Songfacts®:

• It had been 10 years since The Doobie Brothers last album, and World Gone Crazy brought the band back to together with producer Ted Templeman, who helmed the Doobie's albums their first 15 years. This song was written by guitarist Tom Johnston, who wrote the classics "China Grove" and "Listen To The Music."
  
  Johnston told Songfacts: "'Law Dogs' wrote itself. I didn't have to think about it. I'm not a slide player. I know the rudiments of how to play slide, but I'm a long way from a kingpin of the slide guitar. But I can fool around in my studio and make it work. That particular day that I started fooling with that song, for whatever reason I just open-tuned my acoustic guitar and started playing this pattern. And I laid down a very light drum loop, and started getting all these images about this chick who is not living a very good life. It kind of drifts in between the 1800s and now: She's hanging out with a no-good outlaw guy and she's got a drug problem. Her life expectancy doesn't look long, and I guess she's hooking for a living. I put slide acoustic over it, and then I doubled that with a dobro, and all the sudden you've got this kind of wacky tune that's kind of a lot of fun. I had a good time doing that tune."