It seems to me that the reason that lawyers become the butt of so many jokes is that many of them, at least the ones that become visible, a la Johnny Cochran, are working for money, often LOTS of money, but don't seem to have too many scruples about whether their clients are murderers or not. They are like the old sophists of the ancient world, arguing for the sake of arguing, interested primarily in winning the argument, not in establishing truth. Our adversarial legal system is set up that way. Some of us out here in the real world work for relatively little money, compared to lawyers, but are scrupulously honest. Sometimes, I dare say, we remember that old line about no good deed going unpunished, and we feel something less that charitable toward lawyers.