Ethics and Values in Legal Professions Essay

What is the relationship between ethics and values? Provide three examples.

Values are the aspects of life that are the most important for a certain individual. Ethics are the individual’s ideas of the proper and most acceptable behavior. Values and morals are very individual and differ from person to person. One’s life choices depend directly on their values and ethics. The choice of a profession depends a lot on the person’s values and ethics. For example, when a person values good income, they would take a job connected with risks that are paid very well. When a person values career development or their ethics do not allow them to go after money only, they would agree to start at the very bottom of a career ladder and have a perspective of growth and learning. If a person values safety the most, they would never agree to a career related to risks for health or life. Ethically, not all jobs are acceptable to everyone. Someone may disagree with waitressing or with working as a janitor because these professions are less prestigious, and some people would never work in sales because of the huge responsibility.

Are they the same? How do we learn these or develop them and incorporate them into our daily personal and professional life?

Ethics and values are related, but they are not the same. We learn our ethics and values during the course of life by means of going through various experiences. For example, two people can be cheated on at some point in their lives. One of them, after comprehending the consequences of this experience, may decide to never cheat on anyone in the future in order not to cause the same discomfort and pain. The other one may stop trusting people around and become a cheater themselves, valuing their own comfort over the well being of others. We also learn a lot about our values and ethics from our parents. They can teach a child to love or neglect animals, for example. When we grow up, we start to apply our values and ethics towards the situations we face in order to make choices. Not only do we select our future careers according to our values and ethics, but we also make better or worse employees due to them. Values and ethics represent our reliability and honesty, our courage, and manners at the workplace; they make us responsible or untrustworthy workers.

Criminal justice workers, such as police and correctional officers, judges, and attorneys, are commonly held to a specific standard of values. What are those values? Why are they held to these values? Should this be the case?

Criminal justice workers are seen as the living representation of law and proper behavior in our society. This is why they are always very carefully watched. Some people just view them as reliable readers and role-models; some are just trying to catch them wrongdoing. Criminal workers such as police officers and judges possess certain power; this is why it is highly important that these people are held to strict values and treat their duties with responsibility and never misuse their influence. Criminal justice workers often have to deal with situations related to high emotional pressure and stress; many of the cases they have to handle require fast and proper decisions. Police professionals need to know how to maintain balance and stick to the right ethical actions under any circumstances. This is why criminal justice workers have to be properly selected and trained for their professional responsibilities. Ethics training course for the police workers is designed to teach them how to see the ethical issues clearly, identify different solutions for them, make right ethical choices based on the solutions, act promptly and take full responsibilities for the consequences of their actions (Gleason 2014).

Reference List

Gleason, T. (2014). Ethics Training for Police. Web.