There are too many lawyers entering practice already, argues former litigator Dan Slater in the NYT’s “DealBook”. “The American Bar Association, which continues to approve law schools with impunity and with no end in sight, bears complicity in creating this mess. …. many law schools appear to profit from what may charitably be called an inefficient distribution of market information.” Profs. Bainbridge and Ribstein react.
8 Comments
US medical schools graduate approx 15,000 physicians/year. US law schools are graduating over 60,000 attorneys. What does this say about our country?
What does it say about what it takes to be a lawyer versus what it takes to be a doctor?
Bob
The difference is that pretty much nobody goes to med school on a humbug.
If the ABA were to decline to approve law schools in order to keep down the number of lawyers, wouldn’t it be subject to prosecution for restraint of trade?
We need more doctors. How about letting the ABA take over the AMA? What is wrong with more people studying the law? Only 60,000 new lawyers per year? The ABA needs to get out of the way and make the law degree available to everyone at the community college level. Don’t most top tier ABA school students take less than 20 courses in under three years anyway?
I think becoming a doctor is harder than becoming a lawyer. I think that is what the disparity tells us.
Has anyone thought to look at what the AMA has done with medical schools over the last 100 years? Is it possible that the AMA has closed schools and thereby limited the supply of U.S. trained physicians?
Woodruff:
The AMA does not have or approve medical schools. This is all done by the Federal Gov. Further, the Federal gov determines how many of what specialty of doctors are trained.