Lawyers Dumbing Down?
The legal profession takes its fair share of abuse from all angles these days. Lawyers grumble about target-hours, workloads etc, businesses groan about increasing fees and a lack of commerciality and joe public and the media just love to gripe. So what’s new – lawyers are getting less intelligent? Whilst here at Solicitr we normally love a bit of data analysis and drawing conclusions wrought from solid empirical evidence, it appears that someone has come up with some that …
The legal profession takes its fair share of abuse from all angles these days. Lawyers grumble about target-hours, workloads etc, businesses groan about increasing fees and a lack of commerciality and joe public and the media just love to gripe. So what’s new – lawyers are getting less intelligent? Whilst here at Solicitr we normally love a bit of data analysis and drawing conclusions wrought from solid empirical evidence, it appears that someone has come up with some that says just that…ouch.
According to a recent article in The Lawyer , lawyers have become less intelligent compared to the average person over the last decade. Quoting research from the Centre for Market and Public Organisation (CMPO) the legal rag noted that: IQ scores for lawyers born in 1958 and those born in 1970 were 11 per cent better than the average, and 8 per cent better respectively, indicating that lawyers have become less intelligent compared to the average person over the last decade. The 1970 group supposedly represents those who are currently climbing the ranks of law firms and barristers’ chambers.
Now (generally) we are not statisticians here, probabiltiy knowledege was mainly gelaned from visiting the bookmakers; however, this does seem to be a remarkably narrow bit of research with which to paint the picture. So affording preference to our favorite form of research – what do you think, are lawyers are getting thicker?
March 2, 2009
If lawyers really are so bright why were none of them clever enough to foresee the toxic debt mess we are now in.
Most of the finance and capital markets lawyers I’ve encountered are like highly trained dogs at Crufts – ready and eager to jump through whatever hoop they are told to (for the right compensation) but underneath the sleek exterior is a simple sick inbred.
March 2, 2009
What level of intelligence is necessary to:
1. Drink beer with clients,
2. Fill out time sheets,
3. Fill in forms,
4. Cut and paste document collages,
5. Design idiotic securities,
6. Provide useless business advise
March 2, 2009
Our generalized, unsuited to the marketplace training and haphazard work practices are making us duller.
March 2, 2009
1) Firstly, what is the CMPO, and why should we take it seriously? It’s not a ‘known name’.
2) The fact that only the years 1958 and 1970 have been chosen suggests that there is a lack of relevant information to go on, which very much compromises this research. The years are 12 years apart, and the nearer of the two 39 years ago. What have they got to do with anything?
March 2, 2009
Well the one good thing this graph does is explain why my accountant is so goddamn thick.
March 2, 2009
I’ve been a City lawyer for many years and followed this article perfectly until it got to the graph, which befuddled me (I had a bit of trouble with the words too but let’s not go there). No problem: I’ll get a junior to pull an exec summary together for me.