According to the Mercatus Center, the state of New York came in second highest in terms of state regulations. The Center quantifies the number of regulations because their "research indicates that regulatory accumulation worsens economic conditions, inadvertently increasing poverty rates, destroying jobs, and raising prices. The path to reversing these trends is clear: Improve regulations by reducing their number. Our State RegData project has produced "snapshots" of state regulations that can help policymakers engage in that process."

In addition, New York ranks highest in terms of lawyers per 10,000 residents according to the American Bar Association and TIA calculations.  It has 95.72 lawyers per 10,000 residents, while Massachusetts, the next highest state, has 61.06 lawyers per 10,000 residents.  Is this a coincidence, a correlation, or a cause?  You decide and check the numbers for your state at Data.Z.org.

"Lawyers Per 10,000 Residents" is the average number of lawyers for every ten thousand residents in every state. The data given is calculated by using numbers from the American Bar Association (ABA) and the U.S. Census Bureau. The total number of lawyers by state is divided by the corresponding population estimate for the previous year and then multiplied by 10,000. Prior to the official July 1 Census estimate, an unofficial population estimate based on the state's five-year growth rate is used.