1.06.01. Hints on the Professional Deportment of Lawyers, with Some Counsel to Law Students

David C. Hoffman (1846), pp. 33-59

[This book is a set of readings that Professor Hoffman developed to instill in his law students “professional deportment” and he included in his syllabus readings from the Bible (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), various moral tracts, and some on the practice of law. What is set out below is the a part of the introduction to his Rules of Deportment and ten of his Rules]

In no career is the great importance of courteous, correct, and honorable deportment more strikingly manifest. If the lawyer would gain clients, he must be popular with the world around him; if he would preserve them he must also be respected by the bench and the bar. Eminent success at the latter depends not solely on learning, eloquence, and sound morals; manners are also of the highest necessity. One who is beloved by his professional brethren, and by the judicial and ministerial officers of the court, soon finds a numerous list of clients, equally adhesive in their attachment, and anxious to promote his welfare and elevation. And if the practitioner should be cautious in his deportment towards clients and the members of the bar, he should be still more so in his intercourse with the court. If loyal to their clients, it is not always easy for counsel, even of the most courteous manners, to prevent collisions with the bench….

Our young lawyer may rest assured that he has every motive for the utmost assiduity in the acquisition of knowledge, and for the most inflexible honor in the practice of his profession. He has proffered to him respect and influence in society, professional reputation, high stations of honor and of profit, and all the goods of intellectual and worldly wealth, in a growing and enlightened republic. If true to himself, most, if not all of these, are within his reach…. The character of a lawyer who does justice to his profession, may not easily be drawn; but we hold him to be one, whom early education has imbued with the lessons of probity, and habituated to labor and research in all that enlarges and refines the mind, and chastens the heart. He desires to impart luster to the utility of his learning, by fostering every honorable and amiable affection. He has tasted of the fountains of liberal science, and of polite letters before entering on his more technical studies, and has thus protected himself from pedantry and narrow views. …. He is the asserter of right, the accuser of wrong, the protector of innocence, and the terror of crime. He labors not for those alone who can afford the honorarium, but for the widow, the fatherless and the oppressed. No prospect of gain will induce him to advise the pursuit of law against right or sober judgment; nor will any man’s greatness be a shield against the justice due to his client. If he assists in the inaction of laws, which he may be afterwards called on to vindicate, it is done with an eye solely to his country’s good; and whilst he respects its legislature and judiciary, he learns to reverence the constitution more than either. … Rhetoric and logic are weapons by which he imparts to his oratory warmth and grace, force and clearness. From his knowledge of man, he ascertains the real nature of truth; and he loves and cultivates rectitude, for the more useful of his powers. Destitute of these, he is either unprofitable, or mischievous to society, — but endued with them, he is one of its chiefest ornaments, and firmest safeguards.

Admitting, however, our student, (now about to commence the practice), to be a young man of the soundest morals, and the most urbane, and honorable deportment; it may still be well that he should be fortified with a few rules for his future government. We have been to him (we hope as we intended) a faithful guide through a long course of preparation, and cannot even now feel as if we had fully discharged our duty, unless we leave him a memento of our regard for his welfare, long after he has bid adieu to these volumes, and when he has become fully engaged in the perils, and honors, and emoluments of an arduous profession. We therefore submit to him the following Resolutions, to be adopted by him as guides, never to be departed from, and to which he will ever be faithful. We have preferred to frame them in the manner of resolutions, rather than of didactic rules, hoping they may thereby prove more impressive, and be the more likely to be remembered.

Resolutions in Regard to Professional Deportment

1. I will never permit professional zeal to carry me beyond the limits of sobriety and decorum, but bear in mind, with Sir Edward Coke, that “if a river swell beyond its banks, it loseth its own channel.”

2. I will espouse no man’s cause out of envy, hatred, or malice toward his antagonist.

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8. If I have ever had any connection with a cause, I will never permit myself (when that connection is for any reason severed) to be engaged on the side of my former antagonist. Nor shall any change in the formal aspect of the cause induce me to regard it as a group of exception. It is a poor apology for being found on the opposite side, that the present is but the ghost of the former cause.

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15. When employed to defend those charged with crimes of the deepest dye, and the evidence against them, whether legal or moral, be such as to leave no just doubt of their guilt, I shall not hold myself privileged, must less obliged, to use my endeavors to arrest or to impede the course of justice, by special resorts to ingenuity, to the artifices of eloquence, to appeals to the morbid and fleeing sympathies of weak juries, or the temporizing courts, to my own personal weight of character — nor finally, to any of the overweening influences I may possess from popular manners, eminent talents, exalted learning, etc. Persons of atrocious character, who have violated the laws of God and man, are entitled to no such especial exertions from any member of our pure and honorable profession; and, indeed, to no intervention beyond securing to them a fair and dispassionate investigation of the facts of their cause, and the due application of the and the due application of the law. All that goes beyond this, either in manner or substance, is unprofessional, and proceeds, either from a mistaken view of the relation of client and counsel, or from some unworthy and selfish motive which sets a higher value on professional display and success than on truth and justice, and the substantial interests of the community. Such an inordinate ambition I shall ever regard as a most dangerous perversion of talents, and a shameful abuse of an exalted station. The parricide, the gratuitous murderer, or their perpetrator of like revolting crimes, has surely no such claim on the commanding talents of a profession whose object and pride should be the suppression of all vice by the vindication and enforcement of the laws. Those, therefore, who wrest their proud knowledge from its legitimate purposes to pollute the streams of justice and screen such foul offenders from merited penalties, should be regarded by all (and certainly shall by me) as ministers at a holy altar full of high pretension and apparent sanctity, but inwardly base, unworthy, and hypocritical — dangerous in the precise ratio of their commanding talents and exalted learning.

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18. To my clients I will be faithful; and in their cause zealous and industrious. Those who can afford to compensate me, must do so; but I shall never close my ear or heart because my client’s means are low. Those who have none, and who have just causes are, of all others, the best entitled to sue, or be defended; and they shall receive a due portion of my services, cheerfully given.

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27. I will charge for my services what my judgment and conscience inform me is my due, and nothing more. If that be withheld it will be no fit matter for arbitration; for no one but myself can adequately judge such services, and after they are successfully rendered, they are apt to be ungratefully forgotten. I will then receive what the client offers, or what the laws of the country may award; but in either case he must never hope to be again my client.

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33. What is wrong is not the less so from being common. And though few dare to be singular, even in a right cause, I am resolved to make my own, and not the conscience of others, my sole guide. What is morally wrong cannot be professionally right, however it may be sanctioned by time or custom. It is better to be right with a few, or even none, than wrong, though with a multitude. If, therefore, there be among my brethren any traditional moral errors of practice, they shall be studiously avoided by me, though in so doing I unhappily come in collision with what is (erroneously, I think) too often denominated the policy of the profession. Such cases, fortunately, occur but seldom; but when they do, I shall trust to that moral firmness of purpose which shrinks from no consequences, and which can be intimidated by no authority, however ancient or respectable.

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48. The ill success of many at the bar is owing to the fact that their business is not their pleasure. Nothing can be more unfortunate than this state of mind. The world is too full of penetration not to perceive it, and much of our discourteous manner to clients, to courts, to juries, and counsel, has its source in this defect. I am, therefore, resolved to cultivate a passion for my profession, or, after a reasonable exertion therein, without success, to abandon it. But I will previously bear in mind, that he who abandons any profession will scarcely find another to suit him. The defect is in himself. He has not performed his duty, and has failed in resolutions, perhaps often made, to retrieve lost time. The want of firmness can give no promise of success in any vocation.

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50. Last resolution: I will read the foregoing forty-nine resolutions twice every year during my professional life.