I’m afraid usage will always trump literal meaning and the expression is now accepted in its wider context of a few:
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/handful
http://www.reference.com/example-sentences/handful

Besides one of the wonders of English is its ability to go from literal to metaphorical meaning with ease. Something Maltese seems to have lost
(although I recently heard of someone who had been observing a fish whilst fishing and saying that’ ‘talwaqt nitradih’ meaning to bait and catch him, which i thought was a great metaphor of the relationship between fisherman and fish

Not sure if you are talking about the girth of lawyers or nitpicking about the language.

Size doesn’t really enter the picture in the expression ‘a handful of… ‘

Two examples from the BBC speak of a handful of people http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022m7bf
and a handful of countries
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b049kmk2/hardtalk-lord-falconer-former-uk-secretary-of-state-for-justice
The expression is even more prevalent in American newspapers

[Daphne – I’m afraid it’s laughably used there too. ‘A handful’ is not interchangeable with ‘a few’. It’s ‘a handful of corn’ but ‘a few countries’ and ‘a few lawyers’. A handful is exactly what it says it is, in the same way as ‘a mouthful’. How can you have a handful of countries? Mistakes are incorporated into the language through ignorance. It doesn’t follow that you have to join in. ‘To practice’ is cropping up rather a lot on the BBC site nowadays – it doesn’t make it right. A handful of lawyers, indeed…]

[Daphne – I decided against posting about that, in case the Taghna Lkollers think it’s cronyism.]

First take over the media, infiltrate all government departments, the Central Bank and Bank of Valletta, state authorities and agencies, and run the country while Lawrence Gonzi runs the government, fund an election campaign and the Labour Party for the years to come through backroom deals, win the election, take over the army and the police, take complete control of the banking system (CBM, MFSA, and especially Bank of Valletta), and place your stooges as judges and magistrates so as to take over the law courts. Game, set and match.

I say that not more than a handfull lawyers will be missing.

[Daphne – You can’t have a handful of lawyers, Mr Loporto. They are way too large. Would you say ‘ponn avukati’?]

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140724/local/nice-guy-charged-with-seriously-injuring-girlfriend.529085

Lawyer Franco Debono, who represented the victim, said the accused had terrorised the woman’s family who now lived in fear of him.
He said he beat up his girlfriend when he got drunk and a number of police reports had been filed.

I know of another nice guy with a drink problem who in front of Is-Serkin Bar in Rabat beat up a decent young man, while Franco Debono was with him in the early hours of the morning after drinking at Gianpula.