In-house corporate counsel ranks grew more than sixfold between 1951 and 1991

Evidence

A smaller number of lawyers work as “in-​house counsel.” That is, they are lawyers on the payroll of one particular company. They are lawyers with a single client, their company. The number of these lawyers also seems to be growing fast. In 1951, there were 11,000 lawyers working as house counsel; in 1979, 50,000. By 1991, there were over 70,000 law­ yers who worked as house counsel in private industry, though that number appears to have leveled off somewhat over the last two decades. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1217

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘in-house counsel’ with a crisp single-client distinction useful for the course’s institutional vocabulary.
• XREF: connects to: Legal profession growth tracked commercial expansion, not litigation demand alone — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1215; Corporations expand in-house legal departments to cut reliance on elite firms — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1064

Broader Connections

• Corporations expand in-house legal departments to cut reliance on elite firms #expands (0.85) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1064