WHAT DO YOU THINK DOES USA HAVE TOO MANY LAWYERS?

About two weeks ago, this column offered a few brief words of praise for the critique of the legal profession delivered by Vice President Dan Quayle at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association. Those comments brought howls of outrage from a long-time friend who is a practicing attorney. I won't identify that friend, and because I haven't discussed with him a response, we'll just call him Seymour. What follows is an open letter to my attorney friend, "Seymour", to whom I've sent a packet of articles supporting my position.

Dear Seymour:

Let me say at the outset that I have no interest in "lawyer-bashing", nor was I doing so in the column you responded to. (By the way, the reader who sent me some of the source material I enclose, and who shares not only my concerns but those of millions of Americans, is himself a 40-year member of the Bar.)

Nor do I accept your premise: that lawyer-bashing is what Bush-Quayle are up to. To note one fact that's almost too obvious to require mention, Quayle and his wife Marilyn are both attorneys. Several of the articles I enclose herewith Mona Charen's and Gordon Crovitz's Wall Street Journal piece are written by attorneys. Further, the Vice President went to the Bar convention in Atlanta to present the 30-point recommendations of a panel he heads on economic competitiveness. I've not seen all the recommendations, and will withhold full comment until I have. But certain points are clear.

It's clear that this issue isn't about lawyer-bashing; what this is about is about reform. The legal profession is, after all, sufficiently attractive to me to be the group among whom I long thought I wanted to spend my life's work. But if you are not troubled by the awesome statistics, then other thoughtful observers certainly are. Consider just a few of the amazing facts: The United States has 70 percent of the world's lawyers. 70 percent. More lawyers in the greater Washington, D.C. area than in all of many advanced industrial nations. Japan (population +/-100 million) runs a highly productive society and economy with 10,000-12,000 lawyers, while we have something like 729,000 lawyers for a population of 250 million.

It is in the nature of lawyers and lawyering that they make work for each other. Everyone acknowledges that attorneys perform a useful make that, indispensable role in a free society. Attorneys who keep their roles in perspective oil the wheels of industry and commerce.

Still, other facts about their work are also apparent. Nothing is produced; no wealth created; we're talking about redistribution of wealth that someone else's work, saving, investment, and risk-taking has brought into the world.

I believe we're talking about a competitiveness issue; i.e., that the surest products of our current legal system uncertainty and constipation harm America's competitiveness in the emerging global economy. Who is it who has an interest in delay and uncertainty where legal rules are concerned? Why, the litigator, of course. Certainly not the businessman, nor the inventor, nor the entrepreneur the productive risk-takers who fuel the engines of growth.

That present levels of lawyers and lawyering are an anti-competitive drag on the American economy is becoming sufficiently obvious that the social scientists and economists are taking note. They're noticing the obstacles that businessmen and manufacturers have long struggled with. This is the subject of many studies and much careful and dispassionate research, one example of which I have enclosed herewith.

One difficulty in demonstrating this fact is that we will never know exactly which advanced drugs, with precisely what lifesaving properties, were never introduced, because potential liability consequences are so severe that drug companies don't bring them to market. Nor will we know which companies decide to delay doing so for many years, while ordinary people suffer and die needlessly.

We do know that in other countries, with less constipated legal systems, beneficial drugs come to market much sooner, without horror stories of the thalidomide variety. Examples are drugs helpful in treating Alzheimer's, cancer and heart disease.

We do know that experts have proven that 40 percent of the cost of a stepladder is the "liability tax." We do know that the prices of small aircraft have been hiked $100,000 and more by the liability tax, causing a catastrophic slide in sales, layoffs, and a declining industry.

We do know doctors are practicing defensive medicine at what immeasurable cost! They're ordering unneeded tests and procedures to "cover their ass" against the inevitable lawsuits that follow any bad result, no matter how accidental or unforeseeable. All this mandates higher insurance premiums that doctors and industries pass on to consumers in higher fees and prices.

I know the rationale. Lawyers argue that all this enforces safety. But really as they say in Kelso "Enough is too Gott-damn much!"

This is not a frivolous subject that can be dismissed by tossing off cliches about who has, or has not, "sold out to Big Business." Big Business, Little Business, In-Between-Business, consumers, ordinary people in all walks of life it makes no difference. We all lose when a system whose goal is justice costs more than is at stake in the underlying damage award the very "justice" that is supposedly being fought over.

The reforms being pressed most urgently have much to commend them; the enactment of many is among the most urgent business of the day. Tort reform. Limitations on punitive damage awards. An end to forum-shopping. A move to the English Rule (also known as the Everywhere-But-America Rule), requiring the loser to pay the winner's costs. (You'll get a real argument from lawyers on that one. They say it's a sell-out to "Big Business"). The elimination or restriction of contingency-fee lawsuits, as in Great Britain and many other countries. (Another fierce argument).

The law is surely one of the honored professions, the search for justice in freedom among the most noble to which any of us can aspire. But something has gone terribly wrong, and it won't do for lawyers to blindly deny what everybody knows to be true. Surely, most Americans know we should be training more chemists, physicists, mathemeticians, engineers and inventors and fewer lawyers.

In closing, be assured that we at the Southeast Missourian understand the responsibility of a newspaper to be a forum for the continuing discussion that is the lifeblood of a free republic. Accordingly, please give serious consideration to my invitation that you write a "Be Our Guest" column for publication in our pages, on this or some other topic that may tickle your fancy.

Sincerely,

Peter Kinder

Associate Publisher