We gonna run this...

Is the role of the lawyer in the United States losing the status of professionalism?

Lately I have been taking some heat about legal education in the United States. I think that a lot of people agree that we have a remarkable legal education system, but those that I have engaged in conversations with from other countries that have alternate systems seem to have an inferiority complex. All things considered, however, I decided to do some looking into the legal profession in my own country - hoping to understand by looking in as well as out. I ran across a book in the library about lawyers, legal education and common law countries. The discussion about the American legal education system is interesting. Its basic premise is that the purpose of professions is exclusionary - an academic elite that excludes the masses of average persons to create a highly specialized and trained group of people. It discusses the history and growth of legal education in the United States and it's divergence from a profession that used to have few people that even completed high school - forget college - to struggle towards the elitism that surrounds the legal profession in other countries. As predicted, it professes, the American system resulted in a profession that brings in a ton of money, but that has had a choppy development, not possessing even formal legal education until the latter part of the 19th century. It also talks about how the ABA and other academic institutions have forced the part time student out in favor of the full time student - making it even more of an elitist institution simply on the basis of funding, which has little to do with academic prowess.

I find it interesting that the assertion is made that the concept of the American lawyer as a professional is dwindling. The book alludes to the idea that since now the market is so flooded with lawyers, it's no longer a profession. It's rapidly becoming...what? I can see how this would be meritorious. In 1995, the ABA estimated that there were about 895,000 lawyers practicing. Currently they think that there are about a million. Rounding the population of the United States to 300 million, that means that .33% of the population are lawyers. Not 3%, not even 1% - that is .33%. It does seem to me that there are a LOT of lawyers, but I "run with that pack." I meet these people every day. I'm conscious of their presence because it's my life. In comparison, doctors - per the WHO - numbered 730,801 in 1995 - a scant 165,000 less than lawyers. Are there too many doctors? I can't say, but I do know that I think the perception of the legal community is blown out of proportion.

Let's face it - there is nothing that you do in your life that law doesn't touch. You don't make your morning coffee without the law having touched it a hundred times - from the trade laws, the laws covering workers at every stage of the game (from the truck driver, to the shippers, to the field workers and the people that bag it and then the ones that sell it to you at the grocery store or what have you), the sales laws governing your purchase, the laws governing the store itself (including tort law if you slip and fall on their floors to how long eggs can sit on the shelf). Never mind the laws governing the trucks on the road, road laws, the laws governing the electricity as well as the supply running into your house to your coffee maker, and the coffee maker itself. You get the idea, I don't think I need to go on. Are there are lot of lawyers? Yes. Are they needed? I'd say so. But are we losing "street cred" as a profession? I think that is for us to determine. Set higher standards for ourselves. Bring back the cool in being an academic. It's an interesting question.