It is fitting that Mormon first mentions “many merchants.” In Mesoamerica these “merchants” are inextricably related to trade networks. In a world where most of the necessities of life are made in the individual home, the trade networks supply the luxuries, or the items connoting wealth. One of the ways that the wealth accumulates is through these traders, but it is also they who bring in the ideas from the lands from which the elite goods are acquired. Mormon continues his description of society by noting that there were also “many lawyers, and many officers.” We must remember that this is not simple description, but that Mormon is describing this information as part of his picture of a society heading away from God and towards destruction.
Mormon’s issue is not with the merchants, or specifically with lawyers nor officers. Mormon is not precursor to early lawyer jokes. What he is noting is that specialized functions are arising, and arising in positions that assume authority and precedence. These positions in the Mesomaerican cultural milieu are suggestive of social hierarchy. Once again, it is this social segregation that Mormon sees as the problem. The issue isn’t really the lawyer, but the fact that the position of the lawyer comes as a manifestation of a society that assumes that some are better than others.