By NIDRA KEWERE MAPI
LAWYERS must constantly strive to maintain moral ethics and integrity, Minister for justice and Attorney General of Papua New Guinea Dr Allan Marat said at the graduation ceremony of lawyers from the Legal Training Institute (LTI) yesterday.
Dr Marat told the 63 graduating lawyers that the legal profession was very noble and demanded a lot of hard work.
He said they would meet all kinds of people on a professional and personal basis and that they would encounter all kinds of work due to the rapid change in technology which they would get a chance to experience.
“All these work will require you to employ your professional skills and with that comes in professional ethics.”
Dr Marat said the legal profession was not about whether a lawyer won or lost a case, but if the law had been carried out professionally and diligently.
He said: “I believe professional ethics is founded on the essential building blocks of moral ethics and integrity.
You must constantly strive to have these building blocks in your professional careers.”
Dr Marat said integrity on the other hand, was actually doing what you said which went together with moral ethics.
He added that in the legal profession and the quest for leadership in life, lawyers needed to uphold integrity, moral ethics and the purity of justice.
“In the legal profession you advocate something and you live up to it. That’s integrity. When you say something and you don’t do it, that’s a disintegrated personality and you become a hypocrite.”
Deputy Chief Justice Salamo Injia said in his address that they were graduating at a time when the country faced a lot of challenges, one of them being the decline in respect for the rule of law.
He said that a lot of things were not being done correctly in the legal profession today and urged the young lawyers to think creatively and dynamically and to do their jobs in a way that upheld the rule of law.
He also told the new lawyers to resist temptation and influence that came their way and to learn from experienced lawyers.
Justice Injia said: “The challenges are insurmountable. You are beginning a new chapter of you life.
“Sometimes the answers you seek are not only human intervention but divine intervention as well.”
He added that faith, perseverance, humility and peace of mind were not found in the books of law but in christian principles.
The graduats will officially become lawyers when they are admitted to the Papua New Guinea Board of Lawyers at the National Court House this Friday.