f/k/a . . .

Civil suits in China increased 7-fold in just two years, while    

the number of lawyers in Shanghai grew almost 50%.  Maybe we should

outsource Walter Olson  and Jim Copland to China, where it’s probably

still easy to discipline school kids. (see LATimes via LegalReader)

 

 

The ABA’s survey of Lawyer Population by State shows that

there were 1,084,504 active lawyers in the USA at the close of 2003.  The

biggest percentage growth was in Virgin Islands, Utah, and Indiana, while

Vermont, South Carolina, Rhode Island, and Maryland had fewer lawyers in

2003 than in 2002.   You can find a lot more lawyer and law school stats 

using the ABA Statistical Resources page.

• 
  
  According to Texas U. Professor Stephen Magee, each additional
  
  
  lawyer reduces GDP by $250,000 dollars — but, who’s counting?

As of today, about 47% of attorneys answering Findlaw’s Hindsight

& Careers poll, say they wish they had never taken the Bar exam; and,

don’t tell Carolyn, but almost twice as many wish they had gone to a

BigLaw firm than say they would have chosen a smaller firm.

 

At U. Ill. U/C, I found an essay asking Are There Too Many Lawyers?, which

was presented by the Pre-Law and Law School Admissions office.  If anyone

has a clue what this piece is saying, please let me know.  Meanwhile, I was

edified by this nugget of information (emphasis added).

When asked what skills they expected law school graduates to 

tbring o a firm, hiring coordinators listed in order:

1. oral communication skills
   
2. written communication skills
   
3. legal analytic ability
   
4. library and computer skills
   
5. sensitivity for ethical skills.

Is it any wonder that law firms now need to hire in-house legal counsel, and

that “Lawyers representing lawyers find unique challenges” (see BostonBizJ,  

via Legal Reader)

 

  Please don’t forget poor old North Carolina, which is suffering from severe LSD —

law school deprivation syndrome — having, according to some sources, too few lawyers and

too few law schools.

 

  Finally, if he can stand a large dose of bigotry, Evan Schaeffer might want to check out

the Father’s Manifesto website, which has cranial capacity charts galore, along with lots of

standardized test results.  At the site we learn, among many similar tidbits, that 

“The first thing Americans must understand is that, by design, lawyers are STUPID people. 

They score lower on the Graduate Record Exam than most of all other majors, scoring

slightly higher than average score for blacks and slightly lower than the average score

or women, but more than 200 points lower than Asian engineering majors.

“Many lawyers are divorced, are paying “child support” and alimony to ex-wives (or

two or three ex-wives) which makes their ability to understand the Holy Bible or draft

a simple agreement, much less understand human nature, highly suspect.”

ethicalEsq and Prof. Yabut no longer feel bad about anything we’ve ever said about lawyers. As

we never took the GRE nor filed for divorce, we are happy not to have made the statistics any

worse than they are.

 

boom! boom! ka-boom!
so many duds…
fireworks

 

heading for where
hunting birds are few…
the fox
 

 

haiku of Kobayashi ISSA, translated by D.G. Lanoue                                                                                                  j.d.