I have seen statistics forecasting about 28,000 new law graduate jobs opening each year for the next ten years.  But law schools currently appear to be on pace to graduate about 44,000 lawyers per year in that same time period.  This would create a significant over supply of lawyers.  Even worse, it appears that there are already too many.  Almost half of recent law school graduates do not have a law related job within nine months after graduation. 

While many middle income Americans still do not have reasonable access to legal services, that situation will not likely be helped by simply turning out more and more lawyers. 

Needless to say, one of many unfortunate effects of having too many attorneys is the possibility of more and more litigation. 

This is one of many societal trends that make it more important than ever to protect your assets before you unexpectedly end up in the middle of some catastrophic lawsuit.