The Young Man and the World Part 13

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 a.s.set. 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 cla.s.s 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, const.i.tutional 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.suming 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 pa.s.sion 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sume 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 Aga.s.siz'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 Aga.s.siz.

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 a.s.sumed 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 cla.s.s 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 n.o.blest 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 cla.s.sics 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 c.o.ke ought to be your rule.

"I should," said c.o.ke, "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 pract.i.tioner, 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 Const.i.tution. The _Federalist_, the const.i.tutional 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 const.i.tutional questions made by every court in this country, you could not understand the Const.i.tution.

You must go back to the roots of it. Trace out the growth of our inst.i.tutions in Holland. Work out the modifications by these upon inst.i.tutions adopted from England. Follow the indigenous development of both of these from the old Crown Charters, and finally up to the Const.i.tution 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 "Const.i.tutional History of the United States."

Books like Dougla.s.s 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 const.i.tutional 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 a.s.signing 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, fort.i.tude, 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 pa.s.s 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-f.a.g brings, and of some flogger of exhausted nerves, such as coffee in excess.