Rank Strangers to Me: Shaffer and Cochran's Friendship Model of Moral Counseling in the Law Office

Abstract

This is my argument against a model for law office moral counseling based on friendship and moral commonalities. Reading Shaffer and Cochran's Lawyers, Clients, and Moral Responsibility, led me to the conclusion that we would be far better off thinking of our clients as, in the words of the gospel song, "rank strangers." And we would be better off relating to these strangers not as if we were in a traditional friendship with them, but as the rhetoricians that I believe our lawyering tradition teaches us to be. Whether I have our tradition's lesson right or not, and I only invite the reader to consider this possibility here, I think any heuristic model for moral counseling in the law office has to start with an interpretation of the story of which we lawyers are a part. For this is where we are likely to find our most justified moral resources for counseling. Shaffer and Cochran, because they accepted a hostile academic critique of the practice, one that separates role morality from personal morality in defense of a false integrity, failed to do this and, in so failing, were not able to provide an adequate heuristic model for moral counseling in the law office.