Texas Sees Boom in Lawyer Population

The number of attorneys in Texas grew by nearly 20,000 over the last decade, outpacing growth in the state’s general population, according to a report by the State Bar of Texas.
Between 2004 and 2014, Texas’s active attorney population grew by 28%, from 67,764 to 86,494. The number of Texans increased by 20% in that time.

There were 20,378 attorneys in the Dallas-Forth Worth area in 2004. In 2014, the number was 26,364, a jump of 29%. In the Midland metropolitan area in western Texas, the attorney population nearly doubled.

The state bar estimates there’s now one Texas attorney for every 312 Texans. In Dallas County the ratio is one attorney per 157 people.

“It’s much more competitive in Dallas than it has ever been in the 42 years I’ve been here,” criminal defense attorney Bill Knox told the Dallas Morning News, which wrote about the lawyer boom.
The surge in Texas attorneys coincided with an energy-driven boom in the state economy, which has chugged along even amid the more recent downturn in oil prices.

Milan Markovic, a Texas A&M University law professor who writes about the legal profession, told the Morning News that he thinks the growth in the state’s legal sector has a lot to do with the state’s economy. “People are going to want to practice in areas where people have money to spend on legal services,” he said.

Texas still isn’t the attorney capital of the nation.  Florida has added lawyers at a much faster clip, according to American Bar Association data. In the last decade, Florida’s attorney population grew by more than 50%. Nationally, the lawyer population grew by 17.7%.

Texas is less attorney-dense than a lot of other parts of the country. Nationally, there’s one attorney for every 250 people, according to ABA data. In New York, the ratio is one to 115.