I had to reread your first sentence quite a few times. You're saying that software engineers in total have had more of an effect on society than lawyers or law enforcement officers? If this is really what you're saying, I think that you are taking the work of these two groups of people completely for granted. Software engineers have affected society, but universally more than lawyers and police? I highly doubt this. You recognize that the vast majority of politicians in the US (for example) and other makers of policy tend to be lawyers, right? That almost every major court proceeding that determined interpretation of legislation and the Constitution have primarily been lawyers? Law enforcement agents also have a huge impact on society...by preventing it from imploding.

I'm not saying that software engineers aren't reshaping the world, but let's not use this as a springboard to downplay the (very important) contributions of other members of society.