lawyers: Do we really need 1 out of every 200 workers in America to be a lawyer?

What we really need is to have everyone trained in the law, so that most could handle situations that don’t require a specialized professional.

The point about the war on drugs and torts is correct, but consider the current health-care debate – if I could choose a much lower cost that would have a much higher threshold for malpractice, and thus cheaper, I am not free to choose it.

Or consider the parallel case of medicine. Especially with the internet, Physician’s assistants, Registered Nurses, Pharmacists, and Paramedics could treat 90% of the “sniffle” category and refer the outliers to physicians, but aren’t allowed to because the AMA imposes a similar set of barriers to entry. If I have the 156th ear infection and need amoxicillin yet again, there is no mechanism to short circuit the cursory examination of an MD (who isn’t likely to catch anything and might be sued because of the kabuki) which I will be charged for simply to get an identical Rx with identical instructions as the 155th incident. Do I need an MD? No. Does the medical-industrial-legal complex require I go to one? Yes.

Surgeons and Criminal lawyers are needed, but if the law is an ass, holes will appear in proportion.

Nope. Try “CPSIA”, “Title IX”, “zero-tolerance laws in schools”, “drunk driving”, and “Americans with Disabilities Act”, as well as anything related to the EPA, EEOC, and Christmas/Christian symbols.
Now THERE is a whole lot of full employment acts for lawyers!

courts are like highways – people pretty much fill them up to capacity regardless of size,

Myth — at least as applied to highways.

Wrong quote. To your major point:

I’m agree, it was great being black in the south, or a woman in 1950. No need for any of those silly “anti-lynching” laws.

Keep in mind the “Hell on Earth” standard. Also, I’m sure those civil rights laws which are still pertinent would be re-passed by acclamation first thing.

Bill Shakespeare was right in Henry II,
“First we kill all the lawyers…”

Seriously though, common sense is something often bereft in WashDC as well as the various state capitals. Try reading the constitution some time…they didn’t need gobs of regulatory language to make a point. Compare our constitution to that of the proposed EU constitution…point proven

PersonFromPorlock: s true. Prices are high when you are “gang-impressed” into a particular court (or choose to enter one) and that is largely because the pool of attorneys you can select who are competent is an effective monopoly. But you are right that basic contract review, estate

I’m agree, it was great being black in the south, or a woman in 1950. No need for any of those silly “anti-lynching” laws.

There is an impact on all of us that goes past “legal” things. It means that many of our politicians are retroductive. This is akin to looking out the rear window and trying to drive the car.

Perhaps the first thing that we do “come the revolution” is to bar lawyers from holding office.

A Charles Dickens character said “The law is a ass”. We know what that makes lawmakers.

Too many laws, too many lawyers, too many congresscritters, too many judges, too many cops, too much messing around in other peoples lives.

Mind your own business, and remember, if you are unhappy, it is your life, the government won’t make you happy.

drunkdriver: Well, my grandpa never went to law school, but was a judge. Maybe we should let people take the risk of using a lawyer with a different form of learning about the law.and Justice Jackson never went to law school, but was and has remained, one of the most respected of the justices of his era. Still, today it’s a different time. I don’t mind the requirement of law school graduation in order to practice, though like most of us I think law school’s about a year too long.

Well, I’m sure there are lots of opinions about how long law school should be, whether it should be an undergrad major, a community colledge degree, trade school, etc. Let’s throw them all in the ring and let the clients choose.

Lawyers are the only profession that regulates itself. In Michigan, the state Board of Medicine has 19 members, a simple majority of which, 10, are doctors. The Attorney Grievance Commission and its Attorney Discipline Panel both have a supermajority of lawyers, 6 of 9.

Justice Scalia isn’t the only legal expert to opine on the legal profession’s general failure to create wealth.

Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Court of Appeals:

Lawyering is an essential component of democratic capitalism, but too much lawyering can be too much of a good thing. A disproportionate amount of our talent in the United States goes into law as opposed to business, which creates wealth. Lawyers redistribute the wealth, but they do not generally produce wealth.

In short, what’s the problem again? I fear I must disagree with Justice Scalia on this one.

The US population is roughly 305 million. Take away the children, the retired, and others who don’t work and you have a workforce of perhaps 150 million. Do we really need 1 out of every 200 workers in America to be a lawyer? Most lawyers produce nothing of value and many of them actually stiffle innovation and production.

Orin is correct: The number of laws bears little relation to the number of lawyers. Consider, for example, that the common law of torts, which is not a written law at all, is responsible for all of the slip-and-fall, auto accident, asbestos, and med-mal cases, employing multitudes of lawyers.

While I might agree with Orin, that’s a pretty boneheaded way of defending his position.

The relevant measurement is the amount of CASE LAW in torts. Which is massive.

and Justice Jackson never went to law school, but was and has remained, one of the most respected of the justices of his era. Still, today it’s a different time. I don’t mind the requirement of law school graduation in order to practice, though like most of us I think law school’s about a year too long.

cjwynes: Reports from those in the legal job market say YES, there ARE too many lawyers. There are folks with law degrees from what we would have thought were decent schools who are nevertheless forced to slave away in some dank basement doc-review mill like a third-world textile worker in order to pay off their outlandish student loans. Thank god that’s not me…. at least not yet. The ABA and the state bar examiners have been failing us, by accrediting too many law schools and then allowing too high a bar passage rate. Also, the only answer to rising tuition costs that ever gets any traction continues to be the ready availability of larger and larger student loans, which never puts any price pressure on law schools to find ways to reduce tuition.Unfortunately, from the POV of the law professors, this is all well and good for the moment. It increases the number of teaching jobs and allows salaries and budgets to stay high. Eventually word of the legal job market’s reality may filter down to undergrads and we may see law school enrollment finally start plummetting. But maybe not. Law schools are full of people who spent their whole life being the “smartest kid in the room”, and no 1L ever thinks HE is the one who’s gonna be relegated to some doc-review basement someday.

As a non lawyer, I’m glad to see such a clear statement that the main purpose of the ABA and the state bar associations is to ensure high quality legal representation to the public. I always thought that the sole reason for existence of these organizations was to reduce competition amongst lawyers at the expense of the public. I’m glad that’s not the case.

Bored Lawyer: But the problem is that some clients may have a deeper, more complex problem that someone with such a limited education would not be able to spot, let alone handle. You would be taking a risk in not using a lawyer because if you have some unusual issue your position could be jeopardized.

Well, my grandpa never went to law school, but was a judge. Maybe we should let people take the risk of using a lawyer with a different form of learning about the law.

Bored Lawyer: This is half right and half wrong. There are many legal tasks which are routine and which someone who has taken a two year course could handle. Apart from wills, simple real-estate closings come to mind.But the problem is that some clients may have a deeper, more complex problem that someone with such a limited education would not be able to spot, let alone handle. You would be taking a risk in not using a lawyer because if you have some unusual issue your position could be jeopardized.Maybe the legal profession should take a page from the medical profession, specifically physician’s assistants. They are trained to deal with routine matters while referring more difficult cases to an MD. Maybe there could be a “Lawyers’ Assistant” who could do most (or even all) of the routine work in drafting a will or doing a closing, but also trained to spot the situations where a lawyer’s advise is needed.

I strongly agree, although I’m not sure that wills are a very good example. The best areas of law to create independent specialties in are those with (1) high low end demand that isn’t being met (e.g. indicated by high pro se rates), (2) little interdependence with other areas of law, and (3) well defined, compact cores of legal doctrine.

Some of the areas that seem particularly ripe for independent professions by these criteria include criminal law, immigration law, and child custody law (which might appropriately be seperated institutionally from the property issues as it is in the New York State court system, where the general jurisdiction trial court handles divorces, but non-marital custody fights and post-decree matters are handled in Family Court). These are areas where personal status and liberty are at stake (even though many cases don’t involve affluent people), were a small number of statutes govern, where traditional civil procedure has little or no relevance, and where attorney compensation rates are not particularly high.

In contrast, areas like bankruptcy, tax and wills are all “holistic” disciplines that require an underlying solid conceptual understanding of the nature of property and contract rights, assets and liabilities, and customary transactional arrangements. As a result, these are areas where having paralegals supervised by attorneys with wider knowledge and issue spotting capacity may be the best model.