There has been no bigger topic during the last week than the consequences of the Iraq war on the image of the legal profession. We have witnessed a succession of lawyers giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, and we have been presented with different models, as follows:Elizabeth Wilmshurst, former deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office: she resigned when her and her colleagues’ advice was not followed, and when the government pursued a course which she believed was unlawful – she was applauded by the public when she left the room;

Sir Michael Wood, former legal adviser to the Foreign Office: he maintained his advice that the war was unlawful in the face of hostility from his minister; he did not resign when the government went to war, saying (among other things) that questions of conscience are very individual questions and it would have been more disruptive for the legal advisers in the Foreign Office if there had been a host of resignations;

Lord Goldsmith, former attorney general: initially believed that the war was unlawful, but this was not welcome advice; changed his mind, following a trip to the US, to the effect that there was a reasonable case for going to war on legal grounds; on being pressed to give a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, refined that to the effect that the war was lawful;

Jack Straw, qualified as a lawyer, former foreign secretary, now secretary of state for justice: was reported to have said that he had often been told at the Home Office that things were unlawful but he had gone ahead anyway and won in the courts; wrote on a note from Sir Michael which said that the war was unlawful: ‘I note your advice but I do not accept it’ (although, as Wilmshurst pointed out, he is not an international lawyer).

There could not be more critical questions facing lawyers than the issue of whether to go to war or not. It is not only in hindsight that it was clear that there would be thousands of deaths, which is not the usual result of a lawyer giving the green light to a client. The war would have gone ahead regardless of what UK lawyers said – but without UK involvement, since presumably the UK would not have committed support and troops if the government had concluded that the war was unlawful. Around a million ordinary people marched against the war on just these kinds of grounds.

The models of lawyer behaviour presented by the principals this week will presumably reverberate in the public mind for a long time. It is good that there have been alternatives from which to choose. (I say nothing about the evidence of the other lawyer involved, Tony Blair.)

Regardless of the model of lawyer on show, the question of the meaning of legal advice has itself been presented in various models, too. We were told, for instance, that all the lawyers in the Foreign Office were of one mind that the war was unlawful. Yet the attorney general, who initially shared their view, came back from America with the view that there was a reasonable case to be made for the other side, which a few days later had hardened into the opinion that the war was lawful. Of course, there are often two or more sides to a legal argument, but will the public conclude that the law is something solid and protective, or a flexible instrument to allow, say, the most powerful to get their way?

I do not envy the participants in this decision, who were required to give advice in just the kind of circumstances which calls on the lawyer’s deepest core principles. I do not know how I would have behaved (and I fear the worst about myself). But I imagine that the legal profession will have to live with the consequences, in terms of the image of lawyers and the image of what legal advice means, for a long time.

Jonathan Goldsmith is the secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents around a million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies