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adopted without change. The only one changed was the canon about contingent fees. That canon, as proposed by the Committee, read:— 13. Contingent Fees. Contingent fees may be contracted for, but they lead to many abuses and should be under the supervision of the court. So worded, it was deemed too broad, and as the sole purpose of the com mittee was to get assent to the proposition that no lawyer has the moral right to charge his client an unjust contingent fee, it was amended to read:— 13. Contingent fees, where sanctioned by law, should be under the supervision of the court, in order that clients may be protected from unjust charges. As thus amended it was adopted. Just a word in regard to that provi sion as amended. Perhaps I may best get the matter before you by quoting what Judge Simeon E. Baldwin of Con necticut has to say about it. "The canon regarding contingent fees," says Judge Baldwin, "was the only one amended in substance by the Associa tion in dealing with the report of the Committee, and indeed it is not clear that this amendment changed anything but the form, so as to make plainer what was the intention of those who drafted it. In its present shape it seems to sanction, by implication, ar rangements for contingent fees (when not contrary to local law), provided their terms are reasonable; and its real emphasis is laid on the necessity of pro viding a prompt remedy for the client by the supervisory action of the court, if any unfair advantage of his necessi ties has been taken. Precisely how this supervisory action should be invoked was left to be decided by the local prac tice; and it would have been difficult to
frame any form of procedure of universal application."1 It should be borne in mind that the American Bar Association was not fram ing a statute, but was trying to frame an ethical canon which could be sub scribed to in every state, whether the given state did or did not legalize contingent fees and whether (where it did recognize such fees to be legal), it did or did not already provide a par ticular method of supervision. How any one actuated by right motives could fail to subscribe to that canon, aimed as it is solely against exorbitant con tingent fees, I cannot understand. If the code were a bill to be passed by the legislature, its failure to point out a specific method of supervision would be highly objectionable, but it is not such a bill. The code is simply a statement of a few of the important ethical principles which all lawyers should be bound by and may very appropriately provide that the court should supervise contingent fees when ever clients claim them to be exorbitant or in anyway unjust, without pointing out the method of supervision. One who looks at the code for what it is, and does not worry himself unnecessarily by likening it to that very different thing—state or federal legislation—can surely not object in good faith even to the canon on contingent fees; for should he say, as some do say, and as in a cer tain sense at least is true, that the doc trine of the canon is already a rule of law recognized and enforced by the courts, he will surely not want to be recorded as saying that it is bad law and should not be enforced, while if it is not already the law of the state he will surely want to be recorded as saying that it should be lived up to anyhow. Just a word more about this con 's Columbia Law Review 541, S44.
