A good attorney typically spends his or her day largely fixated on two overarching objectives: effectively representing the interests of his or her clients and developing a successful legal practice with a solid client base. We devote countless hours of our time in furtherance of these aims — we are constantly strategizing, scrutinizing, pouring over statutes, cases and contracts, marketing our services, attending bar meetings and tending to our clients. In truth, there likely is no other way if one wants to be a successful attorney — there is no substitute for diligence and hard work in our profession.
However, we cannot allow our tireless pursuit of professional excellence to completely consume us to the exclusion of the important moral obligations that we assume when we are sworn into the Florida Bar. In our estimation, two of those moral obligations are to ensure that the least fortunate, the oppressed, in our community have adequate access to our legal system and to support the next generation of South Florida attorneys, the law students who in the future will inherit the mantle of upholding the morals, values and ethics of our legal system.
