Who said there is an excess supply of lawyers?
Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
181–190 of 217 posts
Re: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an excess of lawyers in certain areas; an excess of IP lawyers doesn't map to an excess of divorce attorneys. >if you're a lawyer, do you charge the amount that covers your loans, or the amount that nets you the most profit? If all lawyers were interchangeable, your argument might hold, but the artificially high price of legal education leads to a misallocation of resources--The increased cost of student loa…
> The increased cost of student loans can cause lawyers to move into specialities that are higher paying, causing shortages in one area and surpluses in others. This is circular. You're arguing that shortages in some areas are causing higher prices, but then arguing that lawyers are leaving certain areas for the areas that pay higher salaries. You can't say that prices are high for corporate legal services because su…
>You can't say that prices are high for corporate legal services because supply is restricted
I'm not saying that. I agree with you that there is a surplus of corporate lawyers, and so deregulation wouldn't really reduce the price in that sector.
Even if there were cheap lawyers who learned through apprenticeship instead of law school, large companies still wouldn't hire them.
I'm talking about prices being driven up in other areas, where law school grads with insane debt don't want to work.
I know several law school grads who couldn't find the kind of high paying job they were looking for. However, since they had so much debt they ended up taking non legal jobs (one is a project manager, the other an entrepreneur), instead of moving into another lower paid area of the law.
Because of high education costs (and the requirement that lawyers posses a graduate degree, which means most of them are going to be at least 25 by the time they can start practicing, plus the psychological factors involved in having spent 7 years in school), there is a minimum price below which most lawyers will not work, and will seek other opportunities.
Re: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sad that you've been downvoted, though I disagree with you. Occupational licensing doesn't just improve service quality (if it improves service quality), it also increases the price. The result is often that instead of great quality, the consumer gets nothing at all because ze can't afford it. This hits the poorest people hardest. In the USA, the poor have a famously bad time with healthcare and legal advice. The…
With healthcare at least, there are walk-in clinics and nurse practitioners. Without licensure you wouldn't have a surfeit of cheap doctors; you'd have quacks running around representing themselves as doctors. With licensure you still have the quacks, but they call themselves "alternative medicine" and you can still go to them if you want. So there's no real loss of choice there.
Medical licensing isn't just about the right to call yourself a doctor.
Alternative medicine practicioners, or even experienced doctors who qualified in another country, are not allowed to perform the same procedures as doctors regardless of whether their patients would like them to. There is a very real loss of choice.
Re: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
#184There is one restriction in particular which I believe has a huge effect on the legal industry's slow pace of change -- only lawyers may own companies which provide legal services to clients (vs. in-house counsel). So, want to start an online, virtual law firm? Either act as a referral service or make sure you never want a non-attorney to have equity in your company. Why does this rule exist? I haven't a clue.
This is true for most state-licensed professionals like doctors and accountants. There are two main reasons for this.
The first is that a non-licensed person could easily bypass the license rules by affiliating with a licensed person in name only and doing all the work requiring a license.
The second is that licensed professionals have ethical and professional duties to their clients that they are taught as part of their licensing eductation. A non-licensed person may not know these duties, or be aware of their rationales, and may try to influence the licensed person to violate them.
Re: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
#185Simple, because government keeps passing more and more laws that create more ways to become liable. While there may be growing supply of lawyers, there is a growing demand due to this explosive growth of new laws. Stop the government from controlling every inch of our lives, and you will see lawyers getting cheaper.
I also agree with the previous reply that this article only deals with the 10% of lawyers who work in big firms. The other 90% of lawyers that don't work in big firms are out there competing everyday for your business and are charging reasonable rates.
Re: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
With healthcare at least, there are walk-in clinics and nurse practitioners. Without licensure you wouldn't have a surfeit of cheap doctors; you'd have quacks running around representing themselves as doctors. With licensure you still have the quacks, but they call themselves "alternative medicine" and you can still go to them if you want. So there's no real loss of choice there.
Medical licensing isn't just about the right to call yourself a doctor. Alternative medicine practicioners, or even experienced doctors who qualified in another country, are not allowed to perform the same procedures as doctors regardless of whether their patients would like them to. There is a very real loss of choice.
Internationalization is a valid point, but I'm not too choked up about my witch doctor not being allowed to perform open heart surgery. Besides, he would probably rather prescribe me water or stick needles in me instead.
Re: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Medical licensing isn't just about the right to call yourself a doctor. Alternative medicine practicioners, or even experienced doctors who qualified in another country, are not allowed to perform the same procedures as doctors regardless of whether their patients would like them to. There is a very real loss of choice.
Internationalization is a valid point, but I'm not too choked up about my witch doctor not being allowed to perform open heart surgery. Besides, he would probably rather prescribe me water or stick needles in me instead.
Sarcasm aside, you're missing the point. Why isn't it sufficient to regulate the title 'Doctor' without preventing other practitioners from practicing?
People who wanted a traditional medical practitioner would be protected, and those who were willing to take more risk would have the choice.
Re: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
#188HN, help me make up my mind: is an abundance of lawyers to be seen as a necessary component of a complex society? Or is it a symptom of decay? Are lawyers necessary agents of the greater good or are they vampiric rent-seekers on a byzantine legal morass?
I'm not trying to be clever; I genuinely want to figure this out.
Re: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
#189HN, help me make up my mind: is an abundance of lawyers to be seen as a necessary component of a complex society? Or is it a symptom of decay? Are lawyers necessary agents of the greater good or are they vampiric rent-seekers on a byzantine legal morass? I'm not trying to be clever; I genuinely want to figure this out.
(Obviously, IANAL and I have no legal training).
In England people are encouraged not to go to law until they really need to.
People with family law problems (divorce, access to children, etc) are encouraged, strongly, to use mediation before they go to court. This mediation can be lawyer led, but it can also be led by other professionals.
People with employment problems usually need to filter through any internal company policies before they go to law.
Rejecting pre-trial discussions is usually a bad idea.
Solicitors will tell you that going to law is a bad idea, and expensive, and will often not get the result you want. I think, BICBW, that they need to do this as part of their professional codes of conduct. They're tightly regulated, and encouraging people to go to law if they're unlikely to win is frowned upon.
Note that none of this is a barrier to effective law; once you need to go to law you've usually had several discussions with solicitors and you know what's involved and what to expect from your barrister.
There are separate tracks for quick and easy civil "small claims" cases, but even these can sometimes be avoided by using existing legal protections. (The very consumer-friendly "Distance Buying Regulations" or the credit card protections, for example.)
Re: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive Even With The Excess Supply Of Lawyers?
#190HN, help me make up my mind: is an abundance of lawyers to be seen as a necessary component of a complex society? Or is it a symptom of decay? Are lawyers necessary agents of the greater good or are they vampiric rent-seekers on a byzantine legal morass? I'm not trying to be clever; I genuinely want to figure this out.
Here's another reply which tries to better answer your question:
I live in England. We have free health care available to all. But if you want to pay you can buy private medical insurance.
I was debating with some friends. They said that it was wrong for doctors who got free training in the NHS to then go and work privately; they said that doctors should work for X years in the NHS.
I said that doctors didn't get free training; they have large student debts and they work for years in tough conditions for low pay. And then I asked what the difference between doctors (educated and trained at UK tax-payer expense) and lawyers (educated at UK tax-payer expense)? Why is it wrong for doctors to work privately, and not for lawyers? Why are legal-aid lawyers so hard to find in the UK? Why is "pro-bono" so rare?
Some lawyers can be drivers of social change for good (fair pay, anti-racism, etc) but they often get hoovered into creating laws or finding loopholes for weird corporate behaviours.