Why are there so many lawyers in the US

Many Lawyers in The USA

There�s one more factor nobody else has mentioned. If I�m remembering correctly, I first read it in an essay by Derek Bok. Mr. Bok served as dean of the Harvard Law School from 1968 until 1971, and then served as President of Harvard University from 1971 to 1991.
What Mr. Bok noted was that the majority (probably even the vast majority) of new law students are humanities majors, and most of the rest are social sciences majors; very few entering law students are majors in mathematics or the sciences.

He further noted that law schools were unique in that they required pretty much no mathematics or science courses as a prerequisite to entry, and little if any of the law school curriculum is mathematical in nature (if a law school has a course on accounting for lawyers, that�s probably the only class that�s going to require any significant mathematics, and that�s pretty much simple arithmetic).
You probably see where this is heading. Every year in the US you have a large number of ambitious humanities and social science graduates. Their primary talents are in languages, they are either untalented at mathematics or severely math-phobic (in either event that makes them very much math-averse, and unwilling to study any subject which requires any significant mathematical grounding), and they�ve probably taken the bare minimum of science and math courses necessary to receive their bachelors degrees.
Now here they are, in late junior or early senior year of college, trying to decide what they want to do with their lives. Getting a job out of college seems impossible; nobody wants to have spent four years of college only to be asking �Do you want fries with that?� after graduation�the �classic liberal arts job prospect�.
So obviously, several years in graduate or professional school preparing for a career is the way to go. But, what graduate or professional program? Most of these graduates being humanities students or social sciences students, they know that the job prospects for students with masters or doctorates in their disciplines are equally dim.
Most professional schools (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, optometry) require as prerequisites much more science and mathematics (at least through calculus) than they took (unless the prospective student wants to take an additional year or more taking the undergraduate math and science classes they neglected taking before they received their bachelors degrees).
Graduate study in business requires much more math (in economics, accounting, and finance classes) than they want to deal with. Obviously, any sort of graduate study in science and mathematics is out of the question for the same reasons.
What�s left? Law school, of course! No mathematics or science courses required to enter, and no math or science after you get in. And of course, lawyers make the big bucks! (Or so they think, but there�s plenty of time to realize what a huge miscalculation that was once they�re within striking distance of the legal job market.)
So on the surface, what�s not to love about law school? Add to this mix the fact that none of these students� parents are going to discourage their going to law school; the ability to say �my son/daughter the lawyer� is just too great an encouragement there.



That creates a huge demand for law school openings. Now, add to this a number of the other factors mentioned (law schools require very little capital outlay and have low costs of operation compared to other professional schools, thus making them huge profit centers (i.e., cash cows) for universities, the failure of the legal profession to regulate the proliferation of law schools and make it harder for colleges, universities, and for-profit ownership groups to open new law schools, etc.), and you can see why we have too many law schools pumping out twice as many lawyers than the US needs to fill anticipated legal job openings, and what is the natural result? A glut of lawyers.