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I**wyero uu noi seem to exist in those scenes. Only rarely do they appear, and then in unflattering terms, looking like bespectacled wimps. They are slender, bookish sorts who invariably speak in a high-pitched voice— not manly, not gruff. They are anything but The Law.
Times have changed. Today the law is embodied less in the lethal determination of saber-toothed sheri^s and more in the brains of an armj o lawyers, once so few and feeble. Tne Sheriff as The Law is out. Lawyers, lots of them, are in.
Many people would like them back out. The lawyer, runs a popular theme, is a curse. He, she —or it —is a fasttalking, faster-than-thou, fat cat whose services cost you a pretty penny. To make matters worse, you cannot put your finger on those services and you surely will never understand them.
Where, after all, is the product? Where is the something you can touch and say “ah yes, this was expensive but at least I’ve got it in my hand and it is now mine for as long as I can keep it?” Lawyers deliver no objects. Their product consists of a few letters, some discussion, and maybe, just maybe, a settlement.
Work? Do lawyers work? They write proper-sounding letters, talk some (mostly with other lawyers), and they whisper in judges’ ears. What work? We should all work so hard. So runs a popular conception of what lawyers are all about.
A caricature of the lawyer lobby rebuts as follows. Pity all lawyers. They are misunderstood, slandered, and unappreciated. They have been found guilty without due process. They demand an appeal.
Lawyers are thrashed and scolded for what? Merely for performing their craft, for doing their job. They are trained to argue and to argue well. For this they are tabled fast talkers. They are considered slippery and elusive ifi conversation.
As budding lawyers, they slaved over cases and codes for three painful years, all to the greater purpose of mastering the technicalities that weave coherence and unity into the nation’s institutional fabric. Having mastered these technicalities, lawyers soon become victims of public persecution simply for displaying their mastery.
Not privy to the intricate knowledge of lawyers, the public (or some of it) forms a prejudice to the effect that lawyers do not practice, they swindle.
Pity the lawyer. He is chastised for doing just that which is required of him: for using the tools of his trade. A plumber uses his wrenches with impunity; he fixes pipes so they hold water, and when his job is done he goes free. Not so with the lawyer. His job is to do with arguments what plumbers do with pipes: make them hold water. That done, however, the lawyer falls under attack.
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