A noble job is facing its defining moment. From law institutions to the exclusive firms that represent the pinnacle of a legal career, an emergency is unfolding. Information headlines tell part of the story-the developing oversupply of brand-new lawyers, widespread profession dissatisfaction, and magnificent implosions of pre-eminent lawyers. Yet willing hordes of shiny young people continue to stage over one another as they look for jobs with high rates of despair, life-consuming hours, and little guarantee of about The Lawyer Bubble: AN OCCUPATION in Crisis financial stability. The Great Recession has only worsened these developments, but correction can be done and, now, essential.

In The Lawyer Bubble, Steven J. Harper reveals how a culture of short-term thinking has blinded a number of the nation’s finest minds to the long-run implications of their activities. Law college deans possess ceded independent wisdom to flawed U.S. News & World Survey rankings requirements in the quest to maximize immediate results. Senior partners in the nation’s large law firms have centered on current income to improve American Lawyer search positions and individual prosperity at great price to their establishments. Yet, wiser decisions-being honest about the legal work marketplace, revisiting the financial incentives currently generating bad behavior, eliminating the billable hour model, and more-can take the profession to an improved place.

A devastating indictment of the greed, shortsightedness, and dishonesty that now permeate the legal occupation, this insider account is vital reading for anyone who wants to know how things went so wrong and how the career can right itself once again.