2/15/2005

Who's the Client? The Plaintiff or the Lawyer?

One thing that really annoys me are "ambulance chasers. " Something that annoys me more are lawyers who are ambulance chasers and/or engage in similar activities. Lawyers are intelligent enough to realize the perverse consequences of such practices but continue because of greed. These "ambulance chasing" lawyers ignore people who truly need the help of a legal expert so they can devote their time to some person who allegedly had been "wronged" by a drug company. That's a discussion for another day. The economics behind my griping is that the lawyer industry has created its own demand and supply curve. The demand curve being those lawyers who are looking for people who have supposedly been taken advantage of and want to stick their hands in some kind of lucrative compensation that a drug company is issueing. The supply curve would be the people who have taken the drug. I used the example of drugs and drug companies, but there are other examples as well. For a more thorough analysis on the economic effects of this issue, please refer to my hyperlink above.
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1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Sam's comment for spelling mistakes.

I think Sandy is a little off in saying that lawyers have created both demand and supply. I think this is good example of a shift in one curve causing a movement along the other. In this case the demand for plaintiffs has shifted to the right, moving us up the supply of plaintiffs into a region where people used to be too busy to sue.

I think Mack's insight that the proliferation of tort cases is because of a principal-agent problem between society and lawyers is astounding. I think this is absolutely right, and I've never heard that point made that way before.

8:27 PM

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