Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/58

32 making member of our bar, say that long ago he discovered that the more law he read, the less he knew; that it was merely business which a successful lawyer needs here; that the best of law is to be had cheap; and that the chances are that if Lord Mansfield were a young member of our bar to-day, he (the money-maker) would have him in his office at fifteen hundred dollars a year.

Clients select legal advisers, as lawyers select dentists, largely on faith. To this, of course, there are exceptions, especially in the case of great corporations. The latter often select a lawyer with great nicety as to his merits as a lawyer. A corporation may have a lawyer selected with this nice discrimination in each locality where the corporate work is done, and, more than that, it often selects a lawyer with reference to his peculiar fitness for the special piece of work.

All clients, however, do appreciate that lawyers are legion, and that they work for pay. The day is at hand here when clients run from office to office to get their legal services done by the lowest bidder, and in this they are aided and abetted by many of the profession. This is particularly true in regard to actions for tort, proceedings to vacate assessments, and as to searching titles. In regard to torts, arrangements amounting to champerty and barratry are not uncommon, and in regard to searching titles such arrangements are made occasionally as have resulted in the lawyer having finally either to break his contract or to serve without pay and expend more for disbursements than the entire sum "to cover all" for which he had agreed to examine the title. Recently the writer discovered two men named executors in the will of a person just deceased, running from lawyer to lawyer to get the lowest bid for the entire legal service in settling the estate. The cause for their peculiar zeal was probably that they were the residuary legatees.

None of the law partnerships hereabouts savor of mutual insurance between the members, or are in any wise sentimental, albeit single members of such a firm may now and then write or speak. in public as communists or socialists. The dividends or share of profits fit each member's personal value as rigorously as if the subject matter of the business were beef or wool. Many of the large law firms employ cashiers as in a mercantile house, and often a member of the firm is such distinctly as its bagman, its drummer-in of business.

There is no common mould for these men; law schools do not fit