At last count Ethiopia had 434 lawyers, or about as many as Davis Wright Tremaine. Niger has 77 lawyers, which is fewer than Baker & McKenzie’s 13th-largest office. Both nations have about one lawyer for every 150,000 people, with nary a Global 100 firm in sight. To get an idea of how low that figure is, imagine if the United States had to operate its entire legal apparatus with only the 2,100 lawyers who joined the Illinois bar on November 1.
“In many countries there are not enough lawyers, and that’s the fundamental problem,” says Microsoft Corporation general counsel Brad Smith, who has made legal capacitybuilding in developing nations a pro bono priority, and leads nearly as many lawyers as those in Ethiopia and Niger put together.
