The Lawyer Bubble is a cogent critique of the legal profession by Steven J. Harper, who for 25 years was a partner at the Chicago megafirm of Kirkland & Ellis, after which he became an adjunct professor at Northwestern University and its law school. The two types of institutions at which he's spent his professional career--a large law firm and a law school--are at the heart of what he believes are the profession's most serious ills.
In 2011, some 44,000 students graduated from American law schools. Nine months later, only about half had obtained full-time jobs requiring a law degree. Employed or not, many stagger under debt. Instead of responding to their plight, Harper argues, law schools pay focus on their annual U.S. News & World Report rankings, willing to resort to unethical tactics to move up the list.
Big law firms are engaged in similarly fierce competition for a place in the Am Law 100, the ranking of the nation's top 100 firms compiled by American Lawyer. These massive firms (the largest exceeding 4,000 lawyers worldwide) are driven by an obsession with short-term profits at the expense of traditional values of collegiality and mentoring young lawyers.
Harper offers some useful prescriptions--from curbing law school admissions to reducing reliance on the billable hour--which he believes may help restore the law to its former status as a learned profession. As someone who has spent 37 years in that profession, I can only observe that change, if it comes at all, will come slowly. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer