Courts could not exist under the American system without lawyers
to stand between litigants and the judge or jury. It is a system
that requires written pleadings, originally very artificial in
form and still somewhat so. It imposes many limitations on the
introduction of evidence, which often seem to shut out what ought
to be admitted, and rest on reasons not apparent to any who have
not been specially instructed in legal history. It divides the
decision of a cause between judge and jury in a manner only to be
understood after a long and close study. It gives a defeated
party a right of review dependent on a number of technical rules,
and to be availed of only by those who are skilled in the
preparation of law papers of a peculiar kind.

A class of men has therefore been set apart to keep the people
from direct approach to the bench, except when they may desire to
argue their own cases, which rarely occurs.

In England there are two such barriers, the class of barristers
and the class of attorneys. The attorneys keep the people from
access to the barristers; the barristers keep the attorneys from
access to the court. The attorney prepares the case, represents
his client in the proceedings preliminary to the trial, and
assists the barrister whom he may retain at the trial, but cannot
examine a witness or argue the cause.

In America we do not thus divide lawyers into two classes. There
are many of them who never in fact address the court, but it is
not because they have not a legal right to do so. Every member
of the bar of any court has all the legal rights of any other
member of it.