>Either they're more effective than other lawyers, in which case we're not all equal under the law, or they're just as good as any other lawyer.

This is a problem with the nuance of law, not lawyers. The thing that finally clicked for me was talking with a lawyer at a electronics meetup. He was talking about some aspect of the law, and I realized that lawyers are just hackers. The system that they try to exploit is the law, rather than a computer.

Your money gets you a better hacker. The system is the same for everyone, but the interface is flexible.