There is a popular fiction that lawyers are
shrewd and capable, similar to the prevailing one that
detectives are astute and cunning. But, as the head of one of
the biggest agencies in the country remarked to me the other
day, when discussing the desirability of retaining local
counsel in a distant city: "You know how hard it is to find a
lawyer that isn't a dead one." I feel confident that he did
not mean this in the sense that there was no good lawyer
except a dead lawyer. What my detective friend probably had
in mind was that it was difficult to find a lawyer who brought
to bear on a new problem any originality of thought or action.
It is even harder to find a detective who is not in this sense
a dead one. I have the feeling, being a lawyer myself, that
it is harder to find a live detective than a live lawyer.
There are a few of both, however, if you know where to look
for them. But it is easy to fall into the hands of the
Philistines.
The fundamental reason why it is so hard to form any just
opinion of detectives in general is that (except by their
fruits) there is little opportunity to discriminate between
the able and the incapable.
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