The proportion of
the business transacted in a so-called legal manner is insignificantly
small.
The numberless transactions of the retail stores in a great city; such
cases of proving that a pair of gloves were sold, delivered, and not
paid for are extremely difficult to prove. The expense and trouble
involved of subpoenaing the different departments and of breaking up
the routine of the store, would prevent the stores becoming clients.
The enormous transactions on the New York Stock Exchange, where a
hundred million dollars' worth of business is reputed to be done in
one day, is entirely on the basis of personal honesty. So far as the
court goes, should one party to a stock sale not be willing to
complete, there would be little possibility of enforcing it. Therefore
the Stock Exchange makes its own rules and has its own method of
settling disputes. The world at large is not a client in the court.
The man who becomes a client in the sense of litigant is an exception.
The courts would seem to be unrelated to the demands of actual
business affairs.
Times have changed since the Victorian days when a solicitor was the
client's deferential servant, the steward and custodian of the landed
gentleman's legal affairs.
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