George McGovern, age 90, died, without being president of the United States. Had he not been crushed by Richard Nixon, who did become president, the legal sector might not have been plagued with a glut of lawyers.
The current difficulty getting oneself launched in a legal career is not new. Even decades ago, JDs had to be clever, patient, and persistent in getting that first job. Usually it was an awful one and they had to then focus on getting something just a little bit better. Good luck. In a Dale Carnegie course I took at the end of the 1980s, young lawyers were trying to figure out how to resolve disputes with partners over what they saw as imperatives for an impossible number of billable hours.
With McGovern as president we progressives wouldn't have been filled with such outrage about the need to reform. And the way to do that was, Ralph Nader had just told us, through the courts. Idealistic youth headed off to law school. I finally got there in the mid 1980s.
President McGovern would mean no Watergate as a national trauma. Conservatives might have been tried and convicted for that crime but a president wouldn't have been in the loop. The errors embedded in the system as it was wouldn't have driven even more youth to shun MBA programs and go to work for the Ford in Detroit and strive to be admitted to law school.
If progressives are elected in November, the glut of lawyers might be lessened. The norms won't appear to require so much reform. The idealistic must travel to Rowanda to help with the economy and healthcare. It will need that if the judge in the sentencing of former McKinsey head Rajat Gupta this week doesn't go for the lawyer's recommendation that the miscreant receive probation and be sent to Rowanda to pitch in on progress.
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