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BAR DISCIPLINE. In the first part of this century, lawyers gradually established the exclusive right to punish errant members. Since then discipline has been invoked mainly for small-time lawyers with no connections. Though a committee chaired by the late Justice Tom Clark in 1970 labeled bar discipline practices "a scandalous situation," few improvements have resulted. One New York lawyer refused to bring his criminal defendant to trial until his fee was paid; then he intercepted $1,500 intended as bail money. The bar refused to act against him, calling the incident a mere "fee dispute."

ETHICS ENFORCEMENT. If the legal profession has been reluctant to discipline its shadier practitioners, it has been swift to crack down on anyone threatening to cut fees or reduce business. Citing the Canons of Ethics, which prohibits the unauthorized practice of law, bar officials have sought injunctions or even jail terms for laymen writing manuals on avoiding probate or divorce fees, and for real estate specialists performing routine title searches. Similarly, the bar fought desperately to preserve its minimum-fee schedules (which amounted to a monopoly pricing system) and to quell both lawyer advertising and development of group legal service plans. The bar has lost all six Supreme Court decisions on these matters.

Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that some Americans have grown cynical about lawyers—and the law. What is more, every day's newspaper offers up fresh horror stories. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court entertained arguments over which state—Texas or California—can tax Howard Hughes' estate, a corpulent, multimillion-dollar carcass currently being swarmed over (and relentlessly slimmed down) by as many as 200 attorneys. Thanks to painfully slow bar discipline, a northern California lawyer named Jerome Lewis is still practicing law despite a $100,000 malpractice judgment against him in 1970 and a $60,000 judgment including punitive damages in 1974 for defrauding clients of money. When four law firms extracted more than $50,000 in fees and still failed to settle her husband's modest estate in eight years, a Maine widow started a well-received organization called Law Inc. (for Lay Advocates at Work). The group responds to complaints against lawyers, pushes for a state grievance board and teaches people how to handle their own affairs without an attorney.

That organization, born out of frustration, may be a harbinger of the future. The explosion of rights cases, liability cases, regulatory cases and a swarm of others has produced monumental jams and backlogs in civil courts at every level. The traditional response has been to propose more of the same—more judges, more courts, more lawyers for the nonrich, more regulations governing conduct. The bar, for its part, has responded slowly, by broadening public participation on disciplinary panels, requiring continuing legal education, setting standards for specialization credentials and attempting to tighten supervision of unethical conduct. The spread of advertising by lawyers and an oversupply of job-hungry law graduates may do their part to reduce price gouging by lawyers.