Of course, I assume that you are going into the
profession for the purpose of becoming a lawyer, and not a mere
conductor of legal strifes. If you are, you must deny yourself.
Self-denial is the price of strength, as any college athlete will
tell you. Self-denial is the road to wealth, as any banker will tell
you. Self-denial is the method of all excellencies, as all human
experience will tell you. But this is moralizing.
I do not mean that you should decline small cases. By no means. Take a
five-dollar case, and work with the same sincerity that you would on a
fifty-thousand-dollar case. "Despise not the day of small things." In
selecting your business, I refer to the quality, and not the
magnitude, of cases. Again, again, and still again, this counsel: Care
for your small case with the same painstaking labor you bestow upon a
large one.
Never lose sight of the fact that your greatest reward is not your
fee, but the doing of a perfect piece of work. The same fervor and
ideality should govern your labors in a lawsuit that inspire and
control the great artist and inventor. A distinguished sculptor said
to me one evening:
"I wish the matter of compensation could be wiped out of my
consideration.
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