And weâre not just talking about the defendants. The system itself has changed. Often that has been for the better, as with the dramatic increase in the number of female lawyers in a profession once considered âunladylikeâ because it meant consorting with suspects. He sees judges now regularly confer with prosecutors and defense attorneys to try to resolve cases, something pretty much unheard of when he broke in with the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo in 1962. And no longer are suspects paraded down the street, handcuffed to one another, from jail to the court building in a twice-a-day-public spectacle.