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IsBeingACorporateLawyerImmoral 4 - 24 Feb 2009 - Main.AlexHu
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I think Professor Moglen once said that the concept of giving money to the poor while earning money as a corporate lawyer is all good, but it assumes that the work itself has a neutral moral value. Does that imply that being a corporate lawyer is (or could be) immoral? What is so different between being a corporate lawyer and being a blue collar worker? We respect people working in the Ford factory because they work hard to make an honest living. Aren’t they both trying to make a living to support themselves and their family? Is there more difference than their income? | | | The difference between the factory worker and the corporate lawyer is that the factory worker probably doesn't have much of a choice to work elsewhere. The corporate lawyer does, however. So in choosing to support a family through corporate law, the corporate lawyer is choosing to put her faith in capitalism, the legal system, etc. The real question, then, is not whether corporate law is immoral, but whether the economic and legal system are immoral. If the answer is yes, and corporate law is so intertwined with those systems that there is no legitimate possibility of “changing the system from within,” then I think we have to conclude that corporate law is immoral.
-- MichaelDreibelbis - 24 Feb 2009 | |
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> | There is nothing necessarily immoral about being a corporate lawyer per se. People work to survive, and working as a corporate lawyer will earn you enough money to survive. How can it be considered inherently immoral to desire to create a comfortable lifestyle for yourself and your family? It is the basic human nature of egocentric survival. Of course, there are issues when it comes to taking money away from the poor, profiting at the direct expense of society, etc., but working as a corporate lawyer is not necessarily such an occupation. This is because in the end, there is always going to be a certain demand for corporate lawyers that will be filled sooner or later. Being one of these lawyers is simply fulfilling one of society's needs.
The main problem with being a corporate lawyer, in my opinion, is that many people go into it without truly knowing what it entails (other than a comfortable lifestyle). To some, corporate work is their life's calling, and they enjoy it immensely. To these individuals, working as a corporate lawyer is neither immoral nor wrong. But what about the others? Too often, they discover that working as a corporate lawyer allows simply comfortable survival and not much more. To them, working on some complicated brief that will save a company x millions of dollars at 6-minute increments is not very fulfilling, and certainly not what they envisioned their career as lawyers would be reduced to.
In the end, both the lawyer and society may be cheated. The lawyer may eventually find himself chained by golden handcuffs to his lifestyle and unable to leave the career that he despises. In the process, he loses a bit of himself, and resorts to vices such as alcoholism or gambling to cope with his depression. Neither of these is terribly good for society. But what if the lawyer instead changes his career? As Professor Moglen said, society puts a lot into training lawyers. Changing careers would be cheating society out of the fruits of the labors it has put into the "Haves" that it could have given to someone else. So in such a way, society may ultimately be deprived of a lawyer. Thus, while being a corporate lawyer is not necessarily immoral per se, it can lead to some outcomes that are quite bad, maybe even "immoral," to society in general.
-- AlexHu - 24 Feb 2009 | | |
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| Revision 4 | r4 - 24 Feb 2009 - 06:23:33 - AlexHu |
| Revision 3 | r3 - 24 Feb 2009 - 05:42:24 - EstherKwak |
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