December 21, 2011
The NYT had a good piece on Sunday on how the American Bar Association limits the numbers of law schools and lawyers in the country. This inflates the salaries of lawyers.
This sort of restriction should be viewed the same way as a tariff on imported steel. It has all the same negative effects on consumers and the economy. The main differences are that the restrictions on lawyers redistribute income upward to the top 5 percent or even 1 percent and the economic distortions are almost certainly much larger. The other major difference is that the protectionism that benefits lawyers gets much less attention from economists, reporters, and columnists.
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