Upholding the Rule of Law: The Privilege Sets the Profession Apart
This year’s Ross Essay Contest—asking ABA members to address the topic “Why do you believe the legal profession is the greatest profession in the world?”—brought in so many good entries that we have several we want to share in the coming weeks. The contest and $5,000 grand prize is supported by a trust established in the 1930s by the late Judge Erskine M. Ross of Los Angeles. The contest is administered by the ABA Journal. A winner will be announced and published in the August magazine.
Here’s another of this year’s finalists:
Some practitioners today might well ask, “What is so great about the profession?” Lawyers have always worked hard, worried much and sacrificed to succeed. But are too many concluding that the sacrifices are too great and the rewards too few? And lawyers have always felt the sting of society’s dissatisfaction with the imperfections of the legal system. But have they always internalized it so? Articles, studies and anecdotal evidence have built a consensus that American lawyers are anxious, overworked, depressed, bored, burned out and just plain unhappy.
Even discounting for the distorting effects of nostalgia, there is no denying that the legal profession is different today than it was just decades ago. This is about more than the perennial argument over whether law is a business or a profession, a false dichotomy if ever there was one. It is both. Roscoe Pound defined a profession as a group “pursuing a learned art as a common calling in the spirit of public service—no less a public service because it may incidentally be a means of livelihood.”
Law is subject to globalization, commoditization and other developments in the broader economy threatening to wring from the profession all that does not contribute to the bottom line. Mentoring, professional development, service on boards, community activities and pro bono service all are at risk, along with the broader judgment resulting from participation in these activities and the downtime essential to integrate such knowledge and perform effectively.
Only 44 percent of the American lawyers in one study say they would recommend the profession to a young person. Yet 80 percent say they are proud to be a lawyer. In other words, for some the law is a terrible business to be in, but a great profession to be a part of. What accounts for this pride? And will it sustain us?
History is where lawyers turn first for answers to such big questions. Decline is not really the lead story. The turbulent events of the last century include an ambitious evolution of the norms of the legal profession. The ABA Canons of Professional Ethics, adopted in 1908, helped lawyers to better understand their roles and responsibilities and paved the way for the Model Code of Professional Responsibility, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, and two ABA commissions (Clark and McKay) that revolutionized lawyer regulation in the public interest. Rigorous and independent regulation is one reason the legal profession will and must always stand apart from other “service providers” no matter how the trade winds blow.
Directly related to this point is another source of the profession’s greatness, pride and survival: the fearless advocacy of the organized bar and individual lawyers for the rule of law. Events such as those in Pakistan remind us of Leon Jaworski’s warning: “When dictators and tyrants seek to destroy the freedoms of men, their first target is the legal profession and through it the rule of law.”
Without advocacy and enforcement, laws are just abstractions. Without lawyers, rights established on paper remain theoretical statements of principle, sometimes mocking their intended beneficiaries. Some decry “overlawyering,” but the places with the most rights and lawyers are among the most desirable and just. Far from having sclerotic effects, lawyering has produced not only rights and responsibilities but dynamic, open, increasingly fair and prosperous societies.
Other professions perform important and even vital services for people. The legal profession—through the daily labor of its diverse practitioners—provides the freedom and order that allows individuals to thrive and societies to realize their ideals. A profession devoted to these principles will remain the greatest, even—and especially—in trying times.
Mark Armitage is deputy director of the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board in Detroit.
Other 2008 Ross Essay Contest Finalists:
The Rule of Man: A Film Recommendation Leads to a Father’s Enduring Lesson
