I’m not asking about the ethics of lying, or whether lawyers may be justified in lying. That is beside the point. I am just asking: hypothetically, would it be possible for a lawyer to have a successful career while never uttering so much as a white lie?
Like, let’s say the lawyer had some sort of spell cast on them, so they could never lie. If someone were to ask them a question, they’d either need to find a way to avoid answering or answer honestly. Would it be possible for a lawyer in such circumstances to still go on and have a successful career?
Only if hiding it is an attempt to deceive. So simply not telling your boss you hate them would not be a lie by itself. Being truthful does not require you to go out of your way to offer information.
The real summary here for an answer to OP is “no, its not really possible to be a successful lawyer without lying” because even small lies are kind of important to social etiquette as others have noted. People often say lies of omission dont count as lies, so I wanted to address that angle. A lie of omission requires deception. For example if you hate the flavor of bananas, but dont go around telling everyone you hate the taste of bananas, that is not a lie.