Just Another Statistic

Today's quote: Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery;
For where a heart is hard they make no battery.

I was reading a novel during one of my "on" times. You know how it is, you squeeze in some other types of reading when you can, just to be able to say that you do read stuff outside of school. At least, I do. Anyway, the novel was fiction, but it quoted some statistics that made me wonder. It said that the US has about 4% of the world population (back around 1990), about 18% of the global wealth, but produces 50% of the lawyers in the world. That made my jaw drop. I always knew that the number of people graduating from law school every year was high, but I had no idea. I have no way of verifying that figure, but I can only guess that it's probably true, especially given the recent turn of the economy in the last few years. I remember picking up a Business Week two years ago, and it showed the percentage of applications to law school had increased by 36% from the previous year. The year before that, applications had risen by about 27%.

My father never wanted me to be a lawyer. I don't know if I really feel like joining an already glutted market and fighting over my own scraps to eke out a salary.