This analysis discusses how honourable lawyers can navigate negotiation by permitting some deception, indicating its complexity in ethics.
A lawyer has an obligation to be honourable and a duty of integrity. In a negotiation, a lawyer will not be completely honest. Both of these statements are true, but they seem contradictory. The Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s Model Code of Professional Conduct, does not expressly prohibit a lawyer from lying to another lawyer, but the Code does include provisions that promote integrity, honesty and honour. In this post, I attempt to defend the idea that an honourable lawyer can engage in a small range of permitted deception during negotiations.
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Deanne Sowter (2025) studied this question.
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