let me also add, I know a lawyer personally and he is the nicest most generous person out there, he is considered on of the countries top tax lawyers and you wouldn't find a nicer guy.
TPersonally I prefer the Inquisitorial system, which I lived under for most of my life and which at its best is more focused on finding truth and obtaining justice than winning and scoring points.
I like the inquisitorial system too. No risk of losing weeks (unpaid) to jury duty.
The one time I relied on a lawyer was as a student involved in a peaceful sit-down protest on campus that the police decided to wade into with battens.
They then arrested a bunch of people for disorderly behaviour. The students association engaged a prominent local barrister. Thanks to her good work, the judge dismissed everyone's charges and gave the police a public and thorough dressing down.
I was very grateful to have a good lawyer that day.
This might be dangerous to admit to but I am a lawyer and have been for about 7 years. There are a lot of good comments in this thread.
My answer to OPs question:
As a number of people have already said there are good and bad apples. On the whole I haven't seen anything that suggests the proportion of bad apple lawyers is higher than in other professions or trades.
That said, lawyers who are bad apples usually do (and should) receive more media attention than a bad plumber or shopkeeper. A person places a very high degree of trust in a lawyer, so if that trust is broken it's really bad and should be treated as such.
It's possible the fact that those bad apples receive more prominent coverage and generate more outrage makes people think the proportion of bad apples is higher than in other areas. Or maybe the proportion is really higher. I don't know.
Most of the NZ lawyers I know would put "doing the right thing" above "generating a big fee". That said, most of the lawyers I know are not big firm lawyers.
There are a bunch of charlatans around. The best way to avoid them is to only use lawyers who you have been referred to by someone you trust. I tend to think that applies to most fields though including IT.
Normally I would have passed this by with a smile, but this guy's vocabulary really impressed me. This is an excerpt from a report on a New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal hearing on one lawyer's conduct:
The tribunal finding said during correspondence with people associated with the society, Deliu had labelled recipients "crooked, biased, discriminating, bent, debauched, iniquitous, perfidious, rotten, shady, treacherous, unscrupulous, unethical, cowards, untrustworthy, malicious thugs, simpletons, buffoons, inbred, incompetent, cretinous and venal".
"He accused the judge variously of breaching his judicial oath, being out of control, repeatedly abusing his powers, being partial, discriminatory, acting with mala fides, maliciously, spitefully and of being racist," the tribunal's decision said.
Commenting on the tribunal's decision, the lawyer said, "New Zealand is a fascist democracy that persecutes lawyers for speaking out against the state and we are no better ... than China."
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