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Thinking Like A Lawyer Or Acting Like A Judge: A Response To Professor Simon, David Yellen

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Professor William Simon argues that the principal professional responsibility of all lawyers should be to "seek justice."' He defines this as pursuing the client's rights, but not the client's interests, if those interests are incompatible with the "truth." As a concrete example of this approach, Professor Simon states that it would normally be inappropriate for a lawyer to subject a vulnerable, but accurate, witness to cross examination intended to create the impression that the witness' testimony was mistaken.

In my view, Professor Simon's position would not really further "justice" at all. In these brief comments, by focusing on the likely …