Recent research published in personality and individual differences presents evidence that public perceptions of the lawyer’s character have changed significantly over the past 120 years. After analyzing millions of books, researchers found that while lawyers are highly honest and open to new experiences, society tends to view them as increasingly lacking in warmth. These findings suggest that the way we write about the legal profession reflects broader cultural and historical changes in the workplace and society.
Throughout history, the legal profession has held a complex place in the public imagination. People often expect them to act as defenders of justice, but they also frequently face criticism of being selfish or morally ambiguous.
These conflicting stereotypes determine the extent to which citizens trust the legal system. Whether society views lawyers as noble advocates or manipulators has a direct impact on their professional authority. Because of these tensions, researchers wanted to understand exactly how societal depictions of lawyers have changed over time.
“The idea came from both TV and movie depictions and real-world litigation. We noticed that lawyers are often portrayed in very different ways, which got us interested: How has this profession actually been portrayed over time?” says Zehua (Rankie) Jiang, who conducted the study with colleagues from Zhejiang University.
Scientists aimed to map these evolving stereotypes by observing everyday language. By examining a vast collection of written documents, they hoped to capture the key characteristics associated with the profession across different historical periods.
Researchers analyzed the text of 14,953,356 English books published between 1900 and 2019. The researchers used a large database known as the Google Books Ngram dataset. This database contains millions of digitized texts of various genres.
The research team focused on the Big Five personality traits, a widely accepted psychological model that categorizes human personality into candor, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Openness refers to creativity and intellectual curiosity, while integrity includes being organized, practical, and responsible. Extraversion refers to sociable and energetic behavior. Agreeableness relates to being cooperative and friendly, while neuroticism relates to emotional instability or anxiety.
Scientists created a list of 315 adjectives related to these five traits. Then, using computer programming, we searched for each time these adjectives appeared right next to the words “attorney” or “attorney” in a book.
To establish a baseline for comparison, the researchers also tracked how often these same adjectives were used to describe “people.” They calculated relative frequencies to account for the fact that the total number of books published increased significantly over the century.
The analysis revealed patterns in how writers portray the legal profession. Overall, the most frequently mentioned personality trait over the 120-year period was conscientiousness.
The salience of different features varied over time. From 1900 to 1939, the most common characteristic used to describe lawyers was “collaborative.”
Since the 1940s, integrity became a key descriptor and remained at the top until the late 1990s. The researchers noted that words such as “realistic,” “conservative,” and “ambitious” were used consistently during this period.
The rise of conscientiousness in the mid-twentieth century may be related to the postwar expansion of corporate law firms. These large organizations may value hard work, reliability, and strict organizational discipline.
By the 2010s, openness surpassed all other characteristics to become the most frequently discussed aspect of lawyers. Scientists suggest that this recent shift may reflect a broader cultural shift that emphasizes individualism, creativity and innovation in the workplace. While extraversion remained relatively stable in fourth place throughout this century, neuroticism was rarely mentioned.
“The changes over time were very interesting. Lawyers were said to be more personable in the early years, more responsible later on, and more open and innovative in recent years,” Zhang told Cypost. “Overall, the most emphasized trait when describing lawyers is integrity. Lawyers are often portrayed as being more honest, open, outgoing, emotionally stable, and somewhat less affable than the ‘typical person.'”
The scientists also evaluated the polarity of these descriptions. That is, we checked whether the adjective was positive or negative. Compared to the general public, lawyers are rated much more positively in the areas of honesty, openness, and extraversion.
At the same time, lawyers were portrayed more negatively in terms of being agreeable and neurotic. Indeed, the data provides evidence that the cooperation gap between lawyers and the general public has widened over time, with lawyers being portrayed as increasingly uncooperative and more aggressive.
Perceptions of extraversion also experienced significant changes. Before the 1960s, lawyers were considered more extroverted than the general public, but this score declined sharply in the 1990s, eventually dropping below the average person’s score.
It is important to note that these historical portraits represent society’s stereotypes rather than the actual personality traits of lawyers in the real world. This research captures how the profession is constructed within social and cultural conversations, which may not fully align with how individual legal professionals act in their personal lives.
The research design also has some limitations. The scientists analyzed only English-language books, so their results may not apply to other linguistic or cultural contexts around the world.
Going forward, “we’re interested in looking at other professions, and we’re also working on a more general framework for tracking personality descriptions over time,” Jiang said.
The study, “Lawyer Personality Description: 120 Years of Big Data Analysis of English Books,” was authored by Liang Xu, Yiwen Wu, and Zehua Jiang.
