The Decline of the Lawyer: From Revered Counselor to Distrusted Tradesman

Kevin Rademeyer

Prescience Media Group: For centuries, lawyers stood among society’s intellectual elite, figures of reason, strategy, and advocacy. They shared esteem with surgeons, scientists, and philosophers — professionals whose work demanded precision, discipline, and integrity. To be a lawyer was to embody intellect and honor: the steady hand of justice, the trusted guardian of truth.

Yet, today, the public perception of lawyers has dimmed. Increasingly, the modern lawyer is viewed less as a learned counselor and more as a transactional operator,  a negotiator of fees rather than a steward of justice. Where once the title “Attorney-at-Law” evoked reverence, it now often invites cynicism. The lawyer, once seen as a pillar of ethics, now struggles to escape comparison to the second-hand car salesman,  skilled in persuasion but viewed with suspicion.

1. The Cognitive Collapse of the Modern Lawyer

The decline is not only ethical but cognitive. As Article 1 revealed, the modern lawyer faces a cognitive crisis — a profession plagued by mental exhaustion and decision fatigue. The billable-hour model, once a badge of diligence, has become a mechanism of depletion. Lawyers operate in an environment that rewards endurance over intellect, output over insight.

This has created a generation of practitioners who are technically proficient yet mentally fractured. Perfectionism, once a virtue, now erodes judgment. The obsession with working harder, outlasting competitors, and suppressing emotion has hollowed the profession from within. The result is a workforce of highly trained minds operating at diminished capacity — unable to think strategically, emotionally detached, and chronically fatigued.

In the words of neuroscience, the legal brain is overstressed and undernourished. The profession’s relentless focus on risk, liability, and control has rewired its members into hypervigilant problem-spotters, unable to see opportunity or trust their own instincts. In this state, dignity gives way to defensiveness, and professionalism yields to survival.

2. Ethical Decay and the Erosion of Nobility

Parallel to this cognitive crisis is a moral one. As Article 2 warns, the profession has cast aside its ancient ethical canons, those that defined law not as a trade, but as a calling. Once, to be a lawyer was to pledge one’s honor to the court, to society, and to one’s peers. Integrity was not optional; it was existential.

But now, many practitioners have reduced ethics to compliance — the minimal avoidance of disbarment rather than the active pursuit of virtue. The notion of being “fit and proper,” once the golden standard for admission to the bar, has dulled to a checkbox on an application. Lawyers who were once the exemplars of restraint and respect increasingly find themselves the subjects of disciplinary proceedings.

The data is sobering: between 2019 and January 2025, 376 lawyers were disbarred in South Africa, with the Legal Practice Council averaging 80 to 100 disbarments per year.  These are not mere statistical anomalies — they are symptoms of a profession in ethical decline. Many of these disbarments stem from theft of client funds, dishonesty, and misconduct — acts that strike at the heart of public trust.

Each expulsion erodes not only the reputation of the guilty lawyer but the standing of the entire profession. The disbarment lists have become the modern equivalent of public flogging,  reminders that for every advocate of justice, there is another who betrayed it.

3. The Breakdown of Respect and Collegiality

Even within the ranks, the decay of civility is visible. The courtroom, once governed by respect for authority and deference to the bench, now too often hosts displays of arrogance and antagonism. The once-meaningful phrase “my learned friend” has become hollow — a formality masking hostility or contempt.

This lack of respect extends beyond the courtroom. Lawyers increasingly disregard one another’s integrity, viewing peers as competitors rather than colleagues. The adversarial system has metastasized into a professional culture of suspicion, where winning eclipses honor, and self-promotion overshadows service.

In this climate, mentorship has withered. The senior attorney, once a moral compass for the younger generation, is now a rarity. Law firms that once served as academies of ethics now operate as billing factories. Respect for the judiciary, for the client, and even for the law itself, is replaced by a transactional ethos: what can be billed, won, or spun.

4. The Public Reckoning

The legal profession’s crisis is no longer invisible to the public. Media coverage of corruption, negligence, and client exploitation has stripped away the mystique that once shielded lawyers from scrutiny. The result is a loss of public confidence — not merely in individual lawyers but in the very notion of justice as a noble pursuit.

The lawyer’s social capital — once built on trust and intellect — is collapsing under the weight of cynicism and scandal. The tragedy is not that lawyers are less intelligent than before; it is that their intelligence has been misdirected — devoted to survival rather than service, self-interest rather than justice.

5. The Path Forward

Rebuilding the profession’s honor requires more than disciplinary tribunals or mental health workshops. It demands a renaissance of purpose,  a return to the ethical, cognitive, and human roots of the profession.

Lawyers must rediscover what it means to be counselors, not merely consultants. The restoration of respect begins with the restoration of reflection — a profession that values integrity as much as intellect, balance as much as brilliance.

The law will regain its dignity only when its practitioners remember that their greatest client is not the one who pays them, but the one they serve in silence: justice itself.