Do We Have Too Many Lawyers?

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As a political gambit, the method is tried and true. If you are an unpopular Vice President, refurbish your image by deriding an occupational group with an even lower approval rating than your own. Spiro Agnew popularized the ploy back in 1969 with his bitter denunciations of the news media. Following the same playbook, Vice President Dan Quayle -- a lawyer -- wangled an invitation to the American Bar Association convention in Atlanta and last week used the forum to mount a blistering attack on the legal profession.

"Our system of civil justice is, at times, a self-inflicted competitive disadvantage," Quayle declared at the outset. What followed was a somewhat pedestrian recital of recommendations for reforming the legal system from the President's Council on Competitiveness, which the Vice President chairs. Many of these ideas represent pro-business leftovers from the Reagan Administration. But Quayle's speech is likely to be remembered for the string of rhetorical questions he asked in conclusion: "Does America really need 70% of the world's lawyers? Is it healthy for our economy to have 18 million new lawsuits coursing through the system annually? Is it right that people with disputes come up against staggering expense and delay?"

Those were fighting words to outgoing A.B.A. president John J. Curtin Jr. Departing from protocol, Curtin stepped to the microphone to offer an impromptu rebuttal. "Anyone who believes a better day dawns when lawyers are eliminated bears the burden of explaining who will take their place," Curtin declared to cheers from the audience. "Who will protect the poor, the injured, the victims of negligence, the victims of racial discrimination and - the victims of racial violence?" Not mentioned, of course, were the corporations that provide some A.B.A. members with the bulk of their income. Quayle was allowed the final word. "Nobody is talking about eliminating lawyers," he said, backtracking a bit. "So let's not be extreme about this."

That is precisely the problem -- almost everyone is an extremist of one stripe or another when it comes to debating the legal system. Lawyers are advocates, and for some, no cause is more likely to arouse passion than the defense of a profession that, after exacting a grueling apprenticeship, provides their livelihood. The political system is apt to provide only limited succor; nearly half the members of Congress are lawyers. That is certainly one reason why nonlawyers feel compelled to resort to the weapon available to oppressed people everywhere -- sarcastic humor. (Q. Why does New Jersey have so much industrial waste and Washington, D.C., so many lawyers? A. New Jersey had first choice.)

Quayle is far from the first politician to mine this populist bedrock of antilawyer sentiment. Jimmy Carter attacked the legal profession for providing unequal standards of justice for the rich and the poor. Quayle's emphasis was not justice but competitiveness. By framing the debate in these terms, he raised a series of provocative questions about the legal profession's role in national economic life.