Ethics in Service | Page 7

to make the calling an advantage and not a detriment to the public weal, should be understood. Indeed, the profession of the law, if it serves its high purpose, and vindicates its existence, requires a double allegiance from those who have assumed its obligations, first, a duty toward their clients, and second, a duty toward the court. And though the two sometimes seem to conflict, they must be reconciled in the way which will best promote the effective administration of justice and the peace of society. The path to be followed in achieving this golden mean in the intricacies of professional relations is not as manifest as the rule of honesty and morality in ordinary life. The great problem of government that is never completely solved and that is changing with changing conditions is how to reconcile the protection of individual rights, helpful to the pursuit of happiness and the welfare of society, with the necessary curtailment of those rights and freedom, by governmental restriction, to achieve the same object. So the adjustment of the duties of the lawyer toward his client and toward the court in the interest of society, are not always easily distinguishable and an attempt to make them clear, therefore, is justified.
An understanding between the client and his representative that remuneration is a proper incident to their relation insures a greater confidence in the activity and devotion of his lawyer to his interest on the part of the client and stimulates industry and sincere effort on the part of the lawyer. It is far better that the employment on a pecuniary basis should be understood by all men, by the courts and by the parties, than that some secret arrangements should exist unknown to the court and the opposing party. But it is said that to give to counsel, skilled, learned and familiar with the arts of advocacy and the preparation of cases, a pecuniary motive to make the worse appear the better reason, necessarily leads him to an attempt to influence the court against a just result. For since one or the other conclusion must be unjust, one of the paid attorneys arguing the cause before the court must be arguing for the unjust side and in favor of wrong. Hence, it is claimed, the system of paid advocacy must in every case tend to an effort on one side or the other to pervert justice and mislead the judges into inequity and wrong.
It may be agreed that if there were not certain limitations upon the means which counsel may take to maintain the justice of their clients' cause, if they were justified in suborning witnesses, and coaching them to testify to an unfounded state of facts, if they were permitted to misstate the evidence after it has been adduced, if it were regarded as proper for them to accept employment in the prosecution of a cause which they knew to be brought only for a wrong purpose and without any just foundation, or if in a civil cause they were retained to make a defence which they were advised was false and wrong, then it might be that advocacy under such freedom from limitation would not aid the judges in avoiding wrong conclusions and unjust judgments. But there are limitations upon the duty of counsel to their clients. There are also limitations upon a lawyer's action which he cannot violate without a breach of his duty to the court of which he is an officer and to the public interest in the maintenance of the proper administration of justice. We find, therefore, that the goal to be reached in reference to the ethical duty of an attorney in the discharge of the functions assigned to him by the law, is the reconciliation of his duty to his client, with his duty to the court. To mark out this line in advance is easier than to determine each special duty in a concrete way, yet neither is free from difficulty and each requires a calm and clear understanding of the function of counsel as an instrument in the machinery of justice. This is the main object of legal ethics. It covers other fields and is important in those fields, but no other is of such primary importance.
Courts sit to hear controversies between parties over facts and law. Rules of procedure are for the purpose of reducing the issues of fact and law in such controversies to a form as narrow and concrete as possible. Men who are able to present a clear statement of the evidence and who are learned in the principles of the law and their application to the facts as they are developed are in a position to assist the judge to a quick and thorough understanding of the exact question which