"The problem affecting law school graduates is not advancing their employment clause," says William Henderson, who says you need to define what is special about you. "Lawyers have a role to advance the interest of society," he says. "What lawyers should be thinking about is how, in a civil society, do we write a social contract where people are not cast out of social work." Asia's automation is a hugely disruptive force, and social contracts that have implications for democracy result in economic dislocation. Lawyers need to get ahead of these trends so that they can learn how to deal with multi-jurisdictional issues, to come up with ways to reduce the cost of commerce, and ways they can do the handiwork of clients.
U.S. lawyers underestimate the threats of foreign competition to the provision of domestic legal services. The realm of "all other legal services providers," which grew from less than $1 billion in total revenues in 1997 to nearly $3 billion in 2008, will continue to attract sophisticated business capitalists eager to obtain a greater portion of U.S. corporations' legal budgets.
Source: http://www.economicmodeling.com/2011/06/22/new-lawyers-glutting-the-market-in-all-but-3-states/