David:

　　The United States is a country that places a great emphasis on law. Surging use of the courts to resolve disputes has made the legal profession a "hot" industry, and the social status of American lawyers has long been rather high. In the past, many parents would wish for their sons to become lawyers or their daughters to marry lawyers. (Nowadays, of course, parents want their daughters to become lawyers too.)

　　Not surprisingly, lawyers tend to earn handsome incomes. How much an experienced lawyer makes in the US depends on whom he or she is working for. Working for the government as a prosecutor is different from working as a defense attorney. A mid-level government prosecutor can earn from $70,000 to $100,000 a year. Defense attorneys can earn anywhere from $30,000 to millions of dollars, depending on whether they are public defenders or private defense attorneys. (The big bucks are definitely in private practice.)

　　I should add, though, that over the last twenty to thirty years Americans' views of lawyers have darkened somewhat, largely as a result of the growth in the number of questionable legal cases.There is nothing wrong with lawsuits per se, but many Americans now feel that some lawyers encourage clients to initiate frivolous lawsuits. A few years ago there was a notorious case against McDonald's: someone in a McDonald's restaurant had ordered a cup of coffee to go, and as she was drinking the coffee back in her car, it spilled and scalded her leg badly. She sued the restaurant chain, contending that McDonald's should have been warning customers not to drink a hot beverage while driving. She won the lawsuit and received millions of dollars in compensation. A lot of Americans concluded that, but for①a greedy lawyer, this lawsuit would not have happened.

　　As a result of well-known cases of this kind, the prestige of lawyers is not what it once was. There is a joke in the US: "What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? Answer: A good start!" This little joke gives expression to the antipathy many Americans claim to feel toward lawyers -- ridiculing lawyers has become an American habit. Nonetheless, I think I would still encourage any child of mine who was clever with words to become a lawyer. The work lawyers do is in fact indispensable for our society. What is more, studying law is often the first step to a career in politics.

　　Victor:

　　Ordinary Chinese have a high opinion of lawyers, mainly thanks to the positive image of lawyers projected in foreign movies. Among those who actually deal with Chinese lawyers, such good feelings drop dramatically. One reason for this is that lawyers here tend to charge very high fees. A second reason is that many lawyers depend on guanxi (contacts) in the conduct of their work. A third reason is that the level of professionalism among Chinese lawyers isn't all that impressive; too often their presentations are a far cry from②the wonderful public speaking that people have seen in films.

　　Lawyers are starting to play increasingly important roles in society and the economy. In the past, lawyers primarily handled civil matters, but now lawyers work in many fields, including some that do not involve litigation, such as helping to reconfigure joint-stock companies and protecting the rights of suspects during investigations.

　　But two problems have emerged. First, as their role has expanded,lawyers have tended to focus on what they see as the more profitable areas of law. Instead of civil suits or modest inheritance and divorce cases, they are eager to undertake lucrative notarial work for new companies, real estate firms and the like. Second, although the expertise demanded by the legal profession has increased, the phenomenon of relying on guanxi remains serious. The work lawyers do requires them to establish and maintain good relations with judges. I don't like this very much; in fact, that's why I chose not to become a lawyer myself.…