In a letter laden with sage advice, virtue and probity, a lawyer wrote to his soon-to-be-admitted-son that, “…before you take any precipitous legal step, you ask yourself whether you are doing harm, then you will care well for your clients. At the same time, you will elevate your profession and ennoble yourself.” Peter Baird, “My Son the Lawyer,” 36 Litigation 64 (2009-2010).1
The New York Rules for Professional Conduct enunciate that precautionary principle for attorneys with respect to clients as follows: A “lawyer shall not intentionally…prejudice or damage the client during the course of the representation.”2 That is our version of the principle professed for the practice of medicine, attributed to Hippocrates in Of the Epidemics, Bk. I, §XI (400 B.C.): “As to diseases, make a habit of two thingsto help, or at least to do no harm[.]“
Two CasesHarm Done
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