Legal profession growth tracked commercial expansion, not litigation demand alone

Evidence

By the eighteenth century, they had become quite indispens­ able in a country whose lifeline was the sea and which depended heavily on trade with the West Indies and the mother country. Wherever there is business, trade, or dealings with government, the American lawyer plays a role. After independence, the legal pro­ fession took a quantum leap in size. There were only fifteen lawyers in Massachusetts in 1740, serving a population of about 150,000. In 1840, a century later, there were 640 lawyers, ten times as many in proportion to the population. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1215

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: In-house corporate counsel ranks grew more than sixfold between 1951 and 1991 — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1217; Continuous corporate legal needs drove the shift to retainer practice — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1227; Legal innovations follow new commercial practices as they arise. — PAUL R. MILGRO, PAUL R. MILGRO - THE ROLE OF…, 33 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Legal innovations follow new commercial practices as they arise. #corroborates (0.85) — PAUL R. MILGRO, PAUL R. MILGRO - THE ROLE OF…, 33
• Economic activity cannot fully explain the scale of the American legal profession #complicates (0.80) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 999
• The practice of law shifted from courtroom litigation to transactional work #expands (0.78) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3621
• Commercial law shifted from merchants to broad market participants #expands (0.75) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1568
• Commercial complexity made lawyers indispensable despite colonial hostility #corroborates (0.75) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 519
• Corporate lawyers’ real value lay in transactional skill, not courtroom advocacy #expands (0.72) — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1228
• Private lawyers continuously create novel legal instruments that alter the economy’s structure #expands (0.70) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 3298