What is a lawyer's mission?

About the author: Ren Jinghua, lawyer, female, practicing lawyer of Beijing Bondo Law Firm, bachelor of law from Xinjiang University. 1993 graduated, 1998 started internship. I have many years of experience in law teaching and lawyer practice, worked as a legal consultant in enterprises for many years, worked in the legal departments of large domestic enterprise groups, and am familiar with the operation processes of various enterprises. Participate in the related work of enterprise restructuring and reorganization projects and handle a large number of litigation cases. Article 2 of the draft Lawyers Law stipulates that "a lawyer is a legal professional who has obtained a lawyer's practice license and provides legal services according to law. Lawyers take the mission of safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the parties, ensuring the correct implementation of the law, and safeguarding social fairness and justice. " The author thinks it should be changed to "A lawyer is a legal professional who obtains a lawyer's practice license according to law and provides legal services." Lawyers take safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the parties as their mission, safeguarding the correct implementation of the law and safeguarding social fairness and justice. "The reasons are as follows: 1, the mission has an obligation, and the fundamental obligation of lawyers should be to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the parties as much as possible; 2. Maintaining the correct implementation of laws and social fairness and justice is the common goal of lawyers, prosecutors and judges, not their mission; 3. Lawyers in China only have the right of claim (the biggest characteristics of lawyers are passivity, passivity and right of claim). All the powers he seeks come down to one point: request, request for bail pending trial, request for lifting compulsory measures, request for meeting, request for investigation, etc. The role of the right of claim is relative, and there is no decision-making power to safeguard social fairness and justice (the decision-making power is in the hands of judges). It is meaningless to ask a person who only has the right to claim to undertake the mission of maintaining social fairness and justice. 4. Lawyers, as spokesmen for the parties to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests, can request to weaken public rights through the right of claim to safeguard human rights, thus achieving the purpose of maintaining social fairness and justice; 5. Lawyers have completed the mission of safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the parties, which is to contribute to the maintenance of social fairness and justice. However, whether lawyers can take safeguarding social fairness and justice as their own responsibility, the author puts forward two different conclusions to discuss with you. 1. As an individual lawyer, one should have a sense of mission to pursue the rule of law, justice, human rights and democracy and safeguard social fairness and justice, which is the essence of a lawyer's mission. Pursuing this mission is to make our society more fair and reasonable, and of course, it also includes making the judiciary fairer, making the market more orderly, and making the game between citizens and the government healthier and not destructive, so as to achieve the goal of building a harmonious society. 2. As a lawyer's law, maintaining social fairness and justice should not be defined as a lawyer's mission, just as a person should have ideals, personal ideals should not be defined as industry obligations by the state. Every occupation has its professional ethics and responsibilities, which are determined by the social division of labor and also determine the different missions of different occupations. Courts, public security, procuratorates and lawyers are all legal workers, but their responsibilities are different. Taking criminal cases as an example, the duties of public security and procuratorate are to collect evidence of criminal suspects' guilt and accuse defendants of guilt and guilt; The lawyer's duty is to defend the defendant's innocence, light crime or reduction or exemption of his criminal responsibility; The duty of the court is to make a fair judgment according to the law, not to wronged an innocent person or condone a guilty person. From the above division of responsibilities, it can be concluded that it is the mission of the court to safeguard the correct implementation of the law and social fairness and justice, and it is the mission of lawyers to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the parties. If the mission of maintaining social fairness and justice is regarded as the obligation entrusted to lawyers by law, it will contradict the professional responsibility of lawyers. The professional responsibility of lawyers requires lawyers to protect the legitimate rights and interests of clients with due diligence within the scope of their entrustment. Therefore, Article 35 of the draft Lawyers Law stipulates that "a lawyer who represents litigation legal affairs or handles non-litigation legal affairs shall safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the client within the scope of entrustment." Article 36 stipulates that "when a lawyer acts as a criminal defender, he shall collect and put forward materials and opinions to prove that the criminal suspect or defendant is innocent, the crime is light, or his criminal responsibility is reduced or exempted, so as to protect his litigation rights and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the criminal suspect or defendant." Article 42 stipulates that "[Practice Confidentiality] lawyers shall keep state secrets and business secrets of the parties they know in their practice activities, and shall not disclose the privacy of the parties. Lawyers have no obligation to report or testify about facts that are not conducive to clients, but they are committing or preparing to commit crimes that endanger the lives of others or public safety, knowing that they endanger national security or major public interests. " The mission of maintaining social fairness and justice requires lawyers to report the facts that lawyers know are not conducive to their clients during their practice. When representing litigation legal affairs or handling non-litigation legal affairs, lawyers should consider not only the client, but also other parties. When acting as a criminal defender, lawyers are required to express their opinions not only on the defendant's innocence, light crime or reduction or exemption from criminal responsibility, but also on the defendant's guilt. The mission of maintaining social fairness and justice prevents lawyers from dutifully safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of clients, puts lawyers in a dilemma, makes clients give up lawyers and makes lawyers withdraw from the legal arena. The current rights of lawyers are not enough to make lawyers undertake the mission of maintaining social fairness and justice. Lawyers take facts as the basis and law as the criterion to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of clients. Facts are the foundation, but the facts are unclear. Safeguarding legitimate rights and interests has become passive water and empty talk. Facts can only be restored by evidence, and the facts can only be clear if the evidence is conclusive. Therefore, obtaining evidence is the basis for lawyers to handle cases. Only when lawyers investigate conclusive evidence can they safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the parties. What right do lawyers have to investigate and collect evidence? Article 38 of the draft Lawyers Law stipulates that "lawyers have the right to investigate, collect, consult, extract and copy the evidence and materials related to this case according to the needs of litigation agency or defense, and the relevant units and individuals shall cooperate. Lawyers may apply to judicial organs for collecting and obtaining evidence. If the lawyer's application is really necessary for ascertaining the facts of the case and correctly applying the law, the judicial organ shall support it. " In other words, lawyers investigate and collect evidence from relevant units and individuals in the process of handling cases, and relevant units and individuals may not cooperate; When lawyers apply to the judicial organs for collecting and obtaining evidence that cannot be obtained, whether to allow the judicial organs to examine it or not can only be supported if the judicial organs think it is really necessary. Lawyers' right to investigate and collect evidence is not enough to ensure that lawyers can obtain relevant evidence for handling cases, which will directly lead to lawyers' inability to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of clients due to insufficient evidence. Imagine how lawyers can undertake the mission of maintaining social fairness and justice when it is difficult to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the parties. Maintaining social fairness and justice is the lofty ideal of lawyers, the accumulation of the work achievements of lawyers, judges and prosecutors who pursue fairness and justice, and the embodiment of lawyers' mission of safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of parties according to law.