UPDATED. So earlier this year, the ABA released data on lawyers per state over the past ten years. Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly in a useful or informative format. As people seem to enjoy when I post informational charts, here are a few on the growth rates of lawyers per state.
All States and Territories Combined:
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Top Ten States With Largest Percentage Growth In Lawyers
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Top Ten States With Lowest Percentage Growth In Lawyers
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Comments:
- If you’re thinking about becoming a lawyer in any of the top ten growth states, you might want to reconsider. These states likely have their fill of lawyers.
- If you’ve never considered of going to any of the states with low growth and practicing law there, maybe you should.
- Massachusetts was seemingly hurt the hardest by the economic decline of the past few years (go figure). It’s actually the only state to have a decrease in the percentage of lawyers over the past ten years.
- While US Territories are included in main chart, I disqualified them from being in the running for the two breakout charts.
- UPDATE: Was going back through the data today and somehow I totally missed Rhode Island’s precipitous decline in lawyers (they are the smallest state in my defense). They’ve seen a -19% change in the number of lawyers over the past ten years. Yikes.
