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?
My lawyers have recommended that I say “yes”
Of course.
First, lawyers don’t say “my client is innocent”. They say “my client claims he is innocent”. Lawyers are not witnesses, they don’t claim anything in the court. They present evidence and ask questions. You don’t have to lie to do it.
Second, people imagine the job of a lawyer is to get their client acquitted. It’s not, it’s to represent their client in court.
Let’s say you are a lawyer and you have to represent a serial killer. The evidence is overwhelming and it’s obvious he is guilty but still he pleads “not guilty”. Your job is not to try avoid conviction. Your job is to make sure he is treated fairly and that his rights are respected. You basically have to oversee the trial from his side. Make sure that evidence was obtained legally, that witnesses tell the truth, that experts have proper credentials. You don’t have to lie to do any of that.
Yes, some lawyers will be experts in taking out criminals out of jails by manipulating juries, forging evidence or intimidating witnesses. Most lawyers are not.
Most lawyers never litigate or actively engage in matters before a court. There are whole armies of lawyers who do contract law, agreement reviews, general counsel in organizations, tech transfer specialists, etc. These folks advise clients and help manage risk and would never be in a position to need to lie in most cases. Their job is to advise business decision makers, and you don’t need to agree with the decisions made to advise on the risk landscape.
Even outside of that, there is a lot of ambiguity and conflict in large amounts of our statutes and promulgated policy, such that two lawyers can disagree about the application of law and neither one is lying.
The kind of lying that is objectively lying, like suppressing or mischaracterizing facts, are also breaches of their ethical code of conduct and would put them at risk of professional repercussions from the courts or the BAR.
So while there are bad apples like in any profession, most lawyers don’t lie more than anyone else, and probably less given they have incentives to be transparent in their role.
A really good niche is international contracts. You have to have a good handle on the laws of multiple countries, and deal with the constantly changing Venn diagram between them.
I’m not convinced it’s practical to even BECOME a lawyer without lying.
Law school’s like that eh?
Not all lawyers are trial lawyers. There are lots of things you can do helping people with paperwork of various kinds. EoL planing and incorporating businesses, for 2 examples off the top of my head.
I love the trope of lawyers being evil. They are typically held to some pretty tight requirements for ethics. Engineers on the other hand are given a free pass but are responsible for a significant number of humanities worst crimes against both itself and the environment.
I mean, there’s various kinds of lawyers, and some kinds are definitely evil.
Doesn’t help that those are the ones who become rich, popular and famous.
No because even avoiding answering can be a lie. A lie of omission.
The key being that you are hiding some detail or information in an attempt to deceive, that is what makes it a lie.
In that case, no one can ever tell the truth. Because you can never know what thing you’ve accidentally left out might be considered relevant to the person you’re talking to.
Not true. The key is the intent and attempt to deceive. Forgetting to include info or being *unaware of it means you did not intend to deceive.
Define lie.
Knowingly saying something false. I wouldn’t consider omitting information to be lying. Maybe in some contexts it is but for a lawyer that seems too stringent
Found the successful lawyer.
Deceit through misinformation or hiding information.
How do you define hiding information?
If you constantly hide the fact you hate your boss from him, does that count because that’d be a problem in most jobs.
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.
If omitting information is a lie, then no, you can’t be a successful lawyer without that.
Your job is to help your client. Informing the opposition of something they missed and that would help their case hurts your client who pays and relies on you.
But then you can’t be a successful business owner, politician, Union rep or even parent without lying either. Unlimited honesty and transparency isn’t really something society values.But if there is no intention to deceive (and I would add no obligation to reveal that information,) then there’s no lie.
You just don’t provide information.
If my mom asks “where were you?” And I refuse to answer, I’m not lying, I’m just not answering, right?
Exactly
I would argue that hiding information is not always lying.
There are lies of omission, but it depends on if you are asked about the things you are omitting or not.
And even if you are, it is possible to steer the conversation away from the thing without actually telling a lie.
Politicians do it all of the time.
Thats why the requirement for omission to be a lie is that there is an intent to deceive.
Lawyers don’t lie. They massage the truth.
“Due to my ethical obligations to my client, I am unable to answer that question. If your honor insists on an answer, I will need to withdraw.”
You will lose out on a lot of money though. Remember that there are two sides to every story, and it’s not the lawyer’s job to judge what the truth is. The lawyer advocates. The judge and jury decide.
I work with lawyers and I have to say lawyers are by and far either the most or least ethical people you have ever met.
And success is not determined by your ethics as a lawyer.
The best lawyers find the points of the truth that are the most salient to their case and push those.
by and far either the most or least ethical people
Anedcote: I once had a lead developer who was a successful lawyer earlier in his career. He quit his law office because he could not stomach defending people who were not only obviously guilty, bet were scumbags as well.
I would respond that it’s almost impossible to thrive in any sort of human society that has ever existed in history without telling even the faintest hint of a white lie sometimes. I don’t think it’s realistically possible to be a successful human, nevermind a lawyer. Everyone thinks they’re being completely honest all the time, until you spend some years having a bunch of philosophers pick apart the entire basis of the reality you think you’re not lying to yourself or anyone else about, then once you’re done figuring out what reality actually is, you might have a totally different idea of what lying even means. But you’ll never get there, because you’ll never actually figure out what reality even is, nobody comes out the other side of existential philosophy. This isn’t new stuff, the ancient Greeks were struggling with it thousands of years ago, and we only know that because they were among the first who bothered to write it all down.
Obviously it depends on what is meant by a lie.
Someone just watched Liar Liar.
But not all the way through?
I feel like there’s a sequel to liar liar incoming and Jim is doing prep work on the fediverse…
Nope
