COURT SYSTEMS AND LAWof alcoholism, drug abuse, and symptoms of de-
pression than those found in the general population.
In spite of such indices of self-destruction, the
number of lawyers in the United States has been
rising, especially in the 1990s. From 374,000 in
1975, the number of lawyers will soon top one
million as 31,000+ new lawyers are admitted to the
bar every year. The field is proving attractive to
minorities and women. From a low of only about 3
percent in 1971, female lawyers now make up over
one-quarter of the total of practicing lawyers, and
nearly one-half of students in entering law school
classes. Female lawyers, as a group, are younger,
with only 7 percent being over 50 compared to 30
percent of their male colleagues.
The location of practice has, however, not
changed significantly. Private practice is domi-
nant, even increasing, so that by 1991, 73 percent
of lawyers were in private practice, with only 8.8
percent found in private industry, and 8.2 percent
in government. But private practice has been un-
dergoing profound changes. Solo practitioners
have become scarcer as lawyers move increasingly
to firms. The increase is mainly in larger firms
(those with at least eleven lawyers). In 1980, the
very large firms (one hundred or more lawyers)
accounted for only 7 percent of firm employment.
By 1991, that percent jumped to twenty-three. The
large firms are the more common locus for men,
with women being more likely to be found in
government, legal aid, and in public defender’s
offices. Some of these differences are declining as
more women enter the profession and attain expe-
rience. On the other hand, more women, propor-
tionally, are leaving the profession.
It is the large firms that attract more and more
of the new lawyers who seek distinguished and
lucrative careers. The largest—often called ‘‘mega
firms’’—range from the Washington, D. C., firm
of Williams & Connolly with 127 lawyers (sixty-one
partners) producing revenues of $78 million, to
true giants, such as the New York firm of Skadden,
Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, with over 1,000
lawyers (236 partners) earning well over half-a-
billion dollars in gross revenue. Some firms are
even larger. They are not, of course, all under one
roof but scattered in different cities as well as in
foreign countries. Not only are these the places
where the largest salaries are found, but they are
also the platforms from which government and
other influential careers are launched, including
leading positions on major committees and boards,
as well as ambassadorships and presidencies. Twen-
ty-five of the forty-one U. S. presidents have been
lawyers, as well as half of U. S. senators and nearly
half of all members of Congress. Lawyers are
widely found in governorships and state legisla-
tures as well. If these are not the most esteemed
members of society, they certainly are among the
most powerful and perhaps the most feared.Although most persons in common law sys-
tems are aware of the presence of lawyers in those
settings, it is not the image most have when they
think of lawyers, and it is not the setting in which
they see them in television drama. Instead, it is the
lawyer, often solo or in a small firm, arguing for his
or her client in a courtroom before a jury. The
television image runs counter to the image of real
lawyers in the news, leading to charges that the
United States is a ‘‘litigious’’ society, in which large
awards are given for burns suffered from spills of
hot coffee, and there are suits against arrest for
breast-feeding in public or for recovery of ex-
penses on being stood up for a date. Though most
such cases are thrown out immediately by disgust-
ed judges or settled out of court for modest sums,
critics person who may never hear of those out-
comes continue to demand that we follow the lead
of the nonlitigious Japanese, for example, who
make do with very few lawyers. Actually, the num-
ber of lawyers in Japan is deliberately kept low by
the governing elite to preserve a hierarchical social
order. Nor are the Japanese devoid of a taste for
litigation by any means (Haley 1978, 1991, ch. 5).Nor has the United States had a ‘‘litigation
explosion’’ nearly as great as some have claimed.
There was only a moderate increase at the state
level in the 1990s. It is true that there has been a
large increase in the number of federal cases, not
of the trivial sort noted above but rather of big
businesses suing each other. The news of most of
those ends up on the back pages of the Wall Street
Journal. Other federal cases deal with asbestos and
similar injuries as well as other suits by govern-
ment (Galanter 1983; Galanter and Palay 1991).
The reason it seems that the U.S. is experiencing a
litigation explosion is that there is an increasing
prominence of what have been called ‘‘mega’’
cases, in which large masses of lawyers and experts
pursue a single case, sometimes for years on end.
Although most involve business, a few involve