By Nat Jacobs
The phrase “First we kill all the lawyers” is a line from William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2. It is often misinterpreted as the Elizabethan equivalent of a lawyer joke but hidden within its true meaning is a message that is as relevant in 2025 as when it was written.
In the play, this line is spoken by the lawless rebel Jack Cade during a planned uprising against the government. The quote is not a true sentiment of Shakespeare’s but an illustration that to overthrow the rule of law and establish a totalitarian state, one must first remove the lawyers who uphold it. Indeed, rather than serving as a genuine criticism of lawyers, this line is, in fact, a high compliment to the legal profession’s crucial role in preserving justice and democracy.
Among the political systems of democratic nations, the United States stands out as the most legalistic — meaning that decisions that are often made by bureaucracies in other countries are made by courts in our country. Judges, of course, are not making these decisions in a vacuum. They are the result of lawyers making arguments to them, often in an adversarial posture.
The combination of this adversarial approach to settling disagreements, coupled with the opaque language of lawyering (“legalese”), conjure negative impressions of attorneys and the legal system by the general public. But there is much that we can learn from lawyers and the legal system about how to resolve our disagreements non-violently.
More so now than ever before in our lifetimes, lawyers serve the important function of protecting our civil liberties. If a masked assailant popped out of a van and abducted someone from a busy street, the police would be called and would use any/all resources at their disposal to apprehend the suspect and free the victim. Simply put, our laws do not allow kidnapping and police exist in part to see that these laws are enforced.
Now picture the same scenario but with the police being the masked abductors. In that case, it is not police that can be relied upon to enforce the rights of the person who has been taken in violation of the law. Only attorneys, backed by the power of our state and federal constitutions — and the rights they grant us — can stand in the way of such illegal use of government power.
As lawyers, we also have a responsibility to our communities to de-escalate — or at the very least, not participate in — toxic or violent political dialogue. It is easy to become carried away by the currents of our newsfeeds, comment sections, and outrage cultures. It is much harder to have a respectful discussion or debate with a person with whom we strongly disagree.
Lawyers are trained to both think critically and engage civilly with their adversaries. Now more than ever, this combination of skills is crucial to bring down the temperature of our interactions with our neighbors, family members, and our public servants.
I ask everyone, but especially those of us who have the privilege and honor of legal training, to use your power responsibly. Use every opportunity to curate face-to-face conversations with your adversaries. Be curious and committed to dialogue. Don’t assume that you will be able to convince someone that they are wrong, or persuade them to your point of view. Listen to what they have to say and be polite but firm about your disagreement.
If you take the opportunity to have these conversations in the real world instead of online, I promise you find much more common ground than you first believed.
The best antidote to hate is not love but respectful disagreement.
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Nat Jacobs is a lawyer and Clallam-Jefferson County Pro-Bono Lawyers volunteer based in Jefferson County
