But he must put away from him two kinds of pretentious display, the one consisting in the officious proffering of his services to the powerful against those of meaner position, and the other, which is even more obtrusive, in deliberately supporting inferiors against those of high degree. For a case is not rendered either just or the reverse by the social position of the parties engaged. Nor, again, will a sense of shame deter him from throwing over a case which he has undertaken in the belief that it had justice on its side, but which his study of the facts has shown to be unjust, although before doing so he should give his client his true opinion on the case.
For, if we judge aright, there is no greater benefit that we can confer
on our clients than this, that we should not cheat them by giving them
empty hopes of success. On the other hand, no client that does not take
his advocate into his counsel deserves that advocate's assistance, and
it is certainly unworthy of our ideal orator that he should wittingly
defend injustice. For if he is led to defend what is false by any of the
motives which I mentioned above,
It is an open question whether he should never demand a fee for his
services. To decide the question at first sight would be the act of a
fool. For we all know that by far the most honourable course, and the
one which is most in keeping with a liberal education and that temper of
mind which we desiderate, is not to sell our services nor to debase the
value of such a boon as eloquence, since there are not a few things
which come to be regarded as
This much even the blind can see, as the saying is, and no one who is the possessor of sufficient wealth to satisfy his needs (and that does not imply any great opulence) will seek to secure an income by such methods without laying himself open to the charge of meanness. On the other hand, if his domestic circumstances are such as to require some addition to his income to enable him to meet the necessary demands upon his purse, there is not a philosopher who would forbid him to accept this form of recompense for his services, since collections were made even on behalf of Socrates, and Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus took fees from their pupils.
Nor can I see how we can turn a more honest penny than by performance of the most honourable of tasks and by accepting money from those to whom we have rendered the most signal services and who, if they made no return for what we have done for them, would show themselves undeserving to have been defended by us. Nay, it is not only just, but necessary that this should be so, since the duties of advocacy and the bestowal of every minute of our time on the affairs of others deprive us of all other means of making money.
But we must none the less observe the happy mean, and it makes no small
difference from whom we take payment, what payment we demand, and how
long we continue to do so. As for the piratical practice of bargaining
and the scandalous traffic of those who proportion their fees to the
peril in which their would-be client stands, such a procedure will be
eschewed even by those who are more than half scoundrels, more
especially since the advocate who devotes himself