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It's pretty common. My wife and I have a lawyer friend who handles small matters for us for the low, low cost of buying her meal the next time we go out. Plus I

It's pretty common. My wife and I have a lawyer friend who handles small matters for us for the low, low cost of buying her meal the next time we go out. Plus I fix her (aluminum wired) electric.

bxparks 3y ago
There are 1.3M lawyers in the US according to the ABA. There are 250M adults in the US. I find it hard to believe that this is common (if "pretty common" means more than ~20% of adults?).
- superhuzza 3y ago
  It's not like each person has a unique lawyer - One lawyer serves many clients. Especially since most people will only need legal help occasionally. But yes I do agree, it's probably a minority of people that regularly use a specific lawyer.
  - bxparks 3y ago
    Yeah, I think took that into account in my estimation. Not every lawyer will be willing to work for free for a friend (it's like doctors constantly being bombarded for free medical advice, or software engineers constantly asked to provide free IT services to fix people's computers/phones/routers/network). I also assume that law is highly specialized, so a lawyer specialized in Constitutional or Patent law may not want to handle Family law, Contract law, Employment law, or Personal Injury law. I figure the number of lawyers willing to do such small favors is in the range of 1% to 10% of the 1.3M (wild guess). So if each of them had 100 friends-and-family "clients", it still wouldn't add up to "pretty common".
    - stevage 3y ago
      Yeah. I have three lawyers amongst very good friends and family. They are all up for general discussion about law or a bit of basic research. I don't think any would go as far as writing a letter on my behalf.
- stevage 3y ago
  But there's a much smaller number of people from the social class likely to have lawyers as friends. Also further reduce your number for adults in the name age bracket as practising lawyers.

It's pretty common. My wife and I have a lawyer friend who handles small matters for us for the low, low cost of buying her meal the next time we go out. Plus I fix her (aluminum wired) electric.

bxparks 3y ago

There are 1.3M lawyers in the US according to the ABA. There are 250M adults in the US. I find it hard to believe that this is common (if "pretty common" means more than ~20% of adults?).

superhuzza 3y ago
It's not like each person has a unique lawyer - One lawyer serves many clients. Especially since most people will only need legal help occasionally. But yes I do agree, it's probably a minority of people that regularly use a specific lawyer.
- bxparks 3y ago
  Yeah, I think took that into account in my estimation. Not every lawyer will be willing to work for free for a friend (it's like doctors constantly being bombarded for free medical advice, or software engineers constantly asked to provide free IT services to fix people's computers/phones/routers/network). I also assume that law is highly specialized, so a lawyer specialized in Constitutional or Patent law may not want to handle Family law, Contract law, Employment law, or Personal Injury law. I figure the number of lawyers willing to do such small favors is in the range of 1% to 10% of the 1.3M (wild guess). So if each of them had 100 friends-and-family "clients", it still wouldn't add up to "pretty common".
  - stevage 3y ago
    Yeah. I have three lawyers amongst very good friends and family. They are all up for general discussion about law or a bit of basic research. I don't think any would go as far as writing a letter on my behalf.
stevage 3y ago
But there's a much smaller number of people from the social class likely to have lawyers as friends. Also further reduce your number for adults in the name age bracket as practising lawyers.