Inevitably.

I’m personally more concerned about a societal shift.

Lawyers became an “elite” because they were experts in the very fabric of society under Rule of Law. It’s a very specific training in how to interpret and navigate the rules of our own society.

That law has become a business is fine by me. We live in a capitalist society, and no matter how it’s structured, someone will figure out a way to get more or different returns than others.

The problem is that as a profession and industry, we have mostly abandoned access to justice and have instead focused on returns. Bar fees are high; insurance fees are high; software and subscription fees are high. Every vendor sees lawyers as BigLaw partners making obscene amounts of money by billing 60 hours a day and working 2, having drinks and playing golf the rest of the day when we’re not banging hookers while high on cocaine before going home to the trophy wife in a Maserati.

We’re also running a business and want to make a living. We all at least aspire to a decent living, and a lot of us are ambitious, so we want to make enough money to treat ourselves. Because let’s face it, being neck deep in someone else’s shit 80 hours a week has got to be worth something.

So we end up with this massive overhead because on top of everything, there’s a client to service and he wants to be kept happy. And when something like a fence dispute costs at least $50,000, or defending a charge costs more than a car, the clients demand change.

They’ve demanded change for years and nobody in the industry did anything. So now clients are demanding change from regulators, and as more and more populist candidates get elected, they will become the regulators.

So yeah, I think things will change. :)