It takes a combination of fox and lion to make a successful lawyer. And yet we are besieged with sheep and rabbits who are eager to enter law school or who have passed through law school and are wondering why they do not succeed in their profession.
There are at least two general types of lawyers, the court or trial lawyer and the counselor. The first must be a true catechist, a convincing public speaker, keen, alert, resourceful, self-confident, courageous, with a considerable degree of poise and self-control. He may be either aggressive, belligerent, and combative, or mild, persuasive, and non-resistant, but shrewd, intelligent, resourceful. A timid, dreamy, credulous man has no business in the law. A lawyer may love peace, but he should be willing to fight for it.
Because legal ethics forbid a lawyer to advertise or solicit business openly, it is necessary for him to secure a standing and clientele by indirect methods. Best of these is making and keeping friends, by mingling with all classes and conditions of people, by political activity, and in other ways making one's self agreeable and useful in the community. Thus a lawyer draws to himself the attention of the most desirable class of
people. In order to be successful in this, the lawyer must possess qualities of sociability and friendship. A man who is not naturally social or friendly is not well qualified for any profession. Unless he intends to work with a partner who has these qualifications, and who will be the business getter of the firm, he would better leave the law alone.
INDICATIONS OF JUDICIAL QUALITIES
The second class of lawyer, the counsellor, is more of the judicial type. He is quite likely to be stout or to have the indications of approaching stoutness. He should be calm, deliberate, cautious, prudent, capable of handling details, a man with a splendid memory and with the capacity for acquiring a great fund of knowledge about all kinds of things. He should be able to take an interest in almost any kind of business or profession and quickly master its fundamentals.
A MISFIT IN THE LAW
Men of the high-strung, nervous, timid, self-conscious, sentimental class are sadly out of place in the law. While they may be abundantly well equipped for success from an intellectual standpoint, physically and emotionally they are utterly unfit for it. A young man once sought us for counsel who had spent many years in colleges and universities acquiring one of the finest legal educations possible in this country. Because of his intellectual equipment, the study of the law was fascinating to him, and both his parents and his professors in law school expected him to make a brilliant success in practice. What was his intense disappointment, as well as theirs, when he opened an office, to find that almost everything connected with the practice of law was distasteful to him, so that he found himself incapable of doing it successfully. For several years he had made a desperate attempt to succeed and to learn to like his profession, but every day only made him hate it more ardently. As a natural result he did poorer and poorer work at it.
It was no wonder to us that this young man did not like
the practice of law. In the first place, he was fond of change and variety. His was not a nature which could address itself to one task and concentrate upon that hour after hour and day after day, such as carefully scrutinizing every detail of a case and perfecting his preparation of it for presentation in court. In the second place, his was an unusually sensitive, refined, responsive, and sentimental disposition. So fine were his emotional sensibilities that it was almost more than he could endure to hear—as he was compelled to day after day—the seamy, inharmonious, sordid, and criminal side of life. The recital and consideration of these things depressed him, made him morbid and sapped his vitality and courage. For the swift repartee, keen combat, and mutual incriminations of the court room he was utterly unfitted. Any criticism was taken personally. He found it impossible to let the jibes, criticisms, and heated words of his opponents trickle off from him as easily as water does from a duck's back, which is the proper legal mental attitude in regard to such things. He told us that sharp, harsh, or bitter words entered his soul like barbed iron and he was upset and unstrung for hours afterward. A man with such an emotional nature as his and such an intellect is especially qualified for literature, and we are glad to say that he is now making a very flattering success in this particular field.