During this lecture, Scott Cummings, Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics at the UCLA School of Law, will talk about his research into why and how lawyers attack the rule of law. His paper explores the role of lawyers in democratic backsliding – the degradation of democratic institutions and practices using law rather than violence. The papers central aim is to set an agenda and outline an approach to studying the professional paradox at the center of backsliding: why and how lawyers attack the rule of law. It thus seeks to shift the scholarly lens from the conventional view of lawyers as defenders of democracy to investigate lawyers as authors of autocracy. Toward that end, the paper theorizes the legal profession as a site of backsliding, outlining a framework that positions lawyers in relation to distinct pathways of autocratization on the slow road of gradual democratic decline and the fast track of imminent democratic attack.