Hippocrates?

There is a huge risk that those of us here in the Trenches will take on the battles of our clients as our own.  It's a natural thing for lawyers to do, because our training teaches us to fight with our words.  I think in a lot of ways lawyers  in the Trenches are like doctors in that we are entrusted with the futures of people's lives; and because of that, our motto should be like the doctors' - first, do no harm.  Here in the Trenches, our clients do plenty of harm to each other.  It is our job to help extricate them from their world of pain and point them down a different path.  That new path may be like the old one, in that it still has the same children, with the same other parent, but it is different in that it provides a new way of dealing with the old issues and people.  Our job in the Trenches is to use our skills to guide our clients off the old path and down the new one.  When we take on our clients' battles as our own, we fail them.  Instead of helping guide them toward the future, we keep them mired in the past.  When we reinforce the destructive ways of their old path, we make it harder for them to let go of the past and move toward the future.  In my book, that's harm, and it's something we  in the Trenches have to fight against every day. As Hippocrates said:  "Make a habit of two things:  to help, or at least to do no harm."   A motto for us to live by - here in the Trenches.