One of the major issues in lawyer's professional ethics is that of the lawyer's duties towards the court and the administration of justice. The question is whether the lawyer has ethical responsibility only towards his client, or whether he also plays a role as a judge's assistant and has responsibilities arising from such a role.
In research on the subject, the problem is not posed in uniform terms and there are no commonly shared solutions. The prevailing trend is to give different answers according to the various roles which the lawyer is supposed to play in a judicial process with an adversary rather than an inquisitorial framework. Such a distinction is often viewed as fundamental just in order to define the lawyer's ethical duties in the civil process. So, it is usually said that in the adversary system the attorney plays a typical partisan role, and that he is client-centered because his task is only to represent his client with the best zeal and by all the means permitted by law. Hence comes the metaphor of the lawyer as a “hired gun”, who must use all his abilities only to serve the client.