Home > Thoughts/Observations > References to law departments of government agencies and a surmise on their size
Published on:

References to law departments of government agencies and a surmise on their size

By

When I have written about the law departments of government agencies, mostly I have marveled at the size of them (See my post of Sept. 10, 2005: New York City’s Corporate Counsel Office, more than 650 lawyers; Nov. 6, 2005: US Department of Homeland Securities, roughly 1,500 lawyers; Pennsylvania’s Office of the General Counsel, 700 lawyers several years ago; May 10, 2006: legal advisors to the U.S. Department of State, 165; Aug. 2, 2006: State of Massachusetts, something like 650; Dec. 3, 2006: New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Law, 580 lawyers; Feb. 16, 2009: FBI, 180 lawyers; March 11, 2009: United States Postal Service, 220 attorneys; and Dec. 14, 2011: U.S. Air Force with 1,500 lawyers.).

Just the references in the last paragraph, stumbled upon by happenstance, support surmises that (1) the largest law departments in the country support government agencies and (2) thousands of governmental legal departments exist in the United States (See my post of Dec. 20, 2011: government lawyers outnumber private sector two to one; and Dec. 31, 2008: 9% of lawyers in large U.S. survey identified themselves as government lawyers.).

Also regarding governmental legal teams, one post here referred to several that had faced internal audits of their teams and processes (See my post of May 31, 2005: Austin, Texas; Dec. 23, 2005: Pierce County (Washington) Prosecuting Attorney’s Office; March 26, 2007: Hernando County, Florida; May 19, 2006: LA’s Office of the City Attorney; Jan. 20, 2006: California Department of Transportation’s Legal Division; and Dec. 18, 2006: Amtrak.).

Other citations on this blog don’t pertain to the size of the governmental legal department (See my post of Oct. 29, 2006: city of Chicopee, MA and interns in its legal function; April 17, 2007: Federal Gov. Printing Office and pro bono; July 8, 2010: FDIC posts online guidelines; and Dec. 13, 2011: Trenton, NJ’s law department under strict controls.). There may be other posts that should be in this metapost, but it is hard to know what to search for to find them.