It makes legal advice more constantly essential to the corporation and the individual than any European political system.

The lawyer, just as much as the millionaire and the politician, has reaped a bountiful harvest from the inefficiency and irresponsibility of American state governments, and from the worship of individual rights.
They have corporations in Europe, but they have nothing corresponding to the American corporation lawyer.

The ablest American lawyers have been retained by the special interests.

In some cases they have been retained to perform tasks which must have been repugnant to honest men; but that is not the most serious aspect of the situation.

The retainer which the American legal profession has accepted from the corporations inevitably increases its natural tendency to a blind conservatism; and its influence has been used not for the purpose of extricating the large corporations from their dubious and dangerous legal situation, but for the purpose of keeping them entangled in its meshes.