The status of contemporary artistic
practice can be ironically summarized with the same slogan: Artists do sometimes fight for bread for the
poor, but their
work at least as often consists in delivering roses to the representatives of the
social elites.
If law societies regulated fees, I suggest it would have two effects (1) increase both the availability of legal services to the
poor generally, and the size of the pool of potential clients who could seriously even consider retaining a lawyer, and (2) in the long term, change the character of the legal professional (as a collection of individuals) for the better by making the
practice of law more like
social work, rather than drawing in the sorts of people who's skills are better employed in such fields as sales and business entrepreneurship.