It's in the public interest for the job of advocate to exist and be manned and be performed with as much energy as any other job. There are already far more people whos job is to try to attack them than to defend them. Some day it will be you and I guess everyone should just assume they know you're guilty too. As long as it kinda looks that way to all us who weren't there, good enough!

individual people can hire lawyer advocates as is done across society. It doesn't have to be in a union's purview to turn every individual's screwup into a cause celebre entailing the full collective weight of the organization.

so yes, you're right, it's a choice, it can be done this way, but I'm right to draw conclusions from that as to what role unions play in their struggle vs the public interest.

Maybe you believe the unions should be some policing authority for their respective domains? Well, they're not, and it's not their fault for being different than what you imagined. Their stated goal is to protect their members, which is exactly what they do. There are other authorities mandated to regulate and check and we see them at work right now. So the whole system is working just as designed, nothing to see, let's move on.

"individual people can hire lawyer"

Individual people can also form unions.