“The truth is that legislatures and Courts have made lawyers a privileged class, and have thus given them facilities, of which they have availed themselves, for entering into combinations hostile, at least to the interests, if not to the rights, of the community – such as to keep up prices, and shut out competitors. The natural result of such combinations also is, that the mass of the members will do more or less to screen individuals from suspicion. The consequence is, that the people have imbibed an extreme jealousy towards them…. Now if the profession were thrown open to all, lawyers would no longer be a privileged class – they probably could no longer enter into combinations that would be of any avail to them, and the jealousy of the people towards them would be at an end.” Lysander Spooner, To the Members of the Legislature of Massachusetts, August 26, 1835.

Lawyers, like doctors, are part of a class of people who must join what amounts to a labor cartel in order to lawfully ply their trade. Bar associations have territories, and they drive up the price of legal services in those territories by limiting entry by service providers. Talk of the lawyer’s “professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay” stems from guilt about this anti-competitive status quo in the legal services market. Why should lawyers owe anyone relief if they didn’t first create the burden to be relieved? …

The Legal Labor CartelRead More »