This is a Job for Super Regulator!

4. Why does Hadfield assert that the US legal infrastructure would be better served if the legal profession were structured more like the medical profession?

• Gillian Hadfield notes that the medical profession has a much larger quantity of license types in medicine, allowing for—she believes—lower prices in medicine than in Law, where only lawyers are permitted to do any type of law.

To what extent do you agree, and why?

• Hadfield’s major argument centers on prices being higher than necessary due to licensing restrictions. This is true. Licensing restrictions—when enforced by governments—decrease supply, which increases price. Interestingly, she does not advocate for removal of government enforced licensing restrictions. She argues for greater variety and numeracy of the types of government enforced licensing restrictions in the legal field.

• Similarly, in medicine, too few doctors are graduated to satisfy demand, which pushes up prices. Graduation rates are controlled by a board called the, ‘Liaison Committee on Medical Education,’ which is “jointly sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical association.” [citation]
  The committees decrees are then, “recognized,” by the US Department of Education. Graduating from an, “LCME approved,” college of medicine is required to obtain a government enforced license, though workarounds sometimes exist. Thus, there are—at least—two means of restricting the supply of doctors linked in a vertical chain [there is a name for monopolies linked in a vertical chain but it escapes me atm]. The end result is high prices to see doctors and long waiting times to see doctors and overworked doctors. So making the legal profession more like the medical profession may not be a great plan.

• But back to the medical field. In recognition of the huge shortfall in supply in medicine and the huge potential rewards for meeting that demand, various non-MD groups have attempted to make inroads in the field of medicine. To begin with, doctors apprenticed extenders like nurses and physician assistants. Extenders created programs to teach the skills of being an extender. The extenders made their own license authorities. Government backing of their licensing authority was secured. The licensed extenders then slowly pushed for greater independence from the doctors. At present there are physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, nurse anesthetists, podiatrists, not to mention chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists, herbalists, vitamin salesmen, etc. This is why there are so many license types in medicine.

• Lawyers, it appears, do not have the same centrally planned restriction on graduation rates. I was once told that there are 10 lawyers graduated for every one doctor who graduates. This may be why there are fewer subspecialty license types in law. They may not be necessary. The lawyers may be meeting the demand enough to keep prices low enough to discourage competition. But, even if that is the case, it is likely that prices could be even lower if a government enforced license structure did not exist.