The Trouble with Lawyer Regulation

Abstract

The American legal profession has been a backward-looking, change-resistant institution. It has failed to adjust to changes in society, technology, and economics, despite individual lawyers’ efforts to change their own practices and entrepreneurs’ efforts to enter the legal marketplace to serve the needs of middle- and lower-income clients. When change does come, the legal profession is a late-arriver, usually doing no better than catching up to changes around it that have already become well ensconced. This failure robs the society of what could be a positive role of the legal profession in time of change, and it deprives the profession itself of being as robust and successful as it could be.

Keywords: Lawyer regulation, ABA, resistance to change

JEL Classification: K10, K40