V The Young Lawyer and His Beginnings
It used to be a part of the creed of a certain denomination that a man should not be admitted to the ministry who had not received his “call.” It was necessary that he should hear the Voice speaking with his tongue, and saying, “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the Gospel.”
This is true of the profession of law. So, at the beginning of your beginnings, do not begin at all unless you see a certainty of misery if you do not. Unless you are convinced that you would rather work, toil, nay, slave for years to secure recognition in the law, than to be honored and enriched in some other occupation, do not enter this profession of supreme ardor.
And above all things, do not enter it if you expect to practise law principally for the purpose of making money. It is not a money-making profession. The same effort, acumen, and enthusiasm expended in almost any other occupation will bring you financial returns tremendously out of proportion to your most successful compensation in the law, measured by mere money. The money-making conception of our profession is not only erroneous, but ruinous; for you must remember, to begin with, that you are practising the science of justice.
If possible, get a thorough college education before you touch a law book. If you can get a college education, do not “read law” while you are at college. If you go to college, do not take what is known as the “scientific” course, or “physical” course. Take the classical course. Next to geometry and logarithms and the Bible, the best discipline preparatory to making you a lawyer is the translation of Latin. Latin is the most logical language the world has ever seen, or is likely ever to see.
After you get your college course, then go to a thoroughly first-class law school. After this, spend two or three years in active work in the office of some successful lawyer who has lots of practise, and who will load off on your shoulders as much work as possible.
If you cannot go to a law school, your training in the law office will do you nearly as well. You can get along without your law school, but you can never get along without your training in the law office. The way to learn to swim is to swim.
But if you cannot get a college education, do not get discouraged. It is possible that you are an Abraham Lincoln, or a John Marshall, or some person like that; and if you are you will succeed anyhow. Even if you are not so highly gifted you can win in the law without a college education if you are naturally a lawyer and will work hard enough. If you have to choose between a law school and a college education, take the latter. But the training afforded by a clerkship in an active lawyer’s office is more helpful than either.
If you can be so fortunate as to get the firm or attorney with whom you are studying to let you draft pleadings, take depositions, examine witnesses, make arguments to court and jury, get out transcripts for appeal, write briefs, petitions, motions, and all the rest of that careful and painstaking work which makes the daily life of the lawyer, you will equip yourself for actual practise better than in any other way I know of.
The firm will gladly let you do this work if you show yourself competent. But this does not mean that you are merely to sit around the office and say “bright things.” There is nothing in “bright things”—there is everything in good judgment and downright hard work.
In active practise never forget that you are a sworn officer of justice quite as much as is the judge on the bench. It is impossible for you to put your ideals of your profession too high or to attach yourself to them too firmly. I am no admirer of the acidulous character of John Adams (not that he was not both great and good, however, for he was—but he was too sour), yet he announced a great thing, and lived up to it, when he declared that he was practising law for the purposes of justice first and a living afterward. (But, then, John Adams announced many great things; and what he announced he lived up to. He was supremely honest.)
“Never take a case,” said Horace Mann, “unless you believe your client is right and his cause is just.” On the contrary, Lord Brougham declared that “the conscientious lawyer must be at the service of the criminal as well as of the state.” And this great lawyer proceeds to argue with characteristic ability that it is as much the duty of the lawyer to work for the cause he knows to be wrong as for the cause he knows to be right.
Briefly, the reason is that it is the very essence of justice that every man shall have his day in court; that the attorney is but the trained and educated mouthpiece of his client; and that to refuse the cause of a client in which the attorney does not believe is to relegate all the controversies to the judge in the first instance, which, of course, would render the administration of practical justice impossible.
This is the prevailing practise of our profession, and it is a serious thing to question its correctness. Its ethics are as wide as they are ingenious, and when one beholds them through the medium of the great Englishman’s wonderful argument they seem radiant with aggressive truth. Nevertheless, I am almost of opinion that Horace Mann was right. It is certain that in his beginnings the young lawyer ought to lean to that view.
If you consider it your duty to take any side of any case that offers, right or wrong, it is no far cry to considering it your duty to make the cause you have espoused a good one before the court. And when that conception has shot its cancerous roots and filaments through your brain and conscience, the suggestion to your unscrupulous client of facts that do not exist, and all the alluring infamies of sharp practise, are possible.
It is said that burglary exercises such a fascination that, once the delirium of its danger is tasted, a man can never put that fatal wine away. An old and distinguished lawyer once told me that one of the most brilliant young lawyers he ever knew said to him, at the conclusion of a legal duel in which he had resorted to the sharpest practise and won, “That was the most delicious experience of my life.”
Yes, and it was the most fatal. He became, and is, an attorney of uncommon resource, ability, and success, with many cases and heavy fees; nevertheless his life is a failure, for his profession and even his clients know him for a dealer in tricks. Senator McDonald, an ideal lawyer in the ethics, learning, and practise of his profession, told me that one of the justices of the Supreme Court once said to him of a certain great corporation lawyer of acknowledged power and almost unrivaled learning:
“Mr. —— would be the greatest lawyer in the world if he were not a scoundrel. As it is, I brace myself to resist him every time he appears before me.” One of the ablest Circuit Court judges of the Federal bench said almost precisely the same thing to me of the same man.
So you perceive it does not pay to be understood to be capable, or even great, in the wrong. In time it means ruin; and therefore I think, on the whole, that it would be wise for you never to take a cause which, after you have a full statement from your client, you believe to be wrong.
Many of the most excellent men of our profession will dissent from this view. Their argument is usually that of Lord Brougham, summarized above. Also they will declare that a lawyer may be quite wrong in his first impression that his client has not the right of an impending controversy. They will cite you instances where they have entered into the conduct of a case with much doubt in their hearts as to the rightfulness of their client’s position; but that this doubt became an affirmative certainty before they were half through with it—they knew their client was right.
The answer to this is that any man can work himself into an enthusiastic belief in almost anything if he goes upon the theory that the thing is true, and gives all his energy and ability to proving its truthfulness to others and to himself. This is peculiarly the case with the most sincere and genuine men. I repeat, therefore, that upon a point so vital, and about which there are such sharp differences of opinion by equally good and wise men, it is better for you to incline to the stricter view of legal ethics.
So if you believe your client to be in the wrong, frankly tell him so; show him why; induce him to compromise and to settle, if he ought. If he will not because he is obstinate, he will probably lose his case anyhow, and of course blame his lawyer for the loss. So that if you do not have that case you have lost nothing. On the other hand, you have gained. The client will say: “If I had followed his advice I should not have had the expense and humiliation of defeat.”
In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the honest client will respect you for your position. If the client persists in his course because he is a scoundrel, then, doubly, you cannot afford to take his unjust case. After a few years of such practise you will have acquired a moral influence with court, jury, and people which will be, even from a money point of view, the most valuable item in your equipment. Public confidence is the young man’s best asset. And you will be surprised to find how little you will lose, in the way of fees, by this course.
Of course there is a large class of cases in which the correct application of the law is very doubtful, with lines of decisions on both sides; as, for example, in cases of the distribution of funds of an insolvent corporation, constitutional questions, and the relative equities of conflicting interests. These are fair examples of controversies where a lawyer may rightfully and righteously accept a retainer upon any of half-a-dozen sides. But in the ordinary course of practise perhaps it is better to stick to Horace Mann rather than to Lord Brougham, and reject employment in a case you believe to be wrong.
While the law is not a money-making profession, either in theory or practise, the young lawyer should begin by charging every cent his services are worth. It is not only degrading, but reveals a base attitude of mind and character, to charge a little fee in the beginning as a bait for a bigger one in future cases. Maintain the dignity of your effort.
I am assuming that Nature began the work of making you a lawyer before you were born; that you have been preparing yourself, with the enthusiasm of the artist and the passion of professional devotion, for the work of your great calling, by years and years of discipline and study such as no other calling requires; that, with your natural qualification and your general equipment, you are bringing to your client’s particular case an industry that knows no limit in his immediate service.
This being true, tell him frankly that you propose to give him the best that is in you (and that best is your very life—no less—for you write “victory” at the end of every one of your cases with your heart’s blood; or “defeat,” if you do not win), and that for this best which is in you you will charge the highest professional fee justified by your services and the magnitude and difficulty of his case.
At the same time, never turn a poor client away from your office door because that client comes with no gold in his hand. When a lawyer is too busy to give counsel without fee and without charge to a poor man or woman, that lawyer has too much business. I know—we all know—of very eminent lawyers constantly engaged in causes involving large interests, who nevertheless find leisure, many times each year, to serve by advice and counsel, and sometimes even by the active conduct of cases, numbers of the children of poverty, and to serve them without a penny of compensation.
Be very careful of the class of business you accept at first. I knew a young lawyer who had just opened his office, and within a month, by one of those accidents that occur to every attorney, he was offered a case on a contingent fee in which the probability of considerable reward amounted almost to a certainty.
He needed the money—was nearly penniless. He was newly married, had no clients and few acquaintances; but it was not the quality of practise to which he wished to devote his career. He courteously declined the case as though he had been a millionaire, and directed his would-be client to an attorney who would care for it properly.
Out of that case the latter attorney, by a compromise, in two weeks made fifteen hundred dollars. Nevertheless, the young man was right, and acted with a far-seeing wisdom as rare as the courage which accompanied it. Of course, I assume that you are going into the profession for the purpose of becoming a lawyer, and not a mere conductor of legal strifes. If you are, you must deny yourself.
Self-denial is the price of strength, as any college athlete will tell you. Self-denial is the road to wealth, as any banker will tell you. Self-denial is the method of all excellencies, as all human experience will tell you. But this is moralizing.
I do not mean that you should decline small cases. By no means. Take a five-dollar case, and work with the same sincerity that you would on a fifty-thousand-dollar case. “Despise not the day of small things.” In selecting your business, I refer to the quality, and not the magnitude, of cases. Again, again, and still again, this counsel: Care for your small case with the same painstaking labor you bestow upon a large one.
Never lose sight of the fact that your greatest reward is not your fee, but the doing of a perfect piece of work. The same fervor and ideality should govern your labors in a lawsuit that inspire and control the great artist and inventor. A distinguished sculptor said to me one evening:
“I wish the matter of compensation could be wiped out of my consideration. I must give it attention for obvious reasons, but it is the matter of least moment to me, and has absolutely no influence upon my work.”
It is no wonder that that man achieved an immortal renown at thirty-seven. Doctor Barker, the recent occupant of the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Chicago, recently elected to an even more notable position in the Johns Hopkins University, who has won for himself a permanent place in the high seats of his profession by his work on neurology, was in a company one evening. Said one of his admirers:
“Why don’t you go into practise? You could easily make a great fortune before you are forty.”
Listen to the answer: “Money does not interest me.”
We all remember Agassiz’s famous reply to a proposition to deliver one lecture for a large fee: “I must decline, gentlemen; I have no time to make money.” That was why he was Agassiz.
Quite as lofty ideals should inspire the work of those who make their vows to the greatest of all sciences, the science of justice, and the greatest of all arts, the art of adjusting the rights of men. No lawyer can become great who does not resolve, at the beginning of each case, to make his conduct of it a perfect piece of work, regardless of compensation.
John M. Butler, the partner of Senator McDonald, and one of the best lawyers the Central Western states ever produced, was so careful of pleadings and briefs that he would not endure a blurred or broken letter, and bad punctuation was a source of real irritation to him. Many times have I, as his clerk, required his printer to take out an indistinct letter. It was Mr. Butler’s ideal to achieve perfection as nearly as possible.
The most perfect legal argument I ever heard occupied less than an hour. Not a word was wasted. Not a single digression weakened the force of the reasoning. Not a decision was read from. It was assumed that the learned judges before whom the cause was being heard knew something of the law and the decisions themselves.
You see the same thing in its highest form in Marshall’s decisions. I once advised a class of law students to commit to memory half a dozen of Marshall’s greatest opinions. After years of reflection I think I shall stand by that advice.
In making an argument before a court or jury, remember that the most important thing is the statement of your case. A case properly stated is a case nearly won. Beware of digression. It calls attention from your main idea. It is a fault, too, which is well-nigh universal. I advise every young lawyer, as a practise in accurate thought, to demonstrate a theorem of geometry every morning.
There is no such remorseless logic as that of logarithms. It will produce a habit of definiteness, directness, and concentration invaluable to you. The young gallants of a century ago used to practise fencing for an hour each morning. Why should not you do the same thing in intellectual fencing—you, the devotee of the noblest swordsmanship known to man, the swordsmanship of the law?
Do not waste too much time quoting precedents to a court; it produces weariness rather than conviction on the part of the judge, who himself is a daily maker of decisions and knows their value. He knows the stifling mass of precedents, and sighs under them. It is rare that more than two cases should be cited in oral argument on any given point. Those cases ought to be the most controlling you can find—not necessarily the latest. They should be cases decided upon reason rather than upon authority. Your true judge likes to syllogize.
Do not, however, go into a court without having thoroughly reviewed and mastered all the precedents bearing on every phase of your proposition. It requires desperate labor to do this and will shorten your life; but such is the hard fate of the profession you choose, and such is the condition of our absurd system of multiplying reports.
Do not be what is known as a “case lawyer”—an attorney who does not know the law as a science, but merely looks up precedents and texts concerning a particular case. You may prevail in your “lawsuit,” but you will not be a lawyer. Stick close to the elemental Blackstone. You can never get along without Blackstone. Do not read a condensed edition of that great commentator; it is like reading expurgated Shakespeare.
I understand that one of the Justices of the Supreme Court still reads Blackstone once each year. This may be a fable, but I hope it is not. You cannot do a better thing. Thirty minutes each day will give you Blackstone from cover to cover in less than a year, with many holidays. Few modern “text-books” are of permanent value. Pomeroy’s “Equity Jurisprudence” is an exception.
But, of course, I cannot give here a list of those books which should be your daily food; any really educated lawyer will mention them to you. The great mass of text-books are nothing more than digests. But don’t miss the introduction to Stephens’ “Pleading,” and also the introduction to Stephens’ “Digest of the Law of Evidence.” Both are classics and give you the reason and the spirit of our law in fascinating form.
Let your reading in the law be mainly upon the general principles of the common law. The study of the civil law will also be helpful—although English jurisprudence developed of and by itself with only moderate help from the Romans. Reading statutes is unprofitable. You should never answer a question or proceed in a case on the presumption that you remember the statute. The rule of Sir Edwin Coke ought to be your rule.
“I should,” said Coke, “feel that I ought to be put out of my profession if I could not answer a question in the common law without referring to the books. I should feel that I ought to be put out of my profession if I would answer a question in the statute law without referring to the statute.”
Do not confine yourself to law-books. A man who does so is like the farmer who persists in planting the same soil with the same crop; exhaustion, barrenness, and unprofitableness are the results in each case. Read generously, widely. It is impossible for a man to be a great lawyer, so far as the learning of his profession is concerned, who has not saturated himself with the Bible. He may be a great practitioner, but not a great lawyer. It illuminates all our law—is the source of much of it. There is no more curious and fascinating study than a comparison of the ordinances of the Hebrews with what we think our modern statutes.
Read deeply in science. Read widely the great novelists. They are scientists of human nature, and you are dealing with human nature in your profession. Read profoundly in history. A comprehensive knowledge of history is absolutely indispensable to an understanding of our Constitution. The Federalist, the constitutional debates, and all the discussions that preceded and accompanied the adoption of our organic law are bewilderingly full of historical references. If you were to study every decision on constitutional questions made by every court in this country, you could not understand the Constitution.
You must go back to the roots of it. Trace out the growth of our institutions in Holland. Work out the modifications by these upon institutions adopted from England. Follow the indigenous development of both of these from the old Crown Charters, and finally up to the Constitution itself.
Then take Bancroft’s “History of the United States”; then that great monument of intellectual achievement in the realm of historical criticism, Von Holtz’s “Constitutional History of the United States.” Books like Douglass Campbell’s remarkable production, Fisher’s convincing yet novel essay, and other like serious and original works, too numerous to properly mention here, are helpful.
Nothing is more disgusting to an informed court than to hear a surface argument on constitutional law by an advocate who thinks he has mastered that tremendous subject by studying all the decisions upon any given point.
You will say this is a heavy task I am assigning you. It is, indeed. But have you not chosen the profession of the law? And, if so, do you dare to be less than a lawyer? How dare you not shoulder your glorious burden with patience, fortitude, and determination? Do not be as if you were to enlist as a soldier, and end as a camp-follower.
I am told that the leader of the American bar has a standing order with his booksellers to send him every new book of approved merit in all the departments of literature. The result is that when he comes before the court his mind is fresh and sparkling with clear ideas and varied knowledge poured into his brain from every mountain-peak of inspiration in all the world of human thought. He brings to the service of his client not only a study of his case and an understanding of the grand science of the law, but the vivifying, vitalizing power of all the great minds in all the realms of intellect.
If you say you have no time for all this, the answer is: If that is true, you have no time to be a great lawyer. You have the time, if you will use it. A little less lingering at the club, an economy of hours here and there—this will give you time, and to spare. Of course if you would rather “loaf” than be great, if you hunger rather after the flesh-pots than the lawyer’s wreaths, this advice is not for you.
Do not use intoxicants. Even beware of coffee; it is one of the most powerful nerve and brain stimulants. The coffee habit is as easily formed, and as remorseless, as the alcohol habit. After a while, if excessively used, it produces its sure result; your faculties have been sharpened by this intellectual emery-wheel until the edges begin to crumble. Your mind becomes dull; you pass your hand wearily over your eyes; you don’t know what is the matter with you and say so. Overwork, over-stimulation, and the worry these produce are what is the matter with you.
There are lawyers in every town who day by day and year by year find that they have to work harder to understand a case or master a precedent than they did the year before. Whereas formerly they could get the point of a precedent by reading it over once, they must now read it over four or five times. You usually find them the victims of ceaseless toil without rest, of that destroying fretfulness which brain-fag brings, and of some flogger of exhausted nerves, such as coffee in excess.
Do not work late at night. It is a fictitious clearness of mind that comes to the midnight toiler. This also grows into a habit. Conform to Nature. Go to bed early. Get up early, and do your fine and original work in the morning. It will be hard for you to form the habit, but after you have done it you will be amazed at the comparatively immense nervous power you possess in the morning hours.
In trying a case before a jury, never be trivial. Do not bandy gibes, no matter how witty you may know yourself to be in repartee. The jury, and even the court, may laugh, but they are not impressed, and you have not helped your case; and you are there to win your case. As in your argument, so in your examination of witnesses, keep to the point.
In arguing a case, no matter what its nature, before a court or jury, never rage or rave. Get to the point. Speak with great earnestness, but not with violence or volume of sound. Remember that even the most terrible emotions of the human heart in their most intense expression are comparatively quiet. Be earnest. Be sincere. Be the master of your case, and the result must be satisfactory.
It sometimes becomes necessary for an attorney to assert his rights and privileges to the judge himself. Do not shrink from it. It is your duty to your client, your profession, and the cause of justice. Never cringe to a court. Never cringe to any one. He will despise you for it, and properly so. Remember the dignity of your profession. Erskine, in his first case, rebuked a prejudiced and perhaps an unjust judge with such vigor that England rang with it.
Cultivate lucidity of style. You will do that at some risk at first. When a young lawyer is extremely clear, he is apt to be regarded as not deep. Abstruseness in expression is very frequently regarded as an indication of profundity. Nevertheless, persist in a clear and simple style. Make the statement of your case and the argument in support of your propositions so lucid and plain that the judge or jury will say: “Why, of course, that is so. What is the use of the young man stating that?”
The study of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches will be very helpful. Two or three of Roscoe Conkling’s arguments after he left the Senate are models of perspicuity. Mr. Potter’s argument in the legal tender cases is a model—it is Euclid stated in terms of the law. Webster’s arguments you will study, of course. Blackstone is one of the clearest writers who ever illustrated the great science to which you and I are devoted. Perhaps as great a logician as ever lived was the Apostle Paul; read him as a master of logical utterance.
Never be ponderous; never be florid. At the same time, never be dry. Be clear; be pointed; be luminous. I remember having heard both sides of a case argued before an eminent Federal Judge. One of the lawyers made a long, turgid, “profound”—and musty—argument; proceeding like a draft-horse from mile-post to mile-post, until the alert mind of the judge was almost frantic with impatience.
The lawyer on the other side is one of the most eminent members of our profession. He is as lithe as a panther, physically and mentally, sharp as a serpent’s tooth, as lucid as the atmosphere on a cloudless day, and yet as suggestive as a hickory-wood fire in the old home fireplace on a wintry night. He paced the floor in impatience while Mr. Turgidity blew the clouds of dust from precedent after precedent.
When it came his time to reply, he did so with a clearness and wealth of expression, an appropriateness of illustration, and a simplicity of reasoning that made one feel that the other man had committed an impertinence in presenting his side at all. Of course he won his case.
Respect yourself. A man may lose his money, his reputation—may even lose everything; and yet he has not lost everything if he retains his self-respect. Be a gentleman at the outset of your career and forever. Do not move among men like a beggar for favors. Do not wear poor clothes. Apparel yourself like a gentleman.
No client worth having respects you for advertising your poverty. Do not fear that your community will not know that you are poor. They know it, and sympathize with you. But every one of our race likes to see a man “game.” Therefore, dress well. Bear yourself like a man who has prosperous potentialities if not prosperous assets.
Keep your office in as perfect condition as yourself. Remember that it is your workshop. Put all your extra money into books. There is no adornment of an office equal to a library, just as there is no adornment of a mechanic’s shop equal to his tools. You know what you think of a doctor when you find his office equipped with the latest appliances.
Do not permit your office to be a loafing place, even for your fellow lawyers. You cannot afford to cultivate professional courtesy at the expense of the discipline of your office. It is nothing to your client that your friends find your society so charming that they seek the felicity of your conversation even in your office. Or, rather, it is something to your client—he wants his case won and he thinks that will take all your time. And so it will.
Be very careful of the places you frequent. Remember that Pericles was never seen except upon the street leading to the Senate House. Don’t imitate anybody—be yourself. Still, if you must have the stimulus of imitation, pick out a man like Pericles for your model.
Depend upon yourself; do not call into council another attorney. This is a point on which most lawyers will disagree with me. Nevertheless, if you are not competent to handle your case, you have done wrong to open an independent office. If you call in another attorney, every probability is that you will suggest all the solutions yourself and in reality win the case; but your old and distinguished associate will get all the credit. But you need all the credit for work which you really do.
See well to your evidence before you go into the trial of a cause. Be very cautious on cross-examination. It is the most powerful but most delicate and dangerous instrument known to the surgery of the law. Do not bluster, “bull-doze,” or browbeat a witness; there is nothing in it. You only make the jury sympathize with the person abused. Remember that an American loves nothing so much as fair play. When on a jury, he is apt to regard you and the witness as adversaries, you the stronger and with immense advantage.
Ask few questions on cross-examination. Employ the Socratic method always. Ask only those questions the logical conclusion of which is irresistible, and stop there. Don’t press the conclusion on the witness. It is your province to show that in your argument.
A timid witness, whom you know to be telling the truth, may often be confused by cross-examination and made to make a false statement; but this you have no right, as an honorable attorney, to make him do. A just judge ought to stop you if you try it. To confuse a witness whom you know to be telling the truth is not skill; it is a trick, and a very miserable trick, whose performance requires neither real ability nor learning.
Think what a tremendous intellectual effort the properly conducted lawsuit is. You must know your case; you must know your evidence; you must know each witness as a person and each item of his testimony; you must know the law applicable to your general proposition, and the general law upon its various ramifications; you must study the witnesses of the other side; and, almost more important than any of these, you must study that wonderful combination of intellect, prejudice, and passion called the jury.
When the time comes for you to address that jury you must thoroughly understand each man. This is not that you may influence him, or “play upon” him, or resort to any of the devices of the baser sort. It is that you may know how best to get the truth of your case to him. How to get your theory, your cause, before each juror should be your only concern.
Never try to be “eloquent.” Never be funny. Wit may cause laughter, it never produces conviction. A joke may divert, it never persuades. It is unnecessary even to arouse a jury’s sympathies. Forget everything except making the juror understand your case. The result will be that he will understand your case, and if he understands it, and it is a case you ought to win, his understanding of it means that you will win it.
Take at least one excellent legal periodical. There are four or five “law” magazines published in America, some of them very good indeed. Do not pay any attention to the digests of cases with which some of these periodicals burden their pages, except to see if there is a recent decision on some case you are trying. You cannot remember them, and the effort to do so will only confuse. But you will usually find in each number one serious and profitable article, and possibly more, on matters of real interest to the profession. Read such articles very carefully.
The methods of scientific scholarship are now invading the law, and many of these legal essays are superb pieces of work. Now and then you will find a monograph of monumental worth. Such is the remarkable introduction to Stephens’ admirable work on “Pleading,” to which I have already called your attention.
That author’s demonstration of the value of forms, and his comparison of the Roman civil law with the English common law, is the most carefully thought out and learned piece of legal writing I can think of at this moment. It is as great as it is brief.
Take part in politics. I know that it is an ordinary saying that a lawyer should leave politics alone. It is not true. What right have you, a member of the great profession which, more than all other forces combined, has established and defended liberty, to withdraw yourself from active participation in the sacred function of self-government? You have no such right.
Of course you should not make politics your profession. That is fatal to your success in the profession of the law. It is one profession or the other, one love or the other. But take part in your party’s primaries. Make yourself so wise and useful that you will be an indispensable party counselor. By all means be a “factor” in your party.
As you value life itself, do not permit yourself ever to be made a lobbyist under the guise of general employment by a corporation or any other interest concerned in legislation. It is no doubt proper for a lawyer to make a legal argument before a legislative committee in behalf of clients. Nevertheless, I advise you not to do it. It is the first step toward the disreputable form of lobbying. There is, of course, perfectly proper and even necessary lobbying. But then you are a lawyer, are you not?
We all know instances of brilliant lawyers and powerful men who have thus sold their birthrights for messes of pottage. No matter how much you need money, never accept a retainer or fee of any kind from any corporation, person, or “interest” which really does not want your active service, but in that manner is purchasing your silence.
Accept no employment except real, genuine employment for actual, tangible, and honest work. Money obtained from any other kind of employment is a loss to you in every way, even financially.
Think daily of the nobility and dignity of your profession. Remember the great men that have adorned it and established the pillars of its glory. They were gentlemen, men of learning, of breeding, of honor as delicate as a woman’s blush. Be you such, or leave the profession.
Keep in mind the lords of the bar. Resolve each morning when you awake that, to the utmost of your efforts, you will strive to be one of them—in learning full and thorough, in courtesy delicate, in courage fearless, in character spotless, in all things and at all seasons the true knight of Justice.
Finally, preserve your health, preserve your health, preserve your health. Work, work, work. Cling to the loftiest ideals of your profession which your mind can conceive. Do these; keep up your nerve; never despair; and success is certain, distinction probable, and greatness possible, according to your natural abilities.