Among the historians who look to Egypt for legal profession roots is Russ VerSteeg, the author of the book Law in the Ancient World and the articles “The Machinery of Law in Pharaonic Egypt: Organization, Courts and Judges on the Ancient Nile” and “Legal Procedure and the Law of Evidence in Ancient Egypt.” VerSteeg acknowledges that “although there were no professional lawyers” in our sense of the term, there was a class of professional Egyptian engraves that received specialized training in preparing legal documents for insistent, and writing wills and numerous other legal services for a fee. The author describes the Book of the Dead as evidence of a scribe’s character:
“The general reliance upon such devices for escaping ultimate responsibility for an unworthy life." VerSteeg places special significance upon the scribes because the Egyptian system of law did not have a system of appellate courts. This meant that accusers only had one chance to prove their case, even if new evidence came to light. According to VerSteeg, accusers needed to use scribes to make sure a victory in the Great Court. By appealing to the necessity of the scribes in the Egyptian court, the author successfully parallels the role Egyptian scribes with one role of modern lawyers: “Much the same could be said regarding clever lawyers today who are able to free the guilty on technicalities or with persuasive speech." Although VerSteeg successfully connects the scribes to the “behind the scenes” role of the modern lawyer, he has ignored the fact that modern lawyers also advocate for their clients in court. Scribes merely draft documents, and therefore do not possess all of the qualities of a modern lawyer.
In Great Sophists in Periclean Athens, De Romilly describes orators as individuals highly educated in influential communication. During the first century B.C., after the fame of Cicero in Rome, court jurists served three functions: ad respondendum (answering legal questions and giving legal advice), ad agendum (preparing a case for court), and ad cavendum (drafting documents). De Romilly quarrels that the sole function of the modern lawyer is ad respondum, or “responding,” which was considered the Roman jurists most important task. Ultimately, De Romilly outright denies the possibility that ancient Greek sophists are the origin of modern lawyers.
Overall, the sophists’ primary function was to teach the youth of Athens, which De Romilly demonstrates through Plato’s The Apology, in which sophists are described as professionally paid teachers, not lawyers. De Romilly agrees with the concept that sophists were trained as orators and thoroughly taught the art of rhetoric, but she denies the possibility that sophists actively pursued professions in law, like the logographoi. Instead, a legal advocatus, which was a separate profession that developed later in Rome, which happened to have the orating qualities of a well educated rhetorician, developed into the modern lawyer profession. De Romilly’s purpose in writing her book was to defend the name of sophists by separating them from the legendary character of lawyers. She did not want the sophists to be associated with the now tainted image of a lawyer.
