This chapter focuses on the attitudes that lawyers held towards their clients in this study.
Attitudes are fundamental to the topic of access to criminal justice; they underpin the entire lawyer-client relationship. At root, the relationship is a social interaction, an interpersonal encounter premised upon a fundamental ‘exchange of knowledge' (Suseno et al, 2006: 278-80).
Understanding the manner in which lawyers relate to their clients offers a means of comprehending the lawyer's practice as a whole, assessing the foundations so as to pass judgement on the stability of the overall structure. The issue of attitudes, then, represents a sensible point from which to begin engaging with the ethnographic data obtained through this research.This ethnographic data, though, has not produced a simple, unified picture of the issue of attitudes in the lawyer-client relationship. Instead, two apparently contradictory narratives arose. In the formal interviews, lawyers presented positive attitudes when talking about their clients. This pointed towards a healthy relationship. However, the participant observation showed lawyers displaying negative attitudes when discussing clients. This was, rather, indicative of a strained relationship.
In this chapter, both accounts are offered individually and only thereafter brought together. In the first two sections, I do not engage with either the comments of lawyers or arguments from the wider academic literature to any great degree. Rather, material is presented to allow an appreciation of typical statements made by lawyers, first, in interview, and then at work. It is in the third section that these are drawn together into a critical debate reflecting on why there was such divergence and considering what impact this may have had on the lawyer-client relationship. I conclude that the issue of attitudes reveals a strained lawyer-client relationship. To begin, I consider the formal interviews.
In this first section, my results are presented free from critique, so as to give maximum voice to the lawyers. However, I have chosen to organise the quotes in order to highlight the dominant themes that emerged, dividing the responses under three headings:
1. Social Agenda - the lawyers' reasons for being engaged in this area.
2. Professionals - the role the lawyers saw themselves fulfilling.
3. Healthy Relationship - the manner in which the lawyers conceptualised the relationship with their clients.