morning of July 7, 2021, during the activity of sending the law into the community, lawyer Dong Cui gave legal lectures on how to sign a labor contract, how to improve the awareness of rights protection, and how to protect rights. Among them, it also deliberately informs migrant workers that they should maintain a calm mood in the process of safeguarding their rights, use legal means to protect their rights, and express their demands and receive help through communities, judicial offices, police stations, legal aid centers and other channels when individuals cannot obtain legitimate rights and interests.

This can't help but make people sigh, when a lawyer who understands the law meets a client who is not calm, what can you do?

The relationship between a lawyer and a client is definitely not about killing and being killed. A basic red line in the practice of lawyers is to focus on the client. Being entrusted by others and being loyal to others is a basis for lawyers to gain the trust of their clients, and it is also the basis for the existence of the value of lawyers' profession.

In fact, the client is the center, and there is also such a problem: that is, the question of who has the final say between the lawyer and the client. In the final analysis, in this relationship, it is the principal who has the final say, because the principal determines the existence or non-existence of the entrusting relationship.

The lawyer who was originally collecting money to eliminate disasters for others was actually killed by his client this time, which is actually a great destruction of the legal profession.

As a lawyer in China, there is a perpetual question of "Why should a lawyer defend a bad guy?" ”。 This is certainly not easy to answer, because in the eyes of many people, bad people are not people at all, you speak for bad people, you say bad people. According to the famous Criminal Defense Lawyer Deschowitz in the United States, in some cases, the court acquitted the defendant, not because there was doubt about whether the defendant was really guilty, but because the defendant's constitutional rights were violated. The developing exclusionary rule began to focus on whether the actions of the police and prosecutors had led to such dubious confessions, rather than merely on whether the accused was guilty or innocent. With these, the defendant's defense lawyer can sue the government in court. If the police and prosecutor are found to have violated the defendant's Fifth Amendment rights, the defendant's confession is invalid and the defendant should be released. (See Deschowitz, The Best Defense, translated by Tang Jiaodong, Law Press, Class of 1994, p. 49.) )

The emergence of lawyers in society to defend the "bad guys" is precisely a manifestation of the progress of the rule of law. The reason is also very simple. What is a "bad person" and what a "good person" is, before the court pronounces a verdict, no one can say clearly, and the law and the judiciary only recognize "guilty" or "not guilty.". It is entirely possible that the public perceives as a "bad guy" who is in fact legally innocent. If the public is left to judge whether a defendant is a "good guy" or a "bad guy" and decides whether to defend him, it is in effect replacing a judicial trial with a public trial.

Even if a "bad person" is eventually found to be "guilty" by the court, he needs a lawyer to defend him, because for a "bad person", he may have a light crime, serious crime, etc., and need a lawyer to help him find a legal basis. Respecting the rights of bad people is also the premise of protecting the rights of good people, and if the legitimate rights of bad people are not protected, then the abuse of power will eventually come to the good people.

Lawyers have a statutory obligation to keep confidentiality on behalf of their clients. In the 1973 "Happy Lake Corpse" case in the United States, there was a direct conflict between the professional ethics of lawyers and the simple morality of the people, which was called the first major case of professional ethics of lawyers in the United States. The offender has revealed the case to the lawyer, should the lawyer call the police? This problem can be called a big problem in the lawyer's field of daughters-in-law and mother falling into the water at the same time.

After the lawyer found the victim's body, he did not disclose the truth to the police for half a year. They argue that they are bound by the strict confidentiality requirements of their lawyer-client relationships. On June 20, 1974, the New York Times published a rare front-page crime news: "Two lawyers keep serial killers secret: there are two other victims."

A stone stirred up a thousand waves, and American public opinion was in an uproar. In 1975, the judge dropped the charges against the two lawyers, "the lawyer's conduct and the lawyer-client relationship in the lawyer's professional code, the lawyer has the obligation to keep the client's information confidential". The New York State Bar Association also believes that "guaranteeing the confidentiality of the client helps to promote lawyers to better represent the client, because such representation requires a comprehensive understanding of the relevant facts of the client, even if the facts involve previous criminal conduct."

The lawyer and the client are originally "comrades-in-arms" in the same trench, the two sides should cooperate with each other, because mutual trust is the basis of cooperation, if the parties are not satisfied with the slaughter of lawyers, it will cause the lawyer to distrust the parties, just like the current doctors and patients, doctors are afraid of patients with knives, patients are afraid of doctors to prescribe big punishments, how can such a mentality be optimistic about the disease, how is the harmonious doctor-patient relationship?

If the client can kill the lawyer, on the one hand, the lawyer will choose high-quality clients from the perspective of self-protection, and many parties may not be able to get effective lawyer services; on the other hand, the lawyer will also avoid the practice risk through the agency contract and other means, pass on the risk responsibility, and ultimately damage the interests of the client; on the other hand, the fee for the lawyer's service may be increased, because the life price should be taken into account, but the service level may be reduced, because the stability is the most important.

Most importantly, due to the disappearance of the trust relationship, in fact, it will lead to a great depression in the legal service industry, because the client does not trust the lawyer, and the lawyer must guard against the killing from the client.

We call for a relationship of trust between the client and the lawyer as soon as possible, the client trusts the lawyer, the lawyer is the client-centered, and such a lawyer-client relationship is the normal state of the legal profession.