pettifogger

plural pettifoggers

1. Someone who quibbles over trivia, and raises petty, annoying objections and sophistry.

   Hence the cunning measure of appointing as ambassador some political pettifogger skilled in delays, sophisms, and misapprehensions, and dexterous in the art of baffling argument.

   1809, Washington Irving, chapter 39, in Knickerbocker's History of New York

   Synonyms: nitpicker

2. An unscrupulous or unethical lawyer, especially one of lesser skill.

   . . .yet he has never sought by browbeating and other arts of the pettifogger, to confuse, baffle, and bewilder a witness. . . .

   1885, The Bay State Monthly, volume 3, number 6

   3 more examples

   "An inn, or a tavern . . . these are places where greasy citizens take pipe and pot, where the knavish pettifoggers of the law spunge on their most unhappy victims.

   1822, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 11, in The Fortunes of Nigel

   This gentleman (for such he was, however strange ladies who class country attorneys with vulgar pettifoggers in fashionable novels may deem the assertion) was the son of a brave officer,...

   1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter LXX, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 257

   "Donald Hughes, well known in Minneapolis as a conscienceless shyster, was placed in charge of the case. . . . Mr. Edgerton, a high class, reputable lawyer, was called in of counsel from another city to lend respectability to the crooked, unprincipled, blackmailing pettifogger, Hughes."

   1926 June 28, “National Affairs: Blind Mans Huff”, in Time

   Synonyms: shyster