The contest is so real it soon ceases to be a play.  It is too much in earnest and whatever humorous quality it may possess never loses the underlying intensity of human conflict.  One noted trial lawyer says that he always feels the loss of a case in the pit of his stomach, another that he can never begin a trial without mopping his forehead for fear that beads of perspiration might be apparent.  However ordinary and accustomed court trials may become to the participants, there will always remain the deep underlying stress of human passions.

As lawyers are watched, they may appear alternately as jumping up and sitting down like jacks-in-the-box or those weather figures, where if one goes in the other comes out.  Their appearance differs in the different courts from the higher courts where the well-groomed eminent leader of the bar, with thin lips and white side whiskers debates in a frock coat before the appellate court, questions of international importance, or the anxious-eyed little attorney where in one of the lower courts with a showy diamond ring and a handkerchief sticking out of his pocket in the shape of an American flag, argues, while chewing gum, whether his client shall pay the fourteen dollars rent or not.

There is never any peace between them.  Occasionally there is a truce when they come together to agree on a certain state of facts, or conclusions of law, but essentially they are at war; otherwise they would not be in court.  The only reason for their being there is an issue to be decided.

Often so eager do they appear that physical violence seemed impending.  It is as though they were on the point of breaking into fisticuffs.  The judge says:  “Gentlemen, gentlemen.”  They appear like two naughty schoolboys who have to be controlled by their master.  First one is restrained and rebuked, then the other is held strictly to the rules of the game.  Like schoolboys, although they may be fighting one another, they appear at times to be in league against the judge.  As in a baseball game, both sides join against the umpire.  There is a common class feeling between the lawyers leaguing them against the judge.  This may be explained perhaps by a rather subtle psychology.

The lawyers are primarily in court to please their clients.  Every ruling of the judge against them on even minor points of evidence, any adverse decision is fatal to them from the point of view of retaining the client for the next litigation.  They watch the judge with lynx-like eyes.  Is he going to drive the client away from them?  Should he reprimand them or speak severely, their client would think that they had angered the judge and so they had lost the case.  Defeat in a case is so important that if a lawyer loses a case he probably loses his client.

In one of the lower city courts on the East Side, a young attorney came in one morning with a scar across his cheek, a scratch on his nose, and sticking plaster on his chin.  The judge had often seen him before.  After the case was over he called him to the bench and said that he was sorry he had an accident, and asked him what had happened.  “Oh, not much,” said the lawyer, “last week I simply lost a case for a client.”