> Legal service lawyers are dedicated professionals
> who do as good a job as possible given their
> caseloads and the kinds of limitations Charles spoke
> about. * * *
>
> I am stlll steaming about Jenny's slur against
> the profession. Sure there are crooked, lazy,
> incompetent lawyers. And doctors. And business
> people. And factory workers. And academics. And
> union officials. Despite the lawyer bashing the
> profession is no more crooked than any and less
> than some.
It may be too much of an understatement to say "no more crooked than any and less than some" even if perhaps not because of any sort of Inherent Goodness among attorneys compared to others.
Whether one refers primarily to the out of court negotiation process or in-court civil and criminal litigation, the inherently adversarial nature of the profession combined with the reality that most law is practiced locally, with the related importance of reputation and like word-of-mouth considerations, results in a high premium being placed on lawyer credibility in the better senses of that term (not just Colbert's "truthiness").
So, sure - there are and probably inevitably always will be slackers and other corner-cutters and also the occasional Roy Cohn type (though there are many effective ways to deal with all of these); but built-in to our legal systems (which in recent years has included an increasing willingness of lawyers to undertake litigation against other lawyers) is a commonly perceived and honored (or, at least, acquiesced in) need by lawyers for lawyers to be more rather than less ethical than others.
> You can say what you like, but gbut when the cops
> are on your ass, who do you call -- Ghostbusters?
> No, you call a lawyer. Or you are a fool.