and asked him what had happened.
"Oh, not much," said the lawyer, "last week I simply lost a case for a
client."

The complaint of the lawyer against the judge is always that he has
forgotten that he was a lawyer once himself. He does not realize how
important it is that the lawyer should make a good impression on his
client. His feeling is, if the judge cuts him off when he is arguing,
the client will think that he is talking foolishly. The judge
overrules his objection. The client thinks the judge does not like
him. The judge denies his motion to strike out, he evidently does not
look on the lawyer favorably. The lawyer's chance of display is in
talking. If he is not allowed to go on he feels the judge is
unreasonable in not listening to him.

The nice lines to be made by the judge between consideration for the
feeling of the lawyers and insisting that justice be fully and
speedily accomplished, are hard to draw. On the one hand there are
the courts where no limit is put to the digressions of attorneys and
where they may wander on and on, apparently merely to display their
oratory to their clients, and other courts where the undoubtedly bad
manners of the bench to the bar are unforgivable.

Control of the trial is necessary because it is a struggle in a court
on a defined area. It is an intellectual ordeal by battle, a capping
of intellects. It is like a game of chess in which luck is eliminated,
the board is free, the pieces are equal, the way in which they may
move is fixed by the rules of the game of court procedure. The element
of chance is made not by the court or the procedure, but by the fact
that the pawns, the castles, and the knights are not of ivory, but are
human and mutable.

The lawyers are discontented with the courts, while the judges feel
that the deficiencies are the fault of the lawyers. The lawyers, they
say, do not cooeperate with the judges in the administration of
justice, and are too busy with their own game. Here enters that
academic question of whether a lawyer's duty is first to the court and
justice, or first to his client,--should he defend a man he knows to
be guilty. The dispute is sophomoric. He is the advocate of his client
first, foremost, and all the time. That is the reason for his
existence. He is the agent for his client; his tongue, brain, and
energy belong to his client. He is undoubtedly justified in whatever
he does, if he keeps to the rules. Justice is best promoted by h