The Duties of An Advocate Towards His Client

The relationship between an Advocate and a client is highly fiduciary, and it is the duty of an advocate fearlessly to uphold the interests of the client, and give him justice, established a good relationship with the client with an object the client can easily share any matter with an advocate.

1. Duty of care to client

An advocate should ensure that the interests of the client are not in any manner hurt by his act or omissions. He must also defend a person accused of a crime, regardless of his personal opinion as to the guilt of the accused and must not abuse or take advantage of the confidence reposed in him by the client.

2. No Collusion:

This is the duty of advocate that he should not do collusion that is advocate should not do conspiracy with the opposite side.

  1. An Advocate should not meet with opposition parties with aim of doing conspiracy.
  2. An Advocate should not give any such advice knowingly that could effect negatively.
  3. An Advocate should not accept gifts, fees from opposition party. Or should not disclose any weak point of his client with the opposition.

3. Don’t disclose professional communication:

It is another duties of an advocate, that whatever talks and other documents are provided by the client to the advocate, the advocate should not show/provide those to the opposition party to create a conspiracy.

4. No transaction with the property of the Client:

It is the legal binding on the advocate that he cannot do any transaction with the disputed property. Thus he should not buy/sell the property, which is involved in a case.

In case of P.D Gupta Versus Ram Murti (AIR 1998 S.C 283) Supreme Court held that buying the disputed property of client is professional misconduct.

5. Fees should be reasonable:

It is the duty of the advocate that he should not charge arbitrary fees from his/her clients, that means he should tack reasonable fees from his client.

6. No fraud with the client:

It is the duties of an advocate that, the money that the court gives in the name of the client must be provided to the client and under no conditions should be kept by the advocate.

Case Study: In Harish Chandra Tiwari Versus Baiju (AIR 2002 S.C 548) In this case Supreme Court decided that the advocate did not paid the amount to the client, which was taken from the court and thus the name of the advocate was removed from the roll of advocates.

7. Good behavior with the Client:

The client should be treated nicely by the advocates. Advocate should try best to get justice to the client. He should advice client properly and in a proper way.

8. Other Duties:

There are many other duties of an advocate towards client apart from the above-mentioned duties.

  1. He should not use undue influence over his client.
  2. He shouldn’t present false and forged documents
  3. Advocate should try to solve the disputes by compromise.
  4. Advocates should try his best to give him justice

Conclusion:

Thus these are duties of advocates towards his client that must be practiced by advocates to protects the rights of client. There are many clients legal rights using which client can get justice from court against the unjust done by their advocate.

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