[SwellJoe]

Cool. I agree with you. There isn't very strong pressure to play nice in the current system...what pressure there is comes from judges, who often have been practicing lawyers and may be again in the future (or they may be hired by the bar association itself), so they may be inclined to keep the status quo if it is economically beneficial to them. Competition probably wouldn't put any additional pressure on this, though it might, if the higher standards led to some sort of better economic outcome for the membership. But, I don't see how that would necessarily come to pass given the incentives to play dirty.