<story><title>For every 1% increase in the number of lawyers, economic growth falls 3% (1986)</title><url>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0305750X86900434</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SkyMarshal</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;This paper uses international cross-section data to provide a simple test of this hypothesis. Despite the crudeness of the test, the small size of the sample and possible ambiguities in interpretation, the results provide a tentative confirmation of the hypothesis.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Doesn’t sound very reliable, especially being from 1986 when we generally had a much less sophisticated understanding of the intricacies of statistics and hypothesis testing.&lt;p&gt;Conversely to the paper’s implication, too many lawyers can also be seen as evidence of a society based on the rule of the law, with strong legal institutions, processes, separation of powers and other patterns of integrity, and lack of rule by decree in any form, all of which are valuable and possibly necessary components of sustainable economic growth.  In such a society, law will naturally be one of the more prestigious and attractive professions.&lt;p&gt;I’m sure there’s some optimal ratio of lawyers to scientists|engineers|teachers|builders and other productive professions, where exceeding that ratio results in lower than optimal growth.  But even a society with too many lawyers probably has stronger growth than one with none.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>btilly</author><text>The bigger issue is whether this is cause or correlation.  As in, I believe that the figure is correct, and that more lawyers do cause less economic growth, but most of the correlation is not caused by the lawyers.&lt;p&gt;A less developed country probably doesn&amp;#x27;t have solid rule of law, and so has fewer lawyers.  A less developed country also can generate fast economic growth by transferring knowledge from more advanced ones.&lt;p&gt;By contrast advanced countries have solid rule of law, and so lots of lawyers.  They also can&amp;#x27;t easily grow through knowledge transfer, because there is nobody to transfer knowledge from.  They have to generate new knowledge themselves.&lt;p&gt;I would therefore suggest removing GDP&amp;#x2F;capita as a confounding factor first.&lt;p&gt;That said, lawyers are economic sand.  The main purpose of lawyers is to make other lawyers be needed.  And lawyers are good at convincing themselves that they were needed.  We would be better off with fewer lawyers.  If you don&amp;#x27;t believe me, consider the phenomena of patent trolls.  What do they add to anyone other than themselves?</text></comment>
<story><title>For every 1% increase in the number of lawyers, economic growth falls 3% (1986)</title><url>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0305750X86900434</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SkyMarshal</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;This paper uses international cross-section data to provide a simple test of this hypothesis. Despite the crudeness of the test, the small size of the sample and possible ambiguities in interpretation, the results provide a tentative confirmation of the hypothesis.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Doesn’t sound very reliable, especially being from 1986 when we generally had a much less sophisticated understanding of the intricacies of statistics and hypothesis testing.&lt;p&gt;Conversely to the paper’s implication, too many lawyers can also be seen as evidence of a society based on the rule of the law, with strong legal institutions, processes, separation of powers and other patterns of integrity, and lack of rule by decree in any form, all of which are valuable and possibly necessary components of sustainable economic growth.  In such a society, law will naturally be one of the more prestigious and attractive professions.&lt;p&gt;I’m sure there’s some optimal ratio of lawyers to scientists|engineers|teachers|builders and other productive professions, where exceeding that ratio results in lower than optimal growth.  But even a society with too many lawyers probably has stronger growth than one with none.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AnimalMuppet</author><text>&amp;gt; Conversely to the paper’s implication, too many lawyers can also be seen as evidence of a society based on the rule of the law, with strong legal institutions, processes, separation of powers and other patterns of integrity, and lack of rule by decree in any form&lt;p&gt;Well, it means strong legal institutions.  But...&lt;p&gt;Take criminal law, for example.  Lots of lawyers mean that each criminal gets their day in court.  That&amp;#x27;s good.  But a law-abiding society would be better.&lt;p&gt;Or take contract law.  Lots of lawyers mean that, if the other party violates the contract, you can sue them.  But wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be better to have a society where more people just did what the contract said, instead of trying to find ways to weasel out of it?&lt;p&gt;Even with respect to the government, yes, when they overstep their bounds, we can take them to court, and we can even win and make them stop doing whatever they&amp;#x27;re not supposed to.  But really, it would be better if they just stayed within the constitutional parameters of what they&amp;#x27;re allowed to do.&lt;p&gt;In all these cases, it&amp;#x27;s good (really!) that we can have our day in court, in a system that is at least relatively fair.  The lawyers are the sign of a healthy legal system.  But they&amp;#x27;re also the sign of an &lt;i&gt;un&lt;/i&gt;healthy society, that is restrained by court cases rather than by doing the right thing.</text></comment>