I think Dinsdale has a point here. I’m not sure I want someone deciding what’s best for me with these pre-emptive decisions.
Q said correctly that one of the purposes of the bar is to ensure that the population at large is protected. Protected from what? Bad legal counsel.
Do we want the bar to protect us from unpopular opinion, though? And if he has such an unpopular opinion, does that make him, inherently, a bad attorney?
I think Q hit upon a key issue. The bar is there to ensure that people who become attorneys (and represent ‘the law’ to some extent) are qualified. I’d say that the bar ensures that attorneys will uphold the law but let’s face it, some attorney and client had to finally disagree with “seperate but equal” before that law was overturned and I damn well think that attorney was qualified.
So, assuming that as an attorney working for a private firm, Matt Hale could choose his clients,…how is he unqualified? (When Matt graduated, he had a job with a firm that had NO idea that he was a racist or did the things he did. They were praying that he didn’t pass the bar exam so they could fire him. As it turns out, they were okay, anyway.) Let’s assume he never took jobs from Black clients because he told them honestly that he was a racist and saw it as a possible conflict of interest. What exactly is it, then, that would make him unqualified to practice law?
I guess another sticking point is that there are some really, really asshole attorneys out there. Maybe one has fathered 28 kids with 25 different women and never tells anyone he sleeps with that he has Aids - well, what a prick, only - the bar doesn’t ask questions like that. So we all agree Matt’s a prick - but what sets him apart from other pricks? That we know about it? (That might not a bad reason, quite frankly) Or that he has a club of people like himself?
Good points - I like the discussion!
Dinsdale - can you think of other cases where people might flinch at pre-emptive decisions like this?
Tibs.