If a lawyer who masters the clinical psychology and finds himself forced to stand face to face with an accused who was one of his patients ...
How should he act?
Is it according to his professional confidentiality or according to his job as a lawyer which obliges him to defend his agent until the end without thinking of any other details.?
And since he has all the truth about his adversary, especially if this patient has any psychological disease that only him(the lawyer) knows about it ?
And what if this illness makes the accused innocent?
where are the limits ?
The site also has a blog with articles on various legal topics related to personal injury law.
Thank you for this scientific answer, then for your punctuality and finally for your deep perception to the ethical questions ... I really respect this way of thinking .
These are some really interesting ethical considerations. First, I would say that it would be quite rare I should imagine to have both extensive experience in both fields though I'm not sure of the statistics.
If there are any psychological issues for the crime then these would definitely need to be spoken of. The right answer is that one should act ethically, though this is a simple answer and there are a number of factors that need to be taken into account:
How likely is it that the mitigating circumstance interfered with one's free will?
Did the accused 'know' what they were doing?
If the accused knew what they were doing, could they control themselves?
No matter how much we like to place strict black and white rules in our ways of thinking, this does not spread to law or psychology.
In essence too, I doubt you'd find a lawyer who had to face a former patient since even hypothetically this would be a conflict of interest. So more than likely the lawyer would not be either defending or prosecuting such an individual.
Great ethical considerations though, and shows how complex are the threads that unite law and the mercurial world of the human mind.