ABSTRACT
Perhaps ever since lawyers first practiced law, they have endured a negative public image. The Bible says, “Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers” (Luke 11:46). Contemplating a transformation to an idyllic society, a character in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II (Act IV, scene 2, line 59), declares, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Plato referred to the “small and unrighteous souls” of lawyers, and the poet John Keats observed, “I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters” (quoted in Vago 2006:365).
