What Proportion of Politicians have Legal Qualifications?

Factual Questions
1

Lawyers and politicians, politicians and lawyers. It’s often said that a disproportionate percentage of politicians are former lawyers; the two professions are commonly conflated as if to increase the respective villany of each. Another recurrent theme is the tinfoil hat allegation that written laws are deliberately complicated and incomprehensible to laypeople because politicians with a legal background have a vested interest in preserving the domain of lawyers.

I don’t place any credence in either position, but it begs the question: across a range of governmental jurisdictions, what proportion of politicians are lawyers or were lawyers in their past lives?

A quick check shows me that in Australia’s Federal Parliament, out of the 17 members of Cabinet (i.e. the Ministers of Government), 10 have a legal qualification or practiced law at some stage. (By way of comparison, about 4 were farmers or in the pastoral industy.) However, in my home state only 5 of the 22 Government Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries have legal backgrounds (same as the number of ex-teachers/educators).

So the answer is, of course, it varies, but can a useful average across a range of jurisdictions be determined? What proportion of politicians have legal qualifications where you live? Is it comparable to the number of ex-school teachers, ex-doctors or ex-trade unionists in politics?

2

I suspect that there’s no way to find the statistics for even all the politicians in a given country. There are several levels of government in most countries, and it’s pretty much impossible to find the statistics for politicians at the lowest levels. Here’s one statistic I do know: As of several years ago, 42% of the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the U.S. were trained as lawyers.

3

Here’s the breakdown for the Swedish government (22 ministers including the PM).

Mostly they have Bachelor degrees or something similar.

Law: 4
Social Studies/Social Work: 4
Politicial Science: 3
Economics or Business: 4 (one licentiate and one PhD)
Journalism: 2
None (only high school): 2 (one of which is the minister of finance)
Other (no info given on major): 2
Teacher: 1

4

In order to pursue this question, we’d have to be more specific about defining “legal qualification” –

  1. Earned a degree in law from a credited institution
  2. Licensed to practise law
  3. Has engaged in the practise of law
  4. Has engaged in other law-related activity, such as teaching law, legislative work, law enforcement, etc.