Lawyer's Ethics

I just finished reading the assignment for one of my classes from a book called "The Law and Ethics of Lawyering." I know. It's an oxymoron. There are no ethics for lawyers.

I wonder if law school really has deadened me to the basic morality that we should take for granted. I wrestled with some of the problems in the reading. But then I talked about them with my wife and they didn't seem difficult at all to her.

For example, in one case, two people are in a car accident. Victim (V) sues the driver (D) for the damages he suffered. But V doesn't know that he has an aneurysm that might have been caused by the accident. When D's doctors examine him, they find the aneurysm and tell D's lawyers. Now, should D's lawyers tell V that he could die if he doesn't get an operation even if they might have to pay more at trial? Clearly they should. But what if D - the client - doesn't want to? What should D's lawyers do? They promised that they would do what D told them to do, and that they would keep confidential everything they found out about the case.

My wife didn't hesitate. "But someone's life at stake. Is God going to be mad at you for betraying your client to save someone's life?" She's right. It doesn't matter what the ethical rule is. You have to do what's right. I just wish that it had been clearer to me what the right thing was. That's what three years of law school will do to you.

You Are Going to Hell

During my first year of Law School, Tom Griffith, now a federal judge, spoke to the first year students and told us, "You will probably make a lot of money when you graduate. If you spend it on yourself, you will definitely go to hell. Letting the young men and young women in your ward swim in your indoor pool once a year will not save you."

Not one to leave us depressed and miserable, he went on to give us the key to salvation. He said that you have to spend your time and your money "clothing the naked and feeding the hungry" if you want to save your soul.

I was a little bit dumbfounded by Griffith's speech. He couldn't really mean that a BMW 3-series was going to get me kicked out of heaven, could he?

I might be one of the few people who went to law school with the idea of making tons of money and, because of people like Tom Griffith, now plans on doing something else with his life.

But here's the problem: If I had $4 billion, I don't think I would be terribly optimistic about my ability to solve any of the world's problems. And believe me, the world has big problems. I don't want to get into all of them right now because it will give me a headache, and you will get so depressed that you will never read this blog again, but there are problems.

My wife doesn't spend much time thinking about big global problems. Her plan is to help the people around her as much as she can and let the rest of the world take care of itself. My wife is going to change the world for those people. Maybe I should be like her.

But, does anyone have any ideas?