In a very timely post, marketing philosopher  Seth Godin writes:

There are plenty of ways to rationalize false marketing claims (hey, at least they’ll use something…) but it’s pretty clear that marketers have done little to educate the public about what’s going on (did you know that 95% of the radiation that hits us is cancer-causing and skin-aging UVA, the kind that SPF has no relevance to?)

New regulations were recently announced, though it’s not surprising that many think the regs were watered down as a result of lobbying.

It turns out that in the US, sunscreens have been extraordinarily over-hyped, with variations being called ‘waterproof, ‘full spectrum’ and ‘effective’ without being any of these. You need to use a lot more, and a lot more often, than the labels currently indicate. Marketers would prefer a magic bullet, as it’s easier to sell, but sunscreen doesn’t work that way. It’s not easy to make an effective sunscreen, and so competitors with lesser products have hyped them with false or irrelevant claims. (SPF 120 anyone?)

So it’s not that sunscreens are worthless or useless, but just not what they’re marketed to be.  We use them in the vain belief that we’re doing the right thing, trying not to be one of the more than 80,000 who have died of skin cancer in the past decade. 

Ethics and integrity have been on my mind quite a bit lately, not so much because they are one of my scholarly concerns but because  I’m being told with  painful  regularity by  young lawyers that they can no longer afford the luxury of ethics, that the old niceties of a once proud profession no longer applies to their new paradigm.

If Maslow’s  Hierarchy of Needs focused solely on young lawyers, I imagine it would look something like this:

Level 1: Food, shelter, Cheetos
Level 2: Student loan repayment
Level 3: Booze, drugs, video games
Level 4: BMW
Level 5: Ethics

Forget self-actualization, as few new lawyers reach the point where they can manage a decent set of wheels.  This makes them sad, feeling as if the covenant has been broken.  They were promised that if they worked hard, made it through college and law school, there would be a good life waiting for them on the other side.  Well, they kept their part of the deal, and found out the pot of gold is empty.  And so they cry.

There are people like me, “fairy-tale ogres who drink only the tears of young children,”   Not only do I offer them no comfort, but no easy solution.  They want easy answers, and  they demand that I give them easy answers now.  They get angry with me when the answers don’t fit their paradigm.

And then there are people who want to make money off the tears of young children.  They tell them what they want to hear, stroke them and comfort them, and for a small fee, will provide the solutions that fit their paradigm.  They tell them the world is changing, and they are can be part of the new wave of success.  There will be a never ending supply of Cheetos in their future, if only they ride the wave.

The nature of ethics and integrity have become so watered down that even lawyers who believe themselves sufficiently ethical to pontificate on the subject see it merely as a matter of violating the Rakofsky Standard, where its so flagrant as to be unescapable.  Routine, banal puffery and deception have become so ingrained in the legal marketing ethos as to make no ripple.

And yet we feel emboldened to criticize police and judges for their faults and failures, their misconduct and impropriety, for their stupidity and error.  Who are we to challenge them while embracing lies about ourselves?  

Regular readers are no doubt bored to tears with my writing about these subjects.  Where’s the next outrageous story about a police beating or a judge throwing innocent people in prison?  Why can’t we focus on one great villain, making him responsible for all the evil in the system and castigating him at every turn?  It’s not that simple. 

Lawyers are as much a part of a troubled system as everyone else, and we continue to foul the system as they do.  And far too many lack the understanding that we’re even doing this, somehow wrapping themselves in the sanctity of necessity, but we need to earn a living, while denigrating all the other players for their failings.  All of our houses need to be in order before there will be any hope of improving the system.

And so mother’s rub sunscreen with an SPF of 120 on their beloved babies in the hope of saving them from the harmful effects of the sun.  And defendants retain lawyers in the hope of saving them from the harmful effects of the system.  And we’re find with calling bullshit on fraudulent sunscreen marketing claims, but reject the idea that lawyers, a profession whose very existence depends on our will to put clients ahead of self interest, should be subject to the same scrutiny.

Maybe one young lawyer will get the idea.  Maybe one older lawyer will join this curmudgeon to push ethics higher on the lawyer hierarchy of needs.  Maybe one client will be saved.  This is what lawyers do.  An angry commenter asked whether I really thought I was ‘god’s gift to ethics.”  I responded that lawyers should all be “god’s gift to ethics.”  No sunscreen will shield of from our ethical failings.