In American literature, these themes were reiterated with a vengeance. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac sardonically observed: "God works wonders now and then. Behold! a lawyer, an honest man." Brome in the late 19th century said: "The Law and the Lawyer have oftener been the subject of . . . ridicule on the stage than any other class or profession." In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables, Judge Pyncheon, a descendant of one of the accusers of the Salem witches, manipulates the law, "trampling on the weak." In Willa Cather's 1923 novel of frontier life, A Lost Lady, the lawyer, Ivy Peters, is a land-speculating, Indian-cheating, political schemer, who seduces an indigent widow and achieves dominance of a Colorado town through his unethical machinations. In Rex Beach's novel of the Klon

(2) The friendly and dedicated single practitioner typified by Beigler, Greenwald and Mason is no longer characteristic of the bar. Abel says that "as late as the 1950s, nearly all lawyers still were independent private practitioners," but by 1980, more than two thirds of them worked for large law firms or large corporations.  As the solid prosperity of the 1960s turned into the tinsel prosperity of the 1980s and the economic insecurities of the downsizing 1990s, many Americans became apprehensive concerning the supposedly benign purposes of large institutions. Lawyers, a favorite scapegoat of public frustrations for centuries, became once again an object of fear and envy. Thurow says that "people hate lawyers . . . because they are powerful and because they depend on them."

Chisolm, Patrick. "The Public on Lawyers-Guilty." McLeans, 11 October 1993, 68-70.

This new portrayal of the lawyer shares some resemblance with the traditional unsavory depiction of the lawyer, but introduces a distinct contemporary twist. These new anti-heroes exemplify the ethics of a "me-first" generation, which distrusts all established institutions and is not bound by any other code than survival and beating the system.

(1) Thurow says that "lawyers were knocked off their golden throne by Watergate." Thirty-three of them were indicted. Anthony Lewis of the New York Times says that as a result, "lawyers made their names symbols of contempt for law."

Lawyers have always played an influential role in American life, perhaps more so than in any other country. Some, such as Abraham Lincoln, sought to project a positive image of the profession. In turning down a prospective client in the 1840s, Lincoln said: "some things legally right are not morally right."

Marquand, John P. The Late George Apley. New York: Modern Library, 1936.

Lawyers have had a bad press in recent times. A recent poll by the C