I mean, I obviously don’t work at every major firm, but assuming my employer is fairly representative, I can say that lawyers–even junior ones, to albeit to a lesser extent–are making judgment calls every day. (As noted above, usually boring decisions–the clients make all of the high-level ones.) Whether to mark discovery items as privileged, whether to include an item into a disclosure or risk factors (and how to present them), whether to represent clients with questionable practices (e.g., middle eastern sovereign wealth funds), whether to clog a docket up with punitive motions (e.g., motions to DQ counsel), whether to notify the opposing counsel of a mistake they have made (e.g., overdisclosing privileged info or accidentally uploading sensitive material to a data room)–the list goes on and on, these are just what I thought of as I was typing. And with those judgment calls come varying levels of ethical dilemmas. I agree with your point to the extent that there are likely far more day-to-day ethical issues in, say, criminal defense than capital markets work, but I don’t think any area (or, for that matter, any profession, though that’s tough for me to back up) is entirely free of ethical dilemmas.
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