During the eight years of the Bush administration, 13 lawyers served in the president’s cabinet. That makes 13 lawyers out of 47 total people who held cabinet-level posts. (The number actually drops to ten, if you subtract the three Attorneys General—John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, and Michael Mukasey.)
Of course, Bush wasn’t a lawyer, but that got us to wondering how well our profession has faired with a “Lawyer-in-Chief.” After all, “every Democratic presidential nominee for president and vice president in the last seven elections—except Gore who dropped out of law school—has been a lawyer.”
As it turns, Obama has fewer total lawyers—so far—with seven JDs out of the 21 people currently appointed to his cabinet. But if it feels like Obama is surrounded by more lawyers than, say Bush, it could because of the myriad of advisers, directors and czars. According to The Daily Beast, there are roughly twenty—and counting—Obama czars, and many of those power-posts have gone to, you guessed it, lawyers.
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