Catherine Crier: who better to write an angry new book called The Case Against Lawyers than a former prosecutor, civil litigator, and state judge--who is now an anchor for Court TV? ("Live" with TAE).(Interview)

Catherine Crier still ranks as the youngest person in Texas history to win election as a state judge. "I was voted in on my 30th birthday, in 1984," she says. Before that, Crier had worked as a prosecutor in the Dallas County district attorney's office, fresh out of Southern Methodist University's law school. She also had a brief career as a civil litigator.

Her years of observing the legal profession up close have left Crier with a less-than-noble view of many of the law's practitioners. She was an outspoken critic of legalistic evasions during the Clinton administration, warning that "the rule of law is not a popularity contest where the most likable, most ...