The Gazette 1984

GAZETTE

JULY/AUGIJST

19

Litigation in the U.S. — An Overview

by Gael Mahony, Attorney-at-Law* (Text of an address given at the Society's Half-yearly meeting, May, 1984)

Y OUR former President, Michael Houlihan, invited me last year to attend your Annual Conference and suggested that I might speak to you and the topic he suggested was A Comparison of Law Practice in America with Law Practice in Ireland and the United Kingdom. The more I have thought about the suggestion the more interesting it has become. There is nothing, perhaps, that throws more light on things we take for granted than to examine them through the eyes of someone else. I will be speaking mostly about what is different in American Law Practice from Law Practice here and in the United Kingdom and I will offer some opinions on what underlies the differences in American practice, and what the traditions and attitudes are that have induced these differences. I am most grateful for the assistance which I received from Professor Denis Driscoll of University College Galway, Peter Sutherland your Attorney General, Professor Robert Prichard and Patrick Curran the Irish Before getting into the subject of comparisons, I will give you some statistical highlights on law practice in AMERICA. • There are approximately 613,000 lawyers in America. Taken against a population of 230,000,000 people, this means there is one lawyer for every 390 people in the country. In IRELAND, by way of contrast, there is one lawyer for every 933 people in the country. • The density of lawyers is greater in America by far than it is in any other country in the world. In JAPAN, for example, there is only one lawyer for every 10,000 people — which has led some wise men to suggest that for every car Japan exports to America we should make them import one American lawyer back to Japan. • The median age of American lawyers is growing younger every year. This bespeaks a vast influx of young people into the profession. From 1970 to 1980, the lawyer population in America increased by fifty percent. In the same period, the median age of lawyers dropped from 45 years to 40 years; in 1983 it was down to 37 years. • The percentage of American Lawyers who are women is growing very rapidly, especially in the younger ranks. From 1972 to 1980, the number of women lawyers increased from four percent of the lawyer population to thirteen percent. Virtually all Consul in Boston. Statistical Overview

of this growth has occurred in the younger age groups. Today, approximately thirty percent of all American lawyers under the age of thirty are women. And the trend is ever upwards. I am told that more than fifty percent of the freshman class of New York University Law School this year are women. • What does this vast horde of American lawyers do? • Approximately seventy percent of them are in private practice. Thirteen percent are government lawyers. Nine percent work for private industry. The remainder teach, or work for public interest organisations, or are retired from active practice. • Let me add some economic data on American lawyers in private practice. In 1983, the median income of private practitioners in America was $50,000; one-third of them earned more than $75,000; one-fifth of them earned more than $100,000. Their incomes tend to increase according to the size of their law firms. In 1982, the median income of partners in the largest New York law firms — those having 150 lawyers or more — was $232,000. To put that figure in perspective, only three percent of the private practitioners in America work in law firms that have more than 100 lawyers. • Let me add a qualitative statistic. In a national survey of American lawyers, eighty-nine percent of them said they were happy with their career choice. • By any objective standard, the profession in America appears to be in remarkably good health. It is growing. It is growing younger. Lawyers like their work. And they are prospering. This is not to say that the picture is uniformly bright. There are many things American lawyers don't do well, and many things they should do but don't do at all. But notwithstanding our shortcomings, the meaning of the statistics is unmistakable. The American bar is strong and vigorous. Lawyers in America have always played an important role in the political and social development of the country — a subject I will return to later. For better or for worse, that condition is certain to continue. Differences In looking at law practice in America, and in Ireland and the United Kingdom, perhaps the most striking difference is the absence in the American system of any formal separation between barristers and solicitors. • This may be due in part to the geography in 125