The level of attention that greets news of the supposed over-supply of lawyers is surely a sign of the times. This was clearly demonstrated last week with the publication of figures showing the number of practising solicitors in England and Wales was up 7% in 2010 to break through the 120,000 mark.

Admittedly, that's a startling figure; the number of working solicitors grew only 2% in the preceding two years and last year's rise was well ahead of the rough 4% annual growth the profession has managed since the 1970s.

But this angst can be seen in many areas. The simmering debate over legal education is heavily focused on calls for aptitude tests and criticism of vocational law firms. These are all proxies for fears of those who have climbed the ladder that there is an unsustainable horde trying to climb on as well.

But working out the 'correct' number of lawyers is an exercise in abstraction. Certainly, the UK has more lawyers than many comparable Western European economies, but then it has a far larger legal market thanks to its commercial legal sector. A report last year compiling statistics on various international markets from consultancy Jomati found the UK's population had just under 400 people per lawyer, making it on that measure a good deal less 'lawyered' than the US, Canada or Australia and not that far off the eurozone average of 475.

True, the growth in the number of solicitors has exceeded that in the UK economy, but that has been underpinned by frenetic law-making, and the growth of commercial law since the 1990s hardly suggests that the profession is too large.

Two things could change that equation: the first is if clients start radically altering their view of legal services, either in what they are prepared to pay or in the level of service required. The second is if law firms and other employers of lawyers start giving large areas of work currently handled by qualified UK lawyers to other staff – say via paralegals or various forms of offshoring or outsourcing. That certainly could happen, but the direction on the front is still far from clear.

In the meantime, law appears to be having a similar experience to other industries since the recession, with profitability remaining resilient at the expense of staff. In many cases, this has meant shedding the least productive workers that were tolerated during the boom and raising productivity. Not pleasant, but in itself largely still suggesting cyclical rather than structural issues.

As such, attempts to impose a 'correct' number of lawyers entering the profession look misguided. Supply and demand will never be in perfect step, especially in competitive careers, and if the numbers started to fall short of demand there would be just as much angst about lawyer 'shortages' as the current issues over 'glut'. But you can expect calls for such measures to be a common theme in 2011.