The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread and butter involved.  Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and client.  An exorbitant fee should never be claimed.  As a general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer.  When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case as if something was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client.  And when you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the performance.  Settle the amount of fee and take a note in advance.  Then you will feel that you are working for something, and you are sure to do your work faithfully and well.  Never sell a fee note—­at least not before the consideration service is performed.  It leads to negligence and dishonesty—­negligence by losing interest in the case, and dishonesty in refusing to refund when you have allowed the consideration to fail.

This idea of a refund or reduction of charges from the lawyer in a failed case is a new one to me—­but not a bad one.

1851 Letters to family members to John D. Johnston.

January 2, 1851

Dear Johnston:—­Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to comply with now.  At the various times when I have helped you a little you have said to me, “We can get along very well now”; but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again.  Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct.  What that defect is, I think I know.  You are not lazy, and still you are an idler.  I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have done a good whole day’s work in any one day.  You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it.  This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break the habit.  It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after they are in.

You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work, “tooth and nail,” for somebody who will give you money for it.  Let father and your boys take charge of your things at home, prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get; and, to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you, that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of May, get for your own labor, either in money or as your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar.  By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work.