[Ads-l] "The client is always right"

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Thank you, Peter. I have updated the Quote Investigator article by
adding your 1884 citation for "a client is always right" as a
precursor to "the customer is always right". I also updated the
acknowledgement:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/10/06/customer/

[Begin acknowledgement excerpt]
Also, thanks to Peter Morris who told QI about the valuable 1884
precursor citation.
[Begin acknowledgement excerpt]

The statement using "client" continued to circulate in 1979 when Del
Goldsmith published a piece in the "American Bar Association Journal"
containing the following:

[Begin excerpt]
Lex Clio Volente. The client is always right--particularly when he has
further causes to entrust.
[End excerpt]

The statement subsequently appeared in the compilation "The Official
Explanations" (1980) edited by Paul Dickson.
The updates will be visible within a few hours.
Garson

On Thu, May 15, 2025 at 9:55 AM mr_peter_morris at outlook.com
<mr_peter_morris at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> QI article: The Customer is always right.
> Dated to 1905.
>
> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/10/06/customer/
>
>
> ==============
>
> https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Duties_of_Solicitor_to_Client_as_to/-5kDAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=customer%20%22is%20always%20right%20%22&pg=PA158&printsec=frontcover
>
> The Duties of Solicitor to Client as to Partnership Agreements, Leases,
> Settlements, and Wills
> By Edward Francis Turner · 1884
>
> I am speaking, remember, of the many cases in which a solicitor
> does in fact exercise an important influence in the matter. He may
> of course have no option but to carry out instructions which are at
> variance with his own personal views; his opinion may be overruled,
>  or may not even be asked for: and it is an old saying, available of
> course as a rule of conduct only up to the point at which self-respect
> makes its appearance, that a client is always right. But, on the other
> hand, the solicitor's advice may be, and often is, not only invited but
> implicitly followed, and where this is the case I would impress upon
> you that zeal for your client's interests should, like everything else,
> have limits founded on justice and right feeling, and that your duty
> does not, and never can, demand of you that you should voluntarily
> outstrip those limits.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org