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Artemio Endaya Vs. Atty. Wilfredo Oca.

ARTEMIO ENDAYA, complainant, vs. ATTY. WILFREDO OCA, respondent.

A.C. No. 3967 | 2003-09-03

D E C I S I O N

TINGA, J.:

The law is no brooding omnipresence in the sky, so spoke Justice Holmes. He must have made the statement because invariably the legal system is encountered in human form, notably through the lawyers. For practical purposes, the lawyers not only represent the law; they are the law.[1] With their ubiquitous presence in the social milieu, lawyers have to be responsible. The problems they create in lawyering become public difficulties. To keep lawyers responsible underlies the worth of the ethics of lawyering. Indeed, legal ethics is simply the aesthetic term for professional responsibility.

The case before us...