attorney's education and social values: Notable examples The country lawyer's image – and mythology – has become that of advocate and protector of the common man. Notable American examples include: Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), frontier lawyer (1787–1796), 7th U.S. President (1829–1837) Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), prairie lawyer, 16th U.S. President (1861–1865), Clarence Darrow (1857–1938), leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933), country lawyer (1897–1916), Massachusetts State Legislator (1907–1908), Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts (1910–1911), Massachusetts State Senator (1912–1915), President of the Massachusetts State Senate (1914–1915), Lt. Governor of Massachusetts (1916–1919), Governor of Massachusetts (1919–1921), U.S. Vice-President (1921–1923), 30th U.S. President (1923–1929) Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954), last U.S. Supreme Court justice (1941–1954) not to have graduated from law school, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials (1945–1946). Deane C. Davis (1900-1990), Governor of Vermont. Sam Ervin (1896–1985), Democratic U.S. Senator (1954–1974), and leading member of Congressional committees involved in discrediting McCarthy in 1954 and Nixon in 1974. (Ervin eventually graduated from Harvard Law School three years after being admitted to the bar, but still self-identified as "a simple country lawyer".) Strom Thurmond (1902–2003), Edgefield (South Carolina) Town and County Attorney (1930–1938), Circuit Judge, Governor of South Carolina (1947–1951), United States Senator (1956–2003), Presidential candidate (1948). Bobby Lee Cook (1925–2021), defense attorney from Summerville, Georgia, reputed to have been the inspiration for the television character Ben Matlock Notable Canadian examples include: John A. Macdonald (1815–1891), 1st Prime Minister of Canada (1867–1873) John Sparrow David Thompson (1845–1894), 4th Prime Minister of Canada (1892–1894) Robert Borden (1854–1937), 9th Prime Minister of Canada (1911–1920) References Lawyers by type