Trial Lawyers Lobby in Trouble?

The tort reformers among you are going to love this story. Just as it looks like there might be an opening to enact significant medical malpractice reform, it appears that one of the most powerful lobbying arms against reform is hemorrhaging money (gavel bang: Overlawyered). The Washington Times reports:

The American Association for Justice, the most prominent group representing plaintiffs’ attorneys, has seen a shake-up in its executive suite and has struggled to deal with what appears to be a mounting budget shortfall. To help it fight congressional efforts to make it harder for patients to sue doctors and lawyers, it recently sent out an extra solicitation to its members, asking them to fork over money for a lobbying campaign.
The most striking evidence of its financial woes is a swift decline in income, which resulted in a more than $6.2 million deficit in its operating budget for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2008, the most recent year for which data are available.

The reason for the shortfall appears to be fewer members. Details after the jump.


Given the way that the recession has affected the legal industry as a whole, it is not entirely surprising that the American Association for Justice is dealing with a decline in its membership dues:

The biggest hit to its books was in membership dues, which dropped from $28.6 million in 2005 to $19.2 million in 2008, according to the annual AAJ financial report for that fiscal year filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
“That is our number-one priority: to strengthen our membership,” said Joey Diaz, a member of the AAJ executive committee, speaking by phone from his law office in Madison, Miss. “We have a number of people working on membership and we have reversed that [downward] trend and are starting to move forward again.”

Has the recession really hit the medical malpractice industry as well? I imagine there are a lot of lawyers sitting on their couch right now that would gladly pay an AAJ membership fee, if the AAJ could point them in the direction of a full time, stable job. But it is a little hard to motivate people to lobby Congress when they’ve just been laid off or fear being laid off next.
Do trial lawyers have the financial muscle for another battle against tort reform?
Trial lawyers lobby sinks $6.2M in debt [Washington Times]
Financial woes at AAJ? [Overlawyered]

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