only lawyers care what the laws say. I care about what's right and good and leads to prosperity for people I care about (which is to a greater or lesser extent everyone)

It's the lawyers job to make the laws align with some version of the above, and many of them, like most other people with power in society, are doing a willfully terrible job of it

This is not correct. It's a politician's job to make them selfrich by any means necessary. It's a lawyer's job to make you pay for as many hours as possible.

correct - "a" lawyer. a single lawyer is but a cog in the machine. Lawyers as a whole, as an institution, however are at least ostensibly supposed to exist for some benefit to society. They, like other institutions, must act to prevent principal agent problems. And like other institutions, they are failing dramatically