The American legal profession is in fact many different professions, performing different specialized tasks, representing different clienteles, and confronting different economic and ethical challenges. We begin with history: how did the main institutions of the profession – firms, practice specialties, law schools, and the organized bar’s rules regulating admission, training, and ethics -- come to be the way they are? We then examine briefly and critically the ethic of adversary advocacy that is the dominant ideology of the bar; and look at some distinct areas of current practice – corporate law, plaintiffs’ personal-injury law, and criminal prosecution and defense. Finally we try to guess at possible futures of a profession struggling with pressures from clients and with competition from other professions, paraprofessionals, and new technologies to streamline services and cut costs; and demands from unserved or underserved clienteles for solutions to their legal problems.