Is A Lawyer Surplus Dooming American Society?

The glut of law school graduates the U.S. has produced over the last three decades – along with wage stagnation and income inequality, are indicators of societal destabilization, according to Peter Turchin, anthropology professor at the University of Connecticut and author of War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires. Turchin estimates that U.S. law schools graduate 25,000 more lawyers every year than we have legal jobs to fill, creating “intra-elite competition that gradually undermines the spirit of cooperation, which is followed by ideological polarization and fragmentation of the political class.” Similar stats preceded civil wars in Ancient Rome, and the U.S. Civil War as well.  A silver lining isthe fact that law school applications are down significantly, and “a series of judicious reforms, initiated by elites who understand that we are all in this boat together,” could bring us back from the brink, Turchin says.