Right now (and for some time, actually) the supply of lawyers has been several times larger than the demand for their services. On top of this, the amount of work available has shrunk drastically over the past 10 years. It has nothing to do with how good the lawyers are- there just isn't enough paying work for them to all do. Poor people have poor access to lawyers because (having represented such people) the poverty is often a symptom of their general lack of ability to cope with day to day life. They can't pay you because holding down a job is difficulty when you're a sociopath with a room temperature IQ and impulse control issues. The notion of drug dealers saving their money for a good lawyer is an idea that died in the 80s. Everyone gets the public defender now.

Law schools are pretty much in two pricing tiers- state and private. A private school will run you roughly 50k a year plus expenses for 3 years. With interest, you can reasonably expect 200-300k in debt when you graduate. This is true for attending Harvard Law where you can pretty much choose between a dozen great options upon graduation. It is also true if you attend Cooley School of Law where your chances of any JD related employment are slim at best. A state school with in-state tuition will generally run you a lot less- 10-20k a year. Some state schools are high ranked, some are not.

A lot of prospective law students have figured this out and application rates have plummeted over the past 5 years or so. The T10 schools haven't had to compromise their admissions standards to admit full classes. Outside of this area, it's looking really grim. Down in the old tier 3 toilet schools, they're admitting people with LSATs in the low 140s, which is about what a dyslexic chimpanzee could get by smearing poo on the test form. These are people who will never pass the bar, let alone competently practice law.

There's plenty of lawyers who already have JDs (and law experience) who could resume the practice of law if it became worthwhile again. The problem is that it's just a pit of misery for 90 percent of lawyers. Even when it paid well, practicing law was basically drudgery. Without the pay or the stability of having a good job, it's just pure suffering.

This is pretty much why I decided to exit law school before having sunk too much money into it.

Didn't take out any loans, though. Made sure I had enough cash on hand to cover the whole 3 years before I committed to it.

how about you fucking hippies go get a job. I hear burger joints pay very well... enough to support entire families.

I owe $480k. Beat that bisshes.

Despite having a law degree become the equivalent of a liberal art undergrad, the number of students seeking a JD does not decline. This part i don't understand :dunno: However, there are still ways for these attorneys to make money, actually a lot of it, via institutions like 411-Pain and Traffic Ticket Clinics. They require little skill and work and the volume of customers that seek this service is rather large.

So, would it be necessarily politically incorrect for a politician to go ahead and tell all this unemployable students that fundamentally is their fault they are not employable? I know no one would win an elections this way, but baby sitting adults should not be a thing.

In the absence of other evidence, I think suggesting that "you win" might be viewed as a contrarian argument...

Read my post at the top of the page. The number has dropped enormously since 2010. It took a while for the scamblogs to get the word out about how bad outcomes are for law students, but once the big shock of 2008-2009 happened, everyone caught on that things were really bad.

In response to this massive drop in qualified applicants the following has happened:
-the elite schools (HYS) have changed nothing. The rest of the T14 are getting increasingly bad outcomes, but they're all lying and trying to preserve their prestige for as long as possible.
-some schools have shrunk class sizes and maintained pre-crisis admissions standards. Besides the reduced revenue, it's basically business as usual except for the challenging job market.
-some schools have dropped standards and are aggressively recruiting from low-IQ cohorts who don't realize that they're being suckered yet. To compensate for the reduced quality of their students, they're doing things like lying about employment outcomes, paying people not to take the bar. This way they can tell incoming students about how they have a 75 percent bar pass rate and good employment stats. Which is all blatantly untrue, but the courts have been really hostile to the idea of allowing suits against the schools for what is basically fraud.

Really, outside of HYS, employment outcomes are pretty grim. I went to a tier 1 school and most of my class mates are employed as lawyers, but mostly in very meh positions. Insurance defense, state/local govt, solo shitlaw dominate. A handful got midlaw or boutique work and are doing fine. A few ended up in fedgov doing admin law. And this is considered waaaaay above average. Down in the underworld of the third tier, JD-required employment is rare. You're as likely to be working as a public defender as you are to be making lattes in starbucks.