This is a very good question. The ABA's marketing department reports that in 2010 there were 1,203,452 licensed attorneys in the United States. Meanwhile, the ABA Section of Legal Education releases numbers that add up there having been 1,531,507 J.D.s awarded since 1964. Professor Jane Yakowitz estimates that about 150,000 J.D.s have never passed a bar exam--and so generally are not licensed attorneys. ("Marooned: An Empirical Investigation of Law School Graduates Who Fail the Bar Exam," 60 Journal of Legal Education 3 (2010)). With the number of attorneys who may have passed away in the past 50 years, and those who have given up their licenses, the 1.2 million licensed attorneys-figure the ABA provides is quite reasonable.
That seems like a lot of lawyers. But many fewer are not being lawyers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there were 728,200 lawyers "employed" in the country in 2010. The Bureau of the Census estimates that there were about 689,000 lawyers and judges (give or take 18,000).
This means that around 500,000 licensed attorneys do not practice. The number teaching couldn't possibly fill this gap. (I realize I have not precisely investigated the meanings of "lawyer" or "employed" or "judge" in the statistics quoted above, but for now it can't matter very much). Half a million people, who went to the trouble of as many as 7 years of school, and who absorbed all that cost in tuition and lost wages, aren't using their degrees.
I'm working on what they're doing.
That seems like a lot of lawyers. But many fewer are not being lawyers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there were 728,200 lawyers "employed" in the country in 2010. The Bureau of the Census estimates that there were about 689,000 lawyers and judges (give or take 18,000).
This means that around 500,000 licensed attorneys do not practice. The number teaching couldn't possibly fill this gap. (I realize I have not precisely investigated the meanings of "lawyer" or "employed" or "judge" in the statistics quoted above, but for now it can't matter very much). Half a million people, who went to the trouble of as many as 7 years of school, and who absorbed all that cost in tuition and lost wages, aren't using their degrees.
I'm working on what they're doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment