as the population increased and business developed, the necessity for skilled lawyers forced itself upon the community.

Experience thus seems to show the need of a paid legal profession under present social conditions. Let us consider now those ideals that if pursued by the lawyer will confirm this lesson of experience on rational grounds.

The first ideal that a lawyer must strive for is a thorough professional education. The mere cramming process to answer Bar Examination questions is entirely inadequate. The acquiring of legal principles and the study of actual reported cases to learn the method of their application are the hardest kind of work and to be effective must be continued long after admission to the Bar. That is what the long wait for business by the young lawyer is for. It can only be well done by one with a disciplined mind trained by a thorough general education. Our law schools are vastly more thorough to-day than they ever have been. They require more preparation for entrance than formerly, and while they can not anticipate or supply the hard knocks of actual practice that every competent lawyer must go through in fitting himself to render effective aid to clients and fill the measure of proper ideals, the law school helps him much further along the way to that end than in the past.

The proper practice of the profession at one time or another carries a lawyer's investigation and presentation of conditions into every branch of human activity and into every other profession. Of all professions, it is the one that requires adaptability, quickness of apprehension, intense application to the subject in hand, in order that the lawyer may put himself in the place of his client in comprehending and explaining the details of any business, of any science, or of any profession, as those details affect the issue in court. In cases of malpractice, in criminal and damage cases, he must familiarize himself with the effect of wounds and injuries and their proper treatment. In other cases he must know the law of mechanics or chemistry, the keeping of accounts, the rules of business exchanges, the customs of bankers. In all these various fields and others, the lawyer must prepare himself to learn enough for his case. Therefore, a lawyer should have a broad preparation for the bar in a general education, in a discipline of mind that enables him to concentrate it and possess himself quickly of the principles that govern results in various fields of human activity. A lawyer of ideals should therefore not only be a man with a

trained and disciplined mind but of wide general information upon which he can build in his special investigations that the exigencies of a trial make necessary. He must be able to fit himself to crossexamine experts of all kinds and to detect the fallacy that there may be in the conclusions which they advance, by an examination, with adequate knowledge, of the reasons upon which they base those conclusions. I have known many a lawyer who was able to fit himself to cross-examine physicians and to show in his crossexamination that he knew more about the particular subject than the physicians whom he was examining. I have known lawyers who were better book-keepers than the public accountants who were called to the stand to answer searching inquiries; and so through the whole range of legal issues, the lawyer must make himself master pro tanto of all trades, that he may give the assistance that his client is entitled to.

Having fitted our lawyer with an ideal mental preparation for his duties, let us now consider a priori the possibility of reconciling the function of a paid profession or advocacy with the settling of controversies by just and equitable rule. Is it possible that a man who is paid to argue one side of a case can help the judge or judges reach the right result when he is arguing against what is the right result? The answer to this bald question must be in the negative, unless we lay down certain limitations that must govern lawyers, first in the kind of service that they render to those who consult them and who ask their advocacy in prosecution or defense of their rights, and second in their method of advocacy. It is here that we begin the definition of those ideal rules of conduct in his practice that every lawyer must have before him if he would serve the social and political purpose for which his profession exists. The lawyer practices his profession in a state of peace and in a state of war. Where the state is that of peace, sometimes the client wishes to continue it, sometime he wishes to change it into that of war. The client who wishes to have a contract drawn with another and express in it their common intention, a client who wishes his will prepared, a client who wishes articles of copartnership drafted, a client who wishes to know what he may do legally and what he may not do to guide him in future conduct, is seeking peace. He is trying to acquire from an expert, assistance to avoid litigation in the future. He is appealing to ability of a professional architect of legal relations to keep his future free from legal controversy. That is one function of a

lawyer that the criticism of the profession which I am meeting leaves out of view altogether.

Secondly, when a man is in a quarrel, when his rights as he regards them have been infringed, or when it is claimed that he has infringed another's rights, he consults a lawyer. What then is the duty of the lawyer? In the first place, it is to find the facts. The law secures to his client in making a complete disclosure to his counsel of everything connected with the controversy as to which he asks advice, complete protection from its prejudicial use. The communication is thus privileged in order that the lawyer may have the opportunity of advising the client truly, and may, if possible, save him from litigation by advising, if he is the intending plaintiff, not to bring the suit if he hasn't a good case, or if he is the defendant, by advising him to yield or to compromise the claim of the plaintiff if the facts and the law make it right and wise. The law further assists the lawyer in inducing such a course by forbidding the admission in a suit of evidence of an offer of compromise.

It is unprofessional, it is unethical, it is immoral for a lawyer to accept employment in a case, if the prosecution of the suit or the defence against it, will in the opinion of the lawyer work unjust hardship upon the opponent of his client. It is not true that a lawyer of ideals offers himself for the prosecution of every case, however unjust, or for the defense, against a claim however meritorious. The Code of Ethics of the American Bar Association and that formulated by other bar associations and by great lawyers who have written on the subject, repudiate any view that the lawyer is bound by professional rule to make himself the instrument of plain injustice. On the contrary, it is his duty to decline to become so. But it is said that lawyers do appear and prosecute unjust cases and do defend against meritorious suits. This it is argued is clearly shown by the result in the cases. There must be a wrong side and a right side. Lawyers of the highest ideals are not always on the winning side of a suit. That is true. But what one must carry clearly in mind is that the colors in a law suit are not only black and white. They shade off, and it is not always easy to tell what the color of a claim or defense is, or what it is likely to turn out to be in the actual litigation. It is the duty of the lawyer in hearing the complaint of his client to find out the facts. There is nothing that is quite so variable as human recollection, and I am sorry to say that law in its application to a

particular case is not by any means certain and it is very difficult to tell whether the court of last resort will apply one principle or another to the facts as they may develop. In other words in the great majority of cases as they are presented to a lawyer for his consideration either on the facts or on the law, or on both, there is presented a debatable controversy, to which he has the right and duty as counsel for his client of inviting the consideration of the court and its decision. Courts even differ on the same case. That is the reason why a review is provided to a Supreme Court. How, therefore, can it be held that counsel in the confidential communications in his office may not sincerely and honestly believe in the righteousness of his client's cause and properly tender him his services, prepare the pleading, summon the witnesses, present the case to the court, argue for a judgment in favor of his client, all honestly, all with entire sincerity, and still meet defeat at the hands of the final tribunal?

What is the ideal that the practicing lawyer should seek to reach in the preliminary steps of a litigation? In the first place, he must be absolutely candid in the treatment of his client. He must elicit from him as full and truthful a statement of the facts as he can, and then he must give him his honest opinion of the law as it will be applied to those facts. If he believes that he is likely to be beaten, he ought to tell him so. If he believes that he ought to be beaten, he not only ought to tell him so but he ought to decline to prosecute his case or to defend it. That is the ideal that the lawyer must pursue in the proper practice of his profession. If he can find a basis of compromise then it is his duty to advise his client to make it. His first duty to his client is to keep him out of litigation if he can, without the sacrifice of substantial right. It is his duty to bring before him the nervous strain, the loss of time, the drain of vital resource and the cost of litigation, and to give him to know that he may well sacrifice something to avoid the cost that is inevitable, whether he wins or loses. In other words, his first duty, if it is possible, is to be an advocate of peace, and to keep his client out of the courthouse. It often happens that a controversy of this sort may easily be settled if the views of both sides are analyzed, and each is made to understand the real attitude of the other. The composer of such a difficulty is a benefactor of both parties. The lawyer who encourages litigation merely for the purpose of enlarging his business and

increasing his compensation violates the Code of Professional Ethics and has no ideal at all of making his profession useful to society.

Of course lawyers differ in their ability to live up to this ideal that I have described, as to candid advice, refusal to accept employment and the urgent desire to effect a just compromise. Some lawyers have the spirit of advocacy so high that they become partisans at once, with even more heat than the clients who employ them. Others who wish employment lack the courage to tell their clients the truth. Complimented by their selection as counsel, they seek to conform their judgment of the law and the fact to the wish of their clients. In doing so they fall away from the ideals of the profession.

The lawyers are first and foremost, or ought to be, the peacemakers of society, and I venture to think that the amount of good work that the profession does in this respect, no one but those practically familiar with its work can realize. That which men see in the life of a lawyer is the litigation in court. They see something of the office work done in the making of contracts and deeds, the forming of partnerships and corporations, the drafting of wills which become public in the course of time; but they do not see at all the great volume of litigation that is avoided by the wise, beneficent, useful counsel of lawyer to intending litigants who are turned from their purpose. The necessary corollary from these rules of duty of counsel in advising a client is that the lawyer of proper ideals by appearing in court to prosecute a suit or defend against one, in effect, certifies on his honor that after a full investigation of the facts and the law, he believes that the controverted claims of his client in that litigation are debatable and are worthy the consideration and decision of the court.

I have assumed in the discussion up to this that the relation of lawyer and client is established. Now there is something that ought to take place in the action of a lawyer of ideals before the relation become fixed. A lawyer has the right to select his clients, just as he has the right to select the character of the law business which he will do. If he is familiar with patent law and likes it, he may decline all other business. If he prefers a general practice, he may decline the employment of those who would wish him to argue patent causes, admiralty causes or any causes involving a knowledge of the practice and principles of a special branch. He may wish to avoid criminal business-a good many lawyers do—