Copyright (c) The Harvard Law Review Association 1994

... Anthony Kronman begins his deeply pessimistic meditation on the state of the American legal profession with a confession. ... On that occasion, Kronman argued that the legal profession's moral problems stemmed from its commitment to advocacy as a professional ideal. ... This vision of the lawyer's role, which Kronman calls "the ideal of the lawyer-statesman" (p. 3), links professional excellence to the character virtues of prudence and practical wisdom. ... His implicit assertion that these considerations should dominate all others, however, ultimately produces a distorted vision of professional ethics inconsistent with a proper understanding of the lawyer's role in society. ... Nevertheless, by labeling the lawyer who faithfully implements his client's objectives as nothing more than a "deferential servant" (p. 15), Kronman moves too quickly from the realm of personal decisionmaking, in which an individual is always free to practice his deliberative powers by reexamining his own ends, to the sphere of professional assistance, in which the lawyer's moral development must be secondary to serving the client's interests. ... Even if political fraternity is a necessary condition of a normally functioning legal system, it does not necessarily follow that society is best served if every lawyer aims directly at achieving this goal. ...