American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct - Self-governing Body

Self-governing Body

Generally, the legal profession in the United States is a self-regulating and self-policing organization. Lawyers control the regulatory institutions that control lawyers, and such institutions are subject to supervision by the judiciary, which itself consists of lawyers who became judges. In contrast, many other professions, such as medicine, are controlled by executive branch disciplinary bodies that have many members who come from outside such professions, and who may have been appointed by the governor of the state, who is not necessarily a member of those professions.

The concept of the self-regulating profession has repeatedly been attacked as ineffective in controlling unethical or incompetent lawyers, especially after the Watergate scandal. The Model Rules were specifically formulated by the ABA's Kutak Commission after Watergate to demonstrate that the American legal profession was capable of regulating itself and to alleviate demands that lawyer regulation be centralized into federal or state agencies directly accountable to the public.