Ethics in Service | Page 2

how to deal with human nature as it is, realize that the world is not to be reformed tomorrow or in a month or a year or in a century, but that progress is to be made slowly and that the problems before us are not so widely different from those which were presented to our ancestors as far back as the Christian era. Nor can we fail to derive some benefit from a consideration of such troubles, tribulations and triumphs of our profession in the past as suggest rules of conduct for lawyers in the future. I do not mean that we are not to aspire for better things. Nor do I wish to deny us the happiness of hope for reasonable and real progress toward higher ideals. I simply insist that we ought not to ignore the lessons of experience when we deal with conditions as they are and as everybody who is familiar with them knows them to be.
The three civilizations in which we may most profitably study the growth and development of the legal profession are the Jewish, the Roman and the English. Among the Jews, the Mosaic law, which went into the smallest details of personal life, was the guide to their rule of action. As it had religious sanction, the high priests became the actual ministers of justice and the preservation of religion and law was united in them. Acting as their assistants, and as assessors in the tribunals of which the high priests were the head, were the Scribes. They were learned in the law; had a religious and priestly character themselves; interpreted the Mosaic law with a view to its application to the various facts and issues which arose; and were in addition the teachers of law. It was to them that the rabbinical injunction was made "to make the knowledge of the law neither a crown wherewith to make a show, nor a spade wherewith to dig." And again it was said, "He who uses the crown of the law for external aims fades away."
In describing the principles of non-remuneration to the Scribes, the learned German Professor Schurer says: "In Christ's censures of the Scribes and Pharisees, their covetousness is a special object of reproof. Hence, even if their instruction was given gratuitously, they certainly knew how to compensate themselves in some other way." And it is because of this evasion of this rule that we find those passages in the eleventh chapter of Luke, the 46th and 52d verses, which read:
Verse 46. "And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers."
Verse 52. "Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."
The line between the judicial and advisory functions of the Hebrew Scribes was not closely or clearly drawn. They were evidently supposed to occupy a disinterested position toward those who consulted them and to be in a sense the associates of the judges. Since the motive which prompted their study of particular cases was supposed to be only that of vindicators of general justice, the rules which nominally guided their action, as announced by the lawgivers, required that their services should always be gratuitous. But quite naturally their consultation with private litigants prompted such litigants to influence their view of the law, and command their skill in debate. And so to evade the rule which prevented remuneration they established the custom of giving presents in advance. These presents given in advance to secure the kindly favor of the Scribes are interesting as the precursors of that institution dear to every English barrister, and not unknown--nor even objectionable--to American lawyers, to wit, the Retainer. In fact it was the impossibility of finding men who could remain judicial in their attitude when the thought of remuneration moved them to advocate the cause of one of the litigants, that put the Scribes of those days in an indefensible position and led to the attacks upon them that we find in the New Testament.
And so it was in Rome. There the progenitor of the lawyer was first the priest, the Pontifex, mingling judicial and advisory functions, and then the patronus or the orator, a man of wealth and high standing in the community, who had gathered about him freed men and Plebeians as his supporters. The latter were known as his clientes, from which term our word is derived. When one of his clients became involved in a lawsuit, the patronus appeared to advise the judge--a magistrate acting only as vindicator of general justice and often not learned in the principles of law--and was not