The Supreme Court recommended on Thursday that the Israel Bar Association change its stance on sexual relations between attorneys and their clients, especially if the copulation took place during a consultation meeting. The court suggested that such behavior be defined as a violation of ethics.
The recommendation was made as part of a hearing on a petition made by a woman who claimed that her lawyer had sexual relations with her in his office, and even charged her for the meeting time.
The woman appealed the Israel Bar Association Tel Aviv District Committee's decision, which refused to put the lawyer on trial. She claimed that the two had sexual relations during a consultation meeting in the lawyer's office and that the attorney even charged her a lawyer's fee for the meeting. She said he demanded that he be paid in cash, without providing a bill.
The Bar Association decided to discard the complaint claiming that there was no way of establishing whose version of the events was true.
The woman appealed the committee's decision in the Court for Administrative Matters with a demand that the committee justify its reason for not putting the lawyer on trial. The court rejected the woman's appeal claiming that she failed to prove that the Israel Bar Association committee made its decision based on false premises or made a mistake in its judgment.
The case reached the Supreme Court on Thursday. Justices Asher Grunis, Yoram Danziger, and Edna Arbel rejected the woman's appeal saying that the lower court's decision was not flawed.
However, the Supreme Court did level criticism at the Israel Bar Association's for its stance on client-lawyer relations. According to the Bar, if sexual relations are performed without coercion or force, they do not constitute an ethical violation.
Justice Danziger emphasized that forbidding client-lawyer relations is particularly apt in family law cases, in which emotional dependence on the lawyer is likely greater than in other fields.