Do Lawyers Impair Economic Growth?

The large U. S. legal profession hurts economic productivity in the United States and our economic competitiveness abroad, according to a common claim. A number of studies support that claim, but they suffer from serious flaws. I reexamine the hypothesis that large lawyer populations impair economic growth and suggest that it lacks theoretical and empirical support. The hypothesis depends on false assumptions about the organizational capability and interest of the legal profession; the empirical research in support of the hypothesis depends on flawed lawyer data, unusual combinations of high lawyer populations and low economic growth in one or two countries, and the unjustified use of lawyer population figures from the 1980s in analyses of economic growth prior to that period. I present the results of research on lawyer populations and economic growth among the U. S. states and in a sample of countries, correcting for the worst flaws of past research. The results do not support the claim that large lawyer populations impair aggregate economic growth. The analysis is not intended as the final answer on this important question but rather as an encouragement for a more sophisticated understanding of the role of lawyers in late modern economies.