A CODE OF LEGAL ETHICS

of sixty or seventy paragraphs of specific instances, meet such conditions? What regard have such people for professional ethics? Against such, care is to be exer cised in admitting practitioners, and after their admission, measures adequate both to their discouragement and punishment should be adopted and enforced. As now required, a code of ethics is a remedy for existing conditions: it should be for the reclamation of present offenders and a guide for future practitioners. The ob servance of principles is all any of them need, and consequently a code of principles is sufficient. Any other code will be interest ing but inefficient. A few principles well known, well remembered and scrupulously enforced, are all that is requisite. Let us consider some actual conditions which, although they may, so far as they consist of examples, illustrate only extreme cases, are indexes of what an efficient code ought to meet. So far as my own observation and expe rience go, there is slight occasion for a code of ethics, except in the largest cities. The social conditions, taking New York as a type, are such that many men select the practice of law as a business, and some are, I fancy, ignorant of ethical standards; success as they define it to themselves is the only standard that they know, and they utilize the highly artificial rules of practice evolved in and from the execrable Code of Civil Procedure, to attain that end, wholly regardless of any ethical conceptions : there is no brotherhood; the Bar is too numerous and too heterogeneous for any central influence. The Association of the Bar of the City of New York numbers 1900 members; it has no code of ethics; its meetings are attended by not more than one hundred men on an average. The principle of election to mem bership is selective, and involves such scrutinv and discrimination that, while calculated to reject all men whose pro fessional record is open to any ethical

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criticism, it is in many quarters, especially in political quarters, sneeringly regarded as a lot of exclusive Pharisees; it exercises little or no influence on the practice, or on the judicial selections; men have repeatedly been elected to judicial position by over whelming majorities, whom it has dis approved after investigation; its opinions have been contemptuously treated by those in control of nominations to judicial office; those whom it has recommended as emi nently fit have been scorned by political bosses and voters alike; if it exercises any influence ethically outside of its own limited membership, it is imperceptible, except that of late it has manifested activity in pro moting the prosecution of those members of the Bar who have been credibly accused of such practices as to merit their disbarment. In short, until the Bar Association indus triously began to act as public prosecutor in cases of flagrant misconduct, it exercised apparently no ethical influence on the Bar at large. Formerly it was practically im possible to get its grievance committee to seriously consider charges against members of the Bar; it had no disciplinary power; it could only, in proper cases, act as relator in disbarment proceedings; the practice was such as to discourage charges against offend ing practitioners. I have been told that no charge would be investigated as long as either civil or criminal proceedings were pending against an accused lawyer, and that complaining parties were made to feel that they were deemed the culprits. Of late, however, the atmosphere has changed, with the result that disbarment proceedings, inaugurated by the Bar Association, are now not uncommon, and they commonly result either in suspension or disbarment. The forces working for uplifting the Bar in New York are the greater strictness and uniformity with which Bar examinations are conducted now than formerly, the strict ness of the so-called character examination in New York City and the more highly scientific character of ' legal instruction (of