Lawyers and the American West An Empirical Investigation into the Components of Demand for Legal Services from 1850 to 1930

In the late nineteenth century, the number of lawyers in the United States rose sharply across the country. The largest contributor to the national increase, however, was the Western region. States in the West had significantly higher levels of lawyers per capita than other regions. Census Bureau data was used to evaluate two hypotheses. Limited support was found for the hypothesis suggesting that legal services are an income elastic commodity. A more comprehensive explanation of the data is that uncertainty about the law generates demands for legal services. In the case of the American West, uncertainty sprang from the distribution of public lands to private owners.