The market for legal services disciplined entry when formal bar strictures collapsed

Evidence

Loose standards were probably inevitable. And perhaps even necessary. Formal restrictions and requirements shriveled. But there was a harsh, and perhaps efficient, control: the actual market for legal services. It pruned away deadwood. It rewarded the cunning and the adaptive. Jacksonian democracy did not make every man a lawyer. It helped make a scrambling bar of shrewd entrepreneurs. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1893

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wider theme that American professional regulation relied on market forces - echoes the earlier note that bar admission fragmentation produced de facto market discipline. Also parallels law-merchant material where reputation markets disciplined traders. — connects to: Loose bar admission made law a channel of upward mobility — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1816; Bar preparation requirements weakened across the nineteenth century — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1884; Market competition disciplines lawyers more than bar association sanctions — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 852 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Market competition disciplines lawyers more than bar association sanctions #corroborates (0.82) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 852