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Bar Association: Germany Has Too Many Lawyers

May 21, 2004
https://p.dw.com/p/54il
Fearing that the quality of legal advice in Germany will suffer in the long term, members of the German Bar Association have called for a professional training program to reduce the number of people that become lawyers each year. Since 1972, the number of lawyers has quintupled and each year, about 8,000 new lawyers are added to the 130,000 men and women already working in the profession. "There's a danger that this quantity will result in bad quality at some point," Hartmut Kliger, the president of the German Bar Association, said at the organization's annual meeting in Hamburg. He added that some young lawyers already have to work second jobs to get by financially as there is not enough work for them. To counter the trend, Kliger suggested introducing more practical training in lawyer's offices before people start working independently.