Law Schools and the Continuing Growth of the Legal Profesion

<p>In most countries for which data are available, the size of the legal profession has continued to grow over the last 40 plus years. This continued growth reflects the perceived attractiveness of a career as a legal professional (i.e., the demand) and the incentives of the institutions that...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Herbert Kritzer
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law 2013-07-01
Series:Oñati Socio-Legal Series
Subjects:
Online Access:http://ssrn.com/abstract=2221281
Description
Summary:<p>In most countries for which data are available, the size of the legal profession has continued to grow over the last 40 plus years. This continued growth reflects the perceived attractiveness of a career as a legal professional (i.e., the demand) and the incentives of the institutions that provide legal education, and hence serve as primary gatekeepers, to maintain or increase the number of students they enroll. In some countries, perhaps most prominently the United States, structural changes in the opportunities for careers in the legal profession are likely to put pressure on law schools that could result in changes in the supply of opportunities to obtain the legal education required to become a lawyer.</p> <hr /><p>En la mayor&iacute;a de los pa&iacute;ses de los que se dispone de datos, el n&uacute;mero de abogados no ha dejado de crecer desde hace m&aacute;s de 40 a&ntilde;os. Este crecimiento constante, refleja el atractivo que se percibe en una profesi&oacute;n como la abogac&iacute;a (esto es, la demanda), y los incentivos de las instituciones que imparten estos estudios, y constituyen la primera barrera para mantener o aumentar el n&uacute;mero de estudiantes que aceptan. En algunos pa&iacute;ses, tal vez de forma m&aacute;s destacada en Estados Unidos, es probable que los cambios estructurales en las oportunidades de trabajar como abogado obliguen a las facultades de derecho a modificar la oferta para acceder a la carrera de derecho.
ISSN:2079-5971