De Australische onderzoekster Suzanne Le Mire van de Universiteit van Adelaide heeft een uitgebreid artikel geschreven voor het blad Legal Ethics over de onafhankelijkheid van de advocaat in dienstbetrekking. Volgens Le Mire hebben rechters de neiging om – bij het bepalen van die onafhankelijkheid – te kijken naar formele, relationele controlemechnismen, terwijl het volgens haar veel meer gaat om de materiële onafhankelijkheid. Maar juist die materiële onafhankelijkheid is moeilijk vast te stellen.
Op de website Legalpro geeft Richard Parnham de volgende samenvatting van de belangrijkste conclusies van Le Mire:
“Perhaps one of the most challenging conclusions reached by Le Mire is that her most valued concept of independence – capacity – is arguably the most difficult to assure. Ms Le Mire may rightly be critical of courts’ over-reliance on in relational mechanisms as for protecting the independence of lawyers. However, while relational mechanisms may not, in reality, be the panacea for guaranteeing in-house lawyers’ independence that some courts appear to consider they are, they at least have the value of providing clarity and predictability. By contrast it would, perhaps, be inevitable that any case relating to the independence of in-house lawyer that was determined by capacity alone would be wholly-facts specific. Justice in individual cases may well be served by such a development. Legal certainly would not.”
“In light of this, it is perhaps therefore not surprising that Le Mire is in favor of a combined approach for ensuring the independence of in-house lawyers. She advocates that the most important factor for assessing independence should be capacity, but this should then be supported by other factors such, such as relational, status or power considerations.”
Of course, if the courts were, globally, to adopt Ms Le Mire’s approach to assessing the independence of corporate counsel, there would still be a degree of uncertainly of about whether in-house lawyers had behaved independently in specific scenarios. However, if courts could agree to use the same considerations, around the world, then at least in-house lawyers in many countries would, for the first time, enjoy the possibility of potentially being recognized as being “independent” by their own courts. And that development would, on a global basis, probably represent progress for many in-house lawyers, when compared with their status today.”