CASE Legal Ethics Report
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are an abuse of the legal process that chill advocacy and undermine democratic scrutiny. This Legal Ethics Report examines how Europe’s legal profession and court systems should prevent lawyers from enabling such abuse and how institutions should respond when it occurs.
The report does not seek to be conclusive but instead culminates in a set of Recommended Standards for Legal Professional Ethics. These standards translate the comparative findings into concrete guidance for lawyers, bar associations, and regulators, clarifying how professional independence can be preserved while preventing abuse. They are designed to help practitioners, regulators, and policymakers navigate SLAPP-specific dilemmas in practice and to strengthen the legal profession’s role in safeguarding public participation.
Key Findings from the Report
- Lawyers play a role in enabling and preventing SLAPPs.
Lawyers may defend against SLAPPs and sometimes be targeted by them, but they can also facilitate abusive litigation. The report emphasises that recognising and responding to this risk forms part of professional responsibility and should be guided by the lawyers’ ethical standards. - Ethical standards already prohibit facilitating abusive litigation.
Across jurisdictions, duties such as good faith, integrity, loyalty, independence and respect for the administration of justice already regulate improper lawsuits and abusive tactics, even without explicit SLAPP language. - Preventing abuse sits alongside the duty to represent.
Professional frameworks require lawyers to protect client interests while avoiding participation in litigation that abuses procedure, including, where appropriate, considering the client’s underlying motivation. This is necessary to avoid lawyers becoming agents of abuse, as opposed to agents of the rule of law. - Non-discrimination rules rarely require accepting abusive cases.
Most systems preserve discretion to refuse vexatious mandates, with obligations typically limited to legal aid or court-appointed representation. - Duties to the client have clear limits. Duties to the client are constrained by duties to the court and the administration of justice, which restrict coercive or abusive litigation strategies.
- Courts can intervene to stop abusive proceedings.
Judges use tools such as admissibility filters, dismissal of bad-faith claims and case-management powers to prevent misuse of process while a case is ongoing. - Abusive litigation can create consequences beyond the case.
Sanctions may extend past procedural control to include fines, damages, disciplinary referrals to bar associations and, in some systems, liability for lawyers as well as litigants. - Existing principles need clearer SLAPP-specific guidance.
The report shows that general duties alone are often too abstract without practical guidance, consistent interpretation and credible enforcement. - Reducing SLAPPs requires a coordinated professional response.
Effective prevention depends on training, shared standards and alignment between bars, courts and regulators, supported by European frameworks and national implementation. - Consistent application and effective enforcement by the legal profession
In particular, the bar and law societies should develop a pro-active policy on the sensibilization of the relevant ethical standards. They may, together with the disciplinary bodies within the legal profession, promote and guarantee a consistent application and effective enforcement of these standards.