Atticus Finch is one of the most esteemed lawyer heroes in popular fiction. To Kill a Mockingbird is a story set in a place, a town, a community, and a region of the country. Consider the difficulties Ms. Caroline encounters in her first day of 1st grade teaching in Maycomb. Learning a place requires learning about people and learning about people requires empathy for those you're trying to learn about. We live from place to place, vesting our lives in places other than where we were born, in places and with people we do not know.
People are people.
Atticus seems to be as comfortable in being a lawyer as he is living in Maycomb. But even Atticus has his limits. I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.