Lawyers for Laymen

...He is not content to present the facts and let the reader form his own opinion...

...Mayer is a competent reporter, and he has done a good job in catching the practice of law as it is, with all its many sides...

...Woe unto you also, ye lawyers...

...It is satisfying to think that this poor fellow in the state penitentiary would have been electrocuted three years ago had it not been for your efforts—but while the case is in process there is always the dreadful realization that if you make a poor choice of arguments, or if you are a day late in filing a particular paper, the executioner's switch will be thrown...

...Most legal educators regard the decline of the night law school as a great step forward, but to Mayer it is "among the most important and saddest social developments in the United States since World War II...

...If a man with a serious criminal record is arrested for yet another crime under incriminating circumstances, Mayer thinks the idea that the man should be presumed innocent and released on bail "a notion unworthy of an intelligent legal system, whatever anybody says the Constitution says...

...Mayer is a good reporter...

...It is good, therefore, that Martin Mayer, who is not a lawyer, has undertaken to explain what lawyers are really like in a book intended for laymen...

...Laymen—and lawyers—will find The Lawyers interesting and informative...

...Some of these opinions are gratuitously flip: "to criticize Justice Brennan for the verbal infelicities of his opinions is more than a little ungenerous— and cruel, as it is obvious that the .angels did not bring to Justice Bren-nan's cradle any particular gift of clear expression...

...There is tedium in the law: a large part of every lawyer's time is spent in doing routine things he has done many times before...

...They are better to work with or play with or fight with or drink with, than most other varieties of mankind...

...His words are engraved on a plaque high on the wall of a stately dining room at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York...

...He gets into deeper waters when he turns social critic...

...Facts, unfortunately, are facts...

...But the reader will do well to distinguish between the facts Mayer reports and the opinions Mayer advances as gospel...

...The same personal involvement is present, if on a less dramatic scale, where it is your client's money or his marriage that is at stake...

...With all their faults, they stack up well against those in every other occupation or profession...

...Luke...

...The leaders of the organized bar will not be happy that his first chapter tells how much money lawyers make and how they set their fees, or that he later discusses quite candidly "the trade-union approach to a profession" that is behind efforts to prevent other professionals from being allowed to do work for which the bar associations think a lawyer should have a fee...

...The second quotation is from Christ, as reported by St...

...This difference between what lawyers think of themselves and what others think of them is of ancient origin...

...Perhaps the public will love the lawyers more if it understands them better...

...There is also a sordid side: a barely competent graduate of a two-bit law school making a large contingent fee in a personal injury case he has solicited by unethical means...

...for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers...

...Distinguished lawyers who disagree with him on this "sound like medieval scholastics discussing the substance of the angels...

...There is grandeur in the practice: Abe Fortas, at that time one of the most highly paid lawyers in the country, standing before the Supreme Court arguing, without fee, on behalf of an indigent prisoner he had never met...

...Other opinions are presented as if they were eternal truths, when in fact they are highly debatable...

...The first quotation is from one of the truly great lawyers of our time, Harrison Tweed...

...His chapter on what happens in a busy criminal court is a classic, and he is equally adept in describing a big antitrust trial—"one of the sights of America," as he correctly notes...

...All of this Mayer describes well...

...Instead we get Mayer's opinions too, and these are unpleasantly dogmatic on matters about which competent critics reasonably differ...

...There is also tension: Mayer is right when he says that "nervous energy is drained by the repeated need to make decisions on the spot, some of them drastically affecting the client's future...

...Many more instances could be cited...