There are 1.33 million lawyers in the United States, a number that has remained relatively stable in recent years.
That works out to one lawyer for every 300 people.
At the same time, the number of law graduates shrunk by around a quarter between 2013 and 2017.
Those are some findings from this report from Statista.
“Despite the number of lawyers in the US slowing somewhat, there are one and a third million of them and what they now need to face is that they are a changing profession,” according to LawFuel.
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Here are some other takeaways from the Statista report, according to LawFuel:
- In 2019, almost 34,000 students graduated from law school in the United States. That was down from 34,221 graduates in 2018.
- For years the number of lawyers in the US was rising. That trend ended in 2008, with the global financial crisis, technology and increased legal competition.
- The increasing advance of technology, principally artificial intelligence software and ‘robot’ workers, means that the repetitive work in law offices will be easily and efficiently handled, leaving the sophisticated legal work for the lawyers. This trend is only going to accelerate.
- Half of law firms plan to replace some of their human legal resources with technology.
- The law continues to be a largely male-dominated domain, despite increasing efforts by law firms to increase their gender mix and general diversity. Fewer than a quarter of all partners in US law firms are women and less than 20 per cent of managing partners are women.
- Booming profits recorded by major law firms show that it is a highly profitable profession for many.
Source: LawFuel
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