I found the American Bar Association’s analysis of the demographics of the practice of law interesting. I did not realize that the number of lawyers had grown by more than 1 million since 1960. That’s nearly twice as fast as the growth in population.
IMO such a large number of lawyers is both bad for the public and bad for the lawyers—too much competition in trying to scrape a living together.
I also found the list of states with highest per capita number of lawyers interesting: New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Minnesota, California, Louisiana, New Jersey, Maryland, Missouri. Is it a coincidence that the most corrupt states in the Union (Illinois, Louisiana, New Jersey) are also on that list? I can think of several explanations for that:
- It’s a coincidence.
- All of the states have high levels of corruption—it’s just in states with high proportions of lawyers that the corruption has been uncovered.
- There’s a positive feedback relationship among corruption, activist governments, and lots of lawyers.
I don’t believe it’s #2. I certainly hope it isn’t.
Lawyers are disproportionately men and of primarily European or Asian descent, i.e. only 5% of lawyers are black and only 6% Hispanic.
BTW, as I’ve pointed out before incomes in lawyers occur in a bimodal distribution (like the humps on a camel). There are the lawyers who graduated from Top 20 elite law schools who earn very good incomes, indeed, and the rest. That means there’s no such thing as average or median income for lawyers. There are two averages and two medians.
The proportion of lawyers is probably a product of the number of laws and the frequency of legal changes, incomes of potential clients, the legal culture of the state and the degree of heterogeneity in the community.
For example, New England Yankees are known for a culture of ordered liberty. If a given population has different understandings of queuing expectations, this is a culture that will pass laws on the subject, perhaps educate on them, and encourage a population that will enforce any laws when they see them violated. A traditional legal culture is more likely to use non-legal interventions. Some cultures are more laissez-faire, particularly a feature in low population density areas.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the factors listed in your first paragraph are contributory.
I suspect that the large proportion of lawyers in Missouri is because Missouri law is odd, having aspects of both common law and civil code.
I would think Missouri pulls above its weight because St. Louis and Kansas City house a lot of attorneys that serve Illinois and Kansas as well. Maryland might similarly have a lot of lawyers doing work in D.C. (which used to be known as having the most difficult bar examine in the country, so lawyers took the Maryland or Virginia bar instead)