Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 12 > Issue 8 (1914)
Abstract
We all know the lay tradition as to the lawyer. Mike Monaghan rhymes lawyer with trier. He tells us that the Probate Court is instituted to see that "iviry mimber of the bair gits a fair chanct at phwat the dicaysed didn't take wid 'im." In the timeworn anecdote of the epitaph "here lies an honest lawyer" everyone is ready to say, "that's Strange."' Laymen, who, sitting as arbitrators, will insist on technicalities which the law would instantly reject, and in corner-grocery discussions will argue that a contract signed with a lead pencil is void for informality, are quite sure that the lawyer systematically rejects the merits of a controversy in order to dispose of it upon some quirk or quibble. The legal muckraker who writes for our periodicals finds no difficulty in obtaining an audience for the most absurd misstatements as to the laws under which we live, and the learned economists and professors of government who, with no knowledge of the law, assume that they may read the dicta in the reports and pronounce judgment upon our legal system upon the basis thus afforded, obtain ready credence from a public disposed by tradition to believe that nothing can be too absurd, too mechanical, too out of accord with everyday life to be the law of the land.
Recommended Citation
Roscoe Pound,
Lay Tradition as to the Lawyer,
12
Mich. L. Rev.
627
(1914).
Available at:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol12/iss8/1