It really has very little, if any, to do with the alleged greed on the part of some lawyers. Of all the people, lawyers are among the very few who are often required to do free work. Many lawyers，such as public defenders, make little money for doing what is absolutely essential in sustaining our society.
Actually, the supposedly bad reputation of the legal profession has a lot more to do with the law-and-order nature of this society than with the money the lawyers make for doing what they do.
One reality of the law-and-order society is that most aspects of people's social lives are regulated by laws. While this yields a well ordered society, it also breeds lawsuits. Fact is, people don't like lawsuits. Those who feel wronged believe they should be compensated without having to sue. Those who are sued seldom feel they are in the wrong. Both sides, therefore, resent the expenses incurred in lawsuits. As one of the biggest items on that list of expenses is often the attorney's fee, it's no wonder the society as a whole harbors such resentment against lawyers.
All of this, of course, is totally unfair to the lawyers who use their expertise to help people deal with a necessary social evil, our need for law and order, and who charge a reasonable fee determined by the competitive market.
Aren’t there bad lawyers? Of course there are. But you know what, there are no less bad doctors, or bad whatever, than bad lawyers. There is simply no a priori reason why the lawyer population should be any more “evil” than those of other occupations.
The maintenance of law and order heavily depends on the acts of the judicial branch of the government, and, as a result, judges are highly respected throughout society. Yet, almost all of the judges, the Supreme Court justices included, are lawyers.
Remember those founding fathers who rose so bravely against Britain and who established this democracy? Of the 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention, 35 were lawyers.
Therefore, every time some comedian cracks a joke at the expense of lawyers, he is actually doing no more than affirming this hypocrisy shared by the society: while we love law and order, we are too cheap to feel happy when it comes to paying the necessary cost for it. In this sense, the resentment against the lawyers is no different than our animosity toward the IRS.
