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The Green Bag
5. In choosing between morally permis sible paths, follow the highest of which you are capable; as between two courses not so sanctioned, select neither. 6. Cultivate character, not smartness, as your aid to success; instinct for truth is a sure guide. Self-interest cannot but mislead. 7. Every professional act has the meaning you have led others to give it. Viewed as illustrations of these or similar principles of legal morality, the limiting disadvantage of a formal code disappears; while its usefulness is pre served and even enhanced. The nice balancing of conflicting duties which lies entirely beyond the prohibitions of a moral code, but in which rests the crowning glory of socially valuable pro fessional conduct, still remains possible. That the giving of adequate instruc tion on legal ethics can be done prin cipally, if not solely, by morally stimulating lectures, instruction and sug gestion at the law school seems fairly obvious. Time was, indeed, when the personal interest of the venerated head of a law office might have been safely relied upon to furnish the novitiate with some adequate conception of the ethical nature of his chosen calling. At the present, it would be quite as rational to expect that his successor in position would suddenly appear in knee breeches or essay to go on circuit in a stage coach. Modern legal business requires a finished product, something that will fit at once, like a well-oiled cog, into the compli cated machinery of the great law office. The law school has necessarily sup planted other agencies for producing this completed practitioner, and it is there fore, of necessity, to the law school alone that the profession is forced to look for the desired instruction in legal idealism. Yet there are very few law schools which undertake, even in the most casual way, to furnish it. General Thomas H. Hub bard, of New York City, whose generous
interest in this matter, as a member both of the Committee on Legal Ethics of the American Bar Association and of the New York State Bar Association is a subject for national congratulation, founded, a few years ago, at the Albany Law School, of which he is a graduate, a professorship of legal ethics. The income of the fund, as is well known, is employed in procuring the delivery to the students of that institution of annual ad dresses by various distinguished lawyers, and giving a limited circulation to copies of these addresses. Recommendations to state and national bar associations that law schools furnish instruction in legal ethics meet as a rule, whenever presented, with instant public and pro fessional recognition of their importance. But all such action is unproductive of practical result; the instruction is not given. It needs but slight inquiry of the official heads of our law schools to learn why this is so and could not well be otherwise. The great law schools of the country have no lack of interest in the matter of giving their students needed assist ance in this branch of a lawyer's com plete education. No man fit to be the dean of a leading law school could hesi tate to feel that the soul of the legal profession is at least quite as important, objectively or subjectively, individually or socially, as its brains. These gentle men are fully conscious that the law schools alone are expected to supply this instruction; they do not deny the justice of the expectation. Obviously, however, they feel that there are difficulties in the way which at present they do not see how to overcome. These will be found to be of two kinds: (1) how to find the right man, (2) how to pay him. In itself considered, the difficulty of selecting a proper person for giving help ful suggestion on legal morality, while
