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But for law schools or Bar associations or anyone else to acknowledge and preach the values of professionalism, lawyers must first agree on the nature and substance of the sermon. This is particularly difficult, as we have seen, in the context of a profession whose heritage has apparently changed significantly over the last half century, and is still evolving. We tackle in the next section of this Essay the task of identifying what we believe are the essential substantive values of legal professionalism; here, however, we seek to identify a few less controversial "procedural" aspects of professionalism with which we believe all lawyers, despite much disagreement on substance, would nevertheless agree.
By "procedural" we mean the scope and purposes within the legal profession of the values of professionalism whatever the substance of those values turns out to be. We believe there are three such propositions that lie behind all discussions of professionalism: the universality of its values, its relevance to the practice of law, and certain general functions it performs within the Bar.
We would argue that all lawyers believe that, if "professionalism" exists, then it applies to all lawyers and all areas of the practice of law, not to some smaller group within the Bar. . . .
As a second point of "procedural" agreement, we believe all lawyers accept the idea that some set of special demands is made on them -- which we now characterize as "ethics" and "professionalism" -- even if their substance remains controversial. . . .
Despite an inevitable focus on actions rather than attitudes, the demands of professionalism, whatever they may be in detail, serve two functions that can have an impact on attitudes. First, if it were well-defined, professionalism would help the Bar attract people to the profession who already have the values we hope will continue within it. This could in turn have both positive and negative effects: on the one hand, it would allow experienced lawyers to save the time involved in preaching those values to new entrants; on the other, that "saved" time would be a loss to the profession's sense of its heritage, and therefore to professionalism. Second, again if it were well-defined, professionalism would announce to all new entrants into the profession that the Bar's contemporary moral diversity and competitiveness, while consistent with the minimal standards of the Model Code and Model Rules, nevertheless have their limits. In other words, some aspirational, professional values would be expected to be held by each lawyer regardless of his or her personal proclivities or desires.
The central issue in the professionalism debate, then, becomes: What are those values or aspirations that we must all share?
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