More often, however, if there are moral errors which tempt you, they are errors of professional role rather than errors of private gain. They show up as failures of ethical insight and moral sensitivity. Being zealous is something many lawyers learn without thinking about it or reflecting on it. Lawyers, when they earn their money, live up to their ideals of the profession, and gain the admiration of other lawyers, do so as zealous advocates. When a lawyer is less than zealous in their advocacy there is a real sense of failure.
Lawyers take pride in zealous advocacy.
It is not something we do because we demand it of ourselves. Zealousness is built-in to the ritual of lawyering. We internalize zealous advocacy and it becomes a habit. The ritual of zealousness is a matter of caring so intensely and making this intensity into a regular feature of professionalism and lawyer character. When zealousness becomes part of our ritual life as lawyers it takes on a double-edged meaning.