care, neatness, and accuracy.

He cannot be faithful to his clients unless he continues to be a hard
student of the learning of his profession. Not merely that he should
thoroughly investigate the law applicable to every case which may be
intrusted to him; though that, besides its paramount necessity to enable
him to meet the responsibility he has assumed to that particular client,
will be the subsidiary means of important progress in his professional
acquisitions. "Let any person," says Mr. Preston, "study one or two
heads of the law fully and minutely, and he will have laid the
foundation or acquired the aptitude for comprehending other heads of
the law."[26] But, besides this, he should pursue the systematic study
of his profession upon some well-matured plan. When admitted to the Bar,
a young man has but just begun, not finished, his legal education. If he
have mastered some of the most general elementary principles, and has
acquired a taste for the study, it is as much as can be expected from
his clerkship. There are few young men who come to the Bar, who cannot
find ample time in the first five or seven years of their novitiate, to
devote to a complete acquisition of the science they profess, if they
truly feel the need of it, and resolve to attain it. The danger is great
that from a faulty preparation,--from not being made to see and
appreciate the depth, extent, and variety of the knowledge they are to
seek, they will mistake the smattering they have acquired for profound
attainments. The anxiety of the young lawyer is a natural one at once to
get business--as much business as he can. Throwing aside his books, he
resorts to the many means at hand of gaining notoriety and attracting
public attention, with a view of bringing clients to his office. Such an
one in time never fails to learn much by his mistakes, but at a sad
expense of character, feeling, and conscience. He at last finds that in
law, as in every branch of knowledge, "a little learning is a dangerous
thing;" that what he does not know falsifies often in its actual
application that which he supposed he certainly did know; and after the
most valuable portion of his life has been frittered away upon objects
unworthy of his ambition, he is too apt to conclude that it is now too
late to redeem his time; he finds that he has lost all relish for
systematic study, and when he is driven to the investigation of
particular questions, is confounded and embarrasse