Technical challenges for lawyers impact on our ethics. Some predict that singularity technologies will progressively merge human and machine intelligences. These may become evident in knowledge processing and therefore affect litigation, with potential for such merged intelligences to minimize moral accountability. Perhaps machine intelligences will progressively calculate which actions are ‘better’ in rigid consequentialist terms, ignoring competing moral frameworks described in this book, and government authority will be challenged. Speculation, of course, but there is unlikely to be a lessening in the need for moral leadership from law school deans, bar association presidents and leading practitioners, as Greater China strives for overall sustainability. Arguably, with our lawyers’ sensitivity to virtue and Confucian teaching we might conclude that narrow role morality is no longer enough. Our final social utility (and the reason for any social and economic privileges we retain as lawyers) may lie in our willingness to help whole communities access practical justice: that is, genuine equality of access to health, food, housing and education.

We should act for only one client at a time, to avoid a conflict of interest (or a conflict of loyalty). So what happens when your law firm as a whole has two commercial clients trying to negotiate a merger and one lawyer in one team ‒ yourself ‒ suddenly learns something damaging about the other client that could derail the merger? Traditional role morality, virtue ethics and Confucian teaching require us to avoid situations where interests conflict. Loyalty is not contentious for most of us, except when we are setting our fees. However, the professional conduct rules that apply to current (concurrent) client conflicts and current–former (successive) client conflicts are some of the most complex in Greater China. Utilising scenarios around Big Pharma patents’ disputes, competing airlines and competing steelmakers, our diagrams set out the conduct rules of Greater China and suggest solutions according to general morality. Avoid joint representation in commercially competitive areas – regardless of an information barrier – and where a conflict emerges due to a firm merger, cease acting for both parties.

There are several types of law degrees in Greater China but no simple way to compare them or work out whether a single law school will provide you with a good (moral) legal education. We explain what makes a law school morally good and what questions to ask your preferred law school. We discuss how to manage your mental health as a law student and lawyer, and how this is connected to Confucius’ teaching about the ‘superior man understanding what is right’. We discuss Davd Luban’s insight that lawyers’ careful moral thinking is critical to the future of law and legal practice. Because professional conduct rules can only rarely be applied without reference to context and circumstances, there will always be a need for lawyers to use an underlying moral framework or methodology, when they encounter new or challenging decisions. Four global approaches to ethical decision-making are introduced – consequentialism (similar to utilitarianism), Kantian ethics, virtue ethics and Confucian teaching. At the heart of each of these approaches is a commitment to integrity and, in those circumstances when it is required, to open candour and frankness, irrespective of self-interest or embarrassment.