The UK has a huge glut of lawyers. I hear similar things from the US.<p>A lot of people go into it believing they&#x27;ll make huge piles of money, but a lot of the money goes to the public school types who know someone&#x2F;are related to someone in barrister&#x27;s chambers.<p>The rest goes to corporate street fighters - the kind of people who get involved in patent troll cases, and send out cease and desist letters to the owners of domains one or two letters away from a famous brand.<p>High street laywers don&#x27;t earn much, comparatively. They&#x27;re also not particularly competent (IME).<p>There&#x27;s a basic problem here - when someone finds a piece of popular software is crap, they&#x27;re not surprised.<p>When someone discovers a doctor or a lawyer is incompetent, they <i>are</i> surprised.<p>In fact I suspect these professions are a lot less competent than we&#x27;d all like to believe. The real difference in ability may be smaller than we think.<p>But software is used by millions, so when there&#x27;s a bug it can make the headlines, and it&#x27;s always bad news for the public perception of the software industry.<p>Doctors, lawyers, and accountants all work personally, case by case, so it&#x27;s <i>easy to hide</i> pervasive incompetence.