 The first known lawyer was William Forsyth, who wrote History of Lawyers, Ancient and Modern in 1875. Forsyth initiated his research on the lawyers’ origins simply because he believed such a feat had never been challenged, and he wanted to be the first author to accumulate a history of lawyers. Several decades after the first periodical of Forsyth’s history, Charles S. Wheeler, both a lawyer and author, made the first fictional and historical effort to fight society’s negative view of lawyers, which is correctly described in this phrase: “You cannot pluck a pearl of ethics from the shop of a shyster.” In 1903, in an address to Stanford law students tells that they need to acquire an education because it encourages the assimilation of ethics, which is the key to becoming the ideal lawyer. More highly, in this speech Wheeler gives a description of what he believes is the origin and evolution of the lawyer profession in an attempt to defend the modern lawyer.
Charles S. Wheeler’s speech, which was intended to bring back the esteem of the lawyer profession, gave rise to a small number of historians who became interested in the historical origins of the lawyer profession.
The answer to the question where and when does the lawyer profession begin? lies in three distinct categories of explanation The first group argues that modern American lawyers invented from the professional inscribes of ancient Egypt, while a second group insists that modern lawyers developed from the logographoi of ancient Athens. A third and final group disprove both the Egyptian and Athenian origins, and put forth the argument that modern lawyers developed from the jurists of the Roman Republic. All three explanations differ observing exactly where and when lawyers originated, but all agree that lawyers originated from some time and place in the ancient world.
William Forsyth gives his argument regarding lawyer origins in his History of Lawyers, Ancient and Modern. In this book, which is the first of its kind, Forsyth explains that the role of the logographoi as the people in Athens who most nearly relate to our modern idea of a lawyer. According to Forsyth, at times a logographoi would create legal speeches for both sides of a case, which shows the logographoi’s exceptional knowledge of the law and influential use of rhetoric. The author makes the point that although modern lawyers cannot legally or morally represent both sides of a case, they do groups the same argument ability as the logographoi.
Although Robert Bonner’s argument is similar to Forsyth’s in that he presumes the argument that the closet “ancestor” of modern lawyers is the logographoi of fifth-century Athens, he does set up the idea that if Athenian legal advocates had been able to speak as liberally for the complainant as the logographoi was to write for him, the legal advocate would have been a much closer “relation” to our idea of a lawyer. Unfortunately the lawful advocate did not have those freedoms.
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