There's circumstantial evidence that it's hard to get hard direct correlations between these campaign contributions and the policies we observe. Liability and tort reform presumably have been hampered or killed by that effect. And they certainly, lawyers as a group make large contributions to politicians. So let's go back to the book. As you say, you spend, the book by the way is quite short. It's about 110 pages, I think. It's under 120. Short. A chunk of it is tries to estimate empirically the premia that lawyers earn due to these effects of restricting supply and increasing demand.
Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the market for lawyers and the role of lawyers in the political process. Drawing on a new co-authored book, First Thing We Do, Let's Deregulate All the Lawyers, Winston argues that restrictions on the supply of lawyers and increases in demand via government regulation artificially boost lawyers' salaries. Deregulation of the supply (by eliminating licensing) would lower price and encourage innovation.