GQ, The Economy Is Frightening. Law School Won’t Save You.:
When it was reported last month that law school applications are up 20%, some of us who graduated around the 2008 recession thought of that one friend, the liberal artist-activist who, after six months of financial uncertainty, became conveniently passionate about the law. He got busy. He got a haircut. He got a Big Law job he never spoke about except when brandishing his pro bono bona fides.
Law student applications are a bearish indicator—the bearish indicator if you’re young and insufferably promising. Morgan Stanley is revising up the chance of a recession. Gen Z’ers are revising up the chances Aiden takes the LSAT.
He should check in with my one friend before he does. Big Law attorneys’ wages, which stagnated decades ago, show no sign of recovery with AI encroaching on billable hours. And the prestige associated with both Big Law School and Big Law is under direct threat from the White House. The Trump administration issued a number of executive orders targeting lawyers, including those that have investigated him: taking away the security clearance they need to do business, inquiring about their DEI practices, promising sanctions against those that sue the government. Already, the law firms Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, and Perkins Coie have cut deals with the White House, promising to spend firm hours that would have once been devoted to pro bono work grooming the administration’s pet causes. …
Eight months ago, I launched Upper Middle, a publication documenting the growing discomfort among “comfortable” millennials. Consultants at McKinsey—another tempting career for wayward achievers—had just dropped numbers reporting that middle managers were the target of roughly a third of job cuts in 2023 despite constituting 17% of the workforce. That spike arrived amid broader white-collar wage stagnation and a surge in living costs in metroplexes. Then there was the cultural assault: Trump railing against the deep state as post-woke Silicon Valley broligarchs depicted the “professional managerial class” as a conspiracy of feckless, self-righteous elites. The economy was booming, but cocktail parties were ending early. …
Over the last few weeks, during the Trump administration’s assault on Big Law, I’ve had the displeasure of watching and listening to lawyers go through a … process of discovery. They’re coming to terms with the fact that prestige and purpose can be pried away by power. Several attorneys I’ve spoken with have asked a variation of the question I’ve heard so often from medical professionals: “Was I lying to myself?” Very few have the courage to spell the whole thing out. “Was I lying to myself thinking I was special?” …
They are being paid to do jobs they have less and less freedom to define. In the absence of that freedom, the money doesn’t seem so great. But it’s not nothing. …
If the fig leaf of prestige falls, the upper middle class will be exposed for what it is. A bit hypocritical? Sure. A bit precious? Absolutely. But also knowledge-bulked and economically well-endowed. When I talk to doctors or lawyers about their work, their lives, and the misalignment of their expectations and their circumstances, I hear anger in their voices.
The upper middle class is spoiling for a fight. If the powers that be don’t want to share authority—if they’d rather oil up and wrestle—well…let’s fucking go.
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