“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” — When William Shakespeare placed these words in the mouth of the rebel Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, Part II, he was not mocking lawyers — he was saluting them. The line appears in a scene where a mob dreams of a world without laws, contracts, or courts. To “kill all the lawyers” is their first step toward chaos, because lawyers alone stand between anarchy and civilization. In that sense, Shakespeare’s seemingly cruel line is the highest compliment ever paid to the legal profession. It acknowledges that the rule of law — however tedious or technical — is society’s last defence against tyranny.
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