Horace Mann was
right. It is certain that in his beginnings the young lawyer ought to
lean to that view.

If you consider it your duty to take any side of any case that offers,
right or wrong, it is no far cry to considering it your duty to make
the cause you have espoused a good one before the court. And when that
conception has shot its cancerous roots and filaments through your
brain and conscience, the suggestion to your unscrupulous client of
facts that do not exist, and all the alluring infamies of sharp
practise, are possible.

It is said that burglary exercises such a fascination that, once the
delirium of its danger is tasted, a man can never put that fatal wine
away. An old and distinguished lawyer once told me that one of the
most brilliant young lawyers he ever knew said to him, at the
conclusion of a legal duel in which he had resorted to the sharpest
practise and won, "That was the most delicious experience of my life."

Yes, and it was the most fatal. He became, and is, an attorney of
uncommon resource, ability, and success, with many cases and heavy
fees; nevertheless his life is a failure, for his profession and even
his clients know him for a dealer in tricks. Senator McDonald, an
ideal lawyer in the ethics, learning, and practise of his profession,
told me that one of the justices of the Supreme Court once said to him
of a certain great corporation lawyer of acknowledged power and almost
unrivaled learning:

"Mr. ---- would be the greatest lawyer in the world if he were not a
scoundrel. As it is, I brace myself to resist him every time he
appears before me." One of the ablest Circuit Court judges of the
Federal bench said almost precisely the same thing to me of the same
man.

So you perceive it does not pay to be understood to be capable, or
even great, in the wrong. In time it means ruin; and therefore I
think, on the whole, that it would be wise for you never to take a
cause which, after you have a full statement from your client, you
believe to be wrong.

Many of the most excellent men of our profession will dissent from
this view. Their argument is usually that of Lord Brougham, summarized
above. Also they will declare that a lawyer may be quite wrong in his
first impression that his client has not the right of an impending
controversy. They will cite you instances where they have entered into
the conduct of a case with much doubt in their hearts as to the
rightfulness of their client's