Here's 'Everything You Need To Know About The Business Of Law Over The Last 45 Years'

The vastly divergent fortunes of partners and solos.

onJuly 8, 2015 at 2:44 PMJuly 15, 2015 at 8:47 AM

Professor Ben Barton of Tennessee Law has shared (while guest blogging over on Instapundit) his “favorite graph” from his new book Glass Half Full (affiliate link). The professor loves this graph because “it tells you everything you need to know about the business of law over the last 45 years.” Apparently, the most telling trend in the legal industry has been the wildly divergent fortunes of solo practitioners and law firm partners.

Since 1967, the Internal Revenue Service has collected income data for two categories of attorneys: solo practitioners and law firm partners. (The IRS defines “law firm partner” very expansively, to include everyone from Mom & Pop shops to Biglaw.) Here is the data, measured in current dollars, from 1967 to 2012:

A tale of two professions: alongside the explosive (and until about 2008, seemingly unstoppable) growth of the business of law firms, we have seen the steady erosion of the earnings of solo practitioners. Adjusted for inflation, in 1967, solos earned an average of almost $75,000. In 2012, that number had fallen to $49,130, a decrease of more than one-third.