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Hypothesis: the Bar Association is a cartel; limits supply, keeps prices high. The supply of lawyers is artificially constrained, while the volume of civil liti

Hypothesis: the Bar Association is a cartel; limits supply, keeps prices high. The supply of lawyers is artificially constrained, while the volume of civil litigation only grows larger every year. One used to be able to self-study, pass an exam, and practice law. Now it virtually always requires 3 years of law school, at a cost of thousands.

zeptoon 7y ago
Similar idea w/ doctors (although obviously different specifics) or with any licensed profession really. Yes, you need some form of licensing to keep all the fakes out. On the other hand, should it really require so much time and so much money? On some level it's just raising costs for everyone and limiting supply.
rayiner 7y ago
There is no "Bar Association." There are 50 different state bars with different rules. The largest legal jurisdiction, New York, requires only one year of law school. California, the third largest, does not require a law degree at all. Interestingly enough, California and New York are the two states with the highest rates for legal services. (Though obviously it's not a cause-and-effect relationship.) There is an American Bar Association, but it does not regulate licensing. It regulates accreditation of law schools, but it was sued by the DOJ in the 1970s for antitrust violations. Unlike the AMA, it has aggressively accredited new law schools. Since 1970, the cumulative number of JDs granted over the previous 35-year period increased by 3.5x, while the number of employed attorneys increased by 2x: https://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/35-year-law-degrees-rate.png https://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/35-ye....
vonmoltke 7y ago
The same thing has happened in the areas of engineering where licensure is required. An accredited degree is now an explicit requirement in most states to take the PE exam, and the FE exam is mandatory to start the clock on your experience period.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
Limited? There's a law office on every corner. 2/3 of all billboards are rented by law offices (ok, that's made up, but still...) However, FTA: > Last year, the Trump administration effectively closed the Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice, designed in 2010 to make lawyers available to everyone. Let's put the blame where it should go.
anon4lol 7y ago
Your hypothesis is wrong. At one point I was thinking of changing careers and gave a serious consideration to getting a law degree. I've had long conversations with several attorneys and did plenty of research. You would be surprised at how little most new attorneys make. Unless you land at a firm, you'll end up scrambling to find your own clients as a solo practitioner. Some give up and end up working in the business world on the edges of the legal profession. > One used to be able to self-study, pass an exam, and practice law. Now it virtually always requires 3 years of law school, at a cost of thousands. This is state by state. In most U.S. states, you have to go to an accredited brick-and-mortar school, graduate, and pass the bar exam. At that time, there was only two online law schools, both in California. I believe that in CA (maybe one other state) also will let you apprentice for a licensed attorney and pass the bar to become a licensed attorney.
- thrownblown 7y ago
  I know somebody tangentially who self studied and passed the CA bar. He was a squatter at the time and successfully represented himself in a adverse possession suit and now owns said squat in Oakland. I wish I had more details but he was friend of my ex.
wyldfire 7y ago
> One used to be able to self-study, pass an exam, and practice law. AFAIU your beef is with state legislators and not the Bar. They're the ones setting the regulations for practicing law. I agree with you, though: self-study or apprenticeship + exam sounds like a valid way to become an attorney.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
> Hypothesis: the Bar Association is a cartel; limits supply, keeps prices high. The supply of lawyers is artificially constrained The bar associations are actually trade unions. Restricting the supply of labor is the only mechanism unions have available to increase the wages of union members, and all unions do it, only the various lawyers, doctors and pilots unions are simply the most effective in this regard.
henryfjordan 7y ago
The license to be a Barber or a Hair Dresser is a cartel, but you would never say the same thing about requiring doctors and civil engineers being licensed. Being represented by an under-qualified attorney can ruin your life. You can go to jail because your attorney was incompetent. When the consequences are that high, we need the Bar.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Barbers have price transparency. Lawyers and doctors have open-ended fee schedules.
  - henryfjordan 7y ago
    There's no reason a Barber couldn't charge based on time spent cutting your hair. There's also no reason a lawyer cannot charge a fixed fee, which is more standard for document drafting. You might not want to pay a lawyer a fixed fee for a case though, as that would incentivize them to put in as little work as possible. And none of this has anything to do with the licensing, which artificially restricts the supply of Barbers and Lawyers, letting them charge more regardless of the billing scheme.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > Being represented by an under-qualified attorney can ruin your life. You can go to jail because your attorney was incompetent. When the consequences are that high, we need the Bar. The same concern cuts both ways though. It's just as problematic to have rules that raise the cost of legal services beyond what some people can afford, because not being able to afford an attorney can lead to all the same dire consequences.
  - henryfjordan 7y ago
    Because we have laws requiring a lawyer be provided in a criminal case and we have high standards for lawyers, you theoretically will get a good lawyer even if you cannot afford one. Of course the public legal system is incredibly under-funded so in reality this doesn't work out. Let's consider this from a different lens though. "Bridge Engineers are too expensive so lets make the requirements to become one more lax" is obviously a dangerous idea. There is a minimum amount of knowledge and experience a person needs to be qualified to build a bridge. If you cannot afford to pay someone who meets the requirements, you have no business building a bridge. The issue is funding, not the requirements.
xphilter 7y ago
Hah. Limited supply of lawyers?? That’s not true at all. The problem is the bloated cost of law school, which coincidentally is the same cost as the max allowable federal loans.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Hypothesis: the Bar Association is a cartel; limits supply, keeps prices high. The mechanism is a little different than that. They don't limit the supply, they drive demand by causing attorneys to be risk-averse. For example, there are questions an attorney might be able to answer off the top of their head and be correct about 99.9% of the time. A low income client may like those odds and be much happier to take them in exchange for getting charged for 15 minutes of time than to have the attorney take two hours to double check the answer. The attorney, however, would answer a thousand questions like that a year and then have even odds of getting one of them wrong and getting disbarred over it. That takes option one off the table. Multiplied by every question the client has, that means the client has to pay for eight times as much lawyer time. Even if it isn't worth paying your lawyer $5000 more to e.g. avoid a 1% probability of a $15,000 penalty.

zeptoon 7y ago

Similar idea w/ doctors (although obviously different specifics) or with any licensed profession really. Yes, you need some form of licensing to keep all the fakes out. On the other hand, should it really require so much time and so much money? On some level it's just raising costs for everyone and limiting supply.

rayiner 7y ago

There is no "Bar Association." There are 50 different state bars with different rules. The largest legal jurisdiction, New York, requires only one year of law school. California, the third largest, does not require a law degree at all. Interestingly enough, California and New York are the two states with the highest rates for legal services. (Though obviously it's not a cause-and-effect relationship.) There is an American Bar Association, but it does not regulate licensing. It regulates accreditation of law schools, but it was sued by the DOJ in the 1970s for antitrust violations. Unlike the AMA, it has aggressively accredited new law schools. Since 1970, the cumulative number of JDs granted over the previous 35-year period increased by 3.5x, while the number of employed attorneys increased by 2x: https://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/35-year-law-degrees-rate.png https://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/35-ye....

vonmoltke 7y ago

The same thing has happened in the areas of engineering where licensure is required. An accredited degree is now an explicit requirement in most states to take the PE exam, and the FE exam is mandatory to start the clock on your experience period.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

Limited? There's a law office on every corner. 2/3 of all billboards are rented by law offices (ok, that's made up, but still...) However, FTA: > Last year, the Trump administration effectively closed the Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice, designed in 2010 to make lawyers available to everyone. Let's put the blame where it should go.

anon4lol 7y ago

Your hypothesis is wrong. At one point I was thinking of changing careers and gave a serious consideration to getting a law degree. I've had long conversations with several attorneys and did plenty of research. You would be surprised at how little most new attorneys make. Unless you land at a firm, you'll end up scrambling to find your own clients as a solo practitioner. Some give up and end up working in the business world on the edges of the legal profession. > One used to be able to self-study, pass an exam, and practice law. Now it virtually always requires 3 years of law school, at a cost of thousands. This is state by state. In most U.S. states, you have to go to an accredited brick-and-mortar school, graduate, and pass the bar exam. At that time, there was only two online law schools, both in California. I believe that in CA (maybe one other state) also will let you apprentice for a licensed attorney and pass the bar to become a licensed attorney.

thrownblown 7y ago
I know somebody tangentially who self studied and passed the CA bar. He was a squatter at the time and successfully represented himself in a adverse possession suit and now owns said squat in Oakland. I wish I had more details but he was friend of my ex.

wyldfire 7y ago

> One used to be able to self-study, pass an exam, and practice law. AFAIU your beef is with state legislators and not the Bar. They're the ones setting the regulations for practicing law. I agree with you, though: self-study or apprenticeship + exam sounds like a valid way to become an attorney.

AmericanChopper 7y ago

> Hypothesis: the Bar Association is a cartel; limits supply, keeps prices high. The supply of lawyers is artificially constrained The bar associations are actually trade unions. Restricting the supply of labor is the only mechanism unions have available to increase the wages of union members, and all unions do it, only the various lawyers, doctors and pilots unions are simply the most effective in this regard.

henryfjordan 7y ago

The license to be a Barber or a Hair Dresser is a cartel, but you would never say the same thing about requiring doctors and civil engineers being licensed. Being represented by an under-qualified attorney can ruin your life. You can go to jail because your attorney was incompetent. When the consequences are that high, we need the Bar.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Barbers have price transparency. Lawyers and doctors have open-ended fee schedules.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  There's no reason a Barber couldn't charge based on time spent cutting your hair. There's also no reason a lawyer cannot charge a fixed fee, which is more standard for document drafting. You might not want to pay a lawyer a fixed fee for a case though, as that would incentivize them to put in as little work as possible. And none of this has anything to do with the licensing, which artificially restricts the supply of Barbers and Lawyers, letting them charge more regardless of the billing scheme.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Being represented by an under-qualified attorney can ruin your life. You can go to jail because your attorney was incompetent. When the consequences are that high, we need the Bar. The same concern cuts both ways though. It's just as problematic to have rules that raise the cost of legal services beyond what some people can afford, because not being able to afford an attorney can lead to all the same dire consequences.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  Because we have laws requiring a lawyer be provided in a criminal case and we have high standards for lawyers, you theoretically will get a good lawyer even if you cannot afford one. Of course the public legal system is incredibly under-funded so in reality this doesn't work out. Let's consider this from a different lens though. "Bridge Engineers are too expensive so lets make the requirements to become one more lax" is obviously a dangerous idea. There is a minimum amount of knowledge and experience a person needs to be qualified to build a bridge. If you cannot afford to pay someone who meets the requirements, you have no business building a bridge. The issue is funding, not the requirements.

xphilter 7y ago

Hah. Limited supply of lawyers?? That’s not true at all. The problem is the bloated cost of law school, which coincidentally is the same cost as the max allowable federal loans.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Hypothesis: the Bar Association is a cartel; limits supply, keeps prices high. The mechanism is a little different than that. They don't limit the supply, they drive demand by causing attorneys to be risk-averse. For example, there are questions an attorney might be able to answer off the top of their head and be correct about 99.9% of the time. A low income client may like those odds and be much happier to take them in exchange for getting charged for 15 minutes of time than to have the attorney take two hours to double check the answer. The attorney, however, would answer a thousand questions like that a year and then have even odds of getting one of them wrong and getting disbarred over it. That takes option one off the table. Multiplied by every question the client has, that means the client has to pay for eight times as much lawyer time. Even if it isn't worth paying your lawyer $5000 more to e.g. avoid a 1% probability of a $15,000 penalty.