June 2025 eBulletin Now Available

Dear Fellows:

Throughout our history, lawyers have shepherded us through the major and tumultuous issues of our times. Despite that, lawyers are often the butt of jokes, and examples of unethical lawyers abound in the popular media. But rather than discuss the failings of some of our colleagues, I’d like to offer the portrait of a lawyer who for generations has been held in the highest esteem for his integrity and his honesty. Long before he served as President or became known as The Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln was an attorney with a particular affinity for the practice of criminal law.

Abraham Lincoln grew up in the rugged frontier country of Western Kentucky and later moved with his family to Illinois where he studied law by lamp and firelight. He practiced law for twenty-three years before becoming President. It is commonly accepted that it was during this time as President, during the most perilous crisis that our country has yet faced, that the greatness of Abraham Lincoln manifested itself. He was the steady hand at the helm as the forces of secession sought to tear the country apart.

Lincoln’s time as a circuit-riding, backwoods lawyer truly prepared him for his role in history.  He was blessed with a keen intellect and a temperament inclined towards kindness, and it was these traits, coupled with his training as a lawyer, that brought to him the ability to analyze a complicated series of facts and issues and to then put them in the most simple and direct, yet the most eloquent terms, as anyone has ever done. It was his training as a lawyer that taught him the elusive skill of assessing character and to recognize that justice must be tempered with wisdom and mercy. It was his twenty-three years of closing arguments with people’s lives and liberty hanging in the balance that honed his ability to take a principle of law or morality and present it in such a way that his listeners would not only hear his words but claim his vision and his insight as their own. That was the great strength of this homely, melancholy man of the prairie. That he was a lawyer is a fact which seems to not have been duly noted in taking the full measure of this great man.

His formal education over the course of his life was less than one year, but even so, he was always an avid reader. And it was quite by accident that he began to read the law. As a young man, operating a general store, Lincoln came upon the law when he purchased a barrel of odds and ends from a passing family and in the bottom of that barrel, he found a copy of “Blackstone’s Commentaries.”

Lincoln said later:

I began to read those famous works, … The more I read the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed.

I read until I devoured them.

Lincoln became a lawyer in 1837, at a time when the only real requirement to practice law was a certification by the county court that one was of good moral character. He tried and lost one of his first murder cases within two years of being admitted to the bar. In the first several years of his practice, he handled virtually every type of case in both state and federal court. And he learned the art of speaking to juries.

This great man of history and fellow lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, offered the following advice on ethics and professionalism in a lecture to law students and young lawyers:

“I am not an accomplished lawyer. I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful. The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.”

“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser – in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good person. There will still be business enough.”

“Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it.”

I can only echo the wisdom of what Mr. Lincoln has said. We all know the value of being diligent in all that we do, realizing that every task you undertake, no matter how seemingly menial, is a representation of you and reflects on your professionalism and commitment to a client. Likewise, we also know the value of, whenever we can, being peacemakers – helping our clients to see that sometimes peace can be achieved without litigation and conflict. The principles that guided Lincoln as he guided our nation are the same principles he learned as a lawyer, and particularly as a trial lawyer.

Richard H. Deane, Jr.
President

To read more from the June eBulletin, click here.