It's an interesting article, though the conclusion is somewhat underwhelming: according to the study, there are 40% more lawyers than the optimal number.<p>The article also points out some legitimate sources of imprecision in the data. GDP is a poor measure of the economy as a whole. Consider the classical example of the broken window fallacy. GDP goes up when people go around breaking windows! In a more real world context, consider the two huge coal plants that were recently shut down here (thanks to litigation) in Chicago. They were responsible for about $100m/year in health damage to the community, and each created only about 50-70 jobs. Shutting down the plants is clearly a net benefit for the economy, but GDP mis-measures this situation. GDP will go down after the shut-down, not only because of the lost jobs, but perversely because fewer people will seek medical treatment for respiratory illnesses!<p>There is a narrative about their being too much litigation in the economy, but I'm inclined to believe there is too little. I'm doing pro bono work for a village in Illinois that was heavily polluted by a subsidiary of a major oil company. Like, children playing and going to school in heavy-metal contaminated soil level of polluted. The village didn't sue until it was past the statute of limitations because it thought the government would take care of them. This story is replicated all over the US. It's great for GDP when a company pollutes and hurts peoples' health, because that damage to human and environmental capital is "off the books" for the purposes of the GDP calculation.
There aren't too many lawyers, there are too many laws. I would bet that if the study had correlated the number of laws and its effects, it would find the same result. After all, when a complex set of laws is passed, some lawyer must become a specialist in it. There were no personal injury attorneys until products liability laws were passed in the twenties. Likewise, there were no securities lawyers until the SEC was formed and securities laws were passed in the thirties. Patent lawyers, bankruptcy lawyers, etc. Obamacare was 2000 pages of law alone. The resulting regulations and case law will be tens of thousands of pages dictating the actions of people who will need a lawyer to know it all, analyze it, and apply the law to their clients' situations.
For many a sensible person, lawyers seem to be more a liability than an asset. Rightly so. Indeed they are more often than not rent-seekers, and the rent is sky high. That is, until you are faced with a serious problem.<p>Imagine you are falsely accused and facing charges that could land you in some maximum security prison, sitting on death row. Or, even worse, imagine you get caught downloading too many JSTOR articles in a university library. Then, lawyers don't seem like rent seekers. They are an asset, not a liability. And you need one. Or two. Or a whole team of them. You can't have too many. The more the merrier.<p>As with anything else in life, context is relevant.
Speaking in general terms, lawyers are a sign of a sick society. The law should be a set of agreed rules by which we all agree to abide in order to create a better society for everyone. If we need a specialised profession to explain to us what the rules we all implicitly agreed to abide by say we should do, or as is often the case not even explain to us but just tell us the outcome, the rules are no longer fit for purpose.
First of all, except at the top end, I don't think lawyers are any worse, ethically speaking, than any other category of private business. And they are absolutely necessary.<p>The glut of attorneys definitely ruins the economy <i>for other attorneys</i>. Their income distribution is bimodal, depending on the first law job out of school. If you get "biglaw" or a decent positions at, at the least, a mid-sized regional firm, you'll make a six-figure salary. If you don't and you fall into the legal underclass, you make less than an entry-level software engineer, and have student loans to pay off.