Lawyer unpopularity tracked the business cycle and debtor grievances

Evidence

The two groups—​loyalists and revolutionaries—​might have canceled each other out in the public mind. If they did not, the reasons lawyers were unpopular must lie somewhat deeper. Some lawyers, not Tories themselves, defended the Tories against state confiscation laws. Between 1780 and 1800, Alexander Hamilton built a career working for these unpopular clients. Yet, even this fact does not explain very much. There were broader social forces at work. Animus against lawyers rose and fell with the business cycle. In Massachusetts, during Shays’s Rebellion, there were uprisings against courts and lawyers; the lawyers seemed to be partners of creditors in the oppression of debtors. It was a common lay opinion that the law was all tricks and technicalities, manipulated by unscrupulous men who built legal careers “upon the ruins of the distressed.” — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1809