Good lawyering is fundamental to the protection of vulnerable individuals accused of criminal offences – but causes one to question what ‘good’ lawyering is in this context.
One method of assessing this would be consideration of how effectively lawyers discharge their professional duties for such clients. In order to explore this conceptual understanding of good lawyering, this post will consider how criminal lawyers represent the neurodivergent accused – that is, suspects and defendants whose neurodevelopmental profile is atypical (for example, an autistic defendant).
It will argue that defence lawyers must adapt to the particular needs of neurodivergent clients and that, without doing so, they cannot effectively discharge their professional duties and therefore be ‘good’ lawyers.
Read Dr Tom Smith’s “Missing the signs”: An legal-ethical analysis of ‘good’ lawyering for the neurodivergent accused on the Defending Vulnerability blog forum.