Can Deregulating the Legal Industry Significantly Benefit American Society?

The legal industry’s self-regulation creates entry barriers for firms and people who seek to provide legal services and for institutions that seek to educate lawyers. In this chapter, I provide a prospective assessment of whether deregulating the legal industry could benefit American society. I argue that deregulation would benefit consumers by allowing new entry of firms and individual lawyers who would reduce prices and increase the availability of legal services. I also argue that deregulation of legal education would result in lawyers being less intellectually siloed, which could provide enormous social benefits by exposing lawyers to other modes of intellectual thought that could help them improve their policy decisions and rulings when they serve in government as legislators and judges.