Or at least the rules lawyers I have known and gamed with.
I started gaming in 1977, when I started college and discovered Dungeons & Dragons. I was hooked instantly by the idea of being able to _participate_ in the sorts of fantasy adventures I'd only ever read before. We played D&D obsessively for a whole semester. I came back after the Christmas break, ready to game on--and the group had moved on to Traveller. We still played D&D sometimes, but mostly we played Traveller.
And we played it for years, and still called it "Traveller" though it rapidly evolved into a home-brewed system as we threw in bits and pieces of every other game we stumbled across, plus home-made rules we found entertaining. In those pre-cell phone days, I would occasionally get a garbled message via a dorm mate that my friends had called and we were "traveling."
The thing is, we were playing by what appear in retrospect to be incredibly odd rules. The GM made ALL the die rolls in the game. You simply told the GM what you were trying to do, and he'd tell you what happened. It was a great for immersion ("IMMERSE ME!"), and for newbie players who had no clue how the rules worked. You didn't need to know. It also made for more flexible gaming because players didn't think in terms of rules or game mechanics, they just reacted naturally (or cinematically).
I played with that core group of players for fourteen years, until I moved from Virginia to Oregon, where I joined the Western Oregon Wargamers (the RPG sub-group). Over the years, I was amazed by the reactions I usually got when I described that east coast group's approach. The GM made all the die rolls? Burn them! Burn the Heretics! You'd think I'd said, "We raped babies for fun and profit."
The WOW group played the usual way, with players making (most of) their own rolls. They were also unrepentant rules lawyers, one and all. Two in particular just simply lived for the moments when they could blindside the GM (or the other players) with a cunning use of some obscure rule, or airtight logical argument for why some outrageous behavior should have the intended effect. But they all enjoyed the challenge of building the most efficient and/or effective (usually but not always combat-effective) characters possible, and then crushing the enemy with a minimum of risk. And I fit right in. After many years of "diceless" play, I found the change very refreshing.
The thing is, if you knew how to handle them, they weren't a problem.
First, they mostly (especially the two ringleaders) wanted to be recognized for their cleverness. When I ran games for that group, I learned that if I said (not in so many words) "Yes, you're very clever. I applaud your creativity. But, no, you cannot play that monstrosity/pull that trick in my game" they'd generally accept my ruling without complaint. Then, having demonstrated their cunning, they'd settle down to actual role-playing.
Second, one rules lawyer in a group can cause lots of problems. When the group is composed of rules lawyers, they are very much aware that the GM is also perfectly capable of rules lawyering, and he has an infinite supply of points to spend on NPCs. His NPCs were just as capable of being devious and cunning, and laying traps that would murder the PCs just as efficiently and with as little risk as anything the PCs were capable of, so it was generally a good idea to treat him (his NPCs) with some respect.
It also wasn't just rules-lawyering. Some of it was just play-style. This group lived by the military/police axiom that a "fair fight" was for suckers. If you didn't go into a battle with overwhelming superiority, you weren't doing it right (although, of course, they recognized that often you had no choice when the enemy brought the fight to you). A lot of would-be members joined the group briefly, only to depart again soon thereafter because that kind of ruthlessness didn't suit their approach to gaming. I suspect a lot of them ascribed it to their rules lawyering, but that really wasn't the issue.
One of the group members was as much a rules lawyer as the rest of us, but he tended to build his NPCs on the same point totals as our PCs (GURPS, this was) out of some misguided sense of fairness, and he was reluctant to arbitrarily crush us. As a result, we ran roughshod over his games. When the Prince of the City in his Vampire game called two PCs (one was mine) into his office to order them to kill another PC (who had violated the masquerade by having a death duel on live tv...), we laughed in his face. We, the players, knew he WOULDN'T just kill our PCs out of hand, and our PCs were pretty sure they could take the Prince and his minions if it came to a fight. After all, he hadn't had us searched before we entered his presence and we were, as usual, loaded down with weaponry in addition to our powers). Had ANYONE else in the group been the GM for that scene, the PCs would have clicked their heels together, salutely smartly and said "Sir! Yes sir!" because any other GM in our group would have murderized our PCs in a heartbeat for that kind of insolent reaction.
That had nothing to do with rules lawyering and everything to do with play style.
