Years ago I had the pleasure of knowing Arvin Reingold, a Chattanooga lawyer. He was a character, but one thing he told me stuck and it has been part of how I’ve approached the practice of law ever since. Arvin told me “Good lawyers solve problems, they don’t create them.”
It seems everyone has a story about a lawyer who no longer recognizes the practice as a profession. These “lawyers” view it as a business. They are less concerned with improving their client’s life position than in billing hours. In some cases, they are so concerned about winning at any cost that they employ scorched earth strategies. This is particularly troubling when there’s a family dispute and the case leaves brothers and sisters, parents and children, forever estranged. Part of the Georgia Lawyer’s Creed states: “I will strive to represent you as I would want to be represented and to be worthy of your trust.” This is essentially a restatement of the Golden Rule. See also Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31. My reason for bringing these concepts together is that winning, in the legal profession, should be measured by what’s most important to the client and for many clients that means family and quality of life.
A foundational motto of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorney is “Doing well by doing good.” Tim Takacs and I explored this in an article we wrote and published in 2004, Revisiting the Ethics of Medicaid Planning. There we found that an element of the ethics paradigm is nonmaleficence. In other words, one obligation is to not inflict harm on the person to whom a duty is owed. “This principle sets the minimum standard for the duties owed by the health care professional to his patient. The direct precursor to this principle is set forth in the physician’s Hippocratic Oath to “first, do no harm.””
When thinking about law as a profession, the words of Louis D. Brandeis are worth noting:
The peculiar characteristics of a profession as distinguished from other occupations”:
First. A profession is an occupation for which the necessary preliminary training is intellectual in character, involving knowledge and to some extent learning, as distinguished from mere skill.
Second. It is an occupation which is pursued largely for others and not merely for one’s self.
Third. It is an occupation in which the amount of financial return is not the accepted measure of success.
Until 2002, Georgia lawyers took an oath which included the phrase “I will truly and honestly, justly, and uprightly demean myself, according to the laws, as an attorney, counselor, and solicitor, and that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Georgia. So help me God.” In 2002, the oath changed to truly and honestly, justly, and uprightly conduct myself, but it still carries the notion that one should conduct, behave, or carry yourself with the highest level of moral integrity, sincerity, and fairness in your daily life. In speaking about the Georgia oath in 1988, Griffin Bell, former Attorney General of the United States, thought we would do well to recall the original oath. He seemingly “understood that people can be dishonest, unprincipled, untrustworthy, unfair and uncaring without breaking the law or the code. Truly professional people measure their conduct not by rules but by basic moral principles such as honesty, integrity and fairness. In addition, professionalism challenges us to consider our conduct in all aspects of our lives, not just our professional lives.”
As I look back at my career, I am mindful that I’ve had the opportunity to help many individuals and families. I’m certain some felt more helped that others, but I’ve strived to live up to Arvin’s wise counsel and solve problems, not create them.
