The danger in that, some attorneys say, is that come the next case, their clients might suffer from their residual animosity.

Utah already has rules of professional conduct for attorneys, which if violated can result in punishment or even disbarment. The new standards of professionalism and civility, court officials say, are considered "casual rules" meant to advise lawyers on how the courts expect them to behave.

Yet some have questioned whether the standards do more harm than good.

In the latest edition of the Utah Bar Journal, attorney Eric Johnson criticized the courts for passing the standards, saying the rules were too vague and threatened to water down the importance of existing rules.

"Hey, I'm all for professional conduct, but I really think these standards do little to enlighten," Johnson told the Deseret Morning News. "Some of these rules are just downright dumb."

Johnson points to a standard that states that lawyers should avoid "impermissible ex-parte communications." That is something that any law school grad should already know, he said.

"Simply passing more rules won't stop the conduct that it's seeking to prescribe," Johnson said. "My biggest beef is that these rules will never be enforced" by judges.

At the worst, it appears to be political correctness gone awry. "When did lawyers who make their living arguing develop such thin skins?" Johnson said.

Attorney Fran Wikstrom, who sits on the committee that created the standards in 2003, defends the court's decision to adopt them.

Wikstrom says Johnson is not considering the spirit in which the standards were created, but rather picking at details. To suggest that the only way to deal with a misbehaving attorney is to dish it back "reflects a playground mentality," Wikstrom said. "That doesn't solve the problem, it just doubles the number of jerks."

In forming the standards, the committee used several established standards from other courts across the United States, including Florida, Texas, California and the 7th Federal Judicial District.

"They are a road map to effective lawyering," Wikstrom said. "The standards suggest that one can disagree without being disagreeable. . . . We are engaged in the search for truth and justice, not in a war of words or gamesmanship."

"The committee is not so naive as to believe that the court's formalization of a code of civility will, by itself, halt the decline in civility among lawyers," the committee stated in its report.

Dryer said he disagrees with Johnson's stance and feels the first step toward dealing with a problem is to acknowledge that there is one. The standards, he says, set up expectations, but they must be enforced by Utah's judges.

Rep. Lavar Christensen, R-Draper, an attorney who co-chairs the Judicial Rules Review Committee at the Legislature, agrees that the standards couldn't hurt as a reminder. But it also comes down to human nature and the times in which we live, Christensen said.

Attorneys must realize that putting someone down is not going to improve their case, or in other words, "blowing out somebody's candle doesn't make your light any brighter," Christensen said.

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E-mail: gfattah@desnews.com