Lawyers Have Been Unpopular for a Long Time

From p. 1064, footnote 19 of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the first volume of which was published in 1776:

The Germans, who exterminated Varus and his legions, had been particularly offended with the Roman laws and lawyers. One of the barbarians, after the effectual precautions of cutting out the tongue of an advocate and sewing up his mouth, observed with much satisfaction that the viper could no longer hiss.