Today, that sense of professional role is changing, with gathering speed. Responding to the insistent blandishments and pressure of the media, which have surrendered their own sense of responsibility to competition with the tabloid press, lawyers play to the public. Trial in court becomes secondary, merely setting the stage for the main event. Professor Chemerinsky approves of that. To me, that is a profoundly disturbing development.
Legal proceedings become an entertainment, a sideshow that no one takes seriously.
No one believes what lawyers say, and the very speech that is protected is cheapened. The legal profession is tarnished. Lawyers become hucksters, and the client himself may be tarnished, one more product to be sold to a savvy, disbelieving public, like a bar of soap. No system of justice, no legal process, can command respect if it carries no weight beyond the four walls of the courtroom. In this context, as in others, rights go hand in hand with responsibility.