Professor Robert Barrington reviews recent research under the GI ACE Programme on ‘Gatekeepers, Enablers or Technicians’, concluding that the default justification that any lawyer is obliged to represent any client has been challenged by both legal ethicists and practising lawyers in the context of kleptocracy and grand corruption, and is now considered a contested space.
So-called ‘professional enablers’ have for at least a decade been pinpointed by anti-corruption analysts as being a lynchpin in the movement of Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) -including the proceeds of corruption – around the world. Yet not much has happened to curtail the enablers’ activities. Worse, the professional enablers had seemed until recently to be winning the argument in policy circles by claiming it is not really their fault.
Their argument has been that the term ‘professional enabler’ should only be applied to a minority of professionals who knowingly and actively enable criminality. The counter argument is that this ignores many activities in which the legal profession routinely engages that facilitate the transnational flows of the proceeds of corruption.
And many professionals, notably lawyers, have sought to justify activities for which they are accused of enabling by claiming that it is in fact they who occupy the moral high ground, for their work upholds important values of a free society bound by the rule of law such as the right to representation and access to justice.
Now a slew of initiatives and research challenge the validity of those justifications and bring important nuance and insights into the debate.
First, GI ACE research on ‘Gatekeepers, Enablers or Technicians: the contested role of lawyers as facilitators of kleptocracy and grand corruption’, focuses on one profession, lawyers, instead of lumping all so-called ‘enablers’ together. Lawyers warrant close attention as they play a ‘keystone’ role, both because of the breadth of services they provide, and also because so many activities and transactions require a lawyer at some point in the chain.
Certain principles that are sacred to lawyers have been used as default justifications by lawyers who act for kleptocrats. They are broadly enshrined in the UN’s Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers dating from 1990. These Principles safeguard the notion of access to a lawyer to provide ‘adequate protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms to which all persons are entitled.’
The Basic Principles include the right to representation by a lawyer and the right for a lawyer not to be identified with their client or client’s causes when discharging their functions. These are important and necessary, especially in countries where lawyers provide a vital buffer between threatened individuals and the power of the state. Collectively, the 29 Basic Principles fall under the label of providing access to justice, and are considered fundamental to a just society based on the rule of law. They are reflected in the professional codes of Bar Associations and equivalent professional bodies the world over.
The foundational principle (number one) is that ‘All persons are entitled to call upon the assistance of a lawyer of their choice to protect and establish their rights and to defend them in all stages of criminal proceedings.’
When a law firm in a global financial market, such as London, acts for a kleptocrat or corrupt oligarch, this ‘access to justice’ defence is often used as the default justification for doing so. It is not just lawyers and firms who make this argument; they are often supported by professional bodies and powerful allies in politics and the judiciary. So powerful has this lobby been, that even when governments have mentioned professional enablers within their anti-corruption strategies, this has been restricted to professionals who are knowingly involved in criminality – as exemplified in the UK.
Thus, the Law Society of England & Wales boasts that it successfully lobbied to have the UK government adopt a minimalist definition of professional enablers, as “an individual or organisation that is providing professional services that enable criminality. Their behaviour is deliberate, reckless, improper, dishonest and/or negligent through a failure to meet their professional and regulatory obligations” [my emphasis].
The result is that lawyers who act for kleptocrats tend not to regard themselves as professional enablers of corruption. They characterise their involvement as being that of neutral actors who, if anything, have a professional obligation to take on any client, and in doing so are upholding key principles that support the rule of law.
The GI ACE research led by Tena Prelec observes a disconnect, or fault-line, between campaigners and the lawyers themselves. Campaigners view lawyers in such circumstances as being professional enablers who are complicit with their kleptocratic clients; while the lawyers believe that it is actually they themselves who hold the moral high ground because they are providing access to justice.
Is there any way to bridge the fault-line, or to take on directly the default justification that lawyers who represent kleptocrats are merely providing access to justice? Prelec et al’s research carves a path to link literature from two academic disciplines, legal ethics and political science.
In the academic discourse on the legal ethics of client selection and representation in the UK, scholars such as Richard Moorhead and Steven Vaughan ask fundamental questions about when ‘zealous lawyering’ prioritises a client’s interest at the expense of the public interest, how far law firms consider ethics in the course of their work, and whether lawyers are consistent in their decisions about who to represent. Stephen Mayson has reintroduced the concept of a profession with an over-riding duty to the public interest, after years in which commercialisation of law firms prompted a retreat from ethical lawyering.
The US has a longer standing debate. In the 1970s, a ‘standard conception’ emerged which characterised lawyers as neutral actors, or technicians, whose role was simply to act within the law in the best interests of the client. In other words, as long as what you are doing is legal, you are properly fulfilling your duties as a lawyer. Other US legal theorists moved away from this reductive view, with Rick Abel arguing that ’criminal defense cannot be the foundation of legal ethics because it is such a miniscule part of what American lawyers do. Heinz and his colleagues found that Chicago lawyers spent just 5 percent of their working time on it in 1975, and that had shrunk to 3 percent in 1995. We need to construct an ethics for the other 97 percent of lawyers’ effort, especially their transactional work.’ (Abel 2025; see also Wendel 2025)
In the context of enabling kleptocracy, this is a key point. The UN’s Basic Principles, and the deployment of the ‘access to justice’ argument, apply to criminal defence. Put simply, if a corrupt oligarch were arrested for rape or murder, there is no question they should have a right to legal representation. But the vast majority of kleptocrats and corrupt actors whose funds flow through a global financial centre such as London are not looking for legal protection from a criminal charge. They are trying to protect or maximise wealth which they acquired in corrupt circumstances.
Wendel does not always agree with Abel, but makes the important point that lawyers can choose whom they take on as clients: “ Lawyers, is that there are institutional and personal dimensions to justifying a decision to work for a particular client. It may be that “anyone is entitled to a lawyer,” to use the stock phrase, but it may not follow that a particular lawyer should provide that representation.” Applying these principles to kleptocracy, it would appear that that the access to justice argument does not apply to the representation of kleptocrats in commercial transactions (such as listing a former state-owned enterprise on the London Stock Exchange, or assisting with investments), and that in any case a law firm is not obliged to take on a kleptocrat as a client: they have a choice as to whether to do so.
In the field of political science and corruption studies, Prelec and de Oliveira draw a distinction between ‘upstream’ and downstream’ enablers. Those upstream, usually in the same country where wealth was misappropriated, are more clearly complicit in helping out their local kleptocrat. By the time funds reach downstream lawyers, in a market like London, there is plausible deniability (Prelec & de Oliveira 2023). A law firm can undertake an apparently thorough due diligence, and find no evidence of anything that would prevent them taking on the client under existing Anti-Money Laundering laws or regulations.
The GI ACE research by Prelec et al reviews the arguments and counter-arguments deployed by lawyers in this debate, interviewing dozens of lawyers and analysing the public debate as played out in newspaper comment sections. They identify five key arguments that lawyers have used as default justifications, and match each with a counter-argument from the public and academic debates.
These advances in thinking among legal ethicists and political scientists encounter resistance from the legal profession. An initiative from the International Bar Association has not made the progress that had been hoped, not least because entrenched national views about legal ethics and the role of the lawyer have prevented a more holistic discussion about how to respond to society’s concerns about lawyers being professional enablers. The IBA has taken one important step by opening up the discussion – in a meeting at Chatham House– to a wider range of stakeholders, allowing them to express those concerns directly to the legal community. Other initiatives, such as the World Economic Forum’s Gatekeepers Initiative, have, after an initial burst of enthusiasm, lain largely dormant.
The most recent development is a report published by the Taskforce on Business Ethics and the Legal Profession, a multistakeholder group – with a majority of lawyers- chaired by Guy Beringer, former Senior Partner of Allen & Overy, one of the world’s largest law firms. Based on extensive consultations with the legal profession, the Taskforce’s conclusions reinforced much of the academic research:
- the ‘access to justice’ argument does not usually apply in non-criminal matters;
- lawyers do not just have a duty to their clients, but also a wider duty to society;
- solicitors (barristers are another matter) can and should apply ethical considerations to client selection; and
- the conditions of state capture in several parts of the world mean that ‘criminality’ is a moot point and so lawyers need to be making ethical judgements not relying on the traditional due diligence that checks whether funds are of criminal origin.
This has also been echoed in podcasts by The Lawyer magazine, which have examined the use of Executive Orders issued by President Trump against large US law firms to explore the role of lawyers in upholding the rule of law. Are they just businesses like any other? Commenting on this in the Financial Times, Charlie Geffen, the former head of major UK law firm Ashurst, noted that the types of firm targeted by President Trump ‘play a critical role in facilitating commercial activity — whether that is M&A, capital markets or commercial disputes. Their business model is much closer to investment banking than it is to many other law firms.’ By contrast, Guy Beringer had concluded that notwithstanding the commercial drivers of such firms, they had a self-interest in acting responsibly: ‘Legal services is a public profession which owes duties to the public. If the public come to believe that these duties are not being fulfilled, it will begin to dismantle the advantages which were given in return.’
These are significant developments. The stance of legal professionals who treat the access to justice argument as an impregnable fortress can now be viewed as simply one legitimate view amongst several. Their hand has been over-played, and there are now very evident cracks in those default justifications. Legal ethicists, political scientists, anti-corruption campaigners and – most importantly – voices within the profession itself, are offering compelling counter-arguments. Where does all this leave us? After several years of lawyers trying to close down the thinking that some of their number may be professional enablers of kleptocracy and grand corruption, we may now finally have a debate.
References
Abel, R. L. (2025). Are there causes and clients lawyers should not represent? Legal Ethics, 1–7.
Barrington, R., Beringer, G., & Garrod, G. (2025). Competing rights, colliding ethics: reconciling client acceptance, state capture and the concept of a public profession. Legal Ethics, 1–14.
Mayson, S. (2024). Legal Services Regulation: the meaning of ‘the public interest.’ London: UCL. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ethics-law/sites/ethics_law/files/irlsr_second_supplementary_report.pdf
Moorhead, R., & Hinchly, V. (2015). Professional minimalism? The ethical consciousness of commercial lawyers. Journal of Law and Society, 42(3), 387-412.
Prelec, T., & de Oliveira, R. S. (2023). Enabling African loots: tracking the laundering of Nigerian kleptocrats’ ill-gotten gains in western financial centres. Journal of International Relations and Development, 26(2), 272-300.
Vaughan, S. (2023). Existential Ethics: Thinking Hard About Lawyer Responsibility for Clients’ Environmental Harms. Current Legal Problems, 76(1), 1-34.
Vaughan, S. (2024). Moral Remainders: What Is The Price of Professional Integrity?. Available at SSRN 4856109.
Wendel, W. B. (2025). The limits of liberal legal ethics. Legal Ethics, 1-11.