This year's Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association has been going on in Port-Harcourt, capital of oil-rich Rivers State, for the past one week or so. Significantly, the climax of the conference was the election held yesterday to choose a new helmsman and those who will help him to pilot the affairs of the nation's foremost professional Association for the next two years. The conference theme which is Law and Justice in Emerging Democracies: The Challenge Before the Legal Profession in Africa, combined with the scheduled elections, throws up a number of burning issues for debate. But, first things first and this concerns the age-long controversy about the role of Lawyers in society and the perceived inadequacies. There is not a shred of doubt that rightly or wrongly, Lawyers have always been at the butt of jokes and have for various reasons faced negative description in the most pejorative way by laymen, other professionally minded persons, and mischief makers alike.