Do lawyers suck?

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Mon Jan 10 06:49:10 PST 2000



>6) Anyway, lawyers are just tools of the rich

I've always admired Melville's haunting story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" for, among other things, its unforgettable portrait of the narrator, a lawyer, as an unctuous toady, viz:

"I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion.... I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages ...."

Carl

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