Spatial Dimensions of Florida's Legal Services

Abstract

The centrality of services to the nation's economy has been long known, a fact that has been recently studied in some detail by economic geographers (Britton 1990; Daniels 1991; Glasmeier and How-land 1994; Hansen 1994; Marshall and Wood 1995; Bagchi-Sen and Sen 1997; Beyers and Lindahl 1997). Services are an exceptionally heterogeneous group that are frequently classified into two broad categories: consumer services, those that cater to households and individuals, such as retail trade, and producer services, those that are sold to and consumed by other firms, including finance and business services of various sorts (e.g., advertising, accounting, engineering, computer services, etc.).  Services have grown rapidly for a variety of reasons, including changes in the structure of consumer spending, increasing complexity of the production environment, demographic changes that propel the demand for education and health care, international service exports, and steady rise in public sector activities at the federal, state, and local levels.