Roman Lawyers

I've undertaken a long-term project, namely reading Edward Gibbon's 18th century opus "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Widely criticized for his secular views, it would seem however that the Church wasn't the only thing Gibbon disliked. Here's what he has to say about the practice of law in the 4th century:

“ The noble art (of law), which had once been preserved as the sacred inheritance of the patricians, was fallen into the hands of freedmen and plebeians, who, with cunning rather than with skill, exercised a sordid and pernicious trade. Some of them procured admittance into families for the purpose of fomenting differences, of encouraging suits, and of preparing a harvest of gain for themselves or their brethren. Others, recluse in their chambers, maintained the gravity of legal professors, by furnishing a rich client with subtleties to confound the plainest truth, and with arguments to colour the most unjustifiable pretensions. The splendid and popular class was composed of the advocates, who filled the Forum with the sound of their turgid and loquacious rhetoric. Careless of fame and justice, they are described for the most part as ignorant and rapacious guides, who conducted their clients through a maze of expense, delay, and of disappointment; from whence, after a tedious series of years, they were at length dismissed, when their patience and fortune were almost exhausted. “