aging less than $10 each. These notes. had been given the insurance companies by policy holders in payment of premiums for policies which were never worth the paper on which they were printed. The makers of the notes were farmers of small means living in remote sections of the state. The receivers had been unable to realize anything on the collection of these notes. Some were barred by limitations, the consideration for them had failed, and the expense and cost of suing the makers at their domiciles greatly exceeded any sum that could possibly have been realized. In winding up the receiverships, it became necessary to dispose of these notes in some way, so they were offered at public sale by the receivers, and were bought for a song by an individual who held himself out as a lawyer.

Under the law prevailing, a man must be sued at his domicile, unless actually served with process elsewhere. The makers of these notes resided in all the nooks and corners of the state, and were rarely found wandering far enough away from their homes or close enough to the domicile of the purchaser of the notes to enable him to get service of process on them. Letters, duns, and threats accomplished something in the way of collections; but these thousands of notes, aggregating $15,000, although purchased for less than $100, looked to the ordinary man like a bad trade after all; but not so to the undaunted, energetic person whom we will call lawyer. He was familiar with a statute which permitted summons to be served anywhere in the state on a defendant, where a joint defendant was served in the jurisdiction of the court. The shyster then proceeded to create a joint defendant in this way:

Each of the notes were transferred to a dummy living in the bailiwick of the

shyster. The dummy in turn indorsed the notes to a corporation, which was the creation and creature of the lawyer, guaranteeing their payment. The lawyer thereupon brought hundreds of suits in a local justice court of his own domicile in the name of his corporation against his dummy indorser and the makers of the notes, alleging a joint liability to his corporation, and had summons sent to the constables of the various townships of the counties of the state by whom they were served on the makers of the notes. These farmers thus found themselves sued in a justice court remote from their residence for a trifling sum. Service on them was sought to be justified on the theory that it had been obtained on their codefendant, the dummy indorser, in the jurisdiction of the remote court. Many of the makers of the notes paid, rather than go to the expense of a defense so far from their homes. The suits looked regular. The dummy confessed judgment, and judgments by default were rendered against the makers of the notes, the real defendants. Some of these sturdy farmers, however, refused to be victimized, and exposed on appeal the scheme by which the lawyer had created a sham codefendant. It developed that the lawyer had a contract with the dummy, the sham codefendant, by which he agreed to share the spoils with the lawyer for the plaintiff. In that way the dummy, while nominally a joint defendant, was in reality a joint plaintiff.

The circuit court to which some of these cases were appealed, and before which the fraud was exposed, on motion of the local bar association, disbarred the lawyer, on the ground that he had been guilty of willfully and fraudulently perverting the processes of the courts. The lawyer appealed, but we will as

sume to call him a shyster until his disbarment is set aside by a higher court, without fear of libel.

The shyster is indeed with us in large numbers. In this day of corporations and large moneyed interests, he is perhaps more numerous and prosperous than in any previous period of the history of our profession. He certainly tends more largely than all other things to disgrace and deprave the profession of law. He is far more harmful to the profession itself than to the community in which he practices. He should be eliminated from the profession and banished from the bar. That cannot be accomplished until public opinion condemns him; and the public will never condemn him until the bar itself does so. The lawyers can never mould public opinion against the shyster until they first get together themselves on the subject. It is a distressing fact that there are many lawyers of fairly good standing who are unfamiliar with professional ethics, and quite a number who care little about observing those ethics after making their acquaintance. The lawyers must first organize, and then as a body make open war on the shyster as a public enemy.

The fight is a hard one at best with the lawyers organized and united, because every attack on the ambulance chaser in legislative halls, the courts, and before the people is met by the shyster with the very plausible defense that the attack is made in the interest of railroads and corporations, to prevent the common people from obtaining their just deserts.

Lawyers owe two duties to the profession and the public: First, to decrease the number of shysters by driving them from the ranks of the profession; and, second, to prevent their birth and increase.

Great difficulty is met in disbarring lawyers. What is everybody's business is nobody's. Lawyers shirk from the disagreeable duty of initiating a disbarment proceeding. Prosecuting officers are not prone to clean up the profession, when more pecuniary profit can be made in other lines. Under the statutes of many states juries are permitted the offending lawyer. Juries ordinarily are unfamiliar with legal ethics, care little about them, and consequently do not convict as frequently and as promptly as they should. The remedy lies in unity of action among the lawyers, through bar associations, which should make it their business, as organizations, first to lay down and teach sound professional ethics, and to enforce those teachings by vigorous enforcements of disbarment statutes.

If the statutes of the state are inad equate, then the lawyer should see to it that they are improved. Failing in that, courts have inherent power to strike offending attorneys from the rolls of practicing attorneys, regardless of the statutes on the subject.

Any member of the bar, or a bar association, can initiate such proceedings, and much can be accomplished without calling upon the usually inadequate statutes on the subject.

No community should be without a local bar association, which, acting in accord with its state association, can do more to exterminate the shyster pest than any other human agency.

The American Bar Association in 1908 adopted a Code of Professional Ethics. The preamble to that code contains the following ringing sentence:

"The future of our republic, to a great extent, depends upon our maintenance of justice pure and unsullied. It cannot be so maintained unless the conduct and motives of the members of

approval of all just men."

These canons were prepared by a committee of fourteen distinguished lawyers, and condemn, among other things, as unprofessional, the representing of conflicting interests, attempts to exert personal interests on the court, acquiring an interest in litigation, solicitation of business by circulars and advertisements, or touters, stirring up litigation directly or indirectly through agents.

The Arkansas Bar Association has adopted the same canons, and prints them in each annual report of its proceedings.

Every lawyer who violates the ethics of his profession is a shyster. Every lawyer who honors his profession will give his aid in upholding the integrity of the bar, and in joining a crusade against the shyster lawyer.

In Ex parte Ditchburn, 32 Or. 538, 52 Pac. 694, the court said:

"Unprofessional conduct on the part of an attorney involves a breach of the duty which professional ethics enjoin. It has been held that it may consist in betraying confidence, taking advantage of, or acting in bad faith towards his client; in attempting by any means to practice a fraud, impose upon or deceive the court, the adverse party, or his counsel; in introducing testimony which he knows to be false or forged; tampering with or suborning witnesses; fraudulently inducing them to absent themselves from and avoid attendance upon courts, when it is suspected or known that their testimony will or may be prejudicial to him or his client; in applying abusive or insulting language to, or assaulting or threatening to chastise, the judge concerning his judicial action; and in fact any conduct which tends to

sion, or to alienate the favorable opinion which the public should entertain concerning it.

"It is the right and duty of members of the bar to file the necessary information against any attorney who is guilty of any improper conduct in his profession. Attorneys are officers of the court. By virtue of their office great confidence must necessarily be reposed in them, and, if they are unworthy of that confidence, a serious impediment is interposed to the administration of justice. Secrets involving all that makes life worth having are necessarily confided to them by their clients, in implicit reliance upon their professional honor. In the same confidence they have the freest access to all the records of the court, of which they are members. They can, in any action, by their word, irrevocably bind the client that they represent. The bar, more than any other profession, is wholly dependent upon the reputation of its members for honor and integrity; and, after the bench, the members of the bar have the greatest interest in maintaining the honor of the profession, and in purging it of unworthy members."

We call attention to the able opinion of Huston, C. J., in In re Badger 4 Idaho, 66, 35 Pac. 839, which was a proceeding by a bar association to disbar an attorney, where he states that there is no duty imposed upon a court more important than that of preserving, to the best of its power and ability, the professional integrity and purity of its bar. He concludes his magnificent appeal for the honor of the bar by saying:

"The rule given by Burns to his young friend Aiken may well be adopted by every member of the profession as a check upon his zeal either for the ac

quisition of pecuniary results or the attainment of professional success:

"But where you feel your honor grip,
Let that aye be your border;
Its slightest touches, instant pause
Debar all side pretenses,
And resolutely keep its laws,
Uncaring consequences.'"

T

Note

HIS article was published in the

March, 1912, number of the Yale Law Journal, and is reprinted in the Review by permission of the author. Since its publication in the Yale Law Journal the Supreme Court of Arkansas upheld the disbarment in the case of Wernimont v. State ex rel. Little Rock Bar Association, 42 S. W 194. The Supreme The Supreme Court held that the lower court correctly found that Wernimont was guilty of such malpractice, by his perversion and abuse of the practices of law in that court, as to justify the order of disbarment. We refer the bar and students of law to the able opinion of Judge Frauenthal, which so strongly upholds the dignity and purity of the courts and the legal profession. The court, among The court, among other things, said:

"Proceedings for the suspension or disbarment of attorneys for professional misconduct are not criminal, but civil, in their nature. They are not instituted or intended for the purpose of punishment. Their object is to preserve the purity of the courts and the proper and honest administration of the law. Attorneys are officers of the court, made so by its order when they are admitted to practice therein. The purpose of the proceedings for suspension and disbarment is to protect the court and the public from attorneys who, disregarding their oath of office, pervert and abuse those privileges which they have ob

tained by the high office they have secured from the court.

"The right to practice law is not an absolute right, but a privilege only. It is but a license which the court grants by its judgment of admission to the bar, and which the same court may revoke whenever misconduct renders the attorney holding such license unfit to be intrusted with the powers and duties of

his office. The revocation of such lihis office. cense is therefore only a civil proceeding, governed by the rules applicable to all civil actions.

"It is well settled that the power of removal from the bar is possessed by all courts which have authority to admit

attorneys to practice.

attorneys to practice. Any attorney may forfeit the license which he has obtained by abusing it, and the power to exact such forfeiture rests with the court which grants it. It is settled that the power to strike from the rolls the name of such an attorney is inherent in the court itself, and is indispensable to protect the courts in their dignity and the public in the proper administration of the law, as well as in maintaining the honor and purity of the profession.

be removed for malpractice and for dishonesty in his profession. This malpractice and dishonesty may consist of the perversion and abuse of the processes of the court to obtain an unwarranted and unjust action. If, by any act of commission or omission, he deceives the court, so that he obstructs or pollutes the administration of justice, or by the suppression of truth obtains a result which the law would not warrant, he is guilty of malpractice, and renders himself unworthy of the privileges which his license and the law confers upon him.

"If an attorney is guilty of unprofessional conduct, he is subject to suspension or disbarment by the court accord

ing to the degree of the moral turpitude evinced by such unprofessional conduct. It has been held that this professional misconduct may consist 'in betraying the confidence of a client, in attempting by any means to practice a fraud, impose upon or deceive the court, the adverse party, or his counsel, tampering with or suborning witnesses, fraudulently inducing them to absent themselves and avoid attendance upon court when it is suspected or known that their testimony will or may be prejudicial to him or his client, and, in fact, any conduct which tends to bring reproach upon the legal profession or to alienate the favorable opinion which the public should entertain concerning it.'"

AXIMS and proverbs are often

Munsafe guides, for they are apt to

unsafe guides, for they are apt to be expressions of half-truths; but they are not, on that account to be ignored, else we should lose the benefit of whatever wisdom they contain. The phrase, "Vox populi, vox Dei," however handy for the demagogue, does not express an infallible principle of government, even in a pure democracy, for majorities are often mistaken; but we should be foolish indeed, no matter what our form of government, if we failed to heed public opinion.

Deplore it as we may, explain it as we will, we must admit that there is widespread popular dissatisfaction with law and lawyers. The profession has lost its old-time supremacy, its quibbles and

delays are proverbial, its processes are tedious, expensive, and uncertain, and at the bar of public opinion the lawyer stands condemned. However, he may well demand a hearing before sentence of extinction is passed upon him, and may insist that the fickle public, all too prone to look for a scapegoat, has unloaded upon him an odium which he does not deserve.

The whirligig of time brings many changes, and prominence to-day is no guaranty of prominence to-morrow; success no assurance of success to-morrow. Within the narrow limits of earlier times, when education was less widespread and the educated man therefore the more noteworthy, when the three R's constituted the curriculum, and the