First, the Law Schools. Now, the Legal Profession.

There is nothing new about the ongoing process of decline of American law schools in terms of numbers and quality of applicants. Now, it appears that the other shoe is dropping.

Today’s Los Angeles Times reports in an above-the-fold, front page story, that

“For the first time in nearly a decade, most law school graduates who took the summer California bar exam failed, adding to the pressure on law schools already dealing with plummeting enrollments, complaints about student debt and declining job prospects. [ ]  The 46.8% pass rate in California is a drop of nearly 7 percentage points from the previous year. . .  The last time the passage rate dipped below half was in 2005.”  Jason Song, Fewer Pass State Bar Exam, L.A. Times, Dec.8, 2014, at p. A1.

You can take it from there, but as far as we are concerned, all this does not bode well for the legal profession, at least in California. Maybe, and we surely hope so, if young people really want to “change the system” as they so often tell us, maybe they should go into politics, not law because law provides — or at least should provide — stability so that people know what they should and should not do, and be less dependent in the conduct of their affairs on judicial whims du jour.