Correspondence, The Lawyer as Friend

Abstract

We are, most of us, lawyers, or perhaps even worse, makers thereof. We would, most of us, also be good people if we could. It would be sad, socially and personally, if the act of being a lawyer necessarily conflicted in some way with being ethically "good." It will not do, however, either socially or personally, if we choose to avoid whatever necessary conflict there might be, not by changing the reality of ourselves, our profession, or our society, but by changing only the way we talk about who we are, what we do, and how we and those things function in modern American life. Thus, while we do not reject Charles Fried's conclusion' that good lawyers can be good people, we must reject his route.