What Are Lawyers For?

What are lawyers for? What social purposes do lawyers serve? What functions underwrite the special obligations and entitlements that accompany the lawyer’s professional role? I shall try, over the course of the next hour or so, to sketch an answer to these questions, at least with respect to lawyers who function as litigators, in adjudication. The answer will surprise many. Lawyers, I shall argue, do not serve truth or justice, and should not seek them. Instead, lawyers serve to legitimate power. And to produce legitimacy, lawyers should serve their clients. Of course, not all lawyers work in or around adjudication. Perhaps most do not, at least not most of the time. But adjudication remains the lawyer’s characteristic setting. Non-lawyers might provide advice, including about legal compliance or drafting. But only lawyers can litigate; indeed, it is in the nature of adjudication that only lawyers can litigate — so that those who litigate thereby become, functionally, lawyers. The conceptually most important aspect of lawyers’ work is not the empirically most prominent. And insofar as legal ethics has, in recent years, adjusted its sights to focus on the commonplaces of legal