Does Melville believe that the lawyer does as much as he can to help Bartleby in Bartleby the Scrivener, A Tale of Wall Street?

I think this is subject to interpretation and it is impossible
to know what “Melville believed.” But, within the context of the story itself, the lawyer does
make multiple attempts to help Bartleby without resorting to force. Whether or not that is going
far enough to help him is up to the reader.

The lawyer mentions
early on that he believes the easiest way of life is the best, so he would be one to accept the
way society runs and go with the flow. Bartleby rejects society passively. This intrigues the
lawyer and eventually elicits sympathy from him. If Bartleby had actively or violently rejected
the lawyer’s world, the lawyer would have had a much more clear idea of Bartleby’s motives and
may have done little to help him. That being said, because Bartleby is rejecting the
impersonality and indifference of the world (particularly the business world) by being impersonal
himself, the lawyer can’t fight Bartleby, and if he can’t fight him, he can only ignore or help.
So, maybe the question becomes; could Bartleby be helped at this point in his life. The lawyer
noted that Bartleby had recently worked at the Dead Letter office and seems to conclude that
Bartleby had gone beyond despair to the point of a death drive. Either the lawyer believes
Bartleby is beyond help or the lawyer convinces himself that Bartleby is beyond help.  If he does
convince himself, then he is back to “the easiest way of life is best,” meaning the lawyer has
empathy, but kind of a fake liberalism; the lawyer wants to ‘help as much as he can’ but when it
gets too bizarre or difficult, he retracts back to the easy life, much in the way Bartleby
retracts away from that life.