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The Entire Legal Profession Is On The Verge Of Imploding
Business Insider ^ | 04/21/2013 | Steven Harper, The Belly of the Beast

Posted on 04/21/2013 2:39:58 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

When I applied to law school in 1975, the nation was recovering from a severe and prolonged recession. Even so, I always assumed that I’d be able to make a comfortable living with a legal degree, although I didn’t think that practicing law would make me rich.

Three and a half years later, I became a new associate at one of the nation’s largest law firms, Kirkland & Ellis. It had about 150 attorneys in two offices, Chicago and Washington, D.C. My annual salary was $25,000, which is $80,000 in 2012 dollars. There were rumors that some partners in large firms earned as much as ten or fifteen times that amount; by any measure, that was and is a lot of money.

The unlikely prospect of amassing great wealth wasn’t what attracted me to the law. Rather, I saw it as a prestigious profession whose practitioners enjoyed personally satisfying careers in which they provided others with counsel, advice, judgment, and a unique set of skills. Mentors at my first and only law firm taught me to focus on a single result: high-quality work for clients. If I accomplished that goal, everything else would take care of itself.

Today, the business of law focuses law school deans and practitioners in big law firms on something else: maximizing immediate profits for their institutions. That has muddied the profession’s mission and, even worse, set it on a course to become yet another object lesson in the perils of short-term thinking. Like the dot-com, real estate, and financial bubbles that preceded it, the lawyer bubble won’t end well, either. But now is the time to consider its causes, stop its growth, and take steps that might soften the impact when it bursts.

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Education; Society
KEYWORDS: lawyers; legal; tuition
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1 posted on 04/21/2013 2:39:58 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Is this man suggesting that he deserves sympathy?


2 posted on 04/21/2013 2:41:36 PM PDT by abb
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To: SeekAndFind

Cool!


3 posted on 04/21/2013 2:42:53 PM PDT by Beowulf9
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To: SeekAndFind

Neuter or fix all attorneys so they cannot reproduce


4 posted on 04/21/2013 2:43:04 PM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion (Gone rogue, gone Galt, gone international, gone independent. Gone.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Pretty much everything is imploding.


5 posted on 04/21/2013 2:43:41 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy (The ballot box is a sham. Nothing will change until after the war.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The FDA has prohibited sales of Viagra to Attorneys...apparently it just makes them taller.


6 posted on 04/21/2013 2:49:40 PM PDT by gorush (History repeats itself because human nature is static)
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To: SeekAndFind

We can only wish. Hopefully, maybe, possibly, please, even pretty please, etc., etc.


7 posted on 04/21/2013 2:51:11 PM PDT by ProudFossil (" I never did give anyone hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." Harry Truman)
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To: SeekAndFind

One thing I figured, is that a lot of the grunt work that used to be done by new associates is now being offshored on the cheap to India...therefore, firms don’t have to hire newly graduated law students anymore.


8 posted on 04/21/2013 2:52:33 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: SeekAndFind; All

The legal system has arguably been imploding since Constitution-ignoring socialist FDR nuked the Supreme Court with activist justices in the late 30s and early 40s.


9 posted on 04/21/2013 2:53:38 PM PDT by Amendment10
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To: ClearCase_guy
Law has become a business rather than a profession.

When I was graduated from the U.Va. School of Law in 1966 it was generally seen -- I saw it that way -- as a profession. Now, it is very difficult to recognize as a profession. After thirty years, I retired in 1996 and am very happy to have done so.

10 posted on 04/21/2013 2:54:37 PM PDT by DanMiller (Dan Miller)
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To: SeekAndFind

Noteworthy that I have heard of at least one law school is slashing its tuition because of a shortage of fresh meat.

At the time a lawyer commented to the story that at least a law degree still has a slightly higher credibility than does an MBA, a used car salesman, or a politician, though it is still slightly lower than a pawn shop owner or discount liposuctionist.


11 posted on 04/21/2013 2:54:51 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Best WoT news at rantburg.com)
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To: SeekAndFind

For some reason that scene in Saving Private Ryan came to mind, the one where the German bunker is lit up by a flame thrower. Germans are jumping out the front, on fire, and a young American soldier yells, “Let ‘em burn!”


12 posted on 04/21/2013 2:56:07 PM PDT by randog (Tap into America!)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Take the expanding number of law graduates and can come up with a date in the future where all citizens are lawyers who make a living suing other lawyers.


13 posted on 04/21/2013 2:56:41 PM PDT by Mustard Plaster
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To: SeekAndFind
When I started as a legal secretary in 1973, I was told that the legal profession was recession-proof. Well, not anymore. A lot of firms expanded, hired a ton of lawyers and generally spent money like there was no tomorrow. That all changed when their biggest clients, corporations, began to fail. The money dried up. Today, a number of prestigious firms have downsized. Those with multiple offices have closed the less profitable branches. A number of firms I knew back in the 1970s are no more.

Many of these firms have also reduced support staff. The concept of a legal secretary is vanishing. Once laptops and all the mobile devices came out, law firms decided they didn't need too many secretaries. The younger, computer-savvy lawyers could do much of the work themselves.

And like every other business, once Obamacare really takes hold, there will be fewer and fewer jobs at all levels. What jobs remain may actually become part time.

This is not a good time for any business and that includes law firms.

14 posted on 04/21/2013 2:59:49 PM PDT by fatnotlazy
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To: SeekAndFind
.



Let's see ...


1) U.S. Lawyers (by the millions) supported the usurper kenyan for president ...


2) Secretly applaud the heinous murders performed by "doctor" gosnell in philadelphia ...


3) do satans's diligent work by defending drug dealers, poronography producers and child-sex-slave masters and pimps in court


4) move mountains to undermine Christianity while sucking at militant islam's (house of saudi well-funded) political breasts


5) have worked for decades trying to DESTROY American industry via frivolous lawsuits and bogus environmental claims

6) will line-up by the DOZENS to defend "pro-bono" the islamic terrorist from the Boston Marathon massacre



.. and I'm supposed to "feel sorry" for these well-educated accessories to child-infantcide, political corruption and islamic terrorism ?

Like hell, I will ...



.
15 posted on 04/21/2013 3:02:15 PM PDT by Patton@Bastogne (Piss upon Obama, and his False Prophet Mohammed)
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To: SeekAndFind

Cool. What do I have to do to help push it over the edge?


16 posted on 04/21/2013 3:08:08 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty (I am a dissident. Will you join me? My name is John....)
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To: DanMiller

Do you remember the general cost of law school back in 1966?


17 posted on 04/21/2013 3:08:19 PM PDT by CodeToad (Liberals are bloodsucking ticks. We need to light the matchstick to burn them off.)
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To: Patton@Bastogne; et al

Lets see...The U.S with some 8% of the world’s population suffers the presence of 95% of the world’s lawyers. Blessed be we. Hence my nearly original tagline:


18 posted on 04/21/2013 3:09:25 PM PDT by S.O.S121.500 (You can have my lawyer after you pry my cold, dead fingers from around his neck.)
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To: aMorePerfectUnion
Neuter or fix all attorneys so they cannot reproduce

Unfortunately, they reproduce by mitosis:

Lawyer being created in anaphase stage

19 posted on 04/21/2013 3:09:33 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (LBJ declared war on poverty and lost. Barack Obama declared war on prosperity and won. /csmusaret)
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To: SeekAndFind
People are finally starting to wake up to all the sickening lawsuits perpetrated by lawyers, especially the class-action ones, wherein the lawyers walk away with millions while those actually hurt by what caused the suit get discount coupons or some other such nonsense.

I remember the (I assume) liberal girl Public Defender (Mary Kay Place?) in The Big Chill when she lamented on how she got her legal degree to help the poor and downtrodden with their legal problems, but she always ended up representing scumbags who actually deserved to be in prison. The world just didn't fit her pre-dispositioned beliefs and she just didn't understand why. Such is the liberal mindset.

20 posted on 04/21/2013 3:10:12 PM PDT by jeffc (The U.S. media are our enemy)
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