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Lessons for young lawyers from ‘Go Set A Watchman’
After reading “Go Set A Watchman,” Harper Lee’s long-awaited sequel to “To Kill A Mockingbird,” the idealism of Atticus Finch as the perfect lawyer is destroyed. A more apropos name for him might be “Atticus Flinch.”
Despite all of the controversy swirling around the book’s publication, “Go Set a Watchman” still offers some timeless lessons about the practice of law. Here are seven passages particularly relevant to young lawyers.
1. Jean Louise [Scout] grinned. Her father said it took at least five years to learn law after one left law school: one practiced economy for two years, learned Alabama Pleading for two more, reread the Bible and Shakespeare for the fifth. Then one was fully equipped to hold on under any conditions.
2. After nine hours of listening to the vagaries of Old Sarum’s inhabitants, Judge Taylor threw the case out of court on grounds of frivolous pleading and declared he hoped to God the litigants were satisfied by each having had his public say. They were. That was all they had wanted in the first place.
3. Patiently and unobtrusively Atticus had taught him everything Henry knew about his craft, but Henry sometimes wondered if he would be as old as Atticus before he reduced law to his possession. Tom, Tom, the chimney sweep’s son. Was that the old bailment case? No, the first of the treasure trove cases: possession holds good against all comers except the true owner. The boy found a brooch. He looked down at Jean Louise. She was dozing.
4. Atticus took his career in his hands, made good use of a careless indictment, took his stand before a jury, and accomplished what was never before or afterwards done in Maycomb County: he won an acquittal for a colored boy on a rape charge. The chief witness for the prosecution was a white girl.
5. Do you like to go to court? Sure. Wildest divorce case last spring you e’er saw. Some yaps from Old Sarum. It’s a good thing Judge Taylor’s dead–you know how he hated that sort of thing, always askin’ the ladies to leave the courtroom. This new one doesn’t care. Well–
6. Well, he said owin’ to the extreme delicacy of my problem, and since there was no evidence of criminal intent, he wouldn’t be above throwin’ a little dust in a juryman’s eyes — whatever that means — and then, oh I don’t know.
“Oh Hank, you do know.”
Well, he said something about safety in numbers and if he were me he wouldn’t dream of connivin’ at perjury but so far as he knew all falsies looked alike, and that was about all he could do for me. He said he’d bill me at the end of the month. I wasn’t out of the office good before I got the idea!
7. Well, sweetie, I would really like to live here, and I like the things other men like. I want to keep the respect of this town, I want to serve it, I want to make a name for myself as a lawyer, I want to make money, I want to marry and have a family —
“In that order, I suppose!”
