Jim Chen at Moneylaw, ironically named given the nature of his post, has taken a step back and seen the forest through the tree, with his brilliant opening line:

Scandal scored a trifecta this week, as heavyweights from the worlds of politics, business, and law were accused of fraud. Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has been arrested for offering to sell Barack Obama's open Senate seat to the highest bidder. Bernard Madoff ran his investment firm as a giant Ponzi scheme; losses are thought to approximate $50 billion. And lawyer Marc Dreier bilked sophisticated investors of $380 million. Neither law nor higher education in general can escape responsibility for the behavior of these men. Blagojevich and Dreier held law degrees. Indeed, the New York Times took pains to describe Marc Dreier as "a Yale graduate and Harvard-educated lawyer."

This doesn't speak well of lawyers, and no amount of facile denial or rationalization will change that.  To add insult, Madoff went to law school, but didn't finish. 

Lawyers are taught ethics.  Since 1982, lawyers have been tested on their knowledge of ethics by the MPRE.  What we have yet to figure out is how to instill the legal profession a desire to behave in an ethical and moral way.  Knowing ethics and being ethical are entirely different. 

Jim, being a law school dean, challenges law schools to do something about their role in this mess.  He recognizes that law schools cannot absolve themselves of all responsibility for this situation, being the breeding ground of whatever vision a lawyer has of his role in society.

The diagnosis is simple. Greed kills. One of MoneyLaw's running themes is that American universities fare rather poorly in identifying, let alone living or inculcating, moral values. As a partial antidote to the poison represented by Blagojevich, Madoff, and Dreier, I thought I would mark the untimely passing of an academic hero: Jan Kemp.

Since Jim's got the law school exception to the rule covered, and provides great insight as Dr. Kemp paid the price of integrity, I hope to give it a try on the side of the trench lawyer.  As an axiom, we do a miserable job of policing our own profession.  We, each lawyer, at minimum knows someone who fails to fulfill the ethical obligations and disciplinary rules that govern our profession.  We are obliged to act upon this information, but do not.  And we similarly know that if we did, the changes of our disciplinary bodies doing anything serious about it are slim to none. 

This is not an opportunity for non-lawyers to rail against theft by lawyers.  Stealing from escrow is the surest route to disbarment, which may not be a sufficient penalty when the theft exceeds $379 million.  But performing incompetently is rampant.  Sure, it's a subjective assessment, and the level of technical competence necessary to escape discipline (which in these terms means a nasty private letter) can usually be accomplished by dried out slug.  We know it, but we keep it within the family to maintain the "dignity of the profession."  Dignity?  This is what dignity means?

Some will remember that I've just been engaged in a disagreement with many about the role of using blogs as active marketing tools.  Put aside the marketers, whose job is it to market marketing and therefore have done no wrong by saying anything to persuade lawyers to buy their trinkets.  Think instead about the lawyers who argued vociferously that (1) they had to engage in overt marketing or they would sit home alone all day and starve, or (2) that it was their ethical duty to market themselves or the public would not be aware of their existence, and it was their ethical duty to make the public aware of the fact that they were available to deposit their retainer at a moments notice.

The one thing lawyers are well trained to do is argue.  We wield rhetoric like a sword, using it to cut through walls of ethical and moral that stand between us and money.  We confuse some words, however, like ambition and greed, allowing us to explain away our use of any weapon at our disposal to separate a client from his money, or if we are really good at what we do, someone else's client from his money.

Maybe law school has done its job too well, giving us the ability to rationalize our way under, over and around the ethical and moral obligations that are supposed to keep us in check. 

But there is no argument that these three individuals, headliners this week for the sheer magnitude of the allege loss, reflect a gaping hole where a lawyers' heart should be.  Are we this desperate a profession that we can do no better?  Are we this greedy?  Are we this dignified?