[Sussex] [offtopic] Only Music business would try to get away with this

[Geoff Teale]

On Sun, 2006-04-30 at 12:17 +0100, John D. wrote:
> And theres me thinking that "closed shops" were supposed to be 
> anti-competitive. 

Law is no more a closed shop than anything else that requires
qualifications - to have recognised qualifications you must have a body
that monitors and controls that qualification.  

The only monopolies in law are the legaslative authorities, control over
those bodies is a political issue, not an economic one.

There's plenty of competition amongst law firms and a great deal of that
is price based competition.  The question really comes down to how much
power do the customers have to dictate price.  It's fair to say that as
an uninformed Joe Schmoe on the street with only a small amount of work
to offer them your negotiating position is far weaker than if you were a
multinational corporation, but this is no different to any other
transaction in a capitalist economy.  Indeed if we went into every
transaction with perfect knowledge there would be a much lesser need for
the service economy (and it would be very hard for service businesses to
be profitable).

While I'll happily agree that law fees are relatively expensive it's a
mistake to assume that these prices are somehow the result of
monopolistic practices or indeed unrepresentative of the value of the
services they provide.

-- 
Geoff Teale <gteale at cmedresearch.com>
Cmed Technology Ltd.