Looking for legal assistance? Look no further. We turn to attorneys in times of need, derived as they are from the French à, “to” and tourner, “to turn” — enabling them “to act on behalf of another.”

Somehow along the way, however, they got detoured, literally “turned away from” their mission. Take the Philadelphia lawyer (18thC.), a “clever practitioner of the law.” Please.

The term originated with Alexander Hamilton who in 1735, while attorney general of Philadelphia, secured the acquittal of publisher, John Peter Zenger, on charges of criminal libel, thereby establishing the principle of freedom of the press and himself and his city as all that is good about the profession.

It’s been downhill ever since. When lawyers gathered together in Saratoga New York on August 8, 1878 to form the American Bar Association, its initial membership included mouthpieces (1857), from their most prominent asset and shysters (1834) from the German scheise, “s**t.” In 1897, they added ambulance chasers.

No accident, that when we call someone a Philadelphia lawyer today, we’re referring to one who knows the law and how to manipulate it. Not to despair however. As Ben Franklin noted, “God works wonders now and then/ Behold a lawyer, an honest man.”