El abogado debe obrar con honradez... ¿Leí bien?

In ethics codes, the lawyer is asked to act in a righteous way. Here we analyze the scope of this mandate, which seems to move the lawyer in an opposite direction of her commitment towards her clients. In sect. I we unpack the challenge. In sect. II we disambiguate the meaning of righteousness. In sect. III we analyze righteousness as a virtue, and the way in which it can be operative given a role ethics context. In sect IV we depurate the meaning of the duty of acting in a righteous way by means of the way the Professional Ethics Code regulates the lawyer’s interactions with different participants. In sect. V we use the duty of righteousness understood as a professional virtue to analyze a case of a violation of the ethics regulation. We conclude that the way it is expected from lawyers to fulfill the mandate eludes the logic of rule following. Because acting in a righteous way implies the deployment of capacities and skills that involve an inner record from the part of the lawyer about how to act on each case. This does not, however, mean that the mandate is just an application of the lawyer’s moral general virtues. It is strictly professional and does not apply to people in general.