AMERICAN CODE OF LEGAL ETHICS

the professions are high minded and just. Our pride is that from generation to genera tion the legal profession as a whole vindicates its existence by carrying on successfully its high calling of promoting justice. That it may carry on that calling even more success fully, especial emphasis should be laid on section 32 of the Missouri legal code, namely : "32. An attorney should strive at all times, to uphold the honor, maintain the dignity, and promote the usefulness of the profession; for it is so interwoven with the administration . of justice that whatever redounds to the good of one advances the other; and the attorney thus discharges, not merely an obligation to his professional brethren, but a high duty to the state and his fellowmen." In closing it must be said that the state codes of legal ethics are in the main sound and show a healthy moral attitude on the •part of the modern lawyer. While we have suggested the need of a rule making it unprofessional for a lawyer to ask or permit his clerk to do in the course of his employ ment, or his partner to do in the course of

their joint business, anything for which the lawyer does not wish to assume moral responsibility, and have emphasized the need of explicit rules for the prevention of ambulance chasing, and have suggested an amendment to the state code provisions regarding the defense by a lawyer of a man whom he knows to be guilty, and have con curred in the suggestion that the new rule offered by Mr. Abbott to put an end to petty "graft "'be adopted, we have to admit that the surprising thing is that so little fault can be found with these state codes. If, as it doubtless will, the American Bar Associa tion succeeds in framing a better code than any adopted in the states, it will be only because the states have led the way. Here, as elsewhere, the states have justified their continuance in existence by services ren dered as the legislative experiment stations of the nation. It remains for the nation, in its turn, to profit by the local experiments, and in the field of legal ethics the American •Bar Association is going to see that it. does profit by them. LINCOLN, NEB, January, 1908.