Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/106

 AMERICAN CODE OF LEGAL ETHICS

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THE PROPOSED AMERICAN CODE OF LEGAL ETHICS BY GEORGE P. COSTIGAN, JR. THE American Bar Association's Com mittee on Code of Professional Ethics has reported to .the Association in favor of the adoption of a code by that Bar Associa tion, and during the coming winter the com mittee will be engaged in framing such a code. In the meantime it prints the pro visions of the various State Bar Associa tion codes, namely, those of Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North ' Carolina, Vir ginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin, and invites "opinions and suggestions in the matter of the proposed canons of ethics."'1 In view of that invitation, it may be well to call the attention of the bar and of the public to some of the leading provisions of the codes already adopted in the various states. It is desirable to notice at the start the changed condition which confronts the bar of today as contrasted with that which faced the lawyers of even a generation or two ago. Through the enormous increase in the number of practicing lawyers, fully, and more than fully, keeping pace with our material development and enlarged population, and through the growing ten dency of the newer lawyers to regard their calling either as a money-getting trade or as a stepping stone to politics rather than as in itself a noble and inspiring calling to which money getting is merely an incident, the unwritten code of ethics which the lawyer of the past felt bound by is proving wholly inadequate. We are getting into the profession a far larger number of men whose home influences and other early surroundings too often do not permit them to have the same, nor anywhere near the same, high ideals of legal conduct 1 Page 5 of Report of August, 1907, to Ameri can Bar Association.

as actuated the old-school lawyer with generations of professional ancestors to furnish him with moral inspiration. The writer would not be understood as decrying what rhay well be called the democratiza tion of the bar, but certain it is that such democratization has made it inevitable that the unwritten common law of professional etiquette and of professional moral action which governed generations of lawyers in the past shall be replaced by written rules of professional etiquette and a written ethical code. It is startling to read in the report of the American Bar Association's committee on Code of Professional Ethics for 1906, quoted with approval in the report for 1907, "that many men depart from honorable and accepted standards of practice early in their careers as the result of actual ignorance of the ethical requirements of the situation,"1 but when we remember the widely varied walks in life from which the members of our profes sion are drawn, who can doubt that such may well be the case? The very fact that the charge is made by able lawyers and cannot be disproved makes it indeed desir able that a written code with which every lawyer is compelled to make acquaintance at the very outset of his career should be adopted. As the committee above referred to said in 1906: "The 'thus it is written' of an American Bar Association code of ethics should prove a beacon light on the mountain of high resolve to lead the young practitioner safely through the snares and pitfalls of his early practice up to and along the straight and narrow path of high and honorable professional achievement."* And if, as is hoped, the courts will ulti mately require all candidates for the bar ' Page 9 of Report of August, 1907. J Page 9 of Report of August, 1907,