In two weeks I'll be taking the MPRE, short for Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam. I always hesitate to mention that I have to take an ethics exam when talking to non-lawyers. To most people ethics are coterminous with morals, and from a Webster's based perspective this meaning isn't wrong. But I don't mean morals when I'm talking about the Ethics exam. We lawyers have to follow the rules of state and federal law and also the rules of professional conduct, the ethical rules of our profession.
You wouldn't believe how many people snicker derisively at that explanation.
It's ironic; any wanker with sufficient ducats and the ability to fill out forms can waddle into Anytown, USA's city hall and get a business license. There's no test to see if you know that screwing other people over is a bad thing to do. Acquiring the license doesn't hinge on the results of a background check of your character to determine whether you have a tendency to lie, cheat, or do other shady things - like engage in moral turpitude. Yet no one presumes that all business people are necessarily ethically bankrupt swine.
Enter the lawyers (and the irony). It seems the common perception of lawyers is that we don't have the morals God gave weasels. And yet, we have a fairly extensive set of rules that forbid us from engaging in unethical behavior at the risk of losing our license.
Do you know what the single most frequent ethical complaint against lawyers is? Hint: it's not filing frivolous cases, and it's not taking excessive fees. It's failure to return phone calls. That's it. That's what you people complain about. [Note: where by you people, I mean clients, not you, my dear readers who are too smart to cause yourselves legal problems.] The number one problem isn't that lawyers are two-legged jackals, but that we lack basic phone skills.
Does anyone other than me see a lack of continuity here?
I think it's time to start licensing the business community. As long as we're background checking and finger-printing the lawyers, I think it's time to do the same to business people. For starters capitalists can see how THEY like studying for a two hour, multiple choice exam of not particularly easy questions designed to see if the test-taker knows right from wrong. I think it's equally fair that anyone who wants to sell red widgets, or blue widgets, or High Fructose Corn Syrup laden snacks of death should have to keep on the right side of an intricate system of professional conduct rules.
Just think what our world would be like if businesses were required to treat their clients and customers with at least two shreds of decency, and corporations had an additional mandate beyond the well-being of the shareholders.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
As a former accountant, I am giving this post a standing ovation. Can you hear it?
A law professor is teaching an ethics class.
"Let's imagine you've just done some routine work for a nice old lady. She asks how much the bill is going to be. You say $100. She reaches into your wallet and hands you $100, cash, and leaves the office. Once she's gone, you notice that she's accidentally given you two $100 bills that were stuck together.
Now here's where the question of ethics comes in: do you keep the extra $100, or do you split it with your partner?"
Insert rim-shot. Commence slapping of knees.
I took the MPRE half-drunk at a hotel that rented out its basement for standarised exams while the rest of the space was devoted partially to Cheap Family Vacations and partially to Brothel Space. We'd gone out boozing the night before and just piled in a classmate's car to go up to Chicago (those of us who registered too late to take it downstate).
I lost my ticket and had to write out my own in red crayon. Friend had an old kodak insta-snap in the trunk so my pic is me looking dazed against the wall of the hotel and then carefully ripped out into the proper dimensions (no one had scissors).
This story could only get better if I said I had to suck off the bell hop for a #2 pencil but fortunately classmate had an extra one.
Post a Comment