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Lawyers are very good for telling clients what they want to hear, and for taking their money in battles to "do what's right".[rant]
Some lawyers indeed do that. And in a given case it may look like that's what's happening.
But lawyers are constrained by legal ethics rules, which really do require us to put our clients' interests above just about anything else:
1. Lawyers are required to be zealous advocates for our clients' causes. That's a universal feature of legal-ethics rules in the U.S., and AFAIK in most other countries too.
2. Once we take on a client representation in a given matter, we're not allowed to fire the client except in limited circumstances or with the client's agreement. If the client goes flaky, we may be stuck with him / her / them / it.
3. Lawyers can, should, and typically do advise clients about the potential downsides of a given course of action, including bad PR. But in the end, unless the client is asking us to do something illegal or unethical, it's very likely the client's call, and there may not be much we can do about it.
The foregoing can sometimes be a convenient excuse for lawyers to do unsavory stuff on behalf of their clients. But the alternative might be a system in which lawyers were allowed to bail out on their clients at will -- and in which people with unpopular causes were unable to get legal representation. I don't think many people would want that kind of system, especially when they realized that someday they might be the one who couldn't get a lawyer.
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