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Comment by spoonjim | Hacker News Reader

You don’t get to declare what is unethical by adding the sentence “Period.” after your claim. Ethics is a matter of opinion; I believe that knowingly aiding violent criminals is wrong; if you feel otherwise, that’s just like, your, opinion, man.

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They aren't criminal until the court system declares them criminal. The lawyer is defending them before they are declared criminals. That is what "presumption of innocence" means. Everyone has the right to be represented in court, even people that later on will be convicted. Otherwise we can just go back to use pitchforks and similar (and actually it's happening on social media, and it's not looking good)

Everyone is entitled (in the US) to due process and a lawyer to defend them. There is nothing unethical or immoral about it. It's a fundamental right.

It is a thin line, most of these groups are in contact with lawyer teams before they start the operations and the lawyers are in the know. These groups do risk assessment before going ahead.

Again, ethics are a matter of opinion, laws are a matter of fact. Yes, in the US you have the legal right to an attorney. Whether that attorney is behaving ethically depends on the attorney’s behavior and the person making the judgment on the ethics. You and I don’t have to have the same opinion on what’s ethical. We can each advocate for our own ideas of ethics to be codified into policy.

Lawyers, even in the United States, are bound by rules of conduct, and will stop being lawyers very quickly if the overstep the rules of ethical conduct.

The standards of ethics they are checked against are not yours or mine, they are the rules they agreed to. To pretend like ethics aren't a thing for lawyers is surprisingly uninformed for HN.

What happens when you are accused of a heinous crime, the evidence points at you, and yet you are innocent?

I bet you change your mind about the ethics of having a lawyer represent you.

I’d highly recommend that you study formal ethics. Ethics is not built on a platform of opinions.

Unless you are the sort of person that claims that reality is just an opinion, too, in which case you should also study formal philosophy.

Which is good and fair. I think the example was Tony Soprano though and the (imaginary) lawyer in question knew full well the kind of shennanigans he was up to, these lawyers know they're defending murderers and people that ruin lives.

But that’s the point of lawyers. When they defend a guilty party, most of the time they know that the party is indeed guilty. They need to, to prepare a good defence.

Rhetorically, yes he/she/they do get to do that.

Ethics is a matter of philosophy, which has a bit more going for it than just being composed of raw, uneducated opinion.

Lawyers have a code of ethics. Written down and codified. Not a matter of opinion.

You are thinking of morals. That is a matter of opinion

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