Chapter 9 Sample

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What Are We Going to Do About It?

"I don't believe it! I don't believe it! You're meant to come down here and defend me against these characters

and the only one I've got on my side is the bloodsucking lawyer."

--- quote from the movie Jurassic Park, 1994

How Many Lawyers Do We Really Need?

However, before we can realistically deal with the suggestions and solutions, we have to ask ourselves a more fundamental question. Namely: how many lawyers do we really need? That is, assuming that our society, regardless of all the problems caused by lawyers, still needs some lawyers to perform necessary legal work; then the real question for society is to keep and maintain just the right amount of lawyers. More explicitly, let's only have the number of lawyers we really need.

In answering this question we may find that many of the problems our society is currently experiencing with lawyers --- the trials and tribulations of dealing with them and the legal instruments, and lawsuits they so readily unleash upon society ---; we may find that many if not most of these lawyer caused problems come from the fact, we just plain and simple, have too many lawyers. That is, they are currently "falling all over themselves" trying to earn a living (at our expense, of course); so they find and create as much of their own work as they can.

Let's look at this question in a slightly different context. We just may find that if we had very much less numbers of lawyers per thousand population than we do have, we wouldn't have half as many of the problems caused by lawyers as delineated in this book. Maybe, the society has far too many more than it should. Well, whether it does or not, that is the question we will deal with in this section.

Today, there are approximately 1,875,000 lawyers in the United States, according to a 5/16/95, ABC News network television report. This means we have approximately 1 lawyer for every 140 residents. Also, currently, we have between 1/4 to 1/6 of all the lawyers in the world.¹

Another television show, on a different network, which aired on 3/4/95, presented figures which indicated the United States has twice as many lawyers as Great Britain, four (4) times as many as Germany, and twenty (20) times as many as Japan.²

Not only do we have more lawyers than any other country in the world; but their numbers are increasing at an ever increasing rate. According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook for 1994-95, "Employment of lawyers has grown rapidly since the early 1970's, and is expected to continue to grow faster than the average for all occupations though the year 2005."³

Year No. Of Lawyers People / Lawyer Ratio

1995*      930,000                              279 : 1         (corrected actual = 140 : 1)**

**Author's inserted correction, see Endnote 1

Some Suggestions and Solutions

On lawyers:

First, we need to proceed with the proposition that we would have much less lawsuit abuse, many less unproductive legal roadblocks to getting things done and accomplished in a timely fashion for society, and much less money spent for lawyers and legal fees; if we simply had fewer lawyers. That means these problems are all made worse because WE ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY LAWYERS. There is obviously too much pressure for them to create and find more work to sustain themselves. This means we're going to get too many lawsuits, and be forced to deal with unnecessary legal work; if we don't immediately embark upon steps to "thin down" their ranks.

So, suggestion number one is: limit the number of lawyers the society produces, and "thin out" the current ranks. We could accomplish this by taking a number of steps:

1 Restrict entry into law schools

2 Close down some law schools

3 Lengthen the amount of time it takes to become a lawyer

   a. Delay graduations

   b. Revamp the required curricula and education

4 increase the number and variety of courses required

5 insist on 3 or 4 non-lawyer subspecialties (majors) in addition to regular legal courses

6 correspondingly extend typical law school training to 12 years (like physician &
   internship training)

    a. this will make them more qualified and committed

    b. Do not offer State Bar examinations more than once every four (4) years

    c. at least, until the current number of lawyers have been thinned down to more
        appropriately reflect society's actual needs

    d. Erect temporary obstacles designed to thin the current number

7 require that each applicant who takes the State Bar Examination for becoming a Lawyer
   must also post a $1000 bond which goes into a state fund to offset the costs of future
   lawsuits which taxpayers will ultimately have to fund

     a. lawyers can pre-contribute to the costs which they will incur on society

8 Begin to shift some legal cost risks to lawyers

     a. Make them more responsible for many legal outcomes and costs
         (Like surgeons are responsible for the outcomes of medical operations)

     b. Make lawyers responsible for filing frivolous lawsuits
         (Let's make it a "quality issue")

9 Take some types of matters out of their jurisdiction

     a. Like some family court matters

10 Take steps to inform society about the problems with lawyers

     a. Help them realize the importance of the needed changes

     b. Help society change the way it thinks about Law, lawyers and the whole currently
         accepted system of justice

     c. Assist them to question commonly held beliefs about the legal system

11 Restrict lawyer advertising

12 Restrict fees lawyers can charge

      a. Limit or abolish the contingency fee system

      b. Set-up other societally funded alternatives for poor people to get legal representation

13 Let's start "Watching the Watchers" - institute better monitoring systems of lawyering

      a. Do a better job of exposing and punishing lawyer fraud, incompetency, and
          negligence

Some of these steps to limit the number of lawyers the society produces require further explanation. Others, are succinctly obvious, so we won't expand upon them.

Lengthening the Amount of Time it Takes to become a Lawyer

Among the step-categories we will expand upon, is the suggestion to lengthen the amount of time it takes to become a lawyer. Within this overall category suggestion, there were many listed sub-solutions: delay graduations, change the required curricula and education, lengthen the time between administering State Bar Examinations for admitting new lawyers to practice, and erecting some temporary obstacles designed to "thin out" the current ranks of lawyers while at the same time assisting society to pay for them with pre-contributed funds: $1000 posted bonds. We will examine each of these sub-solutions in more detail.

This overall category suggestion will help to thin down the current ranks of lawyers by allowing society more time to absorb the lawyers already in the system. More importantly, this will enable slowing down the current rate of increase in new lawyers, already well-documented to be faster than the rate of growth for any other occupational group in the society.

Delaying graduations

By delaying graduations, we will automatically be able to lengthen the amount of time it will take to put new lawyers into the system. This will not only afford more time for society to absorb the ones we already have, which are way more than we need; it also will allow us more time to change and improve the typical law school curricula and education requirements.

[Author's Note: Sample Text stops here --- see actual book for rest of explanations]

Endnotes from Sample Chapter 9

2.These figures were given on the television show entitled: The McLaughlin Group, on NBC Channel 4 in Los Angeles, on 3/4/95. This show presents a group of political commentators, usually once a week. The subject was "Lawsuit Abuse Hurts Everyone."

3.U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook 1994-95 Edition, Bulletin 2450, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., May 1994, p.117

4.Barbara Curran, Katherine Rosich, Clara Carson, and Mark Puccetti, The Lawyer Statistical Report: A Statistical Profile of the U.S. Legal Profession in the 1980's, American Bar Association, 1985