VI

THE WORRIED CLIENT


Like the financial backer of a play, the client does not figure
largely on the stage. If he does appear as an actor he may have a
small speaking part, but he is not a star. He owns the show, and if it
does not pay he loses, or if he wins he gets a proportion of the
profits. Consequently he hires the best talent he can afford. The star
performer is the lawyer, but as the producer the client has not only
the choice in picking the theme, but the play is about him and his
troubles. Great drama consists in a conflict of emotions. The emotions
of the two opposing clients make a court drama. The acting and the
staging is the art of the lawyer.

The philology and derivation of the word client is significant. It
does not mean the principal, but a follower. It is derived from the
Latin word _cluere_ and the Greek _+klyein+_, meaning to hear; one who
listens, a follower.

An ordinary man has a horror of the entanglement of the law. A
hard-headed man of business says he would rather pay a claim of $250
or less, although he had never seen the claimant, and the suit was
utterly unfounded, than go to court. He would rather lose the same
amount than bring a suit involving the trouble and expense of hiring a
lawyer, requiring witnesses to waste their time, and wasting his own
in waiting for a trial, which might possibly result in a judgment
against him on a perfectly just debt, either through the miscarriage