Doublethink

The fetid corpse of the legal profession, and what to do about it

I’ve blogged about this before, but it finally got some mainstream treatment now that the East Coast elites are feeling the pinch. Things out there are bad for young lawyers graduating from what is colloquially called the “T14,” the US News top 14 law schools. Unsurprisingly, things have been bad for the other 200 or so law schools below them for a while now, and there is plenty of evidence that not even lawyers with solid work experience are safe.

The problem has been self-evident to anyone who cared to see it: lots of work based on bubbles (credit bubbles, IP bubbles, litigation bubbles) that dries up when the bubbles burst. But the BIGLAW industry since the late 1990s has been unique in its hubris, with massive growth in both payrolls and salaries, driven by parasitic sucking from the teats of companies so bloated with money that they couldn’t feel the fraudulent legal bills funneling and pissing their money away. That, of course, has ended, the corporate teat is dry, and companies are either bringing most of their work in-house (see, e.g., GOOG) or drastically slashing legal expenditures, forcing reductions in fees and driving outcomes that cut engagements as short as possible.

I’m no mere observer here. My credentials are, to be crass, pretty fucking awesome, but it’s jarring to see the ship crumble and sink around you as the Captain throws everyone else overboard after slashing their throats. It is, to say the least, a bloodbath that was neither expected nor prepared for by most young lawyers. But it is here, and we must deal with it.

The surprising thing for me has been that no one has laid the blame for this mess in the proper place. They blame the economy, they blame bad business models, they blame lawyers who won’t change, and all of those are valid, but who created this mess of extreme oversupply and no demand? What group of idiot savants decided that it would be a good idea to dramatically increase the supply of lawyers, while at the same time allowing law firms to offshore some legal work (you can read the “ethics opinion,” LOLWHATACROCKOFSHIT, here)? Who? WHO?

The motherfucking American Bar Association, that’s who, that putrid pile of rotting diseased bloated baby boomer fucks that ordains to regulate our fair profession by “accrediting” some of the most intellectially empty and rat infested educational institutions this fine nation has ever seen. We already know that education in America has become an almost healthcare-sized scam (I HOPE WE KNOW THIS, PEOPLE), but the way that the ABA has almost wholesale and without remorse oversold and devalued our profession is mind-boggling. Instead of building a small group of quality professionals held to high ethical standards, we have a massive group of mostly morons taking advantage of the USA’s horribly cracked regulatory, tort and litigation systems to meagerly profit from waste and inefficiency. And this, by the way, includes almost all tort suits; I am vaguely a tort lawyer, so I’ve seen the inside of the system long enough to tell you, from the deepest part of my soul, that litigation is almost always a scam, and should almost always be avoided at all costs.

So what can we do about it? Here are a few things that the ABA needs to do, and I do mean needs:

• Immediately unaccredit all but the top 50-75 law schools, leaving, generally, 1-2 law schools per state. And top 50-75 is being generous, it really ought to be top 40. We have a serious oversupply problem, and that problem needs to end. Will this kill large swathes of the education megaindustry? Fuck yes, and thankfully so. The students at these schools are participating in a scam of the highest order, and we owe them, and existing lawyers, both the truth and the action of brutally and mercilessly ending the oversupply problem.
• Push for national bar examinations and reciprocal national licensing from day one. The idea that the bar exam tests any level of competency at all is pure fallacy; it tests your ability to memorize a flotilla of law in isolation that means almost nothing in practice, and to do so specific to a particular state in the span of two months. State-centric bar exams glorify entrenched state bars, and do nothing for job seekers looking for legal work outside of their licensed states until they have practiced for five years (so-called reciprocity). It’s an artificial barrier to competition and also impedes free movement in the legal labor market. Law is global and national these days, not local, and, in any case, you can look all of that shit up.
• Push for a “bar examination” that ties licensing to sponsored apprenticeships. Supply can be tamped down both by admitting fewer law students and by licensing fewer lawyers. The best way to license a practicing lawyer? Make him act as an apprentice, like architects. An apprenticeship process will also, if implemented correctly, guarantee that the lawyers who are trained/licensed are also the ones who will be employed.
• Push for tort reform, especially malpractice, personal injury, and intellectual property. Torts are a legal construct from lawyers to drum up business for themselves. Every once in a while you’ll see a worthwhile and meritorious case, but for every one of those, there are a hundred fraudulent or borderline fraudulent cases that churn through our pathetic legal system, ruining lives to line lawyers’ pockets. End the nightmare by pulling malpractice and personal injury suits entirely out of the tort system into national insurance pools (e.g., worker’s compensation), and reform tort “bubbles” like IP that are currently sucking the life out of our most innovative private employers. If you want your profession to be honorable, stop being a bunch of greedy assholes and fix the system.
• Provide extensive job training in non-legal fields, both during and after law school. Most lawyers find themselves doing “something else” at some point in their careers and never looking back. “Something else” is usually business-related, anything from business strategy to investment banking. Of course, we’re woefully unprepared for any of those tasks because law school is all about cases from 1805 where some dickfuck shot another dude’s fox. If you want a solid profession, train a group of polymaths who can provide both specific legal assistance and strategic help through the (amazingly) still-valuable lens of a lawyer.

I don’t think these are controversial suggestions for any young lawyer, but the still-living zombies running the profession will laugh at them. So, here’s what we do:

• Boycott the ABA and all bar associations. Don’t pay a dime for any “association” or group involving these dinosaurs.
• Loudly and proudly tell your friends, their friends, their children, everyone you come into contact with, not to go to law school. This is a no-brainer. As I’ve advised before, unless you are absolutely born to be a lawyer, don’t bother going to law school unless you get into Yale, Harvard, or Stanford. That’s reality folks, $150k-$200k debt isn’t worth it otherwise.
• Start your own practices, at low low rates. You want to fuck over the old guard? Beat them at their own game. Do free/cheap legal work for your friends, start building your own practice, and untether from the dry BIGLAW nipple. 1500 hours a year of work at $100 per hour (far far far less than clients get my services for now) is a very comfortable life.
• Network with other disgruntled lawyers. It’s a lonely world and we’re all fucked, let’s drink/hug/fuck it out.

As for me, I’m pretty much set on going into porn and fucking my way to success in the 2010s. Either that or I’m going to blog for a living (there’s still a niche for curmudgeonly doomsayers, right?), that would at least be more “authentic” and align better with my “personal brand.”