A new solidarity of teaching professional opinion,
together with a growing realization by our public of the primary
importance of the calling, is tending to emancipate it, to establish it
in its rightful place.
Nor are our engineers without their ideal. A Goethals did not cut an
isthmus in two for gain.
Industrialism, with its concomitant "corporation" practice, has
undoubtedly been detrimental to the legal profession, since it has
resulted in large fees; in the accumulation of vast fortunes, frequently
by methods ethically questionable. Grave social injustices have been
done, though often in good faith, since the lawyer, by training and
experience, has hitherto been least open to the teachings of the new
social science, has been an honest advocate of the system of 'laissez
faire'. But to say that the American legal profession is without ideals
and lacking in the emulative spirit would be to do it a grave injustice.
The increasing influence of national and state bar associations evidences
a professional opinion discouraging to the unscrupulous; while a new
evolutionary and more humanitarian conception of law is now beginning to
be taught, and young men are entering the ranks imbued with this. Legal
clinics, like medical clinics, are established for the benefit of those
who cannot afford to pay fees, for the protection of the duped from the
predatory quack. And, it must be said of this profession, which hitherto
has held a foremost place in America, that its leaders have never
hesitated to respond to a public call, to sacrifice their practices to
serve the nation.
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