Lawyers' Earnings under Market Growth and Differentiation, 1970-80.

The unprecedented rate of growth and changes in the composition of the legal profession in Canada during the 1970s were associated with a 17 percent decline in the average real earnings for lawyers in private practice. The conventional methodology for decomposition of cross-sectional earnings differentials is extended to analyze this intertemporal differential. After taking account of compositional changes and an interactive effect, it is found that the principal factor in this decline was the greater growth in supply than in demand for lawyers' services.