Sources of Anti-Lawyer Sentiment in Massachusetts, 1740-1840

Explaining the Origins of the Advertising Agency

“…72 Statistical studies of lawyers in the Northeast for the time period show a strong majority of lawyers came from families that practiced law-lawyers literally begat lawyers. 73 The other piece of circumstantial evidence is that nearly all of the work Palmer did, as a real estate and coal agent and as a canal treasurer, was work done by lawyers. 74 Even his civic obligations were consistent with duties discharged by lawyers (e.g., serving as a Congressional elector in New Jersey).…”

“To Exalt the Profession”: Association, Ethics, and Editors in the Early Republic

“…50 The Massachusetts legislature in 1835 "completely overturned the power of the lawyers and their bar associations to control the admissions to the practice of law through the courts," establishing automatic admission to practice for "any candidate who had studied law in the office of any attorney of the state for three years." 51 Doctors likewise "had much less influence, income, and prestige" in much of the century, and "'In all of our American colleges,' a professional journal commented bitterly in 1869, 'medicine has ever been and is now, the most despised of all the professions which liberally-educated men are expected to enter."' 52 And while the University of Pennsylvania boasted the first medical school in America in 1765, "the average practicing physician until well along in the last century received his training by acting as an apprentice to some noted practitioner."…”