My understanding is that those with law degrees see a ton of competition in the market, because it’s such a prestigious professional calling on the order of doctors but with better work environments. Why wouldn’t it affect those at the partner level?
Pay still goes up but your responsibilities change. The communication between you and the shop is still damn important. Owners of bigger shops are always convinced they can backfill you with an army of apprentices and day laborers. Smaller shops are always scared you'll bankrupt them. Trust is character, and competence, according to the business gurus.
I spend most of my days on big issues. Stripped head bolts and stuck cylinders are still a daily thing, but I also take on breaking bad news to big customers. Telling someone their fleet of aging Mac dumptrucks all need a rebuild is a big task. Explaining it in plain English is impossible for a lot of new guys.
My question is do these partners ever take on new responsibilities? Or are they just cashing a paycheck
It’s a business relationship. Ain’t nobody gonna pay you $5 if you only bring in $3. Everyone will fight to pay you $10 if you bring in $20
However, if I'm working for a company and an object I created gets sold by the company for 5$,but the company is paying me 2$ and the salesman 1$,and declaring 2$ worth of profit, then the salesman and I have obviously produced 5$ worth of value together, but were paid 3$ for our work. Any profitable company by definition does exactly this (and nominally un-profitable ones may be doing the same).
As with all financial transactions of the form "I'll trade your risky profit in the future for a low-risk profit now," you lose some money, and that money goes to the entity absorbing the risk for you.
If you can create it and sell it for $5 yourself then you’d do that.
This also speaks to why competition is hard to create. No outside limited liability partners means no VCes or passive investors. The closest a law firm can do is loans. Loans partners will be 100% personally liable for.
There was some literature in the past showing the legal fields prices haven't been reduced to reflect the new reality of the marketplace supply as it has an insular and protective group who want to maintain an aura of "masters of some dark arts" and maintaining their "prestigious" class which is heavily self regulated. There's a lot of pressure on smaller-time lawyers not to undercut the rest of the firms.
If the prices got reduced there would be a lot more case supply to go around as lawyers would be far more accessible to the average person widening the market. It's not just going to stay the same size, just with lower rates. Instead today it's kept artificially high and while the best work is limited to a small group, while other law degree holders fade into other fields or niches.
A reduction in prices and eliminating the lawyer's false perception of exclusivity and class would also reduce the amount of people getting law degrees [1] which would offset the decline in price so it doesn't entirely cannibalize itself, still being a decent middle class job.
Plus there will always be some cushy law gigs available, especially in corporate law, but it will be a status no longer applied to everyone with a law degree, which limits the entire market as a result.
[1] assuming we don't even further disconnect both the financial costs of an expensive education + lengthy time investments they require (aka opportunity costs) from post-graduation job prospects. Especially when compared to other degrees, industries, and alternative job training/apprenticeship opportunities.
Such an interesting, and horrible, time, when justice is de facto denied to all but the wealthiest of us. If this was explicit that would be one thing; but we still pay lip service to principles that we have long since abandoned.
My belief is that the justice system, in particular jury trials, should become shorter, more frequent and exclusively online. You should be able to file a lawsuit and have it resolved in a week.
The whole profession needs to be reformed, by outsiders.
I don’t know why you’d assume that. Looks at the education costs over the 25 years to become a social worker—-which has never been a lucrative profession.
Even if we manage to crack the nut of the law cartel, the educational cartel is of a different order. I expect no progress there, or in medicine, in my lifetime.
[1]: https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib
[2]: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-c...
Can you rephrase so I can understand what you mean?
"There might be competition on some level" BUT "there's also the oversupply of lawyers" -- that means that all the lawyers are competing with each other because there are too many. How are "the lawyers are competing" and "there is an oversupply" competing stories? An oversupply would lead to increased competition.