State-level data from Arkansas, California, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin and several Plains states underscores that lawyers cluster in urban areas. Their disproportionate coverage creates “legal deserts” or patches of the state with few, if any, lawyers in private practice.
There is no general shortage of lawyers anywhere in the United States. If you use these data to argue that, you are deliberately misleading your audience by failing to understand that having a law license and working as an attorney are not the same thing (doubly so for people who just have a law degree).
Solving the rural attorney shortage won’t be easy, given that few law graduates appear willing to set up shop in rural America.
Over the years, North Dakota has seen a boom in its oil industry. As a result, they have seen a shortage in the number of attorneys available to work for the oil company clients.
For example, there are 159 counties in the state of Georgia; roughly 6 of them do not have lawyers, and 40 of the counties have 10 or less lawyers available to service clients. In addition, on the 93 counties in Nebraska, 12 of them do not have lawyers.
New York State has the highest concentration of lawyers compared to any other state, resulting in higher demand for the profession — nearly double the average national demand.
Arkansas, Arizona and South Carolina have the fewest lawyers per capita (2.1 per 1,000), followed by Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota (2.2 lawyers per 1,000). Although Vermont is the second-least populated state, it has one of the highest legal densities, with 5.8 lawyers per 1,000 residents.
Employment of lawyers is projected to grow 9 percent from 2020 to 2030, about as fast as the average for all occupations. About 46,000 openings for lawyers are projected each year, on average, over the decade.
Most employers are seeking mid-level legal professionals with three to five years of experience....Most in-demand practice areasCommercial law.Litigation.Real estate law.Intellectual property.Family law.
Key FindingsIllinois. Our top state for lawyers based on the six metrics we considered is Illinois. ... Massachusetts. ... District of Columbia. ... California. ... Florida. ... New York. ... Georgia. ... Colorado.More items...•
Number of Active & Resident Lawyers Per CapitaNO. LAWYERS PER CAPITA BY STATE (2018)RANKSTATENO. ACTIVE AND RESIDENT LAWYERS1.District of Columbia53,7782.New York179,6003.Maryland40,30960 more rows
Every now and then, or more often, we hear news about how the legal profession is dying. Whether it's robot lawyers, the apocalypse, or the robot lawyer apocalypse, you don't have to worry about the legal profession dying. The profession isn't going anywhere.
Law has a hugely oversaturated job market. If you can get into one of the T14 (Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Northwestern, Berkeley, etc) or the next top ~3 - 5 (Georgetown, UCLA, etc) and graduate in the top half of your class or better then go for it.
A sometimes stressful work environment When it's all said and done, a lawyer may end up spending 50 hours or more at the office each week. “Lawyers often have demanding schedules and heavy workloads, which may contribute to increased stress levels,” says the ABA.
Corporate Lawyers Among the types of lawyers, Corporate Law experts are in great demand due to their specialization in contract law, securities law, bankruptcy, tax law, accounting, intellectual property rights, licensing, zoning laws, etc.
Estate Planning. Although being a legal clerk is the easiest career path, it is only suited for beginners. Estate planning wins the most stress-free legal practice area when practicing law for lawyers. Many lawyers avoid estate planning as it is a field of law associated with death.
Our Jobs Program, which monitors more than 1000 law firms and 24 fortune 500 companies, hit a new high for legal openings in January 2022 reaching 12,000 open legal jobs. That is a 300% increase from July 2020. We expect hiring to continue full tilt through the year.
When looking at all 50 states plus the nation’s capital, only 5 states are actually poised to lose jobs for lawyers. The worst news is for those wishing to practice in Idaho, which is projected to post a -4.5% loss in jobs for lawyers in 2020.
Some of the typical lawyer strongholds throughout the country perform well in the rankings. Massachusetts — famous for top law schools such as Harvard University, Boston College, Boston University, and Northeastern University, — sits close to the top at number six on the list, while Washington, D.C.
According to the Current Population Survey, 1.1 million attorneys were working in the United States in 2012, but the Labor Department’s Employment projections program places the figure at 759,800.
To give you a comparison: For the 1.3 million attorneys on the rolls in 2013, between 1970 and 2012 the ABA conferred just over 1.6 million law degrees and state bars issued nearly 2 million lawyer licenses.
Many lawyers avoid small towns for reasons ranging from cultural preferences to social life to the economic reality that salaries tend to be higher in metropolitan areas. For example, the mean salary for lawyers in the metropolitan area of Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Nashua, New Hampshire, was $170,720 in 2018.
Additionally, parts of the state, including Utqiagvik, north of the Arctic Circle, have a well-documented housing shortage exacerbated by problems caused by a lack of good title. Those title problems are sometimes the direct result of a lack of attorneys to draft wills, Nelson says.
But things didn’t go as expected. Both of the lawyers pulled out of the program after about a year.
Fast forward to September of 2012, when Lohse’s fortunes took a turn no one could have anticipated: He and his wife won a $202.1 million Powerball jackpot, totaling about $91 million after taxes.
Alaska doesn’t have a law school, and many of the attorneys who work for the state’s legal services corporation take the job with the understanding they’ll leave after a short time. Other states are hoping to recruit attorneys to rural parts of the country on a more long-term basis.
Often those areas lack any private attorneys or police officers and jails—a situation prompting Attorney General William Barr to declare a public safety emergency for rural Alaska in January 2019.
Some rural counties have no lawyers at all. In Nebraska, for example, 11 of the state’s 93 counties lack any attorneys, according to the Nebraska State Bar Association.