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Market and regulatory forces in the pricing of legal services

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Abstract

New data on individual law firms and attorneys is used to examine the effects of professional licensing restrictions and market forces on prices of legal services. The data allow detailed testing of the hypothesis that licensing restrictions serve to increase the price of professional services as well as the incomes of those providing these services. In general, little support is found for this hypothesis. Instead, the estimates show that market forces are most important in explaining variations in prices and attorney incomes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yale School, Yale Law University, 06520, New Haven, CT

    Dean Lueck

  2. Department of Economics, Southwest Missouri State University, 65804, Springfield, MO

    Reed Olsen

  3. Department of Economics, Brigham Young University, 84602, Provo, UT

    Michael Ransom

Authors
  1. Dean Lueck
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  2. Reed Olsen
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  3. Michael Ransom
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Additional information

Dean Lueck is on leave from Louisiana State University. We thank William Boiger, Executive Director of the National Resource Center for Consumers of Legal Services, for providing data on law firms. Andrew Dick, Philip Hersch, Andy Kleit, Bill Kovacic, Fred McChesney, Jeff Moore, and two anonymous referees provided helpful comments on earlier versions. Chris Diener, Jim Larkins, Robert Pace, and Darrin Timothy provided research assistance.

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Lueck, D., Olsen, R. & Ransom, M. Market and regulatory forces in the pricing of legal services. J Regul Econ 7, 63–83 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01062780

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