Nathan Koppel at the  Wall Street Journal Law Blog posts about law school applications being down 12%. 

Say it ‘aint so: Is law school starting to lose some of its luster? Are college graduates increasingly doubting the long-held notion that a law degree is a certain path to financial stability?

Evidently so, according to some early indications.

The University of Missouri School of Law’s admissions coordinator told the school’s newspaper, the Maneater (woah-ohh here she comes!), that applications are down over last year, when the school enjoyed its highest application total since 2004.

Koppel asks whether law school has lost its mojo?  If only.  What it’s losing are those potential lawyers who are smart enough to realize that law ain’t what it used to be.

 Koppel’s take?

Color us slightly confused. Firms are showings signs of life and some have indicated they will hire more associates than in years past. Shouldn’t that fuel more law school applications?

Perhaps the steady drumbeat of media accounts questioning the value of a law degree is starting to filter down to the college ranks. And perhaps graduates are finally snapping to the idea, increasingly held, that there is a paradigm shift in which firms will be less leveraged and hire smaller associate classes for years to come.

As always, though, the problem is the what-else question. Sure, law may be a rockier path these days, but what else is out there for smart, ambitious, probing, argumentative college grads?

I’m here to help, Nathan. Granted, every person who doesn’t apply to law school may have his or her own reason, and since I’m neither privy to each one, nor capable of identifying those students who decided not to apply (if I was inclined to ask each one personally why he or she made the decision), I’m left with no option to but to engage in wild speculation.   So I will.

While certain “outlets” have focused almost exclusively on how many baby lawyers are paid top dollar for bottom skills, the word on the street has gone beyond just the mounting debt, lack of jobs, lower salaries and lousy lifestyle.  None of these things would dissuade anyone from seeking to join a profession, since profession isn’t defined by the guarantee of big bucks. 

The law has become a business.  Lawyers market themselves like laundry detergent, demean themselves for the marginal dollar and are represented in the public eye as fast-talking used car salesmen on television commercials.  Used car  salesmen are offended at being compared to lawyers. 

Having shed the mantle of a learned profession, and reduced ourselves to hucksters, a student pondering his or her future is left to compare and contrast the relative worth of becoming a lawyer to, well, any other job out there.  Consider that the equation works out this way: You won’t earn much as a lawyer, but you will pay huge opportunity costs, both in law school tuition and three years of your life, and potential earnings, lost.  At the end of the road, law degree in hand, used car salesmen will look down on you.

Not a rosy picture.  Worse still, the people who come to realize this are the smarter kids, the ones who bother to figure out the efficacy of law as a career.  While some might speculate that there are still those students who truly want to be lawyers applying to school despite the plethora of reasons to do something else, my guess is that there aren’t too many. 

Few college students have a really firm grasp on what being a lawyer is all about.  They may think it’s like television.  Their mothers may tell junior that she would kvell if only he was a lawyer.  Their friends may suggest that Muffy is suited to the law because she argues about everything.  These are students who think they really want to be lawyers, when they don’t.  Some will figure it out sometime during their third year.  Others will be the lawyers with websites touting their vast experience, deep empathy and high qualifications, twelve minutes after they pass the bar.

My take is that the bloom is off the rose because we, lawyers, have allowed desperation to seize whatever sense of professionalism remained and turned a once honorable profession into just another money-grubbing vocation.

But if it’s bad now, the drop in applications suggests it’s going to get worse.  While there may be 12% fewer students interested in a shot at becoming a star of their own TV commercial, law schools are going to continue pumping out as many lawyers as chairs in their lecture halls.  Hey, lawprofs have to pay the Ferrari lease too, you know. 

Some may wonder whether reduction in applicants is at the top end, bottom end or across the boards.  The best answer to this question can be found by asking who is most likely to figure things out first?  That’s right, the top end.  If law is just another business, but with vastly more expensive barriers to entry, then smart money goes elsewhere. 

So we have the same number of seats, and crank out the same number of inchoate lawyers, but we draw them from the universe of those too lazy or stupid to figure out that profession isn’t what it used to be.  Great.

So now the ball goes back to the rest of us, those puffing the living daylights out of themselves in every possible venue.  Are you proud of yourself, or is getting the next quick buck all that matters?  If it’s not worth cleaning up our act for our own honor and integrity, consider the 12% of students who have decided that they would rather be something other than a lawyer.  Do it for them. Do it for the children.