Lawyers

"I feel creepy when I'm around one." he told me. We reflected on the Communist Party rule in totalitarian states and how the lawyer was the new aparatchik.
"But I like lawyer's,"I said, quite surprising myself by my having positive feelings for glorified arts students. As a scientist I'm rather more fond of Engineers professionally.
"I was astonished to learn that so much of their work is done for free and costs to support a case were done out of pocket. The lawyers I know don't get paid from their suits until after the trial. They have to have a lot of committment and carry a tremendous amount of risk."
"Like dentists who have all that upfront investment in equipment and have to take out all manner of loan before getting a practice going."
"That's what bothers me about lawyers. The more I get to know them and the more I work with them the more I understand and appreciate where they're coming from. It pays to be paranoid and take a jaundiced view when you're putting up the money."
"So the lawyers we don't like are the 'politico's. They make the laws and fix the laws and then benefit from the laws. They're no different from the politicians who vote their own pay cheques. "
"Those lawyers are above the pay grade of the all the other lawyers. More commonly than not their 'connection' isn't just law but old money and old blood."

We talked a bit more about this. And no one made a lawyer joke. That was really odd.