While the law is not a money-making profession, either in theory or practise, the young lawyer should begin by charging every cent his services are worth.  It is not only degrading, but reveals a base attitude of mind and character, to charge a little fee in the beginning as a bait for a bigger one in future cases.  Maintain the dignity of your effort.

I am assuming that Nature began the work of making you a lawyer before you were born; that you have been preparing yourself, with the enthusiasm of the artist and the passion of professional devotion, for the work of your great calling, by years and years of discipline and study such as no other calling requires; that, with your natural qualification and your general equipment, you are bringing to your client’s particular case an industry that knows no limit in his immediate service.

This being true, tell him frankly that you propose to give him the best that is in you (and that best is your very life—­no less—­for you write “victory” at the end of every one of your cases with your heart’s blood; or “defeat,” if you do not win), and that for this best which is in you you will charge the highest professional fee justified by your services and the magnitude and difficulty of his case.

At the same time, never turn a poor client away from your office door because that client comes with no gold in his hand.  When a lawyer is too busy to give counsel without fee and without charge to a poor man or woman, that lawyer has too much business.  I know—­we all know—­of very eminent lawyers constantly engaged in causes involving large interests, who nevertheless find leisure, many times each year, to serve by advice and counsel, and sometimes even by the active conduct of cases, numbers of the children of poverty, and to serve them without a penny of compensation.

Be very careful of the class of business you accept at first.  I knew a young lawyer who had just opened his office, and within a month, by one of those accidents that occur to every attorney, he was offered a case on a contingent fee in which the probability of considerable reward amounted almost to a certainty.

He needed the money—­was nearly penniless.  He was newly married, had no clients and few acquaintances; but it was not the quality of practise to which he wished to devote his career.  He courteously declined the case as though he had been a millionaire, and directed his would-be client to an attorney who would care for it properly.

Out of that case the latter attorney, by a compromise, in two weeks made fifteen hundred dollars.  Nevertheless, the young man was right, and acted with a far-seeing wisdom as rare as the courage which accompanied it.  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.