Steven Harper used to be a happy, satisfied lawyer. As he tells it, he led a "charmed life" in the law, graduating from Harvard as a classmate of John Roberts before spending 30 years as a top-shelf litigator at Kirkland & Ellis. Then he retired early, at age 54, to write, teach, and take an arm’s-length view of his profession. He doesn’t like what he’s seeing. In weekly blog posts on americanlawyer.com and now in a new book, The Lawyer Bubble, Harper sees a profession in crisis. "From law schools to the pinnacle of the profession at America’s most prestigious law firms, unrestrained self-interestlet’s call it greedhas taken key legal institutions to an unfortunate place," he writes. "As leaders of the bar, especially law school deans and many managing partners of the nation’s biggest law firms, focus on the near future, disastrous long-term consequences are becoming apparent."
This is an important and timely book. It’s two books, really. The first is a powerful recitation of how we got into this "unfortunate place," which may be more of a revelation to civilians than to lawyers who have paid attention to their alma mater’s struggles or their firm’s business plans. The second may not be so easy for lawyers to shrug off. It’s a call to remedy the problems he so vividly describes. His answers aren’t neat or in many cases likely. But he’s identified the root problemand he’s looking at you! "Human decisions created this mess," he writes. "Better human decisions can clean it up."
