Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company

“ The Society and the defendant officers besides being named as an entity and individuals, respectively, were also sued as representatives of all members of the Society. The Society, comprising some 6,400 writers and publishers of musical compositions, was organized to take nonexclusive licenses to the works of its members, to license such works out for public performance, and to distribute among the members the revenues resulting therefrom. The three appellants are among the Society's publisher members. ”

“ This is one case where a partnership has an advantage over a corporation. A group of lawyers may form a partnership and do business under a partnership name. But a group of lawyers seldom or never form corporations to practice law. The reason for this is that the corporation is a separate entity, and the corporation as such cannot pass a bar examination and be admitted to the bar. In fact, in a few States, there are statutes prohibiting a corporation from practicing law. ”

“ Running perhaps even deeper is the desire of the profession, of courts, and of legislatures to prevent any interference with the uniquely personal relationship between lawyer and client and to maintain untrammeled by outside influences the responsibility which the lawyer owes to the courts he serves.
When an attorney is employed by an association or corporation to represent individual litigants, two problems arise, whether or not the association is organized for profit and no matter how unimpeachable its motives. ”

“ If it can do no harm, it is no nuisance at common law to have written a paper, whatever its nature may be, and if it could be no nuisance, you are bound in duty to acquit the defendant, who is only the publisher. ”

“ A grave conflict of interest can arise out of an agreement between a lawyer and an accused giving the lawyer the right to publish books, plays, articles, interviews, pictures, or related literary rights concerning the case. ”

“ There may possibly be some reason for applying a different rule to cases of winding up partnerships between lawyers and other professional men, where the profits of the firm are the result solely of professional skill and labor. ”

“ Big business looks on the courts as instruments of blackmail, and the small citizen feels that the courts are inadequate to protect his rights. It makes a deal of difference which side they are on. But in any case the present-day successful lawyer is primarily a business man.
A corporation is a legal creation; a lawyer is its mother and nurse. The stockholders having the curious relation of being partners, one not liable for its debts—if its legal affairs are properly handled. And so the company retains a lawyer at a yearly salary to give them advice and that legal protection. ”

“ On the other hand, the Call Publishing Company has certain legal rights. It embarks in an enterprise in the city of Lincoln. It has for a competitor the State Journal Company, and perhaps others. In its race for success it ought not to be unfairly handicapped. ”

“ I wish also to extend my thanks to the Authors’ Club for constituting me a member, at a reasonable price per year, and for giving me the benefit of your legal adviser.
I believe you keep a lawyer. I have always kept a lawyer, too, though I have never made anything out of him. It is service to an author to have a lawyer. There is something so disagreeable in having a personal contact with a publisher. So it is better to work through a lawyer—and lose your case. ”

“ And they insist, in the first place, that an author was entitled, at common law, to a perpetual property in the copy of his works, and in the profits of their publication; and to recover damages for its injury, by an action on the case, and to the protection of a court of equity.
In support of this proposition, the counsel for the complainants have indulged in a wide range of argument, and have shown great industry and ability. ”

“ The parties are competitors in the gathering and distribution of news and its publication for profit in newspapers throughout the United States. The Associated Press, which was complainant in the District Court, is a co-operative organization, incorporated under the Membership Corporations Law of the state of New York, its members being individuals who are either proprietors or representatives of about 950 daily newspapers published in all parts of the United States. ”

“ And though I believe that any sort of Court of Reconcilement or Conciliation must in time do away with much litigation, I do not necessarily think that a bad thing for the profession. How often to-day do lawyers try and keep their clients from litigation and promote compromise to their own cost, to satisfy their high ideals of right action. I am far from thinking it desirable that we should keep alive a system of litigation that we believe harmful to the community because it brings in fees to ourselves. ”

“ As a leading commentator has put it: “It is not necessary that an attorney-client relation have actually existed. One who consults a lawyer with a view to obtaining professional legal services from him or her is regarded as a client for purposes of the privilege.” ”

“ They are not hampered by the same considerations of delicacy and etiquette as the barrister, but may seek employment, although, of course, the one guarantee of real success is the honest and efficient handling of affairs with which they may be entrusted.
The profits of a large firm of solicitors are very great. Much of the money, however, is made in the transaction of business which is not of the profession at all, such as the promotion of enterprises, the flotation of companies, just as there is a class of American lawyers pursuing the same lines. ”

“ I do not agree, however, to what appears to be the holding in Part IV that stockholders who hire lawyers to prosecute their claims in such a case can recover attorneys' fees in the absence of a valid contractual agreement so providing or an explicit statute creating such a right of recovery. The courts are interpreters, not creators, of legal rights to recover and if there is a need for recovery of attorneys' fees to effectuate the policies of the Act here involved, that need should in my judgment be met by Congress, not by this Court. ”

“ If then the lawyer is correct in preferring the soulless corporate client, it must be that the ordinary individual is either too poor, or too human. Naturally, the corporations are not only the most satisfactory, but the most desirable clients.
The client, although he is the originator of the drama is in reality only a listener. The client in court has so little to say and the lawyers have so much, that it seems unexplainable. The reason is that the lawyers are the fighters, the champions, the knights in the tournament. A legal battle is only enacted because the lawyers are expert fighters. ”

“ There is no great difference, as I can see.”
“Yes you can, and will, too, as soon as you look into the matter. A lawyer is paid for a known and authorized assistance, and the public recognises in him one engaged in the interests of his client, and accepts his statements and efforts accordingly. But the conductor of a public journal sets up a claim to strict impartiality, in his very profession, and should tell nothing but what he believes to be true, neither inventing nor suppressing. In his facts, he is merely the publisher of a record; in his reasoning, a judge; not an advocate.” ”

“ The advantages, however, of the separation of the functions of the solicitor from those of the barrister are distinctly felt in the superior skill, as trial lawyers, developed by the restriction of court practice to the limited membership of the Bar, which would hardly exist if the practice were distributed over the whole field of both branches of the profession. ”

“ At common law an author had a property in his manuscript, and might have redress against anyone who undertook to realize a profit from its publication without authority of the author. Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Pet. ”

“ In 1991, a Washington, D.C.-area law firm was sued for making multiple copies of a newsletter for several attorneys in the firm, even though there were discounts available for multiple subscriptions. [20] The law firm reportedly paid a huge amount of money to settle the suit. [21] A year later, another newsletter publisher succeeded in getting an injunction against a for-profit corporation that was making cover-to-cover copies for employees in its branch offices. [22] And one year after that, a non-profit association was held to have infringed for doing the same thing. ”

“ The Court's decisions in Shapero and Zauderer provide helpful guidance in this area. In Shapero, the Court held that States may not categorically prohibit lawyers from soliciting business for pecuniary gain by sending personalized letters to potential clients known to face particular legal problems. ”

“ It is a common remark among lawyers that a great company in Chicago pays a third-class lawyer, who has the reputation of being a first-class lobbyist, an extravagant salary and calls him general solicitor, while it relies upon other lawyers to attend to its important legal business. The readiness of members of the bar to serve wealthy corporations is fast bringing the legal profession of America into disrepute abroad. ”

“ In the building up of our civilization we have complicated matters to such an extent that the lawyer is indispensable, almost omnipotent.
Does the layman know anything about his own rights as a citizen? Very little. Upon the simplest things only is he informed. At every turn he finds himself under the necessity of getting help from the lawyer. Great is the corporation—the [100] bank, the railroad, the trust—but the corporation dares not move a step without a lawyer in the pilot-house. ”

“ This work is an epitome of those branches of law which affect the ordinary transactions of BUSINESS MEN. It is not proposed by it to make every man a lawyer, but to give a man of business a convenient and reliable book of reference, to assist him in the solution of questions relating to his rights and duties, which are constantly arising, and to guide him in conducting his negotiations. ”

“ While there may be some clients sophisticated enough in the affirs of the world to be able to select the good from the bad among this mass of lawyers throughout the country, this unfortunately cannot always be the case. The average individual called upon, perhaps for the first time in his life, to select a lawyer to try a lawsuit may happen to choose the best lawyer or he may happen to choose one of the worst. ”

“ But neither this arbitrator nor the prime contractor gave to petitioner even an intimation of the close financial relations that had existed between them for a period of years. We have no doubt that if a litigant could show that a foreman of a jury or a judge in a court of justice had, unknown to the litigant, any such relationship, the judgment would be subject to challenge. ”

“ This language of the state court, coupled primarily with this Court's own notion that Chapter 33 in defining 'agents' has departed from common-law principles, leads the majority to conclude that the statute may have been interpreted as precluding organizations such as petitioner from simply advising prospective litigants to engage for themselves particular attorneys, whether members of the organization's legal staff or not. ”

“ Often, too, most of the parties to a dispute have been ready to accept a board's suggestions, but it has needed the firm hand of the Arbitration Court to bring one or two stubborn men to acquiescence. {329} "The process may be tedious, but it is not costly. Lawyers are not employed as counsel before either the boards or the court unless all parties to the action agree thereto, and they very seldom do agree. A firm of employers may appear by a manager or accredited representative, a trade union is usually represented by its Secretary or other official. ”

“ It is one thing to show that a party, who appears by a writing to have made a contract, made it as an agent, and quite a different thing to prove by parol that he made a purchase when the writing is silent as to that fact. The duty and power of the court is a duty and power to give a construction to what is written, and not in any case to permit it to be added to by parol. Least of all when a statute has required the essential requisites of a contract of sale to be in writing, is it admissible, in my judgment, to allow the fact, that the defendant made a purchase, to be proved by parol. ”

“ It is a fact that the testimony does not disclose, as to any of them, that the business was conducted in his name, as the literal interpretation of the law would seem to require, but it was carried on in a company name, which did not include that of any of the partners. The fact of buying and selling at a fixed place of business in a real partnership was established without contradiction.
It is true that after the lapse of so many years the appellants, when taken before the commissioner, were unable to produce the books or articles of copartnership of the firm. ”

“ There will be one lawyer to protect the interests of the corporation in dealings with outside parties.” This is a great step in advance. When a true civilization arrives, arbitration will supersede courts, and psychometry will assist in making it perfect. ”

“ It must be taken as settled, that when the United States becomes a party to what is called commercial paper by which is meant that class of paper which is transferable by indorsement or delivery, and between private parties, is exempt in the hands of innocent holders from inquiry into the circumstances under which it was put in circulation-they are bound in any court, to whose jurisdiction they submit, by the same principles that govern individuals in their relations to such paper. ”

“ It is the duty and delight of lawyers to find out everything—and such is the depravity of the legal heart, it is especially their duty and delight to ferret out what the opposite party desires to conceal. It is not what a man wishes and means to say, but everything which he can be made to say, that a lawyer wants. His hand can put aside the proffered “books,” and grab the books which are withheld.265 He does not permit the opposite parties to select and exclude witnesses, but goes out into the highways and hedges and compels to come in whom he wants. ”