Lawyers, Lawyers And More Lawyers
One for Every 152 Of Us In Illinois
Lawyers were in the news last week.
In Pakistan, lawyers dressed in suits and ties demonstrated in the streets of Multan and Gujranwala and other cities protesting the imposition of martial law by General Pervez Musharraf.
Good for them.
Unfortunately for them, according to the New York Daily News, one-fourth of the lawyers in Pakistan were jailed. Pakistan has 12,000 lawyers, the Daily News reported, and 3,000 of them were locked up.
Musharraf's strong-armed tactics would never work in Illinois -- even if Governor Rod Blagojevich decided to step even farther across the lines of common sense than he already has.
One problem would be overcrowded jails. According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, Illinois prisons (not counting youth centers) have space for about 25,000 inmates. Most are filled well over capacity, in some cases almost doubled, so there would be no room for the lawyers.
But even if all current inmates were released, there would barely be enough space for Musharraf's method of justice in Illinois since one-fourth of the lawyers in our state number about 21,000.
That's right. Illinois has a staggering 84,000 lawyers, according to numbers provided by the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. More than 2,350 new lawyers were sworn in last week in ceremonies throughout the state presided over by justices of the Illinois Supreme Court.
No doubt, lawyers provide valuable and needed services.
But 84,000? That means one lawyer for every 152 people in Illinois (and that includes infants and others under 18). If the 25% of the Illinois population that is under 18 years is removed from the mix, there is one lawyer for every 114 people in Illinois.
By comparison, Illinois has about 35,000 licensed doctors -- some of whom are still licensed but no longer practicing. So if there is ever an illness that attacks only lawyers, and a doctor is needed immediately, there would not be enough doctors to administer to the lawyers.
Nor would there be enough beds for the afflicted lawyers. According to the Illinois Hospital Association, Illinois has 33,022 staffed beds (beds actually being used). So some of the lawyers would have to wait.
This commentary is not intended as a criticism of lawyers. Every individual who enters law school has goals and intentions in mind, hopefully admirable goals and intentions.
But you wonder if more people would enter medical schools if there weren't so many entering law schools.
-- Ed Murnane
Illinois Civil Justice League
November 12, 2007
18 comments:
Ed -
There's a big problem with your theory. There are far more lawyers representing big business and insurance companies that there are representing people.
Of those 84,000 lawyers you mention, only 2,000 or so are members of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, according to their website.
I wonder who the other 82,000 are working for?
BTW, how ironic you choose to post your story just as this one hits the news:
China says bead toy contained toxic substances
China's quality control watchdog said on Saturday initial investigations had found bead toys recently recalled in the United States and Australia contained toxic substances, the Xinhua news agency reported.
U.S. safety officials recalled about 4.2 million Aqua Dots toys this week for possibly containing a "date rape" drug.
Please, keep defending these guys.
Two points.
1)Illinois is a leading business center in the world so you have a lot of need for attorneys who deal with complex issues who are from other states but maintain their licenses here also.
2) Until last year Illinois never had mandatory CLE. All you had to do was pay a fee and your license was essentially active. Watch this numbers plunge when some out of staters and retirees decide not to keep up with the CLE.
"But you wonder if more people would enter medical schools if there weren't so many entering law schools."
I agree.
In fact, I can't recall all the times I heard a lawyer say, "You know I had a real passion to be physician -- I wanted to be doctor my whole life. But the siren call of law school was so alluring that I gave up that dream to become an attorney."
Oh yeah... it happens all the time.
-- SCAM
Let me get this right: Murnane is claiming that top quality undergrads are saying "You know, I would like to go to med school, but since I might get sued after screwing up, I am going to do something different."
If that is the person's view, we are probably better off if the person avoided med school.
There are real reasons people avoid med school -- long hours, relatively low pay the first few years, lack of caring about people -- but I can't believe "I might get sued" is that high on the list.
Skeeter -
Your comment is on-point.
According to a survey of doctors in California, the main reason that doctors are leaving the profession - and discouraging their kids from following in their footsteps - is because they're fed-up with the HMO's telling them how to practice medicine. Not because they're afraid of being sued.
Hey, Ed, how many of the fat cats paying your salary are willing to cut their legal expenditures by 30% by settling cases quickly?
And the argument of med school vs. law school is simply stupid.
University of Illinois had the biggest entering class in the country when I worked in med school admissions.
Every year UofI fills every seat in med school. If med schools want to admit more people they can. There's no shortage of qualified applicants.
Ed, do you feel guilty about using completely dishonest arguments?
There are too many lawyers, but the excess is in municipal law where the lawyers give bad advice to taxing bodies. When the taxing bodies act on the bad advice then they have to hire more lawyers. And then the money filters back to the politicians.
But organizations like Ed's aren't interested in fixing problems or in promoting justice. They are merely trying to enrich themselves.
You notice that people who whine about plaintiffs attorneys rarely--almost never--call for more criminal prosecutions of corporate misconduct? And when do they call for more transparency and oversight for physicians who hurt people?
I have to love Carl's solution -- pay off undeserving plaintiffs.
Know what slowed down the amount of personal injury litigation? When the auto insurers stood up and stopped paying off people who are not injured.
Carl's "solution" would do the opposite. What a way to encourage more plaintiffs to file suit.
skeeter, are you claiming that big business never draws out litigation to forestall payments or to wear down plaintiffs?
Yes, I am saying that and the suggestion of the opposite is from people not familiar with how the tort system works. It is what people see on television, but it has little connection to reality. It is fantasy -- "the poor plaintiff against the huge corporation."
If the plaintiff is genuinely injured, the plaintiff will usually have better financed (or at least equally financed) counsel as the defense. The plaintiff will often have experts on the scene before the defendant and will have those experts lined up well before the suit is filed.
Why would a corporation pay huge amounts of money to attorneys and then lose at trial? Where is the upside for the corporation?
However, weak cases attract weak lawyers, and that is how it should be. When the plaintiff is not injured or where the defendant is not at fault, it is not a matter of "dragging it out." It is a matter of not paying people who don't deserve a dime.
For the most part, two sorts of cases go to trial: 1. Cases where the plaintiff's counsel wants his name in the headlines (the Rachel Barton type case); and weak lawsuits where the defendant should not pay. Beyond that, there is a very small amount of cases where the parties work but just cannot reach agreement on settlement.
Re: Toxic exports from China
It appears we need more lawyers in China to write laws that will protect public health and the environment.
Skeeter:
Big business refuses to settle cases or lowballs their settlement offer for the same reason that HMO's routinely deny payment for legitimate claims. It makes them richer on the margins.
In game theory, its the same reason people bluff in poker.
True, if they refuse to settle, there is always the slim chance that a jury will come back with a significantly larger award than they could have reasonably settled for. Even then they have some appeals.
But there's also a chance that the plaintiff will fold, die, or they'll get lucky with the jury.
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that the attorneys have way too much sway over most corporate decisions. The natural inclination of most corporate lawyers is to fight legitimate lawsuits, not settle them. In part because its their mentality, in part because if corporations settled legitimate claims for a fair amount, they wouldn't need nearly as many attorneys.
But if you don't think that corporations refuse to pay out legitimate lawsuits, look at the tobacco industry, or asbestos manufacturers like Halliburton, who were putting asbestos into homes and schools nearly fifty years after they new it was a health hazard, and still doesn't want to accept responsibility.
Heck, look at the City of Chicago, which still refuses to settle police brutality and torture cases linked to John Burge.
We need more lawyers like Frank Avila Jr. and less like Mara Georges.
YDD,
With all due respect, I don't think you understand the matter.
"LAE" -- Loss Adjustment Expense -- is a major problem for corporations and insurers. The goal for most is to reduce LAE, without a corresponding rise in paid claims. LAE has fare more impact on the bottom line than any time advantage based on reserves.
Overall, on quality plaintiff's case (where either the injuries are very serious or where they are moderately serious and liability is very favorable), plaintiff's counsel will outspend defense counsel. Firms like Clifford and Corboy routinely outspend their opponents.
Further, the examples that you offered are not really relevant. The asbestos claims drove all of those companies into bankruptcy. Given the nature of the product and what the companies knew, that was a good thing. However, matters like that -- where a clearly deadly product has its nature concealed - is extremely rare.
Currently, the absestos fight is over how the process has been corrupted by certain plaintiffs' attorneys. For every legit meso case, there are 20 complete BS cases where some whore radiologist claims to "find" meso (I note that I am not aware of any Illinois attorneys using those whores). The situation got so bad that they had to create the registries for these people who allegedly had positive readings but showed no symptoms. Further, the remaining fight is over a simple matter: Companies are willing to pay when it was their product, but not for somebody else's.
Courts have actually bent over backwards in some states to help these plaintiff, creating "market share" liablity. When is the last time that a court assisted a defendant in that manner?
You only need to look at the construction industry to see how biased the system is against the defendants. There, the more the contractor does to create a safe work place, the more the courts hold it against the defendant. The system is amazingly in favor of the plaintiffs.
With regard to Burge: If I was on the City Counsel, I wouldn't pay most of those claims either. Even if he was bad to a few people, most of those claims are against him are the fabrications of gang bangers.
There is a whole lotta dumb in that post. I think that State Farm might want to get a refund from Ed if that is the best argument that he can make.
Skeeter:
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on why big business and insurance companies don't settle more cases. I haven't met a trial lawyer yet that wasn't eager to accept a fair settlement on behalf of their client, the main reason being that trials are lengthy, costly and risky for them.
But I think we can both agree that Clifford and Corboy are only two of the 2,000 trial lawyers in Illinois. Using them as you baseline is extreme.
I agree that matters where manufacturers conceal a deadly or dangerous product are relatively rare, but matters where manufacturers know that their products are deadly or dangerous and do nothing about it are not.
Magnetix got numerous complaints about kids choking on their toys, including E.R. visits and deaths, and they did nothing.
So many kids were being injured by the yo-yo balls -- choking themselves -- that State Rep. Beth Coulson, who is notoriously pro-industry, authored and passed a state law banning them.
State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz authored and passed legislation banning the sale of Ephedra in Illinois - after thousands of incidents nationwide - because the manufacturers refused to respond.
And while I agree that no one should be held accountable for someone else's bad, I don't think companies like Wal-Mart should be let off the hook for flooding their stores with toxic lead toys. Repeatedly.
Caps are gone!
When is Ed going to write about that?
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