Lawyers Per Capita by State (2010 Edition)

[****THIS IS AN OUTDATED POST ON LAWYERS PER CAPITA. THE PERMANENT VERSION OF THIS POST CAN BE FOUND ON THIS PAGE. PLEASE LINK TO THAT INSTEAD.****]

Many readers find their way to Law School Tuition Bubble by searching for the “number of attorneys per capita by state,” and discover research I did way back in the summer of 2010. Other searches bring people to the Avery Index, which used the 2000 Census with 2007 Martindale-Hubble attorney listings. We have better data available, but I credit the Avery Index for teaching me to calculate per capita rates in terms of a set number of residents (10,000) to make comparisons easier. In the past, one would have to shell out $45.00 to buy the Lawyer Statistical Report: The Legal Profession in 2000 from the ABA bookstore, which is no longer available except for a five-page excerpt on the ABA’s Market Research page. So, here’s the 2010 update, open source for all.

This page uses the number of attorneys “active and resident” according to the “ABA’s National Lawyer Population by State” document (NLPS) and population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. This does not tell us the number of inactive or nonresident attorneys, which was around 7% in the early 2000s. To give you a comparison for the 1.2 million attorneys on the rolls, between 1970 and 2010, the ABA conferred just less than 1.5 million law degrees, and about 750,000 people were employed as lawyers in 2008. Those numbers will be updated later as they become available.

So, here’s what y’all came here for. As always, I consider D.C. and Puerto Rico states.

#	STATE	2010 POPULATION	# LAWYERS (2010)	LAWYERS/10,000 RESIDENTS (2010)
1	District of Columbia	610,589	49,207	805.89
2	New York	19,577,730	157,778	80.59
3	Massachusetts	6,631,280	44,121	66.53
4	Connecticut	3,526,937	20,309	57.58
5	Illinois	12,944,410	60,069	46.41
6	New Jersey	8,732,811	40,286	46.13
7	Minnesota	5,290,447	22,585	42.69
8	California	37,266,600	153,155	41.10
9	Missouri	6,011,741	23,728	39.47
10	Louisiana	4,529,426	17,688	39.05
11	Rhode Island	1,056,870	4,098	38.77
12	Colorado	5,095,309	19,737	38.74
13	Maryland	5,737,274	22,149	38.61
14	Pennsylvania	12,632,780	47,453	37.56
15	Puerto Rico	3,791,913	13,282	35.03
16	Vermont	622,433	2,166	34.80
17	Washington	6,746,199	23,204	34.40
18	Alaska	708,862	2,418	34.11
19	Florida	18,678,049	62,875	33.66
20	Michigan	9,931,235	32,731	32.96
21	Ohio	11,532,111	37,335	32.37
22	Oklahoma	3,724,447	11,711	31.44
23	Hawaii	1,300,086	4,077	31.36
24	Texas	25,213,445	77,049	30.56
25	Oregon	3,855,536	11,766	30.52
26	Delaware	891,464	2,706	30.35
27	Wyoming	547,637	1,636	29.87
28	Montana	980,152	2,921	29.80
29	Alabama	4,729,656	13,655	28.87
30	Nebraska	1,811,072	5,149	28.43
31	Kentucky	4,339,435	12,334	28.42
32	Virginia	7,952,119	22,472	28.26
33	Kansas	2,841,121	8,009	28.19
34	Maine	1,312,939	3,663	27.90
35	Georgia	9,908,357	27,398	27.65
36	Wisconsin	5,668,519	15,078	26.60
37	New Mexico	2,033,875	5,269	25.91
38	West Virginia	1,825,513	4,725	25.88
39	Tennessee	6,338,112	16,365	25.82
40	New Hampshire	1,323,531	3,396	25.66
41	Nevada	2,654,751	6,523	24.57
42	Utah	2,830,753	6,778	23.94
43	Iowa	3,023,081	7,080	23.42
44	Mississippi	2,960,467	6,786	22.92
45	South Dakota	820,077	1,839	22.42
46	Indiana	6,445,295	13,850	21.49
47	North Carolina	9,458,888	20,226	21.38
48	North Dakota	653,778	1,397	21.37
49	Idaho	1,559,796	3,299	21.15
50	South Carolina	4,596,958	9,264	20.15
51	Arizona	6,676,627	13,384	20.05
52	Arkansas	2,910,236	5,789	19.89
	USA AVERAGE	312,842,729	1,201,968	38.42

And for your viewing pleasure here’s a chart of this by state, excluding D.C. because its number dwarfs the scale.

In this map, Maryland is the national average. It just goes to show that lawyers are clumping in a handful of states.

Here’s the same data by Census divisions, excluding Puerto Rico:

CENSUS DIVISION	2010 POPULATION	# LAWYERS (2010)	LAWYERS/10,000 RESIDENTS (2010)
Middle Atlantic	40,943,321	245,517	59.97
New England	14,473,990	77,753	53.72
Pacific	52,532,034	201,143	38.29
South Atlantic	59,659,211	221,022	37.05
East North Central	46,521,570	159,063	34.19
West North Central	20,451,317	69,787	34.12
West South Central	36,377,554	112,237	30.85
Mountain	19,724,149	53,024	26.88
East South Central	18,367,670	49,140	26.75
USA	309,050,816	1,188,686	38.46

And here’s a map of this, the Pacific division is close to the national average.

The most recent NLPS does have the number of lawyers active and resident in 2011 but (a) we don’t have population data for each state yet, and (b) Puerto Rico and Illinois shamefully chose not to respond, which will mess the data up. There’s probably a correlation between active and resident status and bar authorities requiring high fees and CLE requirements, which I’m interested in investigating. The fact that Massachusetts lost 5% of its lawyers over the course of 2010 strongly suggests that many attorneys changed their status due to an inability to afford bar fees and CLEs. The ABA Market Research Department should probably start counting inactive attorneys like it did in the 2000s. We may learn much.