Do outbound links help your site as far as rankings in the search engines or is it only inbound links?

There can be some type of benefit from doing outbound links.

IMHO

Who you link to ... who links to you ... who else links to the sites you link to ... and so forth ... all combines to create what you could call a "link profile" for your site/page. The stronger your link profile is, the more trust you have. Trust is an important factor in current SE algorithms.

Ergo, yes, it's a good idea to link out to relevant, trusted sites from your site when appropriate.

Does the anchor text used in outbound links help your ranking? For example, if my web site is about a law firm, and I link to another firm, but use the anchor text, personal injury lawyers, instead on their name, will I get an added benefit from the term personal injury lawyers? Obviously it will be considred content, but will it be considered more important content is my question.

I often try to link out with the same keywords that apply to my site, because you're telling the crawler ... this site is relevant to mine and my visitors, and this is what it's about. So you're helping the crawler associate your site with that term, too.

Does it have a direct, measurable impact on your rankings? I don't know, but it has to be better than anchor text that says "click here." To me, it's one of the many little things you do that (hopefully) add up to Good SEO.