Heads or Tails #97 -- tool

Barb, our guru, who created Heads or Tails without using any hand tools whatsoever, with the arguable exceptions of a keyboard and a mouse, asks us to write today about "tools."

In HoT 66, I wrote about my disastrous experiences in junior high shop class, a subject I'd alluded to in an earlier post wherein I confessed that I don't particularly like to hang out in hardware stores.

So I've beaten that subject to death... or, more to the point, hammered it home already. So, without further preface, I'll write about the most important tool of the lawyer's trade.

I am not referring to lawsuits.

Although, as has been oft observed, when the only tool on your belt is a hammer, you may try and make all of your problems into some kind of nail.

This observation segues nicely into the short, short (but sufficient unto itself) course in legal ethics, taught me by my late father (also a lawyer). He asked me once if I thought a carpenter's most important tool was a hammer.

"I suppose so," I answered.

"Well, if a carpenter breaks his hammer, he goes to the hardware store and gets a new one. But as a lawyer, your most important tool is your word. If you break your word, there's no store in the world that can sell you a new one."