Plumbers apprentice so that they may become well trained and certified master plumbers. I am in law school so that I may gain the qualifications and certification necessary to be a lawyer and attain a job as one. To me, the function of law school is to provide training for a trade: the trade of lawyering. I do not believe that there is anything that makes the law and the trade of lawyering any more venerable than other trades such as plumbing, electrical work, and vehicle repair.

• Do you believe lawyering is not about producing justice? Or do you believe there is nothing more venerable about justice than plumbing?

We have made indoor plumbing, electricity, and vehicular transportation such an integrated part of our lives that the absence of technicians capable of sustaining these functions would have as much of a disruptive effect as the absence of people capable of lawyering.

• The clear implication is that you mean to have clients in the same direct sense that a car mechanic does. Most of the people who go to school here don't have individual human clients. Did you mean to distinguish your intentions in this way?

I have no pretension about what I am doing. I am in law school to become a tradesman and render my services to those who seek it.

• How would you explain your position to a client who expected you to produce justice? Would you deny that justice exists, call it a pretension, or would you urge the client to retain a different lawyer?

QUESTION 1: I don't think lawyering is objectively about anything. There are those who perceive lawyering solely as a mechanism for eliciting a judgment in favor of their client and nothing more, and there are others--possibly the majority--who believe lawyering is about producing justice for their client and/or for society. However, I cannot rid myself of two important notions that I have about justice. 1. Those who seek justice are only seeking their personal conception of justice. 2. Justice does not exist independent of the world.

• By "cannot rid" do you mean "cannot try to rid" or "don't understand why other people at least as smart as I am don't agree with me" or "am not listening to anything said about"?

• If a large number of people agree on, for example, the injustice of racial segregation, is that still only a personal conception of justice?

• What is the significance of the apparently tautological statement that justice cannot exist independent of "the world"?

Question 2: I did not mean to distinguish having an individual client from working for an employer, but you are right, that implication does follow.

• It seems important to observe, then, as a thing we have learned about your opinions and intentions, that law firm employment wouldn't be consistent with them.

Question 3: I don't think that complex philosophical positions on justice necessarily affect my potential relationship with a client who seeks justice. I certainly have a normative sense of justice. For instance, the Israeli response to petty rocket launches strikes me as unjust, but I believe moral statements such as this are not actual propositions (i.e. they do not contain truth values). The expression then is akin to saying "go jets" or "boo giants." While this non-cognitivist perspective makes certain discussions difficult, it has little effect on how I live.

• But doesn't it have a decisive effect on your ability to represent a client who considers it incompatible with her values? That you answered the question only from your own perspective, rather than also from that of the client suggests a junction where your pose becomes untenable.

-- JonathanGuerra - 29 Jan 2009

Jonathan -- Plumbing and vehicle repair have clearer end goals that involve less dispute. Usually, if a building has leaky pipes, both landlords and tenants agree that the plumber should fix the problem, and they have a similar conception of what a fixed pipe looks like (it doesn't leak). In the law there is always someone on the other side. Let's say there are two plumbers, one hired by a landlord who asks him to turn off the water to a tenant's apartment because he doesn't like the look of her, and one hired by the tenant to get the water turned back on. Is there no difference between them? Would you be the first plumber in one building and the second in the next, and consider yourself simply plying a trade? Would you build the plumbing for a gas chamber?

AndrewCase 29 Jan 2009