The takeover of America's legal system
I have practiced law for more than ten years, attended some of the institutions mentioned, and have worked in and with firms that would be considered "elite." I don't recognize any of the phenomena described in this article. Frankly the writer is either very far from the reality of modern legal practice (chasing noise in the system, without any real data) or she's viewing things selectively to serve some ideological purpose.Most legal bills are paid by large corporations. The U.S. is the leader in this respect--on average U.S. companies spend about 0.4% of their revenue on legal services, almost triple the rate in a civil law country like Germany. Effectively most lawyers (including me) work directly or indirectly for businesses. This means that the legal education system, and to a lesser extent, the court system, are shaped by and largely serve the needs of businesses.And what are all of these businesses doing with their legal spending? Largely litigation defense, transactions (M&A, issuing securities, or buying/selling assets like real estate), and interacting with government and regulators.Lawyers that don't work for large business organizations spend their time representing individuals or classes of plaintiffs in tort litigation or in matters like criminal defense, immigration assistance, family law, or estate planning. Things that may not involve the huge dollar amounts of business transactions but that matter a lot to the people affected.For every law school class on critical race theory or other topics the writer criticizes, a law student will take dozens on administrative procedure, taxation, federal courts, etc. etc. etc.There are many valid criticisms of the American legal system. For example, you might feel that it's too easy to file a frivolous lawsuit that will settle for nuisance value. Or you might observe that corporations have been able to cripple or stall regulation that the public demands. Or that mass incarceration is bad social policy. This kind of introspection, including CRT, has long been a part of the academy and the profession, and I think a useful one.The situation depicted in this article, that everyone's suddenly gone out of control "woke," is just ridiculous and doesn't at all fit my own experience.