"a big orgy of lawyer-driven rent seeking at taxpayer expense"

Randy Balko has a great post about the profession into which I am about to enter.

[W]e have a society that enables such a huge demand for lawyers in the first place. The enormous growth in the number of lawyers in this country is, by definition, a result of a huge increase in demand for people who can interpret, manipulate, and influence the law. That demand means there has been a corresponding increase in the influence and pervasiveness of the law (as opposed to, say, voluntary transactions). And law of course is the domain of government. We have more lawyers because we have more law.