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Comment by jivatmanx | Hacker News Reader

You probably live in a civil law jurisdiction, rather than common law.

Juries are limited, and thus less lawyers needed overall.

I don't understand. What do you mean?

Here, if you go to court, either civil or criminal, you of course need a lawyer. I don't see how that is substantially different from the way it works in the US. And the UK, which also is a common law country, has a much lower amount of lawyers per capita than the US.

One explanation for the difference is of course that the US is a very litigious society, resulting in more legal proceedings than elsewhere, and that might be hard to change. But to me it appears the americans in general use lawyers for trivial matters like divorces or wills or entering into contracts or buying property or whatever, and if the cost of lawyers were to increase sharply, I think that americans would be able to discover ways to do those things without lawyers, just like the rest of the world is doing perfectly fine already.

Forgive me if I am misunderstanding your position, but it sounds like you think bar associations in the US should be more restrictive, in order to drive up prices and reduce the consumption of legal goods in the US. I guess I just don't know why this is a desired outcome - presumably, if people use lawyers more in the US, it's because the environment in the US makes it efficient to do so. It seems like we'd be tinkering with market forces for the sake of conforming the US to "the rest of the world".

I don't believe he said that the cost of using a lawyer should become more expensive, did he?

All I read is that if they did become more expensive, people would work out other ways to get things done.

No, I was saying that if they became more restrictive and drove up prices, demand would fall and they'd suffer for it long-term, as we switch to alternative solutions.

Unlike medical associations which have driven up prices of healthcare, but thanks to our limitless demand for those services, we grin and bear it instead of finding alternative solutions.

A "civil law system" as opposed to a "common law system" draws less on precedent, past decisions made by judges on points of law similar to those at issue. Compared to common law, this simplifies the operation of courts and reduces the role that lawyers play in proceedings, which one might reasonably expect to diminish the demand for lawyers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)#Differ...

I read an interesting report on different European legal systems and how they deal with libel/defamation [1]

Comparing Germany to England there are many differences when it comes to libel. Germany has a civil law system while England has a common law system. German cases are decided by a panel of professional judges, while in England juries can be used. German lawyers are paid on a task based system, while English lawyers are paid by the hour. The German system needs one lawyer per claimant and defendant, for cases where English law would need three solicitors, a partner, some trainee solicitors, and two or three barristers. In the German system there are no punitive damages, only compensation.

Because of these differences, a claim with legal costs of 10,000 euros or less in Germany can cost several million pounds in legal fees in England.

How a country's legal system works can radically alter the costs of going to court.

[1] http://pcmlp.socleg.ox.ac.uk/research/project/comparative-st...

There is a common law country without juries: South Africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial#South_Africa

The USA hasn't had separate common law courts since 1938. I doubt many cases from before 1938, are still being litigated in the court.

This is what I'm referring to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LegalSystemsOfTheWorldMap....

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