The NYC Bar Association Task Force on New Lawyers in a Changing Profession, which includes eight law school deans, declares that the "perceived oversupply of lawyers is largely illusory."

The New York City Bar Association Task Force on New Lawyers in a Changing Profession recently issued a 135-page report on legal careers in the 21st century, entitled "Developing Legal Careers and Delivering Justice in the 21st Century (hereinafter: "Report").

http://www2.nycbar.org/pdf/developing-legal-careers-and-delivering-justice-in-the-21st-century.pdf

The Task Force boasts that its membership is "broadly representative of the profession in New York and nationally." ("Report, p. i) Indeed, the 35-member Task Force includes 19 persons who are Big Law partners or are General Counsels or Chief Legal Officers of major corporations. It also includes eight law school deans, and two other persons who are employed by law schools. That is so representative that maybe the rest of us should all just fall silent, and let the Task Force speak for us.

The Task Force boasts that its members "approached the work from different backgrounds and with different perspectives." (Report, p. i) Indeed, the Task Force includes among its members the Dean of New York Law School, as well as another person whose job title is "Advisor to the Dean, New York Law School." So we get the radically "different perspectives" of both the Dean of a school with a 37% nine-month-out bar-passage-required employment rate, and the Advisor whom he employs.

The Report dismisses the "wide-spread handwringing" and "common lament" (Report, p. 1, 108) about a saturated legal market, finding that the "perceived oversupply of lawyers is largely illusory." (Report, p. 1) According to the Report, the problem lies elsewhere, in the mysterious failure to match the supply of lawyers with unmet legal needs.

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According to the Task Force, the recent laments about an alleged "oversupply" of lawyers are ironic. Not just false, but "ironic," in that there are too few lawyers to handle the huge demand for legal services.

• "Perhaps most importantly, there is a huge unmet demand for legal services across America among middle-class households of moderate means: an irony given the common lament about the "oversupply" of lawyers." (Report, p. 1)

Did you know that more than half of American households are afflicted with at least one unmet legal need? Given the extent of the crisis, maybe we should empower law schools to conscript recent college grads into their 1L classes. 

• "The most comprehensive study of the legal needs of persons of moderate means is the 1994 ABA Consortium on Legal Services and the Public, Legal Needs and Civil Justice: A Survey of Americans: Major Findings from the Comprehensive Legal Needs Study. . . found that 52% of moderate-income households faced at least one legal need. Our research confirms that the need for legal services for persons of moderate means, if anything, has increased since the 1994 survey. (Report, p. 89)

There is no oversupply of lawyers, simply a weird failure to match lawyers who need clients with clients who need lawyers. Think of it this way: underemployed recent law grads are huddled at one end of the dance hall, and "large portions of the U.S. population" are huddled at the other. What pitiful "lack of confidence" prevents them from sauntering over to each other, and tripping the law fantastic?

• "There is a need to reconcile the perceived oversupply of new lawyers with the persistent unmet legal needs of large portions of the U.S. population. We believe that many new lawyers could develop sustainable legal practices serving Americans of moderate means who have legal needs and who can afford to pay something, but who do not now obtain legal advice because of competing priorities for limited resources, a lack of confidence in the value of being represented by counsel, and the difficulty of finding the right lawyer at an affordable price." (Report, p. 11)

Or think of it this way: recent law graduates are starving to death at the Super-Glutton All You Can Eat Buffet because they are too dim to realize that there is food underneath those plate lids.

• "Why have large numbers of underemployed law graduates not been driven to address this unmet need in their attempts to build sustainable careers?" (Report, p. 97)

Maybe the problem is that today’s youth are technologically unsophisticated. The cost-savings made possible by newer technologies allow lawyers to profitably represent the middle class, but recent grads just don’t see it. What do you have to do these days to persuade a kid to turn on a damned electronic device?

• "We believe that newer business models, technologies, and innovative practices can provide better opportunities to meet these needs while providing satisfying and remunerative long-term career opportunities for new lawyers." (Report, p. 12) 
  
  

Or maybe the problem is that new lawyers are too citified, refusing to abandon Park Avenue, or the elegant leafy burbs, for rural Green Acres, where the simple country folk often pray for a recent law school grad to move to town and sell them legal services.

• "There are, for example, many areas of New York State outside New York City and its suburbs that have few attorneys in residence, yet populations with legal needs." (Report, p. 13)
  
  
• "Rural areas, for example, are rife with underserved legal needs." (Report, p. 97)

Or maybe the problem is that new lawyers, with their media-driven fantasies of Big Law wealth, are just too egotistical to devote themselves, Atticus Finch-like, to the needs of the common people.

• "We also believe that there are additional, existing opportunities for new lawyers who have flexible career goals and realistic economic expectations. In recent decades, many law schools, law students, prospective law students and the press have been unduly focused on "BigLaw" jobs and their high starting salaries." (Report, p. 5)

Law deans and law professors can help remedy the crisis by persuading their students not to be such greedy bastards. Or, to put it gently, they could shift their students’ paradigm.

• "But what would the profession look like, and what could be achieved for law graduates, law schools, and—most importantly—people with unmet legal needs, if the paradigm were to shift: if schools and students were encouraged to recognize the value and professional rewards of pursuing a private viable legal practice aimed at delivering affordable services to people of moderate means and to adjust their career support services and career expectations accordingly?" (Report. p. 98)
  
  

You know what would be "game-changing"? Easy credit for insufficiently indebted law grads. (What would be really cool is if we could make those loans non-dischargeable).

• "In particular, access to outside capital could be a game-changing development in providing legal advice to the moderate- and low income individuals who currently have unmet legal needs." (Report, p. 86)

Let us not put all blame on young lawyers though, when some of the fault lies with the public. As with many gamblers or drinkers, American middle class households are in denial. They need to be informed that they have a problem, a problem of unmet legal needs, and require professional assistance.

• "[M]iddle-class households gave several reasons for not seeking legal assistance. The principal reasons were that the households did not identify their problem as a legal issue, thought a lawyer was unnecessary to resolve it, or did not believe a lawyer would be useful." (Report, p. 90)
  
  

You had me persuaded, Task Force, and I was prepared to do my part by offering to convert my scamblog column into a law school recruiting tool. Then you mentioned, three-quarters of the way through the Report, that lawyers are often not needed to address unmet legal needs.  

• "We also recognize that in certain circumstances, non-lawyers can provide an important service to individuals who need help and assistance resolving law-related issues. . . . [S]ome of the tasks involved in assisting low-income individuals are relatively simple and, in appropriate circumstances, could be performed effectively by non-lawyers with some degree of training, or even by untrained but intelligent laypersons." (Report, p. 99)
  
  

• "[N]on-lawyers already provide legal services in limited circumstances in New York, including in landlord-tenant disputes, foreclosure actions, consumer credit cases, family court, tribal courts, and administrative proceedings regarding social security benefits, immigration, unemployment insurance, and workers compensation, with better outcomes for the clients. . . . The Task Force applauds these initiatives, specifically encouraging additional study to find roles for non-lawyer practitioners in areas where the market will not bear the costs of a full lawyer." (Report, p. 99)

No, you don't always require a lawyer to address your relatively uncomplicated legal need. Just like you don't always require a doctor to address your minor medical need. Sometimes you can address your medical need simply by consulting a non-doctor with "some degree of training," or an "untrained but intelligent" layperson, or by availing yourself of online resources, or by taking an extra-strength Tylenol. This last option is how I chose to address the pounding headache I experienced after reading the deceitful and highfalutin' 135-page whitewash produced by the New York City Task Force on New Lawyers in a Changing Profession.