Exactly where would the pressure for a bar-competitor to clean up come from? Assuming their income comes from applicants and membership fees, wouldn't they want to let in as many people as the inevitable regulations allow?
Slow reply so you may never see this. But you raise a very good point. As do the other people who replied.
* If a company misbehaves then people can boycott it and/or protest against it. It can be punished in a way that affects it's competitiveness. Public pressure can't be applied in the same way to an organisation without competition.
* If we had multiple bar associations then hypothetically certain bars would preferentially attract good lawyers and others would attract bad. Good lawyers would transfer from a bad bar to a good bar (Please excuse simplistic use of good/bad). So there would indeed need to be an overreaching feedback mechanism that would punish a 'bad' bar association full of bad but cheap lawyers.
I suppose a simplistic solution could be:
* Enforcing multiple bar associations that are not allowed more than (say) 15% of the total number of lawyers
* A mechanism for banning any of these associations if they don't keep there members in check.
A thought just jumped into my head that the Bar Association and the AMA are essentially organisations that are, 'Too Big to Fail'. If you (The public through your elected reps) can't punish something then you can't control it or force it to enforce standards.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think your reasons make a lot of sense. Potentially, some associations get known as "the good ones" and then they're more competitive than the others.
Ultimately though, it comes down to the laws/regulations. If they leave room for an association that doesn't care about its reputation, the lawyers who would be kicked out of the reputable associations will simply transfer to it and nothing is solved.
And what makes you believe the one monopoly bar association doesn't have the same market pressure to let as many people in as possible? They are also funded through membership dues, and have no public or government oversight.
Nothing. I never asserted as much. I'm disagreeing with the claim that more associations create a pressure to "clean up." I can see no source for that pressure so I'd like to know what the person meant.
Cool. I agree with you. There isn't very strong pressure to play nice in the current system...what pressure there is comes from judges, who often have been practicing lawyers and may be again in the future (or they may be hired by the bar association itself), so they may be inclined to keep the status quo if it is economically beneficial to them. Competition probably wouldn't put any additional pressure on this, though it might, if the higher standards led to some sort of better economic outcome for the membership. But, I don't see how that would necessarily come to pass given the incentives to play dirty.
* If a company misbehaves then people can boycott it and/or protest against it. It can be punished in a way that affects it's competitiveness. Public pressure can't be applied in the same way to an organisation without competition.
* If we had multiple bar associations then hypothetically certain bars would preferentially attract good lawyers and others would attract bad. Good lawyers would transfer from a bad bar to a good bar (Please excuse simplistic use of good/bad). So there would indeed need to be an overreaching feedback mechanism that would punish a 'bad' bar association full of bad but cheap lawyers.
I suppose a simplistic solution could be:
* Enforcing multiple bar associations that are not allowed more than (say) 15% of the total number of lawyers
* A mechanism for banning any of these associations if they don't keep there members in check.
A thought just jumped into my head that the Bar Association and the AMA are essentially organisations that are, 'Too Big to Fail'. If you (The public through your elected reps) can't punish something then you can't control it or force it to enforce standards.