Here's a frightening fact - 'lawyer' is actually one of the oldest professional trades in human history, along with 'counter'/accountant and 'medicine man.' Ancient Sumer had lawyers. Ancient China developed a legal caste at the same time that half-naked shamans were playing with bones to predict the future. The Egyptian pharaohs had legal advisors.

Even if society 'collapsed,' one of the early trades that will reconstitute itself in the recovery period will be 'lawyer.' The reason that so many books and movies are about law and lawyers is probably because 'lawyer' is a kind of Jungian emergent phenomena with its own Platonic form which always emerges when a society reaches a certain (and relatively low) level of complexity.