Growth of the Profession.

As colonial society developed and commercial activity grew, so too did the need for competent legal counsel. The earliest colonists had brought with them the long-standing English sentiment against lawyers and had tried to do without them. Massachusetts (1641), Virginia (1658), and the Carolinas (1669) enacted statutes that prohibited pleading in court for hire. Gradually, at first, and with increasing momentum by the 1750s, lawyers became seen as a necessary evil. However, untrained or unprincipled practitioners created problems. In North Carolina lawyers were described as "cursed hungry caterpillars [whose fees] eat out the very bowels of our commonwealth." In 1771 John Adams described a tavern keeper who kept two books on a shelf in his tavern so that he could be "a sort of lawyer among [his customers]." In each colony the courts or the legislatures set rules limiting the ability of...