Everybody knows what they are doing. They are trying to run a guild in a post-guild society. One aspect of that is keeping prices high - the prices for the schools, and worse, the prices for the poor clients and to hell for those who cannot afford a lawyer but are not poor enough to get a cynical, burned-out Legal Aid person.
Justice is exorbitantly - and unjustly - expensive and, as I have often said here, I think a better case could be made for socialized legal coverage than for socialized medicine, because equal justice is an American ideal, but illness is just human fate. In my view, the American legal system is a broken and often piratical mess run for the benefit of the lawyers (most politicians are lawyers). Just consider how many people settle unjust and annoying claims simply to avoid legal fees.
Via Bader in Minding the Campus:
... there is simply no reason to require people to attend law school before sitting for the bar exam. As law professor Paul Campos notes, legal education is a rip-off, since the typical law professor "knows nothing about being a lawyer. Hence, he must bullshit -- he does not lie to his students about how to be a lawyer (doing so would require him to know how to be a lawyer, while attempting to deceive his students regarding the substance of that knowledge); rather, he 'talks without knowing what he is talking about,'" when it comes to discussing the legal system or how to be a lawyer.
Law schools' lack of interest in preparing students to be lawyers is illustrated by Tulane's recent decision to give a murderer a scholarship to attend its law school, even though he most likely will never be admitted to the Bar given his criminal record. Law schools lie about whether graduates find jobs: two law schools are being sued for fraudulentplacement data. Law schools have increased tuition by nearly 1,000 percent since 1960 in real terms.
Meanwhile, student loan debt is rising at an exponential, ever-increasing rate, harming students' ability to buy homes (and thus, the housing market), and increasing federal spending on student loans is driving up college tuition and also harming the economy in other ways.
Of course, if you want a Big Job in a Big Law Firm, you will want a Big Degree. It's just one more example of greedy Big Education's monopoly on credentials. Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Government, Big Education, Big Farming, Big Tort Law. Same old story. Just follow the money.
