MADDOG'S LAIR
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Walter Russell Mead calls the American Bar Association a crony capitalist . . . 

5/17/2016

Comments

 
The ABA Cartel

​. . . them's fighting words, truthful words, but words likely to galvanize the mincing dandies at the ABA to high dudgeon. 

Maddog so love a mincing dandy fairy fight! Grab the pillows boys! 

Lot's more below the fold.

"Despite the highly-publicized headwinds facing recent law school graduates, lawyers—at least those at the top of the food chain—are still doing quite well in America: More than one-in-seven are in the top one percent of income earners, according to 2012 data. Meanwhile, hourly fees are so high that quality legal services are increasingly inaccessible in underprivileged areas.

Do lawyers’ generous salaries merely reflect the fact that talent and brilliance are rewarded in a competitive marketplace—and that very few people are able to perform the tasks that most lawyers do on a daily basis? Not exactly, according to a new essay in the American Economic Review by Brookings’ Clifford Winston and Yale Law School’s Quentin Karpilow.

The reality, they say, is that the American Bar Association functions as a kind of pseudo-cartel that controls the marketplace for legal services by throwing up gratuitous barriers to entry for individuals and firms, squelching technological innovation, and blocking innovative new delivery methods that might be unleashed through deregulation. As a result, lawyers enjoy artificially-inflated wages, and working class Americans struggle to afford legal help when they need it. Some excerpts from the piece:

'Under ABA requirements, firms that sell legal services must be owned and managed by lawyers who are licensed to practice in the United States, meaning that corporations and foreign law firms cannot compete in this market. […]

Notwithstanding their intended function, entry barriers in legal services have created inefficiencies that parallel those generated by entry regulations of US network industries (i.e., transportation, communications, and energy). In particular, entry barriers limit competition and raise prices. In the long run, they compound those inefficiencies by impeding operations, innovation, and technological advance. […]
Moreover, it is likely that current entry barriers do little to improve lawyer quality in the first place. For example, the standards of lawyer quality represented by the bar examination amount to legal rules that can be looked up in a book, and that, once memorized, can be easily forgotten after the test is taken.'"

Of course top of the food chain lawyers are doing well, they write the laws, and maintain the guild (not cartel, guild!). And, no, neither the bar exams, nor the continuing legal education requirements provide any real value. If they did, they would not need to be mandated, attorneys would take them for the value they supplied. But they are mandated, because they supply no value. What they do is create an entire wing of every state bar which is dedicated to "legal education," and enforcement. This is augmented by a huge industry of businesses which provide this mandated "legal education," er, hot air. And this, of course, generates graft and corruption to keep the gravy train rolling.

Technological limitations, ownership rules, profit sharing rules, a lockdown on practice, and no discernible quality controls is no way to run a business. Yet that is what the bars do because they can. 

"The truth is that allowing people without law degrees to perform basic legal tasks—and allowing firms run by technologists or businessmen, rather than lawyers, to enter the legal services market—would probably dramatically cut costs without any appreciable impact on quality. In fact, a more open market might well dramatically improve the quality of service available to low-income populations, many of which are shut out of the market altogether.

As Jonathan Rothwell has written, “politicians and intellectuals often champion market competition—but what they mean by that is competition among low-paid service workers, production workers, or computer programmers who face competition from trade and immigration, while elite professions sit behind a protectionist wall.” Subjecting lawyers to the same kind of competitive market forces that have been unleashed on lower-income workers would do much to ameliorate this inequality. But reformers pushing for deregulation should gear up for a grueling battle: The well-funded ABA cartel and its members will fight tooth-and-nail to keep their racket in place."

Quashing quality improvements, limiting access, and absurd salaries has left attorneys as one of the least liked professions in America. On the other hand, the Internet is just waiting for a reason to correct this imbalance. Maddog for one cannot wait for the great legal correction to finally run its course.

Over the past decade or so, large law firms have suffered a massive erosion due to automated discovery, and technological changes in the legal world. This allowed the splintering of the large law firms into high value and low value operations. In part, this is what is causing the train wreck at the law schools. Where a decade ago, most graduates might have found jobs, today, the big firms are hiring far less. This has created an oversupply of law graduates, resulting in declining associate wages. The law schools believe this will resolve. It will, once a few dozen law schools bang into bankruptcy. 

The Internet is beginning to offer increasing solutions for an ever greater spectrum of clients. Large businesses, especially businesses with foreign locations can increasingly use cheaper, yet high quality foreign lawyers to perform most of the legal tasks, and only pass the torch once absolutely necessary. The middle class is increasingly moving towards online legal services providers. In the end, Maddog fully expects that most legal issues will be handled via an automated litigation, utilizing artificial intelligence.

While legal graduates still find it hard to find employment, Ross has a job.

Artificially Intelligent Lawyer “Ross” Has Been Hired By Its First Official Law Firm

Legal grads, meet the new boss, nothing like the old boss!

Once the dam finally bursts, Maddog, for one, will laud the change. The collapse of the legal guild/cartel is long overdue. Automation of legal services and litigation are likewise long overdue.
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

    Author

    Maddog

      Blog Subscription

    Subscribe to Blog

    Archives

    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016

    Categories

    All
    1000-ways-to-die
    Abortion
    Amazon
    America
    Antisemitism
    Anti-semitism
    Bible
    Blogging
    Blue-model
    Book-links
    Booze
    Bus
    Cancer
    Children
    China
    China-ccp
    China-gdp
    China-ghost-cities
    China-ponzi
    Climate-change
    Coast-guardrescue-swimmer
    Cold-war
    Concealed-carry
    Constitution
    Cool-stuff
    Corruption
    Creative-destruction
    Crime
    Crisis-change
    Dead-guy-vote
    Dead-pool
    Death-of-the-pc
    Declaration-of-independence
    Deflation
    Democrat
    Demographic-decline
    Diet
    Earth-hour
    Ecommerce
    E-commerce
    Economic-change
    Economy
    Education
    End-of-history
    Energy
    Environmentalism
    Epa
    Eric-barker
    Europe
    Executive-outcomes
    F35
    Faith
    Family
    Fascists
    Financial-irresponsibility
    Financial-times
    Firearms
    First-world-problems
    Fitness
    Flight-to-security
    Food
    Fourth-turning
    Free-eye-exam
    French
    Funny
    Gdp
    Gdp-usa-vs-britain
    Gdp-usa-vs-germany
    Gdp-usa-vs-sweden
    Generational-theft
    Global-warming
    Government-incompetence
    Government-we-deserve
    Happiness
    Health
    Helicopter-parent
    Hell
    Holocene
    Honor
    Housing-affordability
    I-love-beaver
    Imf
    Immigration
    Independence-day
    Inefficiency
    Inflation
    Innovation
    Intelligence
    Intergenerational-conflict
    International-relations
    Investing
    Iran
    Iraq-war
    Islamic-reformation
    Italian-travel
    Japan
    Jodie-foster-effect
    Kayaking
    Keynesian-economist
    Kurdistan
    Law
    Leave-nato
    Leave-the-un
    Light-rail
    Maddog-story
    Marine
    Marriage
    Media
    Medical-insurance
    Medicine
    Middle-east
    Military
    Military-waste
    Money
    Monopoly
    Nanny-college
    News
    New-seasons
    Nirvana-is-another-name-for-hell
    North-korea
    Nukes
    Obama-doctrine
    Oil
    Oregon
    Organic
    Parenting
    Partition
    Pearl
    Pensions
    Peter-principle
    Police
    Politicians
    Portland
    Portlandia
    Portland-transit
    Predictions
    President-bush
    President-feckless-odither
    President-obama
    Psychology
    Race-huckster
    Rape
    Recession
    Recipe
    Replace-the-un
    Republican
    Research-studies-are-always-wrong
    Reviews
    Russia
    Salafism
    Sanctions
    Science
    Science-versus-faith
    Self-defense
    Self-drive-vehicle
    Sex
    Shale-oil
    Shia
    Sjw
    Sleeper
    Smart-growth
    Socialism
    Sovereignty
    Sport
    Sunni
    Supreme-court
    Syria
    Tax
    Technology
    Terrorism
    The-fed
    The-house-of-saud
    The-last-economic-superpower
    Therapy
    Trade
    Transit
    True-believer
    Tvfilm-review
    Un
    Union
    Urban-planning
    Urinals-of-note
    Venezuela
    Voter-fraud
    Wages
    Wahhabism
    War
    War-crimes
    Weird
    Weird-science
    Welfare
    Whole-foods
    Work



    RSS Feed

​Maddog's Lair is copyright 2016-2018 by Mark Sherman. Please feel free to quote from this site provided you link back to the original article.
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact