Preface

Several years ago, when I lived in Indiana, I got a grant to write a book about lawyers. The newspaper ran a story about it; the paper said I was to study the morals of lawyers. A friend of mine sent me a clipping of the story with a note that said, It won\u27t take long. My friend held the common Hoosier view that lawyers have no morals. A frontier story tells of the Indiana lawyer who died and whose body was laid out in a room and left for the night. When morning came, there was nothing left in the room but an open window and the smell of brimstone. Americans have always had a love-hate relationship with their lawyers. One day a poll will come out showing that Americans rate the integrity of lawyers with that of used-car salesmen—and the used-car salesmen will complain. The next day tears will flow as we watch old lawyer-hero stories on television—stories such as To Kill a Mockingbird, A Man for All Seasons, or, for us old timers, that superb television series of the 60\u27s, The Defenders. Even the polls, when examined closely, reveal this ambivalence in what we think of lawyers: Americans think lawyers are an amoral lot, but Americans who have dealt with lawyers think their lawyers are exceptions to the rule. And so I begin this beginning to this book for beginners in the legal profession with a guess: My guess is that the beginning law student shares these ambivalent feelings about lawyers