It’s official _ lawyerisation continues apace. The legal profession is growing, getting richer and more male-dominated.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics put out a report last week on the legal-services industry showing a modest increase in employment of 14 per cent between June 1988 and June 1993 (against a five per cent increase in total Australian employment).
But the figure disguises an even greater increase in the number of practising lawyers and a large increase in their incomes.
Practising lawyers took the lion’s share of the increase in people and money in the legal-services industry. Overall, employment in the industry went up 14 per cent, but the number of practising lawyers went up 35 per cent.
As with most industries, there are fewer support staff _ secretaries, messengers, cleaners and other hangers on. In 1988 only 34 per cent of the industry’s workers were practising lawyers; in 1993 it was 40 per cent. The lawyers have got more efficient. But they have not passed on the saving to the public. They have kept it themselves.
Profit per legal business has gone up 47 per cent against a 26 per cent increase in the CPI. The overall income of legal business doubled in the five years. The number of businesses increased by 37 per cent.
In 1988 there was one practising lawyer per 905 people, by 1993 it was one lawyer per 715. Presumably the trend continues. The concentration is highest in NSW. There is now one practising lawyer for every 609 people in NSW. This has reached Californian proportions.
Females have done worse than males. Females make up 85 per cent of the non-lawyer part of the industry (the non-growth, low-paid area).
The professional bodies like to give the impression of the struggling suburban solicitor diligently drafting the family will and looking after the family business, or the gaunt barrister looking for a few crumbs around the courtrooms.
Not so. The ABS figures (and the trends extracted from them) indicate our gut instincts are right: more lawyers earning more money.
We are talking lawyers in the business of lawyering here; we are not talking people with legal qualifications who work in government, property development, or worse, the Press, or who have gone off to more useful fields such as plumbing.
The figures come a week after the Chief Justice, Sir Gerard Brennan, lamented that there were not enough competent people to appoint as judges. The lawyers were staying in the profession. Small wonder; the pay is better than on the Bench. The judges merely get CPI increases, so they are getting left behind. The fact the judiciary is scratching about a bit to get lawyers to come on to the Bench is perhaps one of the least malignant aspects of the increase in the number of lawyers and the extent of their monetary take.
There is a worse aspect. You cannot blame the lawyers if foolish governments ever increase the scope for their work. Every year, Federal and state Parliaments churn out ever more legislation of increasing complexity. They set up ever more tribunals arbitrating of ever more created “rights”.
The aim is well-intentioned: to ensure justice rather than unfairness in a whole range of human activity and to tighten financial and corporate regulations to prevent crooks from getting away with it.
It seems a forlorn hope. The regulations to ensure fairness are abused by the unworthy. The regulations to prevent financial crookedness cause burdens for the honest and are circumvented by the dishonest.
You cannot regulate for morality and the attempt to do so seems only to compound the problem, engendering a view that law and regulation alone become the reference point for legitimacy of conduct. If the employer/landlord/public-service decision-maker/teacher does not do things exactly by the book then you can get the decision overturned and compensation. All form and no substance. If the regulations or law do not exactly spell out proscribed conduct then you can get away with breaking their spirit if not their letter _ and you can pay a lawyer to help you.
As we increase the number of lawyers and pages of legislation all the indications point to more not less unfairness and financial crookedness in Australia.