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Lawyers as Spam: Congressional Capture Explains Why U.S. Lawyers Exceed the Optimum and their Cost 1 Stephen P. Magee This paper shows that the services of lawyers are normal goods up to the higher income emerging market economies but are inferior for countries with higher GDPs per capita. Empirical work across 33 countries indicates that a significant driver of lawyer densities across countries is the percentage of lawyers in country national congresses. An optimum lawyer curve is estimated indicating that the United States has 33% more lawyers than the world optimum and that those lawyers reduce US GDP by $1.5 trillion a year (11% of US GDP). Stephen P. Magee, Bayless-Enstar Chair and Prof of Finance and Economics, Department of Finance, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712 [email protected],