Post-Event Report: "Diverse Judicial Accountability: The Next Decade of Attorney Ethics and Professional Conduct" Symposium

Amid the tripartite relationship of litigation, the public credibility of attorneys—as participants in the administration of justice who are expected to uphold professional ethics—has faced serious challenges in recent years, as a series of attorneys have come under investigation by prosecutors and investigative authorities amid mounting public scrutiny. From whether attorney training resources are sufficient, to the differing approaches adopted by local bar associations in investigating attorney ethics and professional conduct under unequal resource conditions, and whether standards for imposing sanctions in attorney disciplinary and review proceedings are sufficiently clear and investigative resources adequate: do the legal profession's mechanisms of self-regulation and external oversight adequately respond to the expectations of both the public and the profession itself?

On December 14, 2025, the Judicial Reform Foundation (hereinafter JRF) and several committees of the Taiwan Bar Association—the Judicial Reform Committee, the Attorneys' Code of Ethics Interpretation Committee, the Attorneys' Code of Ethics Revision Committee, the Attorney Ethics and Professional Conduct Committee, and the Legal Professional Examination and System Development Committee—co-hosted the symposium "Diverse Judicial Accountability: The Next Decade of Attorney Ethics and Professional Conduct." Former members of attorney disciplinary committees and disciplinary review committees were invited to share their practical experiences and the difficulties faced by local bar associations in handling attorney ethics and disciplinary matters. At the symposium, Professor Yen Chueh-an and Attorney Lin Chung-hao discussed the resource constraints affecting the operation of the attorney disciplinary system based on their experience participating in first-instance disciplinary proceedings and review proceedings.

Attorney Lin Chung-hao: The Effectiveness of Attorney Discipline and Three Major Challenges

1. At the symposium, Attorney Lin Chung-hao examined the practical operation of the Attorney Disciplinary Committee from three perspectives: personnel, funding, and authority. He identified three major challenges: inadequate resources and organizational restructuring, the hollowing out of investigative powers, and rigid application of legal rules. He explained that historical experience shows that simply electing committee members and arranging meetings around everyone's schedules is extremely time-consuming. Moreover, reviewing relevant documents requires members to handle virtually everything themselves without dedicated administrative assistance, making it possible to hold only about four meetings per year. In addition to creating problems in case-processing capacity and timeliness, the former one-year term of committee members—now extended to two years—also made it difficult to preserve and pass on institutional experience, such as consensus concerning precedents and the appropriate level of disciplinary sanctions.
   
2. Moreover, the Attorney Disciplinary Committee generally reviews cases on the basis of the facts described in the referral document. When judicial authorities fail to provide complete referral materials, it is often difficult for the Committee to obtain key evidence or proactively request that relevant evidence be examined, leaving it largely dependent on written inquiries. Returning to the problem of limited review time, where 12 or 13 cases may be scheduled for consideration at a single meeting, it is plainly impossible for the Committee to operate in the same manner as the Disciplinary Court by assigning a designated judge to conduct evidentiary investigations during the case-acceptance and response stages. This illustrates the practical hollowing out of the Committee's investigative authority.
   
3. Regarding the rigidity of legal application, Attorney Lin Chung-hao further pointed out that because the Committee generally treats the contents of the referral document as the basis for its review, difficult questions arise when a referral document cites an incorrect legal provision, or when a complaint submitted to a bar association contains vague allegations, incorrect statutory provisions, or even legal provisions fabricated by generative AI. Should committee members correct or clarify such errors ex officio? Should they even initiate investigative procedures without waiting for a complaint? Unless the current system addresses deficiencies in personnel, funding, and investigative authority, procedural handling will become even more difficult and will fail to satisfy public expectations regarding attorney self-regulation and discipline.
   

Professor Yen Chueh-an: The Dilemmas of the Review Committee

1. Professor Yen Chueh-an described service on the Attorney Disciplinary Review Committee at the symposium as akin to "sacrificing oneself for the country," given the lack of resources available to the Committee. The Review Committee consists of 15 members and generally meets once a month. Members are assigned cases on a rotating basis and take turns drafting decisions, creating an especially heavy burden for members without judicial backgrounds. Professional resources are scarce, and even basic meeting necessities such as drinking water may have to be prepared by members themselves.
   
2. Unlike the first instance, where the structural weakness lies primarily in insufficient authority to investigate evidence, the Review Committee is similarly constrained by a lack of institutional continuity and systematic organization. Under a system in which members rotate every two years, considerable effort must be spent locating prior disciplinary decisions in order to determine appropriate sanctioning standards. Yet because accumulated experience is not systematically organized and therefore cannot readily be passed on, the next term of the Review Committee is unable to benefit from the precedents and experience developed by its predecessors. Establishing a searchable database of disciplinary cases and systematically organizing relevant legal provisions and precedents should therefore be a priority for improving the efficiency of incoming members.
   
3. Professor Yen Chueh-an further questioned the reasonableness of the current institutional design. Referring to the disproportionate workload borne by committee members, she questioned the arrangement under which the Review Committee is placed within the Supreme Court. Given limited remuneration and personnel resources, members can perform their duties only through a highly self-sacrificing commitment and then leave when their terms expire. These factors further undermine institutional continuity and the accumulation of experience, making it inherently difficult to satisfy expectations regarding professional self-regulation and quality. As a possible reform, she proposed placing the Review Committee under the administrative structure of the Disciplinary Court, drawing on the internal practice-conference mechanisms used by courts, and assisting local bar associations in improving efficiency through exchanges and shared standard operating procedures, thereby addressing the current lack of consistent standards.
   

Basic Problem: Lack of Categorization, Disciplinary Decisions Difficult to Access

Lee Ming-ju, CEO of the JRF and an attorney who has never served as a committee member, noted that when the JRF attempted to conduct an in-depth study of the operation of the current system from a civil society perspective using publicly available information, it encountered significant difficulties from the very beginning of the research.

First, there are currently two principal channels for searching attorney disciplinary decisions. One is the "Disciplinary Decision Publication and Search" system available through the Ministry of Justice website; the other is publication in the Taiwan Bar Journal.

The latter cannot be searched by keyword and must instead be reviewed issue by issue. Although the Ministry of Justice's "Disciplinary Decision Publication and Search" system permits searches by attorney name, disposition, or decision text, it includes only decisions dated December 1, 2020 or later. Decisions from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2020 must instead be searched through the Executive Yuan Gazette Online.

Practical testing also revealed that keyword searches are ineffective. For example, an attorney seeking cases concerning the "scope of the duty of confidentiality" may obtain search results that differ substantially from the set of cases ultimately identified after the JRF manually coded and organized individual cases one by one.

Searching by statutory provision is likewise difficult. Multiple amendments to the Attorney Regulation Act and the Attorneys' Code of Ethics mean that researchers must fully understand changes in article numbering over time to avoid missing relevant cases.

For example, as shown in the right-hand column of the following table, multiple provisions must often be searched simultaneously to identify the most common categories of attorney discipline over the past decade:

Ranking	Case Type (2005–2025)	Case Count	Changes in Statutory Provisions
1	Engaging in improper conduct or violating professional duties	74	Article 32, Paragraph 2 of the former Attorney Regulation Act → Article 43, Paragraph 2 of the current Attorney Regulation Act; comparable provision in Article 26, Paragraph 1 of the Legal Aid Act
2	Failure to fulfill the duty of timely notification and case handling	33	Article 26, Paragraph 2 of the former Attorneys' Code of Ethics → Article 27, Paragraph 2 of the current Attorneys' Code of Ethics; comparable provision in Item 16 of the Legal Aid Handling Guidelines
3	Conduct sufficient to damage the reputation or credibility of attorneys	29	Former Attorney Regulation Act Article 29 → current Article 39
4	Accepting representation despite a conflict of interest	29	Former Attorney Regulation Act Article 26, Paragraph 1, Subparagraph 1 → current Article 34, Paragraph 1, Subparagraph 1
5	Commission of a criminal offense resulting in a final conviction	28	Former Attorney Regulation Act Article 39, Subparagraph 2 → current Article 73, Subparagraph 2
6	Engaging in concealment or deception	27	Former Attorney Regulation Act Article 28 → current Article 38
7	Breach of the duty of confidentiality	21	No provision in the former Attorney Regulation Act, but Article 33 of the former Attorneys' Code of Ethics; now provided in Article 36 of the current Attorney Regulation Act and Article 37 of the current Attorneys' Code of Ethics
8	Failure to comply with laws and bar association rules in professional practice	14	Article 2 under both the former and current rules
9	Assisting in the fabrication of evidence	13	Former Attorneys' Code of Ethics Article 23 → current Article 24; Article 16, Paragraph 3 unchanged
10	Failure to join a bar association	13	Former Attorney Regulation Act Article 11, Paragraph 1 and Article 21, Paragraph 1 → current Article 19 and Article 24, Paragraph 1

Although the Taipei Bar Association currently publishes "Selected Cases on Attorney Ethics," a well-organized and de-identified educational resource, compiling such a database takes considerable time. For attorneys seeking guidance specifically on breaches of confidentiality—an issue that has attracted substantial recent attention and represents a significant area of professional risk—the number of available cases remains limited.

The JRF therefore internally compiled individual disciplinary cases into an Excel database, coding them by case number, date of decision, disposition, and violated or cited statutory provisions or ethical rules through categorized drop-down menus.

This system makes it possible to quickly retrieve cases involving "breach of the duty of confidentiality." Beyond allowing individual attorneys to locate specific case numbers and review the contents of decisions, the database makes it possible to quickly understand the severity of sanctions previously imposed in comparable cases, providing useful proportionality references for committee members making disciplinary determinations.

Related Case	Date of Decision	Disposition
113-Lu-Cheng-Zi No. 40	2024-12-13	Suspension from practice for 4 months, together with self-funded completion of 6 hours of training on the Attorneys' Code of Ethics within 6 months after the decision becomes final
113-Lu-Cheng-Zi No. 34	2024-12-13	Suspension from practice for 1 year, together with self-funded completion of 12 hours of training on the Attorneys' Code of Ethics within 1 year after the decision becomes final
113-Lu-Cheng-Zi No. 14	2024-08-23	Suspension from practice for 1 year, together with self-funded completion of 12 hours of training on the Attorneys' Code of Ethics within 1 year after the decision becomes final
112-Lu-Cheng-Zi No. 15	2024-06-28	Suspension from practice for 1 year, together with self-funded completion of 12 hours of training on the Attorneys' Code of Ethics within 1 year after the decision becomes final
111-Lu-Cheng-Zi No. 33	2023-05-26	Suspension from practice for 2 months, together with self-funded completion of 10 hours of training on the Attorneys' Code of Ethics within 1 year after the decision becomes final

This database is still undergoing final proofreading by the JRF and has not yet been released publicly. At the symposium, however, many committee members expressed concern about determining the appropriate level of disciplinary sanctions and about how relevant experience could be passed from outgoing members to incoming members. There was therefore considerable interest in more convenient methods for searching prior decisions.

Hsieh Liang-chun, Chair of the Taiwan Bar Association's Attorneys' Code of Ethics Interpretation Committee, stated that the Taiwan Bar Association had previously proposed at liaison meetings among the Judicial Yuan, the Ministry of Justice, and attorneys that attorney disciplinary decisions be incorporated into the Judicial Yuan's judgment search system.

The Taiwan Bar Association maintains that because the Attorney Disciplinary Committee and Attorney Disciplinary Review Committee are respectively established within the high courts and the Supreme Court, and because attorney disciplinary decisions possess the nature of judicial decisions, the high courts and Supreme Court should publish such disciplinary decisions pursuant to the main text of Paragraph 1 of Article 83 of the Organic Act of Courts.

The Judicial Yuan, however, has declined to add "disciplinary decisions" to its judgment search system on the ground that they are not "judgments," preventing the proposal from moving forward for the time being.

(Editor's Note: According to subsequent inquiries by the JRF, the Judicial Yuan's principal position is that publication of attorney disciplinary decisions is an obligation imposed on the Ministry of Justice under the Attorney Regulation Act. Accordingly, requests to improve search accessibility should primarily be directed to the Ministry of Justice.)

At the symposium, participants discussed that, in the absence of convenient search functions, regular academic research should at least assist in systematically organizing disciplinary decisions.

Professor Yen Chueh-an suggested that the Ministry of Justice commission long-term and recurring academic research projects to create reference materials similar to "sentencing trends," thereby allowing attorneys and complainants to form reasonable expectations regarding the likely severity of disciplinary sanctions, such as the length of a suspension from practice.

Beyond these basic institutional problems, Attorney Chiang Jung-hsiang stated in his opening remarks that, in light of the rapid growth of the attorney population and increasingly serious challenges concerning ethics and professional conduct, the legal profession urgently needs a long-term reform roadmap addressing both individual ethical responsibility and institutional design.

He observed that significant disparities in resources among local bar associations, inadequate investigative capacity, slow case-review procedures, and insufficient transparency have limited public confidence in the legal profession's self-regulatory mechanisms.

Moreover, younger generations of attorneys increasingly value notions of "equivalent exchange" and online visibility, with some even using personal popularity as leverage, presenting new challenges to traditional ethical standards. At the same time, the proliferation of AI tools has significantly affected attorneys' workflows and risk management.

Attorney Chiang argued that improving institutional effectiveness requires reforms including diversification of disciplinary measures, professionalization of investigative mechanisms, and stronger information transparency and external cooperation.

He suggested establishing dedicated investigative teams responsible for case investigations and administrative support, adopting panel-based adjudication for complex cases, and creating a de-identified case database as a reference for internal professional-ethics standards.

Professional continuing education and certification mechanisms for attorneys should likewise be strengthened, including annual legal-ethics courses and substantive assessment mechanisms, to ensure that attorneys continuously improve their professional competence.

Attorney Chiang emphasized that these measures would not only improve case-handling efficiency but also help strengthen public confidence in the legal profession's systems of self-regulation and discipline.

Difficulties and Responses of Local Bar Associations in Reviewing Ethics Cases

During the second half of the symposium, participants discussed the difficulties encountered by various bar associations in reviewing ethics cases and the approaches they have adopted in response.

These included situations in which complainants or respondent attorneys fail to provide information, courts or prosecutors decline to provide case materials, administrative resources are insufficient, and committee members participate largely out of goodwill without receiving preliminary data organization or administrative assistance from the secretariat, resulting in extremely slow case processing.

Participants also noted the absence of regular practice-coordination meetings among bar associations through which experience in investigating professional-ethics cases could be shared.

While the first half of the exchange focused primarily on the difficulties experienced by local bar associations when reviewing ethics cases, the second half shifted toward proposals for institutional reform.

(I) Taipei Bar Association — Attorney Lin Yen-hung

Attorney Lin Yen-hung of the Taipei Bar Association discussed the practical operation, procedural difficulties, and differing practices of local bar associations in attorney disciplinary matters.

The Taipei Bar Association's board of directors and supervisors assigns ethics cases among different groups. Over the previous two years, Lin's group had received more than 30 cases, more than 10 of which he handled personally.

One case concerned whether an attorney had falsely reported the progress of a case and deceived the client. The complainant alleged that the retained attorney repeatedly claimed to have contacted the court and reported on the progress of the matter over an extended period, although in reality there had been no clear progress.

During the investigation, the association sent three written requests for explanation, all of which the respondent attorney ignored, constituting a failure to cooperate with the investigation.

To determine the actual status of the pending court case, Lin requested relevant case materials from the court pursuant to Article 77, Paragraph 3 of the Attorney Regulation Act.

Some materials were obtained, but the enforcement office refused to provide others on grounds relating to file management and uncertainty regarding jurisdiction. The enforcement office then sought an official interpretation, causing correspondence to move back and forth between the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice.

Ultimately, the association still could not obtain the complete case file and could only continue verifying fragments of the facts through written inquiries. This made substantive review of the complaint difficult and significantly delayed the investigation.

Lin pointed out that if local bar associations lack meaningful investigative authority, self-regulation risks becoming merely formalistic, with cases increasingly being referred to prosecutors for disciplinary action, thereby weakening bar autonomy. He therefore suggested strengthening investigative authority through future legislative amendments.

Regarding the disciplinary system, he further proposed two recommendations:

1. Current disciplinary and internal corrective measures are diverse, including admonitions, warnings, and reminders imposed within a bar association, as well as warnings, reprimands, suspension from practice, and disbarment following referral for disciplinary action. Except for suspension and disbarment, however, the practical effects of many of these measures differ relatively little, and the standards governing their application are insufficiently clear. This often makes it difficult in practice to determine whether particular circumstances are sufficiently serious. Historically, there has also been no systematic mechanism for searching prior disciplinary records, which affects consistency in determining sanctions. Although establishing a professional-registration system comparable to that used for medical professionals may be difficult in the short term, Lin suggested that self-regulatory management could be strengthened through measures such as adding annotations to law-firm registration records.
   
2. In recent years, complaints have increasingly been filed not only by clients, but also by opposing parties acting out of hostility toward the attorney. Some such complaints allege, for example, that an attorney failed to fulfill duties owed to the client even though the complainant is the opposing party, or raise matters not directly related to professional ethics. Nevertheless, bar associations are required to process these complaints, increasing their administrative burden. Lin therefore suggested considering standing requirements for complainants so that the system can focus more effectively on matters genuinely involving professional ethics.
   

(II) Taoyuan Bar Association — Attorney Chang Pai-hsin

Attorney Chang Pai-hsin, representing the Taoyuan Bar Association, raised two principal issues.

First, she addressed the relationship between suspension from practice and law-firm registration.

If the head of a law firm receives a disciplinary sanction suspending practice, should the firm's registration also be temporarily suspended?

The board of directors and supervisors of the Taiwan Bar Association discussed this issue extensively and ultimately concluded that a short-term suspension is personal to the disciplined attorney and should not affect the right to practice and livelihood of employed attorneys.

Accordingly, the law firm's registration is retained, while the disciplined attorney personally may not practice law or apply for issuance of a law-firm registration certificate.

This approach seeks to balance the effectiveness of disciplinary sanctions against the professional rights of employed attorneys, avoiding a situation in which all employed attorneys in the firm are unable to practice law solely because the head of the firm receives a short-term suspension.

Second, legal-aid cases have accounted for an increasing proportion of disciplinary matters in recent years.

Under Article 26 of the Legal Aid Act, violations of Paragraphs 1 through 3 of that provision are treated as violations of the Attorneys' Code of Ethics, and where the circumstances are serious, the Legal Aid Foundation may refer the matter to the Attorney Disciplinary Committee for handling in accordance with the Attorney Regulation Act.

This demonstrates the strict standards imposed by the Legal Aid Foundation on attorneys handling legal-aid cases and means that attorneys must exercise particular care when providing legal aid to avoid disciplinary consequences arising from negligence.

Regarding the relationship between the suspension of a disciplined attorney and law-firm registration, Attorney Lin Chung-hao added that if the head of a law firm is suspended for three months, the question arises whether the firm's registration should be revoked.

The Taiwan Bar Association has recently discussed whether, in order to protect the practice rights of employed attorneys, a short three-month disciplinary suspension should not result in revocation of the law firm's registration.

If so, however, what length of suspension should trigger revocation? What clear standards should determine that threshold?

If the firm's registration remains intact, a suspended attorney might potentially continue legal practice indirectly through employed attorneys.

Both effective enforcement of disciplinary sanctions and protection of the practice rights of employed attorneys are important values, and the advantages and disadvantages of each approach require careful consideration.

Attorney Chang Pai-hsin further addressed possible directions for institutional reform.

She noted clear differences among local bar associations in the way disciplinary matters are handled.

The Taipei Bar Association assigns ethics cases among directors and supervisors and has adopted "Procedures for Handling Ethics and Professional Conduct Cases," establishing relatively complete procedures, including standards governing when a case may be dismissed without acceptance or administratively closed.

The Taoyuan Bar Association instead uses an independent committee model, having established a Professional Conduct Supervisory Committee dedicated to attorney ethics matters. Its members consist of senior practicing attorneys and former bar association presidents.

However, because there are currently no procedural rules authorizing dismissal without acceptance or direct closure of cases, every complaint must proceed to investigation, increasing the administrative burden.

Regarding the investigative authority of local bar associations, although bar associations may formally request courts to provide judgments or relevant transcripts pursuant to law, requests for courtroom audio recordings have also been refused on the basis of provisions of the Organic Act of Courts.

This affects the completeness of investigations. Accordingly, whether local bar associations should be granted more comprehensive investigative authority deserves further study and reform.

The limitation period for attorney disciplinary action has also created procedural confusion.

Article 102 of the Attorney Regulation Act provides that where more than ten years have elapsed from the date the disciplinary conduct ended to the date the matter is submitted to the Attorney Disciplinary Committee, no disciplinary sanction may be imposed. Where more than five years have elapsed, disciplinary sanctions other than disbarment may not be imposed.

Nevertheless, when a bar association receives a complaint concerning conduct that occurred many years earlier, it must still refer the matter to the Attorney Disciplinary Committee, which then issues a decision based on the expiration of the disciplinary limitation period.

This creates unnecessary procedural burdens and demonstrates that aspects of the institutional design require improvement in light of practical experience.

Overall, Attorney Chang Pai-hsin observed that current limitations in resources, personnel, and institutional design create substantial practical challenges in balancing protection of the parties' rights with maintenance of attorneys' professional ethics.

(III) Keelung Bar Association — Attorney Chen Ya-ping

Attorney Chen Ya-ping of the Keelung Bar Association stated that, in her observation, review practice indeed suffers from the lack of administrative resources described by the speakers.

There are no comprehensive case summaries or systematic guidance materials, requiring committee members to find their own way when drafting reports.

The number of review cases has increased in recent years, with most attorneys arguing that the original disciplinary sanction was too severe rather than disputing the underlying facts.

Review practice generally tends to respect the original disciplinary determination, resulting in a relatively high rate of dismissal of review applications, broadly consistent with the role of a reviewing body.

She also noted that, with the increasing commercialization of legal services, some attorney-client fee disputes have shifted into consumer-dispute resolution mechanisms.

Consumer protection officers generally treat legal services as "services" and often attempt to resolve disputes through mediation, including refunds. However, whether attorneys qualify as "business operators" and whether the Consumer Protection Act applies to legal services remain unsettled questions.

This phenomenon demonstrates that professional-ethics issues do not necessarily enter the attorney disciplinary system and may instead surface through other institutional channels.

In addition, following amendments to the law, ethics cases have become concentrated primarily in Taipei, leaving some smaller bar associations with virtually no attorney ethics cases.

(IV) Taichung Bar Association — Attorney Hu Wen-chieh

Attorney Hu Wen-chieh of the Taichung Bar Association, drawing on extensive judicial-practice experience, offered several observations concerning attorney ethics review.

1. Investigative resources and investigative authority are important components of effective deliberation. Courts generally do not provide local bar associations with complete files from pending cases. Therefore, when sending written inquiries to courts, questions must be formulated specifically and clearly. For example, where an attorney is accused of failing to appear in court, the inquiry should ask whether the attorney appeared on the specified date and, if not, whether the attorney provided a reason for the absence, rather than merely asking whether the attorney received the summons. This facilitates determination of whether the respondent attorney violated the Attorneys' Code of Ethics.
   
2. The Attorney Disciplinary Committee is currently established within the Taiwan High Court, while the Attorney Disciplinary Review Committee is established within the Supreme Court. Responding to Professor Yen Chueh-an's observation that the Supreme Court's Attorney Disciplinary Review Committee repeatedly lacked adequate human and material resources, Hu suggested that the initial question should be whether the Taiwan High Court and Supreme Court have dedicated budget allocations sufficient to support committee deliberations. He suggested that the Taiwan Bar Association advocate before the Judicial Yuan's accounting authorities for dedicated budget items supporting the disciplinary work of the Taiwan High Court and Supreme Court, including funding for dedicated personnel, postage, telecommunications, and other administrative expenses. Flexible staffing and outsourcing mechanisms could also be considered, with dedicated funding used to hire legal professionals to support the deliberative process and ensure operational efficiency.
   
3. Regarding the inability of local bar associations to promptly learn when attorneys receive criminal judgments, Hu suggested that the Taiwan Bar Association advocate for the Judicial Yuan and Taiwan High Court to instruct local district courts to transmit copies of first-instance judgments to relevant local bar associations, thereby preventing gaps in information. Local bar associations' rules concerning dismissal or non-acceptance of complaints could likewise be collected by the Taiwan Bar Association and made available for reference by ethics committees throughout the country.
   
4. Finally, Hu proposed greater publication of attorney disciplinary decisions, arguing that enabling the public to search past attorney disciplinary cases through local bar association websites would improve the transparency and effectiveness of the Attorneys' Code of Ethics. He also addressed the issue of sanctioning benchmarks. Courts may have imposed relatively lenient sentences in earlier periods, and differences may therefore arise between contemporary citizen-judge decisions and historical sentencing practices. Future attorney ethics review mechanisms should therefore make use of benchmarks without mechanically relying on outdated standards or precedents, ensuring that professional-ethics expectations remain aligned with contemporary social expectations.
   

(V) Miaoli Bar Association — Attorney Hsu Fu-min

Attorney Hsu Fu-min, representing the Miaoli Bar Association, explained that because Miaoli has a relatively small number of attorneys, investigative work is largely undertaken by directors and supervisors.

The investigative team has encountered unusual issues, including a case in which an attorney became involved in a verbal dispute with a public official during a court hearing. After prosecution, the matter was referred to the bar association.

To investigate the case, the association needed to obtain courtroom audio recordings, but courts do not necessarily provide such materials. The association was therefore left to rely primarily on the court's adjudicative results as the basis for its investigation.

Hsu stated that bar associations must balance protection of parties' rights with the proper development of legal practice when reviewing ethics matters.

Establishing systems for case statistics and case-type analysis can provide useful education and training for new and practicing attorneys, helping them avoid unnecessary professional risks and procedural mistakes.

(VI) Kaohsiung Bar Association — Attorney Su Chun-cheng

Attorney Su Chun-cheng, representing the Kaohsiung Bar Association, divided the discussion into two levels: "the operation of local bar associations" and "disciplinary committees."

He first introduced the Kaohsiung Bar Association's system.

The Association has established an independent Attorney Ethics Committee. The chair selects attorneys with professional expertise in ethics to serve as members, and the Committee has an independent budget as well as fees for drafting review opinions, helping maintain professional and operational stability and facilitating institutional continuity.

Su did not recommend rotating ethics cases among directors and supervisors. In his view, ethics review should be professionalized and reasonably compensated.

He then raised two principal points:

1. Regarding investigative authority, he argued that there is no need to focus excessively on obtaining entire case files. Instead, the disputed issues can be identified precisely and courts or prosecutors can be asked specific written questions. For example, an inquiry may ask whether an attorney appeared on a particular date, a question courts are generally willing to answer. Although prosecutors are constrained by the principle of non-disclosure of investigations, they may still provide assistance depending on the circumstances. Su also described a case involving allegedly inappropriate remarks by an attorney in court. The bar association asked the judge familiar with the incident to provide an explanation through formal written correspondence, using appropriately respectful language, while also giving the respondent attorney an opportunity to address the allegations. This illustrates the importance of maintaining constructive channels of communication with judicial authorities.
   
2. He also discussed mechanisms that may overlap with attorney discipline in practice, such as the Legal Aid Foundation's complaint procedures and suspension from legal-aid case assignments. Some conduct may not rise to the level of a serious ethical violation, yet an attorney may nevertheless be suspended from receiving legal-aid assignments for violating legal-aid rules. Because such a suspension can have substantial consequences for certain attorneys, the relationship and boundaries between these mechanisms and formal professional-ethics rules deserve further attention.
   

Finally, Su raised two practical questions.

First, is the supply of self-funded attorney-ethics courses adequate, given the unequal distribution of training resources among local bar associations?

Second, where attorneys attend courses offered by other bar associations, differing fee structures may affect the practical enforceability of disciplinary sanctions requiring training.

Accordingly, future disciplinary measures should take into account the availability of educational resources and the supporting mechanisms necessary for enforcement so that the system can operate effectively.

Based on the experiences shared by representatives of various bar associations, the current practices of local ethics and professional-conduct committees can be summarized as follows:

Bar Association	Case Assignment Model	Drafting Fee	Complaint-Based Principle	Procedural Rules for Non-Acceptance	Ease of Obtaining Case Materials
Taipei	Rotation among directors/supervisors	X	X	O	△[1]
Keelung	Rotation among directors/supervisors	X	O	X[2]	No Experience
Taoyuan	Independent committee	X	△[3]	X	O
Hsinchu	Rotation among directors/supervisors	X	O	O	No Experience
Miaoli	Primarily directors/supervisors, with senior members invited to assist	X	X	X	X[4]
Taichung	Independent committee	X	X	X	No Experience
Nantou	Independent committee	X	O	X	No Experience
Changhua	Committee preliminary review followed by Board resolution	X	O	X	No Experience
Chiayi	Professional Conduct Committee members rotate for preliminary review and submit preliminary opinions to the Committee for resolution	X	X	X	No Experience
Tainan	Rotation among Ethics and Discipline Committee members[5]	X	O	O	O
Kaohsiung	Independent committee	O	X	O	O
Pingtung	Joint discussion by directors/supervisors and dedicated committee members	X	O	O	No Experience
Hualien	Preliminary review assigned to the Attorney Ethics Committee, followed by Board review	O	O	X (under formulation)	O
Taitung	Local members draw lots for rotating assignments	O	O	O	No Experience

The JRF thanks the Keelung Bar Association, Taipei Bar Association, Taoyuan Bar Association, Hsinchu Bar Association, Miaoli Bar Association, Taichung Bar Association, Nantou Bar Association, Changhua Bar Association, Chiayi Bar Association, Tainan Bar Association, Kaohsiung Bar Association, Pingtung Bar Association, Hualien Bar Association, and Taitung Bar Association for sending attorneys with experience reviewing ethics cases to participate in the discussion.

The JRF will continue to organize the issues raised during the meeting, classify them into short-, medium-, and long-term problems, and continue communicating them to the Taiwan Bar Association and the competent authorities.

The discussion also highlighted that local bar associations currently lack regular practice-coordination meetings.

Some participants therefore suggested that the Taiwan Bar Association could continue organizing similar symposiums in the future, enabling common problems across different regions to be consolidated and allowing local experience to be shared and passed on.

---

Footnotes

1. Some requests were successful while others were unsuccessful, hence the △ designation. Experiences involving retrieval of a "complete case file" were rare. In most cases, only specific materials were requested in writing, such as surveillance footage outside the courtroom, transcripts, indictments, or judgments. Except where the response indicated that no such material existed or that the matter remained under investigation, these targeted inquiries generally produced positive results.
2. Before the amendment of the law, whether a complaint would be accepted depended on whether the respondent attorney was a member of the association. Where the attorney's law firm was outside the association's jurisdiction, the association would ask the bar association where the law firm was located whether it had accepted the same complaint. If so, the case would be transferred to that association.
3. The general rule is that no action is taken without a complaint, although an ex officio case-initiation mechanism also exists.
4. Difficulties have previously arisen both in obtaining materials from cases still under investigation and in obtaining courtroom audio recordings.
5. The Tainan Bar Association also has a conciliation mechanism, under which consultants or senior attorneys from the association are arranged to mediate between respondent attorneys and members of the public concerning specific issues raised in complaints, such as disputes over fees and refunds.