The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis
*Starred Review* Harper, an attorney and law-school professor, investigates the causes of what he sees as a rapid decline in the sustainability of and professionalism in the legal profession while providing novel solutions. He starts with law-school deans gleefully accepting easily awarded student loans in order to pump naive applicants into a large and expanding pool of underemployed graduates, and he decries the impact of inane law-school rankings on schools’ policies, where raw numbers reign supreme despite their proven irrelevance. Harper also points to detailed statistics of (nondischargeable) student debt and the unavailability of legal jobs to display how problems in the legal profession are institutional in nature. Deans and equity partners frequently face the prisoner’s dilemma: if every law school or large firm cooks the books, the first to play fair will suffer a severe disadvantage unless all others come clean as well. What surprises Harper is how such damning statistics and examples are unable to dissuade scores of undergraduates who still hope to pursue a career that, according to Harper, will likely not pay off in dollars or in job satisfaction. Anyone looking into a career in law would be well advised to read this thoroughly eye-opening warning. --Steve Uhrich