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5 U. St. Thomas J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 52 (2010-2011)
License to Profit: An Analysis of Entry Regulations in the Legal and Real Estate Professions

handle is hein.journals/tjlpp5 and id is 286 raw text is: LICENSE TO PROFIT: AN ANALYSIS OF ENTRY REGULATIONS IN THE LEGAL AND REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONS EVGENY S. VOROTNIKOV' 1. INTRODUCTION What do fortune tellers, florists, barbers, real estate agents, lawyers and nuclear engineers have in common? All these professionals must obtain licenses in order to perform their work legally in the United States. The generally stated goal and main justification for this particular entry regulation is to ensure quality of goods or services provided to the public by eliminating dishonest practitioners and charlatans from the market. A reasonable person would agree that it is necessary to control proficiency of nuclear engineers because their mistakes could result in disasters leading to tremendous negative consequences for the population and the environment. Also, the reasonable person would agree that fortune tellers', florists' or barbers' mistakes, in a worst case scenario, could ruin a customer's mood and potentially cause some insignificant money loss. After comparing basic potential consequences of nuclear engineers', fortune tellers', florists' and barbers' mistakes, the reasonable person would probably wonder whether licensing requirements should be similar for these professions. An expert researcher would inquire further and would be interested in studying whether licensure, in fact, improves the quality of services or restricts competition in the professions and increases practitioners' incomes. The goal of this work is, first, to choose two professions, one where a professional's, mistake could cause significant and irreversible damages, and another where that is not entirely the case. The second step is to study the development of entry regulations in each of these professions. The final step is to investigate whether these regulations arejustifiable, and whether the ultimate beneficiary of those is the professional himself, or the customer. The legal profession was chosen for its impact on society. 1. Ph.D. Candidate, Suffolk University, Department of Economics, 8 Ashburton P., Boston, MA 02108, (617) 573-8023, evvmail@gmail.com. I thank Dr. Benjamin Powell and Aleksandra V. Nikitenko for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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