Lawyers are supposed to be one of the law enforcement officers in the world. However, sadly, there have been several cases where the lawyer / advocate has actually become one of the officers who have violated the law while carrying out his duties as a lawyer.
Instead of carrying out their duty to uphold justice, they justify any means to win their client in a case. Is this what we call justice?
Or do they just want to get rich? This article will discuss a phenomenon that has occurred several times in enforcing the laws of this world. Advocate or attorney is a person who provides legal services for client legal interests. Hasanuddin Nasution, Secretary General of the National Leadership Council of the World Advocates Association , said that the main task of a lawyer is to provide legal assistance, defend and ensure that a client gets his rights in carrying out the legal process, not merely to win over the client. Both at the judicial level, or at the police and prosecutor’s examination stages.
Advocates or attorneys will be entitled to an honarium or compensation for the legal services they provide from clients. The amount of the honarium is usually agreed upon by the Advocate and the client at the start of their cooperation in a case. Sometimes, this agreement is one of the reasons why an advocate ends up violating his duties as a law enforcer.
Clients sometimes have promised a large honarium to Advocates to win their cases, so the Advocates then choose to violate their own code of ethics by not carrying out their duties. In the end, lawyers actually try to win cases in various ways, such as committing bribery to judges or corruption, obstructing investigations, and providing false information or testimony.
Some of the cases that have occurred in the world are the case of Advocate Lucas, which has prevented investigations by not admitting the ESI suspect (Eddy Sindoro) to the World juridical area but instead being re-issued abroad.
Eddy is suspected of bribing the clerk of the Central Jakarta District Court, Edy Nasution, regarding the management of several cases of companies under the Lippo Group, which were handled at the Central Jakarta District Court. In addition, in the past few years, the case that many people may still remember is the case concerning the corruption of Gayus Tambunan.
Lambertus Palang Ama and Haposan Hutagalung were both lawyers who at that time handled this case. Lambertus was found guilty of providing false testimony and fabricating the origin of the Rp 28 billion in the case. Haposan Hutagalung was also found guilty of giving false information about the origin of Gayus’ money. In addition, he also bribed the National Police investigator, Arafat Enanie and Commissioner General Susno Duadji while serving as Head of the Police Criminal Investigation Unit.
And also, in a recent case, namely the Setya Novanto e-KTP corruption case, lawyer Fredrich Yunadi is also suspected of trying to obstruct the investigation. Finally, in recent days it was discovered from the KPK OTT that a lawyer was actually involved in a bribery case in a court in South Jakarta.
The lawyers may indeed be given a large enough honarium that they end up doing their best to win the case. From the cases above, we can see that the average lawyer caught in these cases is a lawyer with a client of a corruption suspect.
However, in my personal opinion, this should not be the case. A lawyer should be able to position himself as a law enforcer, not as a violator of the law that should be his guide.
A lawyer should prioritize justice and law rather than wealth alone. Before becoming a lawyer, it is certain that they know that they must not violate their oath and code of conduct. And it has also been stated above that the real duty of a lawyer is not to win a case, but to protect the legal rights owned by the defendant.
Lawyers should not twist or hide the fact that the defendant is guilty. A lawyer who breaks the law is not a good example for the people of the World. In the future, it could be that the community does not respect the law even more because they think that law enforcement officers alone are corrupt from within, and do not deserve to be respected.