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Yes and no. Yes in the sense that many of the people writing the laws are lawyers and the criminal justice system made up of lawyers enforcing and defending against laws written by other lawyers. On the other hand a lot of times business create demand for lawyers so they can ensure that they will either not be screwed by, or be able to screw the people they are doing business with.
In last decades, a trend of "legalizing" everything took place in our lives. Relations between people became legal in nature. What once could be agreed upon with a handshake, requires today heavy legal action.
This trend is driven by our elected reps, and lawyers are only happy to oblige. Yes, they generate work for themselves, like every other profession.
To an extent I think they have some degree of influence in the same way that businesses also sometimes go out of their way to lobby for protectionism rules of their industry which impose legal barriers to entry to thwart new competition. It's a similar sort of mechanism in both instances.
There may be some influence, and you may have a little bit of a feedback loop, though I would not really raise this observation to any major level of conspiracy where I think all of them are in on this plot to line their pockets or otherwise to make "busywork" for themselves. In their minds, they might not even be completely cognizant that they are causing that end result. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, is I think a possible apt phrase to describe the process. They [lawyers] possess certain knowledge, and they somehow feel that their knowledge is a true benefit to society, and so from time to time they use that knowledge that has that effect you describe.
The reason I don't see it as a conspiratorial and intentional plot is because I don't think they look at it through the lens of aggregate and cumulative effect. They usually don't see (or don't want to see) the cumulative changes they have caused, and it's not just one individual that causes these aggregate changes, which is all the more reason for them to dismiss the significance of their participation in that process. They only tend to focus on the little individual acts, here and there, that they make at the time. This same phenomenon effects voters and politicians who tend to ignore the aggregate effects they cause over a period of decades and centuries. Whenever a "change" is being considered, these groups (lawyers, voters, politicians, businessmen) tend to see things through the lens of... "we're just making a little change here, a little change there," and it is all for the best. I don't think grabbing more power or new business is necessarily the desired end-goal for many of them, at the time they make many of these actions.
If you are talking about the average lawyer who makes around $50,000 or so per year in a small or solo practice, then no. They don't have that kind of power.
Now, if you mean very high-end lawyers who end up writing laws and doing work for well-paying corporate clients, then yes, they often lobby in favor of regulations that do little but increase "barriers to entry" or increase the volume of legal work needing to be done.
But overall, demand for lawyers is actually in gradual decline, even as their supply continues to increase thanks to a glut of law schools and easily-approved government and private loans to pay for them.
Overall, I'd have to say no. Plenty of lawyers have been involved in writing binding arbitration laws into contracts. Try suing a utility company, credit card company, etc. You think you have that right under US Law, but you don't. Somewhere, somehow, the contract has been structured so that you're forced to go to binding arbitration. The arbiter is chosen by the company, lawyers aren't involved and you lose almost always. That was drawn up by lawyers and it deprives you of your rights and lawyers of work.
The first thing a lawyer will also explain to most people is that suing anyone is rarely worth it.
If you are talking about the average lawyer who makes around $50,000 or so per year in a small or solo practice, then no. They don't have that kind of power.
They do when there is millions of them. Too many lawyers in this country, not enough work to go around.
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