Lawyers
and Virtue
Bill
Piersol
Several years ago I was at a professional conference
being held in a large hotel. In a room
down the hall from where the conference I was attending, the meeting poster for
that room read something like, "Steps to Help Lawyers with
Addictions". I remember my first
thought was, "wait a minute, these are lawyers, we can help them by
disbarring them".
Looking back, that probably was pretty harsh. If a lawyer gets addicted on pain killers and
admits it, shouldn't he or she be allowed to get treatment and keep their
job? But it brings up a point, just
exactly how virtuous does a lawyer have to be?
Aristotle is often referenced with regards to
virtue. For moral virtues, he specifically identified justice, courage and
honesty (McGinniss, 2011). It seems to
me, honesty is the primary catch-all. If you are guided by that, you are doing
pretty good. But as the old saying goes,
nobody is perfect, so having the courage to admit mistakes is the way to get
back on track. So in the case of lawyers
who are addicted to drugs, having the courage to admit an addiction is virtuous
(although there may have been some none-virtuous decisions earlier that got him
or her in that situation for which a person may be held accountable).
Moral virtue though is not the only virtue that
lawyers should be guided by. There is
intellectual virtue, evidenced by practical wisdom or prudence, that Aristotle
called "phronesis" (McGinnis, 2011).
This is a type of sensitive
"early warning system" that has a person looking ahead to avoid
getting into a situation that one would prefer not to be in. Aristotle advised that the best way to learn
this wisdom is to observe and model after those who have practical wisdom
(McGinnis, 2011). There is a saying that
a "smart person learns from his mistakes, but a wise mane learns from the
mistakes of others".
I think the value of the ethics course is it gets
you to consider numerous situations which better prepares you to face them - a
kind of modeling.
McGinniss, M. S. (2011). Virtue ethics, earnestness,
and the deciding lawyer: Human flourishing in a legal community. North
Dakota Law Review, 87(1), 19-57.
Bill,
ReplyDeleteI see where you were going with the virtue perspective, especially for those who practice law. I agree that when I would see a sign that was posted to aid in helping attorneys with addictions, I would have thought the same. Like you said we are all perfectly in-perfected human beings. Slip ups happen. When you touched on Aristotle's "phronesis," in my opinion is in the intuitive side of a person. A side warning not to go down a certain path. Thank you so much for such an interesting read.
You are so right, lawyers are only human. I could not imagine what it would be like to have the future of someone at my hands. Their life could depend on how I perform. The thought of forgetting to point something out could send some to prison for the rest of their life. Or if I don't find everything this,person could lose everything. That is the weight of the world. Society has to remember that before they were lawyers they were human and capable of making mistakes. As long as they can own what they do and change it why disbar them?
ReplyDeleteWilliam: You raised insightful points in your blog on lawyers and virtue. Professor Taylor
ReplyDelete