Steven J. Harper - The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis

The

LAWYER
BUBBLE

The

LAWYER
BUBBLE

A PROFESSION IN CRISIS

STEVEN J. HARPER

BASIC BOOKS

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New York

Copyright 2013 by Steven J. Harper

Published by Basic Books,

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Designed by Pauline Brown

Typeset in 11.5 point Adobe Caslon Pro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Harper, Steven J., 1954

The lawyer bubble : a profession in crisis / Steven J. Harper.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-465-05877-8 (pbk.)ISBN 978-0-465-05874-7 (e-book)

1. Practice of lawUnited StatesPopular works. 2. LawyersJob satisfactionUnited StatesPopular works. 3. Law firmsUnited StatesPopular works. 4. LawVocational guidanceUnited StatesPopular works. I. Title.

KF300.H3687 2013

331.7'613400973dc23

2012048153

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my wife, our children,
and our grandchildren

W HEN I APPLIED TO LAW SCHOOL in 1975, the nation was recovering from a severe and prolonged recession. Even so, I always assumed that Id be able to make a comfortable living with a legal degree, although I didnt think that practicing law would make me rich. Three and a half years later, I became a new associate at one of the nations 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 $100,000 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 wasnt 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 professions 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 wont 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.

The Lawyer Bubble is about much more than lawyers. Its about a mentality that has accompanied the corporatization of Americas most important institutions, including the legal professiona dramatic transformation that is still unfolding. Behind the change is a drive to boost current-year performance and profits at the expense of more enduring values for which there are no quantifiable measures. But omitting critical costs from the decision-making calculus doesnt make them any less important or their damaging consequences any less profound.

This book focuses on lawyers because I know them best. For more than thirty years, Ive been a successful and generally satisfied one. I led what anyone would call a charmed life in the law. I grew up watching lawyers on television trying cases. As a real attorney, thats what I did, too. Neither of my parents attended college, but they assumed that any child who entered the legal profession would gain societys respect in ways theyd never achieved. For me, that turned out to be true as well. Then as now, most people assumed that the legal profession offered financial security and a way to climb out of the lower or middle class. Career satisfaction, upward mobility, social status, financial securitywho could ask for more?

It was always a naive view, but todays rewards are far less certain. From start to finish, the profession now faces a largely self-inflicted crisis. Unfortunate trends began twenty-five years ago, accelerated as the new millennium approached, and continue to this day. The Great Recession worsened them.

As Ive noted, this phenomenon isnt unique to the law. In fact, it afflicts many professions that people traditionally regarded as callings rather than just another job. Doctors find themselves at the mercy of nonmedical bean counters establishing incentive structures that determine how they treat their patients. Journalists become news marketers because corporate media owners see more profit in entertainment than in maintaining large news bureaus filled with investigative reporters. As professors sit through budget meetings while pondering their institutions incentives toward writing grant proposals and away from educating students, they wonder what qualifies their colleges or universities as not-for-profit. Pick almost any once proud professionthe great transformation is killing them all.

The legal profession has become a victim of these trends, resulting in a massive oversupply of lawyers, growing career dissatisfaction among practicing attorneys generally, and the increasing fragility of the prevailing big-law-firm business model in particular. At a moment when psychologists, sociologists, and even national leaders are beginning to recognize the importance of well-being and morale to health, worker productivity, and society as a whole, lawyers suffer from disproportionately high rates of depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse. Recent surveys report that six out of ten attorneys who have been practicing for ten years or more say they advise young people to avoid law school. As new attorneys scramble for spots in the nations premier firms, some of those venerable legal establishments are failing and many others have more problems than they realize or are willing to admit.

This book focuses on two important segments of the legal profession: law schools, because theyre points of entry for every would-be lawyer, and big law firms, because their combination of power, prestige, and wealth gives them a special role. Although attorneys working in law firms of more than 160 lawyers account for only 15 percent of practicing attorneys today, their influence is far greater than their numbers. For example, almost all law schools lure prospective students into their JD programs with promotional materials that cite six-figure starting salaries for new graduates, even though only some large law firms pay that kind of money and most schools have little chance of placing any of their graduates in those jobs. Another indicator of big firms importance is the media attention they generate. The