It might have appeared to go unnoticed (indeed, for some time now), but lawyers, criminal lawyers especially, are no longer specifically instructed by New York’s rules or canons to represent their clients “zealously.” What?

Yes, it’s true. Ever since April 2009, when the New York Rules of Professional Conduct replaced New York’s Code of Professional Responsibility, the historic calling of zealousness (“A Lawyer Should Represent a Client Zealously Within the Bounds of the Law”, Ethical Canon 7), has fallen by the wayside. Ethics aficionados, though, would argue that the word “zealous” was merely in the canon and in the title to the old DR 1-101, not the rule itself. So there!