The American legal system presents one of the most striking contradictions in modern professional services. According to the latest data from the American Bar Association’s 2025 Profile of the Legal Profession, How many attorneys are in the US? The answer: 1.37 million active lawyers as of 2025, marking the first significant increase since 2020. That’s roughly one attorney for every 245 Americans—a ratio that seems adequate on its face. Yet simultaneously, millions of Americans struggle to access basic legal services, with research from the Legal Services Corporation showing that low-income Americans receive little or no professional legal help in 92% of their civil legal problems.
This isn’t a story about simple supply and demand. It’s about a fractured legal marketplace where geographic concentration, economic incentives, and structural barriers create a system that simultaneously produces too many lawyers in some contexts while leaving vast populations without adequate legal representation in others.
The Numbers Tell a Complex Story
The growth trajectory of America’s legal profession has been anything but steady. From 1990 to 2024, the lawyer population increased from approximately 755,000 to 1.32 million—a 75% increase over three decades. However, that growth masked significant fluctuations. After peaking at 1.35 million in 2019, the profession saw a slight contraction through 2024 before rebounding to 1.37 million in 2025.
What drove the 2025 increase? According to the National Association for Law Placement, the 2024 law school graduating class was nearly 12% larger than any class since 2012, coupled with the highest employment rate for graduates in bar admission-required positions in nearly four decades. The labor market, it seems, absorbed this influx—at least temporarily.
But these aggregate numbers obscure crucial details about where these lawyers practice, whom they serve, and whether their distribution matches actual legal needs across the country.
Geographic Concentration Creates Legal Deserts and Oversaturated Markets Simultaneously
The distribution of America’s 1.37 million lawyers is strikingly uneven. Just two states—New York with 190,015 lawyers and California with 181,048—account for more than a quarter of all attorneys in the United States. Add Texas (99,867), Florida (80,976), and Illinois (61,945), and five states contain nearly half of all U.S. lawyers.
This concentration creates wildly different competitive landscapes. In major metropolitan areas like New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston, attorneys face intense competition for clients. Multiple sources document how firms in these markets must invest heavily in digital marketing, search engine optimization, and paid advertising simply to remain visible to potential clients. The oversupply in these markets has driven down starting salaries for new graduates, increased billable hour requirements, and made partnership tracks more competitive than ever.
Yet drive an hour outside these urban centers, and the picture changes dramatically. Rural America faces a genuine shortage of practicing attorneys. According to research from the American Bar Association, counties with populations under 20,000 often have attorney-to-population ratios well below national averages. Some rural counties have no resident attorneys at all, forcing residents to travel significant distances for legal representation or go without it entirely.
The problem isn’t simply that there aren’t enough lawyers nationally—it’s that market forces concentrate attorneys in affluent urban and suburban areas where paying clients are plentiful, while leaving rural and economically disadvantaged communities underserved.
The Justice Gap: When Lawyer Supply Doesn’t Meet Legal Need
Perhaps the most damning indictment of America’s legal workforce distribution comes from justice gap studies—research examining the difference between the legal problems Americans face and the professional legal help they actually receive.
The State Bar of California’s 2024 Justice Gap Study found that despite California having 181,048 licensed attorneys—more than any state except New York—the civil legal needs of Californians remain “widespread and unmet at alarming rates.” The study revealed that only 24% of California’s $57.8 billion legal market serves individual clients, with the remaining 76% focused on corporate and institutional clients.
Nationwide, the situation is similar. The Legal Services Corporation reported that low-income Americans receive inadequate or no professional legal help for 92% of their substantial civil legal problems. These aren’t hypothetical issues—they include evictions, domestic violence protective orders, custody disputes, consumer debt collection, denial of essential government benefits, and predatory lending cases. These are situations where legal representation can literally determine whether someone keeps their home, their children, or their safety.
The data on civil legal aid attorneys is particularly striking. According to research from the National Center for Access to Justice, 27 states and Puerto Rico have fewer than one civil legal aid attorney per 10,000 people living below 200% of the federal poverty line. Only six states plus Washington, D.C., have more than two civil legal aid attorneys per 10,000 low-income residents. The national total of civil legal aid attorneys stands at just 10,479—serving a population that includes more than 80 million Americans living in or near poverty.
The juxtaposition is stark: America has 1.37 million lawyers but fewer than 11,000 dedicated to helping the poorest Americans with their civil legal problems. That’s less than 1% of the total attorney workforce serving populations most in need of professional legal assistance.
Why Market Forces Fail to Bridge the Gap
Economic incentives explain much of this maldistribution. The mathematics are straightforward: serving wealthy corporate clients or affluent individuals generates significantly more revenue per attorney hour than serving low-income or middle-class individuals. A partner at a large law firm billing corporate clients at $600-$1,000 per hour can generate annual revenues in the millions. An attorney serving middle-class individuals in divorce, estate planning, or consumer cases might charge $200-$400 per hour—profitable, but far less lucrative. Attorneys working in legal aid organizations typically earn $50,000-$70,000 annually regardless of how many clients they serve.
Law school debt intensifies these economic pressures. According to the American Bar Association, the median law school debt for graduates in 2024 was approximately $165,000 for private law school attendees and $120,000 for public law school graduates. With monthly loan payments frequently exceeding $1,500-$2,000, new lawyers face powerful incentives to pursue the highest-paying positions available.
The result is a legal profession that efficiently serves those who can pay market rates while leaving everyone else to navigate the legal system alone, rely on overwhelmed legal aid organizations, or simply forgo legal assistance entirely.
Technology and AI: Promise and Peril for Access to Justice
The legal profession stands at a crossroads regarding technology’s role in bridging the justice gap. Recent data shows that 79% of legal professionals now use artificial intelligence in some capacity, up dramatically from just 19% in 2023. This rapid adoption creates both opportunities and risks.
On the optimistic side, technology could democratize legal services. Document automation, AI-powered legal research, chatbots for basic legal information, and online dispute resolution platforms all have potential to reduce costs and increase accessibility. Some predict that technology will enable lawyers to serve more clients more efficiently, potentially bringing legal services within reach of middle-class Americans currently priced out of the market.
However, the evidence so far suggests technology may be widening rather than narrowing the justice gap. A 2024 Legal Trends Report found that while 28% of consumers were directed by AI to contact a lawyer, 12% were convinced their legal problems weren’t worth pursuing—raising concerns that AI may be screening out legitimate legal needs. Moreover, most technology adoption has occurred in large firms serving corporate clients, where it increases profitability and efficiency rather than expanding access for underserved populations.
The California Justice Gap Study found that since 2016, the number of in-house corporate counsel increased by 45%, reflecting how businesses are using technology and process improvements to bring legal work in-house. This trend further concentrates legal talent in the corporate sector rather than individual representation.
The Corporate Capture of Legal Talent
The structural shift of legal talent toward corporate work represents one of the most consequential trends in American law. The California data showing that 76% of the legal market serves corporate and institutional clients likely understates the national picture, as California has relatively more solo and small firm practitioners than many other states.
This corporate concentration accelerated following the 2008 financial crisis. Law firms responded to economic pressures by becoming more selective about the work they take on, increasingly declining cases that don’t meet minimum profitability thresholds. Corporate clients, meanwhile, became more sophisticated about managing legal costs, leading to the growth of in-house legal departments that handle routine matters while outsourcing only complex or specialized work to external firms.
For individual clients, this meant fewer attorneys available for “bread and butter” legal work. Tasks like drafting wills, handling simple real estate transactions, representing clients in small claims disputes, or defending minor criminal charges became less attractive to attorneys focused on maintaining high profit margins.
The Federal Trade Commission and various legal reform advocates have pointed to unauthorized practice of law restrictions as compounding this problem. These rules, which prohibit non-lawyers from providing many legal services, were originally designed to protect consumers from incompetent or unscrupulous practitioners. However, critics argue these restrictions now function primarily to maintain attorneys’ monopoly over legal services, keeping prices high while preventing alternative service providers from filling gaps in the market.
The Pro Bono Gap: Why Voluntary Service Can’t Solve the Problem
Many within the legal profession point to pro bono work—attorneys providing free legal services to those in need—as a solution to the access to justice crisis. The reality is far less encouraging.
California data from 2022 shows that only 45% of attorneys provided any pro bono services at all. Among those who did provide pro bono work, the average was 116 hours annually—but this average was skewed by a small subset of deeply engaged attorneys. Only about one in four California attorneys met the State Bar’s goal of providing at least 50 hours of pro bono service annually.
Nationally, the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct suggest attorneys provide at least 50 hours of pro bono service yearly. If all 1.37 million U.S. attorneys met this modest goal, it would generate 68.5 million pro bono hours annually. With approximately 80 million low-income Americans potentially needing civil legal assistance, this would provide less than one hour of attorney time per low-income person per year—clearly inadequate for addressing substantial legal problems requiring dozens or hundreds of attorney hours.
Moreover, pro bono work is concentrated among attorneys at large firms who can afford to provide it and who receive institutional support for doing so. Solo practitioners and small firm attorneys—who make up the majority of the profession—face economic pressures that make dedicating significant time to unpaid work difficult or impossible, regardless of their desire to help.
The uncomfortable truth is that relying on voluntary pro bono service to address structural inequities in legal access is like relying on voluntary charitable healthcare donations to address the health insurance crisis—well-intentioned but wholly inadequate to the scale of the problem.
Demographics of the Legal Profession: Progress and Persistent Inequities
The demographic composition of America’s attorney workforce is gradually becoming more representative, though significant disparities remain. The gender gap has narrowed substantially: women now comprise 41.31% of all attorneys, up from 34.72% in 2015. Women outnumber men in law school enrollment, make up the majority of federal government lawyers, and comprise most law firm associates. The ABA’s 2024 Profile predicted potential gender parity by 2026.
Racial and ethnic diversity has increased more slowly. As of 2025, attorneys of color represent approximately 23% of the profession, up from 12% in 2014. Asian American attorneys have seen the most dramatic increase, growing from 2% in 2014 to 7% in 2025—largely due to California beginning to report ethnicity data, revealing that 14% of California’s 181,000 lawyers are Asian American. Hispanic lawyers increased from 4% to 6% over the same period, while African American attorneys grew slightly to 4.91%.
These diversity gains matter for access to justice. Research consistently shows that attorneys from underrepresented communities are more likely to practice in those communities and to take on cases serving low-income and minority clients. However, employment data from the National Association for Law Placement reveals concerning disparities: white law school graduates from the Class of 2024 experienced higher-than-average employment rates, while Latinx, Asian, Black, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander graduates saw below-average employment rates, with gaps widening for positions requiring bar admission.
This suggests that while the pipeline for diverse attorneys has improved, barriers remain in converting law degrees into successful legal careers, potentially limiting the profession’s ability to serve diverse communities.
Regional Variations: Not All States Face the Same Market Dynamics
The legal workforce varies dramatically by region. Over the past decade, the Midwest has remained relatively stable with just a 1.4% decrease in attorney population. The Northeast saw a modest 3% increase. The South experienced an 11% growth in lawyer population, while the West saw 7% growth.
State-level changes reveal interesting patterns. Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, and Utah all recorded over 5% growth in resident active lawyers in the last year alone. Conversely, Montana, Vermont, Wyoming, and West Virginia saw the largest percentage declines.
These variations reflect different economic and demographic trends. Sunbelt states experiencing population growth generally see corresponding increases in attorney population, though often lagging behind population growth rates. States with declining or stagnant populations struggle to attract or retain legal talent, exacerbating existing access to justice challenges in those regions.
Rural states face particular challenges. Many report that young attorneys who grow up in rural areas leave for law school and never return, preferring the professional opportunities and higher salaries available in urban centers. Various states have experimented with rural practice loan forgiveness programs, but these have had limited success in reversing the trend.
The Employment Paradox: Oversupply and Undersupply Coexist
The question of whether America has too many or too few lawyers admits no simple answer. From one perspective, the market appears oversaturated. Multiple studies from the past 15 years have documented how nearly every state produces more bar exam passers than estimated annual attorney job openings. In 2009, national data showed nearly twice as many bar exam passers (53,508) as estimated job openings (26,239).
This oversupply has consequences. New attorneys face increasingly competitive job markets, longer periods of unemployment or underemployment after graduation, lower starting salaries (except at elite firms), and mounting law school debt they struggle to repay. Many law firms report having too many attorneys relative to available work, with 60% of managing partners in one survey claiming overcapacity was hurting profitability.
Yet simultaneously, vast segments of the population cannot access legal services. The disconnect stems from how legal services are priced and delivered. There may be “too many” lawyers competing for clients who can pay $300-$500 hourly fees, while there are far too few lawyers willing or able to serve clients who can afford $100-$150 per hour or need assistance with matters that generate limited or no fees.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts approximately 4% growth in lawyer employment from 2024 to 2034—slower than many professions but still indicating some expansion. However, this growth projection doesn’t address whether new jobs will emerge in areas of high unmet legal need or simply in already-saturated sectors serving affluent clients.
Why “Let the Market Sort It Out” Isn’t Working
Free market advocates sometimes argue that legal market imbalances will self-correct: if there’s genuine demand for affordable legal services, attorneys will emerge to meet that demand, potentially using new business models or technology to serve clients profitably at lower price points.
The evidence suggests this isn’t happening at sufficient scale. Despite decades of documented access to justice problems, the legal market continues concentrating resources in high-paying sectors rather than innovating to serve broader populations. Several factors explain this market failure.
First, regulations restrict innovation in legal service delivery. In most states, only attorneys can provide legal advice or representation, and attorney ownership of law firms is required. This prevents models common in other countries, such as “multidisciplinary practices” that might combine legal, accounting, and other services, or non-lawyer ownership of law practices that might bring business expertise and capital to create more efficient service delivery models.
Second, legal services often have characteristics of public goods in that their benefits extend beyond the individual client. For example, tenants with legal representation in eviction proceedings are far more likely to remain housed, reducing homelessness and its associated social costs. Children with legal advocates in dependency proceedings have better outcomes, reducing long-term costs to foster care and juvenile justice systems. The market systematically underproduces legal services because clients can’t capture these broader social benefits, so they can’t pay fees reflecting the full value created.
Third, information asymmetries plague the legal market. Most people cannot judge legal service quality before purchasing it and often cannot evaluate it even afterward. This makes price competition difficult and allows inefficiencies to persist that would be competed away in markets with better information.
What Would Actually Improve Access to Justice?
Addressing America’s legal access crisis will require multifaceted reforms that go beyond simply producing more lawyers or encouraging more pro bono work. Evidence-based reforms that have shown promise include the following approaches.
Expanding authorized practice rules could allow trained non-lawyers to handle certain legal matters. Some jurisdictions have experimented with “limited license legal technicians” who can provide specific services (like family law document preparation) without full attorney licensing. Early results suggest this can increase access to competent help at lower cost, though these programs have faced opposition from state bar associations concerned about competition and quality control.
Simplifying court procedures and forms makes it easier for self-represented litigants to navigate the system. Some states have created “plain language” court forms and provide detailed instructions that enable people to handle straightforward matters without attorney representation. Online dispute resolution platforms show promise for small claims and other matters where traditional litigation is disproportionately expensive.
Expanding funding for civil legal aid remains crucial for serving the poorest Americans. The Legal Services Corporation, which funds civil legal aid organizations nationwide, has been chronically underfunded relative to need. Increasing appropriations and creating new funding mechanisms (such as increased filing fees on high-value cases or settlements) could dramatically expand services.
Creating graduated licensing or limited scope representation would allow attorneys to unbundle legal services, providing specific assistance (like document review or limited court appearances) rather than full representation, at correspondingly lower fees. Some states restrict this practice, forcing clients to choose between full-service representation they can’t afford or going entirely without legal help.
Loan forgiveness programs for attorneys working in underserved areas or practice areas could incentivize recent graduates to take positions serving lower-income clients despite student debt burdens. Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs exist but have been notoriously difficult to navigate, with many applicants ultimately denied relief after years of qualifying employment.
Regulatory sandboxes that permit experimentation with alternative business models could allow data-driven evaluation of whether new approaches improve access without sacrificing quality. Utah and Arizona have launched regulatory sandbox programs allowing non-traditional legal service providers to operate under regulatory supervision, generating data on outcomes and client protection.
The Stakes: Why This Matters Beyond the Legal Profession
The consequences of America’s legal access crisis extend far beyond disappointed law school graduates or underemployed attorneys. When people cannot access legal representation for serious problems, outcomes deteriorate across numerous domains.
In housing, tenants without legal representation in eviction proceedings are far more likely to lose their homes, leading to homelessness, disrupted education for children, job loss, and spiraling economic consequences. Studies from jurisdictions that provide guaranteed right to counsel in eviction cases show dramatic reductions in evictions and associated homelessness.
In family law, children in custody and child welfare proceedings have significantly better outcomes when they have independent legal representation. Without it, courts make decisions affecting children’s fundamental interests based on incomplete information and without advocates ensuring their perspectives are heard.
In consumer law, individuals without legal representation are systematically unable to challenge predatory practices, illegal debt collection, consumer fraud, or contract violations. This allows harmful practices to persist that would be challenged and corrected if more consumers had access to legal advocacy.
In criminal law, despite the formal right to counsel established in Gideon v. Wainwright, public defender systems in many jurisdictions are so overwhelmed that attorneys have caseloads making meaningful representation impossible. Research has documented thousands of cases where defendants have been convicted—sometimes of serious felonies—after receiving only minutes of attorney consultation.
These aren’t abstract concerns. They represent millions of Americans whose life trajectories are shaped by inadequate access to the legal system that purports to serve them. The United States prides itself on being a nation of laws, not men. But laws only constrain power and protect rights when ordinary people can actually access legal processes and advocacy. Without that access, law becomes a tool primarily serving those wealthy and knowledgeable enough to navigate the system—exactly what rule of law principles were designed to prevent.
Looking Forward: Can America Bridge the Legal Divide?
The coming years will test whether America can resolve the paradox of having 1.37 million lawyers while leaving vast populations without adequate legal representation. Several trends will shape outcomes.
First, demographic shifts within the profession may help. As more diverse attorneys enter the field, and as younger attorneys express greater interest in public service and social justice work, the profession’s culture may gradually shift toward models prioritizing access and service alongside profitability.
Second, technology’s role will become clearer. If AI and automation primarily serve corporate clients and wealthy individuals, they will widen the justice gap. But if technology enables new service models that profitably serve middle and lower-income populations, it could be transformative. The next five years will reveal which path predominates.
Third, regulatory changes in pioneer states like Utah and Arizona may provide data showing whether alternatives to traditional legal service delivery models can expand access while maintaining quality. If successful, these experiments could catalyze broader reforms. If they result in consumer harm or quality problems, they may entrench existing structures.
Fourth, political pressure around access to justice issues may increase. As housing crises, family separations, consumer protection failures, and criminal justice reform remain prominent political issues, the connection between these problems and legal access may gain higher profile. Whether this translates into meaningful reforms depends on whether the legal profession’s interest in protecting traditional practice structures can be overcome by demands for change.
The Bottom Line: Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story
So how many attorneys are in the United States? The numerical answer is 1.37 million as of 2025. But that number obscures more than it reveals. These attorneys are concentrated in geographic areas and practice sectors that serve a small subset of Americans, leaving enormous populations without meaningful access to legal representation when they need it most.
America doesn’t have a simple lawyer shortage or surplus. It has a distribution problem, an economic incentive problem, and a regulatory structure problem that combines to create a legal profession that serves some populations exceptionally well while failing others almost entirely. Addressing this won’t come from producing more or fewer lawyers, but from fundamentally rethinking how legal services are delivered, priced, regulated, and funded to ensure that the promise of equal justice under law becomes a reality rather than an aspiration.
The legal profession stands at a crossroads. It can continue operating under current structures, producing comfortable livings for many attorneys while leaving access to justice problems unresolved. Or it can embrace innovation, reform, and change that may disrupt traditional models but could finally deliver on the profession’s proclaimed commitment to equal access to justice. Given the millions of Americans whose lives are affected by this choice, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
For anyone evaluating whether to enter law school, choosing a practice area, or simply trying to understand why legal help seems so inaccessible despite the presence of more than a million lawyers, understanding these structural dynamics matters. The legal profession’s challenges aren’t primarily about individual attorney competence or dedication—they’re about systems and incentives that shape how legal talent gets deployed. Until those systems change, the paradox of simultaneous oversupply and undersupply will persist, leaving both the profession and the public it purports to serve frustrated and underserved.
