Presidents’ Day shouldn’t pass us by without our annual nod to
the lawyer Abraham Lincoln. Two years ago, your Editor, in the
post Fees and the Lawyer-Fiduciary, said:
I wonder how Abe Lincoln, Esq. would have defined the
fiduciary duties of a lawyer when setting fees. I’m afraid
that many lawyers never consider fiduciary principles in
the context of fees. That oversight goes a long way toward
explaining how the legal profession managed to squander
the goodwill that was its legacy from honest Abraham
Lincoln.
Similarly, we wonder how Lincoln would react to what we’ve called
the “ethics aside” approach of the gurus and cheerleaders of law firm
branding, marketing and alternative or value pricing. By equating the
legal profession with the making of widgets for marketing and pricing
purposes, and insisting that we have “customers, not clients,” they
seem to forget the ethical and fiduciary duty lawyers have to fully inform
the client and to look out first for the client’s interests.
Lawyer Lincoln, please take a look at ron baker & price sensitivity and let
us know what you think about lawyers who exploit the psychology of pricing,
leverage premium prices at the client’s most price insensitive moments, and
(after touting the glories of up-front pricing) manipulate Change Orders to
achieve ever-higher “value pricing.”
“An exhorbitant fee should never be claimed.”
Abraham Lincoln, 1850
Weblogging lawyers, and those considering starting a weblog, might want to consider the following quote from Abe Lincoln, taken from his
1850 Notes for a Law Lecture. To modernize it, substitute “frequent weblog-
ging,” for “extemporaneous speaking:”
“Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is
the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may
be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he
cannot make a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to
young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one,
upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the
drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.”
Find more at this website about Abraham Lincoln’s
approach to lawyering, in the following posts:
We haven’t forgotten about you, George Washington.Thanks for showing our nation that integrity and honesty can
go hand-in-hand with power. Presidents who tell the truth.
What a concept!
a money-making
temple…
the peonies in bloom
temple…
the peonies in bloom
the great lord
forced off his horse…
cherry blossoms
Issa,
translated by David G. Lanoue
.
“snowflakeSN” Honest, we know it’s winter, but it’s also
time for some Barry George haiku, no matter what the
season:
autumn gold-
I dodge fresh clots of dung
along the trail
high autumn-
a car’s boom box shakes
the hood
a cloud’s shadow
crosses the footbridge-
summer day
the dampness of the shortcut home spring pines
Barry George – Simply Haiku (Vol. 3: 4, Winter 2005)
