Rendezvous With Ethics
“A practicing lawyer has a constant and perpetual rendezvous with ethics.” McClure v Donovan (1947) 82 Cal App 2nd 664, 666.
Don’t we all?
Lawyers, judges, litigants, therapists, doctors, mothers, fathers, kids, spouses. All of us.
Why is this rendezvous so difficult? Do the darkest hours and the finest acts flirt with each other, but never touch? Or do we choose wrongly when we fail to choose to act? Do we rendezvous when it is easy and fail at other times? Or perhaps some of us like the difficult hours, but turn away from the easy lapses, letting them gather like fallen leaves to be forgotten in the winter of the soul and under cloak of snow.
And if you don’t see it, was it never evil, never wrong? And if no one complains, does it really matter? And if someone complains, do you dismiss them and tell them to move on, that there is not room enough in your life to know another’s pain, hear their story and enter into it?
And when the victim squeals, do you break their back with burdens you shed to feel the unbearable lightness of no remorse?
“A practicing lawyer has a constant and perpetual rendezvous with ethics.”
