Luke Ford

ChatGPT says:

Russell Pearce’s 2001 essay traced how lawyers once occupied a unique, public-serving leadership role. That governing‑class ideal—rooted in civic virtue, republicanism, and professional duty—gradually dissolved under market pressures, fragmentation of professionalism, the rise of “hired‑gun” advocacy, and the erosion of law’s public mission.

Fast‑forward to today: Lawyers are far more like other upper‑middle‑class professionals. Economic constraints, AI disruption, political targeting, and growing class anxiety are stripping away what remained of their prestige and public‑spirited identity. Their role as moral and civic stewards feels largely symbolic—long gone from social reality.

I wonder if the left’s takeover of the professions has led to a decline in the prestige of the professions?

Grok says:

The idea that progressive or left-leaning ideologies have “captured” professions like law, leading to a loss of public trust or prestige, is a common argument in conservative and libertarian critiques. It often ties into broader narratives about the “long march through the institutions” (a phrase popularized by Rudi Dutschke, but repurposed by critics), cultural shifts post-1960s, or the rise of identity politics and “wokeness.”

• The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture by Heather Mac Donald (2018). Argues that DEI-driven, left-leaning ideologies dominate elite institutions (including law schools and the legal profession), eroding merit standards, politicizing curricula (e.g., CRT), and reducing prestige by prioritizing identity over competence. Cites surveys on ideological skew among faculty and links that to declining public trust.
• The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done by John M. Ellis (2020). Claims a post-1960s left-wing takeover turned universities and professional schools into echo chambers, fostering groupthink and suppressing dissent. Argues spillover into law has reduced prestige by aligning the profession with partisan causes and narrowing viewpoint diversity.
• Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter (2021). Contends that institutional “antiracism” operates like a new creed capturing organizations, including law. Links DEI regimes and ideological enforcement to diminished professional neutrality and public trust.
• The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America by Roger Kimball (2000). Traces a leftward shift across institutions (including law schools and the judiciary) to 1960s radicalism; argues this politicized the profession and undercut prestige by recasting lawyers as social engineers rather than neutral guardians of law.

For balance: These arguments are contested. Left-leaning scholars (e.g., in Pearce’s article or works like Deborah Rhode’s In the Interests of Justice) attribute prestige declines more to commercialization, ethical scandals, or market forces than ideology. Polls (e.g., Pew or Gallup) show trust in professions dipping across the board since the 1970s, often linked to broader societal cynicism post-Watergate/Vietnam.

Based on empirical studies and analyses of ideological trends in the legal profession (a key example from conservative critiques of progressive dominance in elite institutions), the most robust conservative contestations appear to center on the documented left-leaning imbalance in legal academia and, to a lesser extent, the broader bar. These arguments hold up best under scrutiny because they are supported by quantitative data from non-partisan sources, showing a significant liberal skew that exceeds the profession’s overall makeup or the general population.

Russell Pearce wrote in 2001:

* The self-image of American lawyers has undergone a major transformation. As recently as the early 1960s, Erwin Smigel’s renowned study of Wall Street lawyers declared them to be guardians of the law.’ While serving their clients’ interests, they maintained a higher commitment to the public good which permitted them to manage the relationship between law and power that was essential to the continued stability of, and rule of law in, a democratic society. Twenty years later, a number of distinguished scholars reconsidered the role of elite lawyers at a conference at Stanford Law School. They painted an entirely different picture. Far from being guardians of the law, most corporate lawyers were hired guns who provided their clients with little independent judgment or counsel. Concern for the public good was not important to their work.

* The legal elite’s original and uniquely American understanding of the lawyer’s role was that lawyers were America’s governing class. Leading lawyers, judges and scholars, including the first American legal ethicists, sought to explain how the common good, minority rights and the rule of law could coexist with majority rule by an electorate largely composed of self-interested voters. They decided that the answer was a governing class of lawyers. With their dedication to the common good and their placement in the center of commerce and governance, lawyers were ideally suited for political leadership.

* In American society as a whole, the sense of community obligation declined as the focus on individualism rose in the years following the 1960s. At the same time, the public became skeptical of the expertise of elites generally, and leading members of the public, including lawyers, doubted whether lawyers were capable of perceiving and pursuing the public good. Two trends within the legal profession also contributed to this transformation during the post-1960s period. First, the growth of a large, distinct public interest bar led to a transfer of responsibility for the public good from elite lawyers to public interest lawyers and to a redefinition of the “public good” that conflicted with the interests of big business clients. Second, the related development of the idea of a pro bono duty offered those elite lawyers who still clung to a semblance of the governing class idea an opportunity to satisfy their community obligations through their pro bono work. Unlike the Wall Street lawyers of the early 1960s, who viewed themselves as servants of the public in all areas of their work, the elite came to view themselves as hired guns-lawyers devoted to their clients who served the public only in their limited
and separate pro bono efforts.

Although the rhetoric of the governing class lives on in hortatory appeals to pro bono responsibility…it no longer rules the conscience of the legal elite. After more than 200 years, the elite lawyers’ allegiance to the idea that they are America’s governing class appears to have come to an end…

In the view of most historians, “the dominant ideological force behind the American Revolution” was republicanism.’ William Treanor has observed that “[a]t the center of republican thought lay a belief in a common good and a conception of society as an organic whole. The state’s proper role consisted in large part of fostering virtue, of making the individual unselfishly devote himself to the common good.” Acting collectively through their representatives, the people would pursue the common good and protect individual liberty. Republics compared favorably to monarchies like England, which “sacific[ed] . . .the public good to the private greed of small ruling groups.”

…Many of the framers of the Constitution sought the solution to this dilemma in a modified form of republicanism. While advocating a government of “limited powers subject to elaborate checks and balances … intended to limit majoritarian excesses,” they sought a virtuous political elite. Building on the elitist strand of republicanism, which had preferred the political leadership of landed gentry and professionals, they found in these two groups the capacity for disinterestedness “necessary to virtue and realization of the common good.” Gordon Wood explains this preference: The “disinterested gentry… were supported by proprietary wealth and not involved in the interest-mongering of the
market place,” and similarly, “lawyers and other professionals [were] somehow free of the marketplace, [were] less selfish and interested and therefore better equipped for political leadership and disinterested decision-making than merchants and businessmen.”

Federalist No. 35 went so far as to identify professionals as the most virtuous members of this emerging governing class. While even the landed gentry would seek to protect and promote its own financial interests, lawyers and other members of the “learned professions… truly form[ed] no distinct interest in society.” Such professionals “will feel a neutrality to the rivalships between the different branches of industry, be likely to prove an impartial arbiter between them, ready to promote either, so far as it shall appear to him conducive to the general interests of the society.”

Janan Ganesh wrote for the FT Aug. 16, 2024 about the perils of socializing too much with your peers. When you lose your job, you will lose your social life at the same time. Janan noted that Tim Walz was the first person on the Democratic presidential ticket since 1980 who was not a lawyer.

Ganesh says all professions deform, and the deformations of law are crippling modern liberalism. What do you mean governor? The Democrats 2024 campaign focus on “constitutional proprieties. An exhausting primness about words and their use.”