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The supply of newly-minted lawyers is greatly exceeding the demand. Schools are pumping out over 45k new lawyers per year, for what might be 25k actual openings for lawyers. This has been covered extensively by other sources, so I’ll not delve into the flawed law-school supplied statistics or outright lies here.
Much of what used to constitute a lawyer’s “legal work” is going away thanks cost-cutting measures from technology and glorified paralegals now doing what would have in the past been $250 per hour document review services. Historically in most states only bar-certified lawyers could sell their legal services, and this allowed them to set high oligopolistic prices. After all, if legal services were supplied at a price consistent with market equilibrium, pro bono services would not need to be such a large focus of the profession as the poor would be able to afford legal services. Rather pro bono is a penance service provided by lawyers to society, an apology by their cartel for its unfair pricing.
But human self interest triumphs and thereby basic economics leads entrepreneurs to attempt to supply legal services at a lower cost, leading to the emergence of services such as LegalZoom. This further reduces both the demand for and the wage rate of lawyers, a fact most law schools seem to be willfully ignoring.
So anyone thinking about taking out $100-200k+ in non-dischargeable student loan debt in order to attend some third or fourth tier school, caveat emptor.
