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The Green Bag

exceptional man. We soon found that he was the quickest man we ever saw in running down authorities, in fact he

was so remarkably fast that at ﬁrst

man to be somewhat superﬁcial in his amusements and at the University, but in the law oﬁices that I have seen there is little or no room for a superﬁcial

looked at the authorities at all—we suspected him of taking his law and

law clerk. Mr. Golightly never learned to take a real and deep interest in the work of the oﬁice and his quickness in

decisions solely from the digests.

we doubted

whether he ever really

In

getting away at five o'clock even ex

these suspicions we were wrong, for what he did do was to skim over his

celled all his other efforts. I have spent hours trying to give myself the reason

reading and get the meat out in the

for

time that I would be reading the head note.

Perhaps it was that everything had always been so easy for him that he was bound to make the law business easy also. Perhaps the very breadth of his interests and wonderful abilities took his mind off the serious business of the law. Or perhaps he was merely intellectually lazy, or was so impressed with the greatness of his powers that he hesitated to waste his energies on any work that might ultimately prove to

Now I and all my ancestors have al ways been slow and when I see one of these wonderfully quick men, I always envy him and at the same time always suspect that he is superﬁcial. That, I came to feel, was the real trouble with

our new clerk.

If he were told to look

this

brilliant

man's

up the authorities on a particular point, he would return in an incredibly short time bringing in a few decisions that were

have been unnecessary.

positive in tone and apparently law.

solved the problem.

inefficiency

I have never

When we turned

Upon being asked if they had been over

him loose on a new job he went over it

ruled or modiﬁed by any later decisions or statutes, he would reply without

with such speed that he only touched

embarrassment, “Vhy, I don't suppose so, but I can look that up if you wish.” In fact his idea was always “I can look that up if you wish," and sure enough he could. But on the other hand, it

never occurred to him to study and hunt out the problems on his own initiative. In the two or three years that he was with us, I think he never suggested a new theory or a new defense, nor a point of law or fact that had been previously overlooked.

At ﬁrst I thought Mr. Goiightly's trouble was solely due to inexperience and that in a few months he would understand and appreciate how labori ously and carefully the modern lawyer searches the authorities for support upon every point that can possibly come up. It is all very well for a brilliant

the high places. We would then have to lead him back over the whole ground and point out all that he had overlooked and assure him that we really would like to have him look up this and that point

in addition to the ones that he had regarded as important.

If we held his

hand and told him what to do he could do it with a speed and ability that I have never seen surpassed. But We had something else to do than lead

around and direct a law clerk, and an)" way the process was a bore and we were

not receiving salaries for acting as Mr Golightly's assistants. I have been interested to follow Mr Golightly’s work since he left us to start

in for himself, and I hoped that he could treat his clients’ affairs with a greater thoroughness than he did ours He has never had a great practice but