I'm a lawyer with an MIS undergrad.

For several years now, people have been talking about mediocre tech jobs/certs/bootcamps a whole lot like MCSEs used to talk about their jobs in the late 90s. If you're at the top of the food chain of SEs (e.g., at a FAANG), you're going to do well even in a downturn. But a whole lot of people in the field are going to have unstable jobs or move to something else when the current mature boom busts.

That's kind of like how it is for the legal field too. Nothing changed in the legal market to make it a bad way to FIRE for certain lawyers. Even before the Great Recession there was a bimodal distribution of salaries: a good number of the best law students (and then lawyers) make FIREing money and a large number of people either don't get to practice or make very little. During the Great Recession there was a downturn in the number of associates hired by big firms for a few years, the ones who got or held onto those jobs were still making FIRE money.

The bigger change was probably that the general public didn't know about the bimodal distribution and just thought getting a law degree was a golden ticket. Nothings a golden ticket for long. You're always going to have to be at the top of a competitive heap to make significantly above average money.