Abstract
The legal profession, like so many others these days, is heavily regulated. Not just anyone can call him/herself a lawyer and offer legal services to the public. In every state in the nation, one must first obtain a license from the state. Requirements may include passing the state bar examination, membership in the state bar association, completing an approved formal legal education, paying various fees, satisfying a “moral character” determination, passing the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam, and earning a certain minimum number of Continuing Legal Education credits after initial admission to the bar. In many states, to qualify as a lawyer, one must incur the costs of attending a law school accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) just to be eligible to sit for the bar exam. Other regulations include restrictions on the advertisement of legal services and a general lack of reciprocity, or allowing an individual who has satisfied the licensing laws of another state to practice without retaking the bar exam and satisfying other regulations in the new state. Past regulations included total bans on advertising and mandatory minimum fee schedules for legal services.
That in every profession the fortune of every individual should depend as much as possible upon his merit, and as little as possible upon his privilege, is certainly for the interest of the public.
Adam Smith, Letter to William Cullen, September 20, 1774
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
American Arbitration Association. American Arbitration Association web site. http://www.adr.org.
American Bar Association. 2003. ABA Presidential Commission on Access to Lawyers. July 21. Chicago, IL: American Bar Association. http://www.abanet.org/abanet/common/print/newprintview.cfm?ref=http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/delivery/accesscommn.html.
—. 2004. Consortium on Legal Services and the Public. Legal Needs and Civil Justice: A Survey of Americans: Major Findings from the Comprehensive Legal Needs Study. Chicago, IL: American Bar Association. http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/downloads/sclaid/legalneedstudy.pdf.
—. 2007a. 2007–2008 ABA Standards for Approval of Law Schools. Chicago, IL: American Bar Association. http://www.abanet.org/legaled/standards/ 20072008StandardsWebContent/Chapter%201.pdf.
American Bar Association. 2007b. Unified Bars, Issues Update 2007. Chicago, IL: American Bar Association. http://www.abanet.org/barserv/issuesupdate/updates07/unifiedbars.pdf.
Andrews, Lori B. 1980. Birth of a Salesman: Lawyer Advertising and Solicitation. Chicago, IL: ABA Press.
Baker, Dean. 2006. The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. Washington, DC: Center for Economic Research and Policy. http://www.conservativenannystate.org/cnswebbook.pdf.
Ballard, Mark. 2002. The Little Ad That Changed Everything. National Law Journal, September 25. http://www.law.com/jsp/law/LawArticleFriendly.jsp?id=1032128590255.
Barton, Benjamin H. 2007. Do Judges Systematically Favor the Interests of the Legal Profession? Alabama Law Review, 59(2): 453–505 (Winter). http://www.law.ua.edu/lawreview/articles/Volume%2059/Issue%202/Barton.pdf.
Bond, Ronald S., John E. Kwoka, Jr., John J. Phelan, and Ira Taylor Whitten. 1980. Effects of Restrictions on Advertising and Commercial Practice in the Professions: The Case of Optometry. Staff Report, Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Caplan, Bryan and Edward P. Stringham. 2007. Privatizing the Adjudication of Disputes, Independent Institute Working Paper Number 69, Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute. http://www.independent.org/pdf/working_papers/69_private.pdf.
Carroll, Sidney L. and Robert J. Gaston. 1981. Occupational Restrictions and the Quality of Services Received: Some Evidence. Southern Economic Journal, 47: 959–976.
Christensen, Barlow F. 1980. The Unauthorized Practice of Law: Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors—Or Even Good Sense? American Bar Foundation Research Journal, 5(2): 159–216 (Spring).
Cox, Carolyn and Susan Foster. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Economics. 1990. The Costs and Benefits of Occupational Regulation. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
The Florida Bar. 2005. Unified State Bars/The Florida Bar. http://www.floridabar.org/DIVCOM/PI/BIPS2001.nsf/1119bd38ae090a748525676f0053b606/ee84c9f3e29ca3b58525669e004e0cee?OpenDocument.
Friedman, Milton. 1962, 1982, 2002. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Fuller, Lon. 1981. The Principles of Social Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Fund, John. 2007. License to Kill Jobs. Wall Street Journal. August 27. http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110010524. (Jim Weeney comment available online at: http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/responses.html?article_id=110010524.)
Good Housekeeping web site, About the Good Housekeeping Seal. http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-testing/seal-holders/about-good-house-keeping-seal.
Hadfield, Gillian K. 2008. Legal Barriers to Innovation: The Growing Economic Cost of Professional Control Over Corporate Legal Markets. Stanford Law Review, 60. http://works.bepress.com/ghadfield/29/.
Hadfield, Gillan K. and Eric Talley. 2006. On Public versus Private Provision of Corporate Law. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 14: 137–163. http://ssrn.com/abstract=570641.
Hood, John. 1992. Does Occupational Licensing Protect Consumers? The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, 42(11) (November). http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/does-occupational-licensing-protect-consumers/.
Jacobs, William W., Brenda W. Doubrava, Robert P. Weaver, Douglas O. Stewart, Eric L. Prahl, William R. Porter, Nathaniel Greenspun, and R. Dennis Murphy. 1984. Improving Consumer Access to Legal Services: The Case for Removing Restrictions on Truth ful Advertising, U. S. Federal Trade Commission, Cleveland Regional Office, and United States Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Economics, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Johnson, Denise R. 1998. The Legal Needs of the Poor as a Starting Point for Systemic Reform. Yale Law and Policy Review, 17 (1): 479, 488.
Keller, Tim. 2003. State Licensing Laws Unduly Burden New Firms. Tucson Citizen. December 3.
Kleiner, Morris M. 2006. Licensing Occupations: Ensuring Quality or Restricting Competition? Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
Lang, Larry and Ronald Marks. 1980. Consumer Response to Advertisements for Legal Services: An Empirical Analysis. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 8: 357–385.
LECG Ltd. 2000. Restrictions on Competition in the Provision of Professional Services. A Report for the Office of Fair Trading. In Canada Office of Fair Trading. 2001. Competition in Professions. http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/professional _bodies/oft328.pdf.
Leef, George C. 1998. The Case for a Free Market in Legal Services. Policy Analysis No. 322. Washington, DC: Cato Institute. October 9. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa322xa.pdf.
Madison, James. 1792. Property. National Gazette. March 29. Reprinted in Robert A. Rutland et al. (ed.). 1983. The Papers of James Madison, Vol. 14: 6 April 1791–16 March 1793, 266–268. Charlottesville, VA : University Press of Virginia.
McHugh, Jack P. 2003. We’re All Licensees Now. Mackinac Center for Public Policy. July 24. http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=5570.
Moran, Rachel F. 2006. Of Rankings and Regulation: Are the U.S. News & World Report Rankings Really a Subversive Force in Legal Education? Indiana Law Journal, 81: 383–399. http://www.indianalawjournal.org/articles/81/81_1_Moran.pdf
Orange County Register. 2004. It’s Time to Revoke the State’s License. August 19.
Pagliero, Mario. 2004. What Is the Objective of Professional Licensing? Evidence from the U.S. Market for Lawyers. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Economics, London Business School.
Rhode, Deborah L. 1996. Professionalism in Perspective: Alternative Approaches to Nonlawyer Practice. New York University Review of Law and Social Change, 22.
—. 2002. The Profession and the Public Interest. Stanford Law Review, 54: 1501–1522.
Rothbard, Murray N. 1973. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. New York: Macmillan.
Sandefur, Timothy. 2002. The Common Law Right to Earn a Living. The Independent Review, 7(1) (Summer 2002). http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_07_1_sandefur.pdf.
Smith, Adam. 1774. Correspondence of Adam Smith. Chapter 143.: To William Cullen in E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, (ed.). 1987. The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol. VI, 173–179. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/203/57957.
Spooner, Lysander. 1835. To the Members of the Legislature of Massachusetts. Worcester Republican. August 26.
Summers, Adam B. 2004. The New Drug War. The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, 54(3): 31–33 (April). http://www.fee.org/pdf/the-freeman/summers0404.pdf.
Tannehill, Morris and Linda Tannehill. 1970. The Market for Liberty. Lansing, MI: Privately printed.
Tenn, Steven. 2000. Occupational Licensing: An Effective Barrier to Entry? Unpublished dissertation, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
U.S. Department of Justice. 2006. Justice Department Asks Court to Hold American Bar Association in Civil Contempt, June 23. http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2006/216804.pdf.
U.S. Federal Trade Commission. 2004. Identifying and Tackling Dysfunctional Markets, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. http://www.ftc.gov/bc/international/docs/US%20FTC%20paper%200n%20identifying%20and%20tackling%20dysfunctional%20markets.pdf.
Virginia State Bar. 1962. Minimum Fee Schedule Report.
Williams, Walter E. 2000. How Regulation and Taxation Stifle Entrepreneurship, Speech given at the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research. April 4. http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/pdf/pdialg_32.pdf.
Young, S. David. Occupational Licensing. The Library of Economics and Liberty. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/OccupationalLicensing.html.
—. 1987. The Rule of Experts: Occupational Licensing in America. Washington, DC: Cato Institute.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2010 The Independent Institute
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Summers, A.B. (2010). Licensing Lawyers: Failure in the Provision of Legal Services. In: López, E.J. (eds) The Pursuit of Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230109490_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230109490_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-10245-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10949-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)