s not only degrading, but reveals a base
attitude of mind and character, to charge a little fee in the
beginning as a bait for a bigger one in future cases. Maintain the
dignity of your effort.

I am assuming that Nature began the work of making you a lawyer before
you were born; that you have been preparing yourself, with the
enthusiasm of the artist and the passion of professional devotion, for
the work of your great calling, by years and years of discipline and
study such as no other calling requires; that, with your natural
qualification and your general equipment, you are bringing to your
client's particular case an industry that knows no limit in his
immediate service.

This being true, tell him frankly that you propose to give him the
best that is in you (and that best is your very life--no less--for you
write "victory" at the end of every one of your cases with your
heart's blood; or "defeat," if you do not win), and that for this best
which is in you you will charge the highest professional fee justified
by your services and the magnitude and difficulty of his case.

At the same time, never turn a poor client away from your office door
because that client comes with no gold in his hand. When a lawyer is
too busy to give counsel without fee and without charge to a poor man
or woman, that lawyer has too much business. I know--we all know--of
very eminent lawyers constantly engaged in causes involving large
interests, who nevertheless find leisure, many times each year, to
serve by advice and counsel, and sometimes even by the active conduct
of cases, numbers of the children of poverty, and to serve them
without a penny of compensation.

Be very careful of the class of business you accept at first. I knew a
young lawyer who had just opened his office, and within a month, by
one of those accidents that occur to every attorney, he was offered a
case on a contingent fee in which the probability of considerable
reward amounted almost to a certainty.

He needed the money--was nearly penniless. He was newly married, had
no clients and few acquaintances; but it was not the quality of
practise to which he wished to devote his career. He courteously
declined the case as though he had been a millionaire, and directed
his would-be client to an attorney who would care for it properly.

Out of that case the latter attorney, by a compromise, in two weeks
made fifteen hundred dollars. Nevertheless, the young man was right