Changes in Lawyers' Earnings: The Impact of Differentiation and Growth in the Canadian Legal Profession

The relatively greater numbers of young, female, and salaried lawyers are said to have diminished the legal profession's control of the market for its services, and hence of its income and status. This article examines the effects on lawyers' real earnings attributable to the rapid change in size and composition of the legal profession in Canada during the 1970s. An analysis of the components of inter-temporal earnings differences, which takes account of changes in composition and in the remuneration or pay structure, shows that the unprecedented growth in lawyer supply was responsible for most of the decline in lawyers' real earnings. But lawyers who were young, female, salaried, or in government service avoided this negative market effect, while lawyers who were male, self-employed, or outside the major financial centers, bore most of the negative economic impact of the rapid supply growth.