I’m not asking about the ethics of lying, or whether lawyers may be justified in lying. That is beside the point. I am just asking: hypothetically, would it be possible for a lawyer to have a successful career while never uttering so much as a white lie?
Like, let’s say the lawyer had some sort of spell cast on them, so they could never lie. If someone were to ask them a question, they’d either need to find a way to avoid answering or answer honestly. Would it be possible for a lawyer in such circumstances to still go on and have a successful career?
Lawyers don’t lie. They massage the truth.
Define lie.
Knowingly saying something false. I wouldn’t consider omitting information to be lying. Maybe in some contexts it is but for a lawyer that seems too stringent
Deceit through misinformation or hiding information.
I would argue that hiding information is not always lying.
There are lies of omission, but it depends on if you are asked about the things you are omitting or not.
And even if you are, it is possible to steer the conversation away from the thing without actually telling a lie.
Politicians do it all of the time.
Thats why the requirement for omission to be a lie is that there is an intent to deceive.
How do you define hiding information?
If you constantly hide the fact you hate your boss from him, does that count because that’d be a problem in most jobs.
Only if hiding it is an attempt to deceive. So simply not telling your boss you hate them would not be a lie by itself. Being truthful does not require you to go out of your way to offer information.
The real summary here for an answer to OP is “no, its not really possible to be a successful lawyer without lying” because even small lies are kind of important to social etiquette as others have noted. People often say lies of omission dont count as lies, so I wanted to address that angle. A lie of omission requires deception. For example if you hate the flavor of bananas, but dont go around telling everyone you hate the taste of bananas, that is not a lie.
No because even avoiding answering can be a lie. A lie of omission.
The key being that you are hiding some detail or information in an attempt to deceive, that is what makes it a lie.
In that case, no one can ever tell the truth. Because you can never know what thing you’ve accidentally left out might be considered relevant to the person you’re talking to.
Not true. The key is the intent and attempt to deceive. Forgetting to include info or being *unaware of it means you did not intend to deceive.
I would respond that it’s almost impossible to thrive in any sort of human society that has ever existed in history without telling even the faintest hint of a white lie sometimes. I don’t think it’s realistically possible to be a successful human, nevermind a lawyer. Everyone thinks they’re being completely honest all the time, until you spend some years having a bunch of philosophers pick apart the entire basis of the reality you think you’re not lying to yourself or anyone else about, then once you’re done figuring out what reality actually is, you might have a totally different idea of what lying even means. But you’ll never get there, because you’ll never actually figure out what reality even is, nobody comes out the other side of existential philosophy. This isn’t new stuff, the ancient Greeks were struggling with it thousands of years ago, and we only know that because they were among the first who bothered to write it all down.
Someone just watched Liar Liar.
Nope
I’m not convinced it’s practical to even BECOME a lawyer without lying.
Law school’s like that eh?
A good lawyer always tells the truth professionally. At least in common law countries like mine. I’m going to generally speak USian, but our northerly neighbors are likely similar as are the brits, kiwis, and aussies. I’m not certain a prosecutor in my country could do well without lying at all, but that’s an entirely different problem of cultural collapse.
A defense lawyer defends both innocent and guilty as their zealous advocate. Their job is to poke doubt in the prosecution’s narrative and possibly provide a counter narrative, but generally challenge everything the prosecution can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt. They may also just be pleading for lesser sentencing. That’s part of how plea deals became so common here. They also don’t say the client is innocent, they state that the client is pleading guilty or not guilty. People can be not guilty and have done it as well, so long as they either have a lawful reason to do the action, or are incapable of legal guilt such as by insanity. They also have a lot of things they aren’t allowed to speak on and are supposed to just say that instead of lying. Copaganda has attempted to convince the masses that these people are lying scumbags who get bad guys on the streets instead of defenders of liberty who force the government to actually prove people did what they claim they did.
A prosecutor’s job is to take the evidence and build and reinforce a narrative that can withhold the defense’s scrutiny. It should be wholly truthful to the best of their knowledge. The goal is to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty and then advocate for a sentence they feel is fair.
Then you’ve got all sorts of other lawyers. Cause lawyers like human rights and environmental lawyers largely argue over interpretations of laws and whether actions violate them. These people ought to believe what they say. Business and corporate lawyers don’t even have room to lie, they’re just building contracts and such.
