Michigan Resident Lawyer Employment Data Series – Part 4 by Don LeDuc, Professor of Law, Cooley Law School
Annually, the State Bar of Michigan collects detailed data regarding its membership, focusing on active Michigan resident lawyers–a focus followed in the seven-part analysis in this series. The data is supplied by and used with the permission of the State Bar. My thanks to Kristen Sewell, the current Research and Analytics Director at the State Bar of Michigan and Anne Vrooman, recently retired from that position, for their work in gathering and providing this information. The data provides an opportunity to examine objectively both the changes from year-to-year and the implications of those changes.
Part 4 continues the look at county lawyers. Chart 6 emphasizes two population-to-lawyer ratios. The first focuses on how many persons currently support the lawyers residing in each county by dividing the general population by the number of lawyers, emphasizing the population number. The second calculates the ratio of lawyers per thousand population, emphasizing the lawyer numbers.
Rural areas have much higher population numbers per lawyer, while the urban areas have fewer. Urban areas tend to have more businesses and government jobs; rural areas tend to have fewer of these. Urban areas include large colleges and universities, which produce graduates who tend to stay in their locality. The counties of the northwestern portion of the lower peninsula attract many lawyers who vacation there, have summer homes there, or retire there; to a lesser degree, the same can be said about the northeastern lower peninsula, as well as the more southerly coastal counties abutting the Great Lakes.
The approach in Chart 6 tends to reverse the order seen in Chart 5, where the urban areas ranked highest in lawyer numbers and the rural areas lowest. In Chart 6, Michigan’s upper peninsula and the middle band of counties have the highest ratio of population to lawyer, reflecting the national situation where rural areas are underserved by lawyers. Specialty practices are less likely to be found in these areas. There are fewer large law firms. Still, it would appear that some relatively good-sized counties by population present opportunities for graduates and lawyers looking to relocate.
Chart 6 also presents an opportunity to consider the age of the lawyer population in each county and area. Statewide, the under-40 group is about half the size of either of the two other age groups reported by the State Bar membership. This reflects the trends of several recent decades, with more new admissions-to-practice than retirements and deaths among older lawyers. The profession grew with the baby boomer generation, which is now aging out; the youngest of that group is reaching age 63 this year. The more-rural counties have far fewer younger lawyers and tend to have more lawyers in the eldest age group.
The urban areas clearly have the most lawyers, including the most younger lawyers. And it appears that the most recent law school graduates are concentrating in the urban counties. The issue presented is how to attract both current and newly graduated lawyers to the underserved areas. Next, will be a look at our aging lawyer population.
