From: PAPAI@kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu (Jonathan Papai)
Subject: "U.S. has 70 % of the world's lawyers." -Dan Quayle
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 18:17:46 GMT


Exerpt from _The Columbus Dispatch_   (a "legendary" paper)
Saturday, September 26,1992  p. 8A, Opinion page.

Headline: Quayle's lawyer numbers don't add up
Author: Mike Royko
Affiliation: Chicago Tribune


At last, somebody has come up with an answer to Dan Quayle's
provocative question about the disgusting glut of American
Lawyers.
You surely know Quayle's question: "Does America really need 70
precent of the world's lawyers?"

...  Is Japan's merciful lack of lawyers the reason that the
country is so efficient?  Is it because it doesn't have hordes of
lawyers goofing things up?  Only one lawyer for every 14,000
Japanese citizens?

Are we inefficient and struggling to keep up because we have one
lawyer for every 700 Americans?  What is the answer?

Well, the answer to Quayle's question has been provided by two
men: Ray August, an associate professor of law a Washington State
University, and Toshika Kitawaki, an associate professor of law
at Nihon U. in Tokyo.

...  That's right, America does not have 70 percent of the
world's lawyers.  We have less than 10 percent.

And it is a myth (or a lie, if you want to be nasty) that Japan
doesn't have many lawyers.  It is loaded with them.  It probably
has more per capita than we do.  A lot of other countries do,
too, including West Germany, Austria, Italy and most of Latin
America.  There are at least 34 countries that have more lawyers
per capita.

....  In the United States, you get to be a lawyer by going to
law school and passing a bar exam.  Then you can write wills,
defend ax murders, practice corporate law, do tax work or become
a judge - in other words, anything in the field of law.

But that's not how it works in Japan and in many other countries.

In Japan, you go to law school.  About 60,000 law students
graduate each year.  About half of them take a test to get a
license that will permit them to set up a law office, go into
court, argue cases and maybe become judges.  But like many
enterprises in Japan, law is a closed society.  Fewer than 500 of
the 60,000 graduating lawyers recieve these licenses.

So, what happens to the others? Do they drive cabs, slice sushi
or stick swords in their tummies out of humiliation?

Of course not.  They do what hundreds of thousands of American
lawyers do.

They go to work in the law departments of big corporations, where
they handle corporate legal matters, write contracts, negotiate
deals and so on.  Or they go into government and handle
government legal matters.

...  Many of them become become big corporate executives,
government leaders and bureaucrats.  Most of the top Japanese
business and political figures are law graduates - or "Law
Providers" , as they are called.

The Two professors found similar systems in other countries.

... So when Quayle, or his hired brains, juggled the figures,
they omitted most of the other catagories, even though they
perform the same kind of non-trial work that most American
lawyers do.

And that's how they came up with the 70 percent figure - by not
bothering to count a few million people who are trained in the
law, do legal work and by American standards would be considered
lawyers.


[end exerpt]

J.P."No matter what you call them, they still smell the same" Papai

Papai@kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu
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