La competitività del mercato forense e l’efficienza giudiziaria

The judicial efficiency is one of the main goals of any democratic state. An efficient judicial system is crucial both from the economic and the social point of view since it constitutes one of the pillars of modern societies. This study aims at estimating the efficiency of the Italian judicial system of First Instance and the determinants of inefficiency. Specifically, it tests the hypothesis that the number of professionals in the market for legal services (i.e. lawyers) can affect positively the supply of justice and therefore the performance of courts. In other words, author studies the relation between the number of lawyers and the score of efficiency of these courts, assuming that the market competitiveness is able to improve the judicial performance. The confirmation of the proposed hypothesis could give a further impulse to the reform process of the legal profession, which has been started in the sixteenth legislature.