Lawyers are a group apart, and in some regards even the law treats us that way. For reasons buried deep in jurisprudential history, our courts and legislatures impose upon us certain obligations and standards they would never impose upon other professionals. For example, our mandatory IOLTA, which exacts annual payments from honest attorneys as restitution for money stolen by less honest (and typically uninsured) colleagues, has no equivalent in any field. And no other professional is held to a standard such as ours which proscribes not only actual wrongdoing, but also the mere appearance of same.
Closer to our point is the time-honored practice of compelling lawyers to do free legal work for poor people. You may wonder: How did this come about? Doesn’t it seem strange? Un-American? If it seems normal, it shouldn’t. After all, your dentist doesn’t have to fill indigent people’s teeth. Your barber doesn’t have to cut the homeless person’s hair. No restaurant can be made to serve food to the penniless, and, despite great charity by some physicians, no doctor in private practice can be made to render service to a patient who admits up front the inability to pay, except, perhaps when the indigent is in mortal peril. Lawyers are indeed different, and we should be proud of that difference.
