Just to let you know, one of my very good friends, now deceased, pleaded many cases in the Supreme Court as well as the highest US Military Court. Indeed, Stanley had two walls in his office covered with citations from national organizations for volunteer work. Another friend, with whom I spend a couple hours with each week, has been national president of a national lawyer organization of his area of specialization numerous times. Including my own lawyer and and lawyer friends they are not alien to me.
Jokes and wry comments about the others’ profession go back and forth when my lawyer and physician friends get together, but this would probably be too raucous for many here who take such things too seriously and personal. Oh, yes. The original quote was from H L Memcken’s famous book of quotations and is identified as “Traditional “, so it’s not an original comment.
Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary defined lawyer as: “Lawyer Persons trained in circumvention of the law.”