Administrative Law-Rules for the Legal Profession
The legal profession itself is governed by rules and regulations published by their profession. Within every state there is an agency or entity that is responsible for publishing rules that govern the conduct of attorneys. Those rules of conduct are generally referred to as disciplinary rules. If an attorney violates a disciplinary rule, he or she may be disciplined by the state bar and subjected to certain sanctions. For example, if you were represented by an attorney and found that the attorney had done something that you considered to be highly improper, you may want to look at the disciplinary rules to see if there is something set forth there that might govern the particular behavior in question.
There are also rules of procedure designed to provide some uniformity to how lawsuits proceed. Rules of civil procedure:
* define what should be contained within a set of suit papers initiating a lawsuit (also called a complaint);
* define how a complaint is to be served;
* set forth what affirmative defenses may be raised by a defendant;
* set forth a variety of rules governing the discovery process; and,
* set forth the procedures by which a judgment of a court may be reviewed by the trial court.
Rules of criminal procedure govern how a defendant is to be dealt with in terms of the initial charging, his or her right to be informed of the charge, what rights he or she may have in terms of discovery, and how the eventual trial will proceed.
