1st Edition

Too Many Lawyers? The future of the legal profession

Edited By Eyal Katvan, Carole Silver, Neta Ziv, Avrom Sherr Copyright 2017
    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    The topic of "too many lawyers" is both timely and timeless. The future make up and performance of the legal profession is in contest, challenged by new entrants, technology and the demand for transparency; at the same time, lawyers long have participated in contests over professional boundaries. In this book, we take up several fundamental questions about the question of whether there are "too many lawyers". What do we mean by "too many"? Is there a surplus of lawyers? What sort of lawyers are and will be needed? How best can we discern this? These questions and more are addressed here in scholarly articles presented at the Onati International Institute for the Sociology of Law (Spain) by some of the best researchers in the field. The collection, witha chapter by Prof. Richard L. Abel, addresses methodological, normative and policy questions regarding the number of lawyers in particular countries and worldwide, while connecting this phenomenon to political, social, economic, historical, cultural and comparative contexts. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the Legal Profession.

    Introduction: Too many lawyers?
    Eyal Katvan, Carole Silver & Neta Ziv

    1. What does and should influence the number of lawyers?
    Richard L. Abel

    2. Too many lawyers? Or should lawyers be doing other things?
    Carrie Joan Menkel-Meadow

    3. Unauthorized practice of law and the production of lawyers
    Neta Ziv

    4. The flood of US lawyers: natural fluctuation or professional climate change?
    Bruce A. Green

    5. It’s the law schools stupid! Explaining the continuing increase in the number of lawyers
    Herbert M. Kritzer

    6. Coping with the consequences of ‘too many lawyers’: securing the place of international graduate law students
    Carole Silver

    7. Effects of the acceleration in the number of lawyers in Israel
    Limor Zer-Gutman

    8. The new knowledge economy and the transformation of the law discipline
    Margaret Thornton

    9. Is access to the profession access to justice? Lessons from Canada
    Avner Levin & Asher Alkoby

    10. The ‘overcrowding the profession’ argument and the professional melting pot
    Eyal Katvan

    11. Setting the limits: who controls the size of the legal profession in Japan?
    Kay-Wah Chan

    12. Legal education in Spain: challenges and risks in devising access to the legal professions
    Laura Carballo Piñeiro

    13. The virtue of low barriers to becoming a lawyer: promoting liberal and democratic values
    Russell G. Pearce & Sinna Nasseri

    14. ‘I love my American job’: professional prestige in the Indian outsourcing industry and global consequences of an expanding legal profession
    Swethaa Ballakrishnen

    Biography

    Eyal Katvan Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, College of Law & Business, Ramat-Gan, Israel. Specializes in the fields of bioethics, law & medicine; The Legal and Medical Professions; legal history and the history of medicine.

    Carole Silver Professor of Global Law & Practice, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, Illinois (USA). Research in globalization and the legal profession, legal education, regulation of the legal profession.

    Neta Ziv Professor at the Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University. Teaches Professional Responsibility, Legal Ethics, Law and Poverty and Disability Rights. Her book "Who Will Guard the Guardians of Law? Lawyers in Israel between the State market and Civil Society" (2015) describes the Israeli legal profession from a historical, critical perspective.

    Avrom Sherr is Emeritus Professor and Director at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, UK. His research focuses on legal education, the legal profession, access to justice, ethics and conduct of professions, and professional competence.