阅读理解
All around the world, lawyers generate more
hostility(敌视)
than the members of any other profession-with the possible exception of journalism.
But there are few places where clients have more grounds for complaint than
America.
During the decade before the economic
crisis, spending on legal services in America grew twice as fast as inflation.
The best lawyers made skyscrapers-full of money, tempting ever more students to
pile into law schools. But most law graduates never get a big-firm job. Many of
them instead become the kind of nuisance-lawsuit filer that makes the tort
system a costly nightmare.
There are many reasons for this. One is the
excessive costs of a legal education. There is just one path for a lawyer in
most American states: a four-year undergraduate degree in some unrelated
subjects, then a three-year law degree at one of 200 law schools authorized by
the American Bar Association and an expensive preparation for the bar exam.
This leaves today's average law-school graduate with $100,000 of debt on top of
undergraduate debts. Law-school debt means that they have to work extremely
hard.
Reforming the system would help both
lawyers and their customers. Sensible ideas have been around for a long time,
but the state-level bodies that govern the profession have been too
conservative to implement(实施)them.
One idea is to allow people to study law as an undergraduate degree. Another is
to let students sit for the bar after only two years of law school. If the bar
exam is truly a strict enough test for a would-be lawyer, those who can sit it
earlier should be allowed to do so. Students who do not need the extra training
could cut their debt mountain by a third. The other reason why costs are so
high is the restrictive guild-like(行会)
ownership structure of the business. Except in the District of Columbia,
non-lawyers may not own any share of a law firm. This keeps fees high and
innovation slow. There is pressure for change from within the profession, but
opponents of change among the regulators insist that keeping outsiders out of a
law firm isolates lawyers from the pressure to make money rather than serve
clients ethically.
All around the world, lawyers generate more
hostility(敌视)
than the members of any other profession-with the possible exception of journalism.
But there are few places where clients have more grounds for complaint than
America.
During the decade before the economic
crisis, spending on legal services in America grew twice as fast as inflation.
The best lawyers made skyscrapers-full of money, tempting ever more students to
pile into law schools. But most law graduates never get a big-firm job. Many of
them instead become the kind of nuisance-lawsuit filer that makes the tort
system a costly nightmare.
There are many reasons for this. One is the
excessive costs of a legal education. There is just one path for a lawyer in
most American states: a four-year undergraduate degree in some unrelated
subjects, then a three-year law degree at one of 200 law schools authorized by
the American Bar Association and an expensive preparation for the bar exam.
This leaves today's average law-school graduate with $100,000 of debt on top of
undergraduate debts. Law-school debt means that they have to work extremely
hard.
Reforming the system would help both
lawyers and their customers. Sensible ideas have been around for a long time,
but the state-level bodies that govern the profession have been too
conservative to implement(实施)them.
One idea is to allow people to study law as an undergraduate degree. Another is
to let students sit for the bar after only two years of law school. If the bar
exam is truly a strict enough test for a would-be lawyer, those who can sit it
earlier should be allowed to do so. Students who do not need the extra training
could cut their debt mountain by a third. The other reason why costs are so
high is the restrictive guild-like(行会)
ownership structure of the business. Except in the District of Columbia,
non-lawyers may not own any share of a law firm. This keeps fees high and
innovation slow. There is pressure for change from within the profession, but
opponents of change among the regulators insist that keeping outsiders out of a
law firm isolates lawyers from the pressure to make money rather than serve
clients ethically.
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