Lawyers have become less intelligent compared to the average person over thelast decade, research from the Centre for Market and Public Organisation
(CMPO) has revealed.
Lawyers have become less intelligent compared to the average person over the last decade, research from the Centre for Market and Public Organisation
(CMPO) has revealed.
The study compared IQ scores for lawyers born in 1958 to those born in 1970 – who are currently climbing the ranks of law firms and barristers’ chambers.
Lawyers in the earlier group scored 11 per cent better than the average, but the 1970 group were just 8 per cent more intelligent.
This was a greater fall than the majority of other professions where the gap narrowed by around 1 percentage point.
Despite the shrinking ability gap, lawyers are now more likely to have come from a wealthier background than those born in the fifties, with the family income for the parents of lawyers increasing much faster than the average (TheLawyer.com 2 Feb 2009).
Lindsey Macmillan, a researcher at the Bristol University-based CMPO, said:
“Despite the fact that lawyers are looking a lot less like the average person in terms of their family income, they are looking more like the average person in terms of ability.”
The gap in IQ performance compared to the average fell for most other vocations, as well as the law. Doctors, teachers, bankers and stock brokers
all moved closer to average intelligence between the two studies.
Artists, engineers, scientist and journalists have all become more intelligent when compared to average IQ scores, the research found.
(To view a larger version, please click on image)
Source: Social mobility and the Professions, Lindsey Macmillan, CMPO, University of Bristol
Advice
Life’s like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.
That’s the best darn piece of advice ah’ve ever heard, and I didn’t need no lawyer to give it to me none.
I’m outraged
This is just another example of The Lawyer’s shockingly casual Communist approach to life, associating high incomes and wealth with stupidity. It is outrageous to make such a claim.
Also did you notice they could not resist saying that journalists were more clever these days? I suppose they are all getting paid less than in 1950 and living in a bloody hippy commune together. Astonishing.
I don’t understand
can you repeat the article?
stupider lawyers
Is it because lawyers have been spending too much time on Facebook?
great story
The Lawyer’s keen news sense remains intact – publishing all the news from 1970 as it breaks…
The solution: Recruit Law students with solid Law degrees from good universities!
That’s because in the 50s, only law students could become lawyers but now any Tom Denis and Harry can become a lawyer with any old degree or by having a rather pompous family member who is a lawyer and weaving their way into the legal system which might I add, used to be for those with the brains. It’s a wonder that anyone still bothers to do 3 year law degrees. Also, there is a real need to standardise what is learnt in all the universities and Law colleges. So much emphasis is placed on getting a 2:i or 1st from Oxbridge. Such qualifications certainly improve the CV but not the IQ.
At Major Misunderstanding
Trying supporting lawyers Major Misunderstanding on an IT level and you might think differently
1+1
Use your brains, this article has been drafted in such a way to draw readers attention and increase their internet site stake !
IQ
Greatstory – You must be one of those stupid lawyers the research is talking about – it’s people born in 1970 who are now being measured. Dur!
PS Athough obviously, the research is deeply flawed!
Drivel
I would love to see a journalist negotiate the terms of a simple, bilateral loan.
The law employs, as it has always done, the finest minds in the City.
hilarious
This article is actually one of the funniest things I have ever seen. There are so many things I could say to criticise it that my brain is about to explode.
Intelligence
I would love to see lawyers negotiate the terms of a single bilateral (writer-reader) text without deliberate obfuscation as a means of making money.
IQ
I’ve been a City lawyer for many years and followed this article perfectly until it got to the graph, which befuddled me (I had a bit of trouble with the words too but let’s not go there). No problem: I’ll get a junior to pull an exec summary together for me.
question
what is the significance of the years 1958 and 1970?
Astonishing Accountants!
Well the one good thing this graph does is explain why my accountant is so goddamn thick.
To That Chap That Responded To Me Below…
I notice that you IT people aren’t included in this survey. The profession is staffed to the gills with barbarians and luddites.
What was the average?
Quote: “Lawyers in the earlier group scored 11 per cent better than the average, but the 1970 group were just 8 per cent more intelligent.” I always thought the average IQ score was 100. On that basis the average lawyer’s score would now be 108. The standard deviation for IQ is 15, which means 67% of the population have an IQ between 85 and 115. This means:
(a) either lawyers (and every group in the graph) are of “normal” intelligence; or
(b) the average in the study is not 100 (quite possible, since only results for graduates are given).
Does anyone know what the average was?
How the braggarts are fallen …
Well done, The Lawyer. You send me an email linking this story, and take the opportunity to boast about how much smarter journalists are, but fail to spell “Bloggs” consistently. Own goal, much?
Two points
1) Firstly, what is the CMPO, and why should we take it seriously? It’s not a ‘known name’.
2) The fact that only the years 1958 and 1970 have been chosen suggests that there is a lack of relevant information to go on, which very much compromises this research. The years are 12 years apart, and the nearer of the two 39 years ago. What have they got to do with anything?
Who defines Intelligence?
What I would like to know is…who decides the scales on these so-called measures of IQ? Aren’t those criteria for IQ measurement subject to “researcher’s bias” by the person who created the scales? I do not believe that IQ alone defines intelligence; that is a rich statement to make! Can intelligence be defined in the first place?
What of the African tribes who survive all sorts of potentially dangerous encounters in the bush (where us Westerners would probably end up being mauled by a lion or something) but who can’t read – does that make them less “intelligent?”
My “profession” isn’t listed in any of the categories; I’m “only” a legal PA but would like to think, an intelligent one at that 🙂
Emotional Intelligence
IQ is no longer seen as the main measure of intelligence by most leading educational psycholgists. Please see Daniel Coleman’s ‘Emotional Intelligence’, or Howard Gardner (Harvard School of Education) ‘Frames of Mind’. Research has shown that high IQ alone does NOT mark people out for ‘success’.
In this regard having a bun-fight on this comment board about who has the highest IQ is rather indicative of what the above authors have tried to indicate: that your emotional awareness plays just a big a part in the successful progession of a person.
whoever
wrote today’s News email deserves a medal. Brilliant!
What this actually tells us…
Let’s get this straight. This is supposed to establish that people who were born in 1970 and were working as lawyers when they were aged 33/34 (ie in 2003/4) were only 8% above the national average IQ when they were aged 10/11 (ie in 1980/1). This can be compared with those who were born in 1958 and were working as lawyers when they were aged 33/34 (ie in 1961/2), who were a full 11% better than the national average IQ when they were 10/11 (ie in 1968/9). But it took our (apparently, increasingly intelligent) “scientists” 5 full years to crunch the numbers and deliver this bombshell.
No mention of the sample size they used. No explanation of that fact that, for some reason, the relative intelligence of almost all professions seems to have dropped. Very odd. But the relative intelligence of journalists has soared. As early as 2003/4, they had become much, much clever that lawyers. And this proves it. Definitely.
–
“Despite the fact that lawyers are looking a lot less like the average person in terms of their family income, they are looking more like the average person in terms of ability.”
That’s part of the problem right there. As someone from a working class background I worked extremely hard to get where I am and managed to score excellent exam results throughout my education because it was the only way for me to succeed.
By contrast, most of the rest of my class at (grammar) school and university came from privileged backgrounds and could rely on the family’s wealth to see them through so they had no need to work particularly hard or develop their mental ability.
Parenting and encouragement to learn at an early age also seems to have a major impact, I was surprised to see that most of my peers from privileged backgrounds were never really pushed to do well in education by their parents, although the same can often be said about the less prviliged too.
I’m also going to be a bit controversial and say that the rise in non law graduates becoming lawyers is adding to these results. My experience has been that law graduates are generally of a much higher academic calibre than those graduating from quite simple degrees such as history and philosophy.
Oh dear…
A number of you are shockingly stupid, and by rising to the bait and publishing such moronic remarks you have merely confirmed the finding that there are an increasing number of stupid people in the profession. That, my colleagues, is the own goal. “Legal PA”: please learn to punctuate corrrectly.
Lack Of Inteligent Work Practices
Our generalized, unsuited to the marketplace training and haphazard work practices are making us duller.
Lawyers fall behind in IQ study
If lawyers really are so bright why were none of them clever enough to foresee the toxic debt mess we are now in. Most of the finance and capital markets lawyers I’ve encountered are like highly trained dogs at Crufts – ready and eager to jump through whatever hoop they are told to (for the right compensation) but underneath the sleek exterior is a simple sick inbred.
More details needed
It would be interesting to see what the average barrister’s IQ is. Probably about 15% above the average, judging by the figure for “lawyers” and adjusting for the drag factor of solicitors’ IQs.
Legal IQ
What level of intelligence is necessary to:
1. Drink beer with clients,
2. Fill out time sheets,
3. Fill in forms,
4. Cut and paste document collages,
5. Design idiotic securities,
6. Provide useless business advise
Makes me laugh
I think its about right..i went to law school after being addicted to Ally McBeal! Stupid or what :S
that sums it up
“The law employs, as it has always done, the finest minds in the City”
Whoever wrote that has perfectly summarised the problem – so many lawyers simply cannot get over themselves and their “intelligence”. You are such a clever lot, aren’t you?
So clever that you will never realise you are just as smart/stupid as Joe from your local pub.
Anonymous
“Whoever wrote that has perfectly summarised the problem – so many lawyers simply cannot get over themselves and their “intelligence”
Couldn’t agree more! I’ve worked with some of the most hopeless and lazy characters around, every last one of them thought they were fantastic and made sure everyone heard it.
Em
What was wrong with my punctuation? Pick on someone your own size! lol
Its a SHAM!!
Well, I am sorry to differ but I am extremely intelligent as are my colleagues and most of my pals who are also lawyers. I am always amazed at the above average intelligence of the lawyers I work with and I DO have an above average IQ myself, which is often demonstrated by the morons who never take my advice, don’t understand it and are not capable of issuing proper instructions because they are too stupid to understand the problem that they have created.
Confusius said, if you are dealing with a man who blindly refuses to consider a sound theory or analysis, then smile knowingly, as he is an idiot and not capable of reason. I smile knowingly a lot these days.