THE POWER OF GLAMOUR TAKES LONDON: I’m headed to London, where next week I’ll be giving three talks on my book The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion.  Details here, for those in the area.

GLASS HALF FULL PART 1 – Wow, Ben, thanks SO much for your cheerful posts.  Law schools have failed their students, the good times are over for much of Big Law, small firm and solo lawyers have been losing ground for 25 years, and with computerization gearing up things will get worse for lawyers before they get better.  Glass half what?

Well first of all, the easiest glass half full case is to look at each of the trends above from the perspective of the American consumer, who are obvious beneficiaries.  Whatever else is coming in the future, it seems likely that legal services will be more widely available to more people and businesses at lower prices.  This trend starts at the top with corporate law firms and bubbles up from the bottom with LegalZoom and other forms providers.  Lawyers and legal fees are what economists call “transaction costs.”  When transaction costs fall, more transactions occur and goods and services are more likely to end up with their highest value users.

The benefits will be especially marked for the poor and middle class.  Most middle and low income Americans cannot afford to hire a lawyer.  This means that many Americans cannot afford to have a will or get divorced or change child custody arrangements or defend themselves in eviction/foreclosure proceedings.  Bar associations and advocates for the poor have argued for years that increased legal aid funding, required pro bono service or a civil Gideon right are the answers to these problems, i.e. more bespoke legal services by more government supported or volunteer lawyers.  These solutions are deeply backward looking, analogue, 1960s-era solutions to a very serious issue.

Fortunately, except for the in-court portion of the problem (which could be fixable with some pretty basic court reforms), computerization is on the verge of bypassing the legal profession altogether.  First generation online services may not be as good as a live lawyer (although everyone knows a lawyer whose work is already worse than what LegalZoom provides), but over time they will continue to improve.  LegalZoom and Rocketlawyer are already superior to nothing, which is all most poor and middle income Americans can afford.

Even in-court work will grow cheaper as lawyers take advantage of forms and virtual offices.  They will need to use these tools to survive, because more lawyers competing for less work will continue to drive prices down.  Between technology, outsourcing, the flood of new law graduates, and the displaced lawyers now willing/forced to work for lower salaries, customers will suddenly (and for the first time in recent history) be paying much less for legal services.  If you have enjoyed the digital revolution in music and photography, you will likewise enjoy the legal market in ten to twenty years.  Legal services will be cheaper, more accessible, AND better.  That’s bad for lawyers in the same way digital photography was bad for Kodak.  It is outstanding news for the country as a whole.

THE HARD LEFT: STANDING ATHWART HILLARY, SHOUTING ‘STAND ASIDE FOR BERNIE!’ “For once, I agree with the Hard Left,” Michael Walsh writes.

TODAY’S COLLEGE STUDENTS HAVE AN “EXPECTATION OF CONFIRMATION”: Have college students gone from believing they have a “right not to be offended” to demanding they have a right to have their views confirmed? I explore this idea in my new essay in the newly published The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism, a collection of essays by a variety of cultural and educational experts edited by Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow. The essays are framed by Bauerlein and Bellow’s theories on the root causes of the decline of the American intellect and “the shift away from the self-reliant, well-informed American.” Some of my fellow authors include E. D. Hirsch, Nicholas Eberstadt, Dennis Prager, Daniel Dreisbach, Ilya Somin, Maggie Jackson, and Richard Arum. Read more about it over at Ricochet.

ROBERT TRACINSKI: Let’s Not Get Trolled On The Confederate Flag:

I’m a little exasperated by some people who seem to be conservatives who have been lecturing me that the Confederate flag is an anodyne symbol of Southern heritage and military valor. One group, the historical pedants, inform me that the battle flag is not the Confederate flag, just one of many. Well, sure. But it’s the only Confederate flag people remember, so the distinction seems moot. Or there are those who insist that the war wasn’t really about slavery but about the North’s desire to assert overbearing centralized power. Yet this was in the middle of the era of laissez-faire, when the federal government was a fraction of the size it is today. The only assertion of centralized power that loomed as a threat worth killing and being killed over was the use of federal power to end the institution of slavery.

I don’t agree with The Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates on much—he usually seems too interested in keeping racial conflict alive for political purposes—but he provides a good list of statements from Confederate leaders and supporters describing how the institution of slavery was the central cause of the war. This sort of information has long been available, and it debunks the revisionist history that has found purchase among some in the South and in a few other ideological corners. (I usually encounter it among the more doctrinaire libertarians, who can’t bring themselves to admit that the federal government ever did anything good.)

“A REALLY PROTEAN TIME IN AMERICA”: Q&A with David McCullough, whose new book is The Wright Brothers, on the aviation pioneers and their era.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

MORE ON THE PROS AND CONS OF RAND PAUL’S FLAT TAX PLAN:

A moderate con by Ramesh Ponnuru:

The plan may look as though it cuts middle-class taxes because he would not apply his flat tax to families of four making less than $50,000 and he abolishes the payroll tax. But the plan taxes everyone by imposing a European-style Value-Added Tax, although he does not say it explicitly.

An enthusiastic pro by Arthur Laffer:

Rand Paul’s tax plan is “absolutely spectacular.” . . . “The compromises can come later.” . . . “I hope he appreciates just how good his proposal is.:

Bill O’Reilly almost likes it but thinks the rate should be 19%: “Overall Senator Paul’s flat-tax proposal is friendly to the American worker.”

I still don’t like a VAT without killing the privacy-destroying income tax (and IRS) with a silver bullet and stake through its heart.

THAT CYBERATTACK IS LOOKING WORSE and worse.

UPDATE: A Facebook friend comments on my FB post of this: “I got my OPM letter 3 days ago. I left federal employment in 1990, & am thinking how many more recent fed employees’ data may now be compromised.” [Emphasis added.]

ON TODAY’S COLLEGE CAMPUSES, THE WILL TO POWER DERIVES FROM VICTIMHOOD: “One must no longer say that America is a ‘melting pot,’ for to do so is to suggest that minorities should “assimilate to the dominant culture,” according to the new moralists at the University of California.”

AMERICAN UNITY VERSUS RACIAL SEPARATISM: “The Confederate battle flag is far from the only worrisome symbol in America today,” Victor Davis Hanson cautions.

WHITHER LAW SCHOOLS? – No one has been better on the Higher Ed Bubble, law school edition than Glenn.  And he has been right on the money.  Main street lawyers have seen their incomes flatten or shrink since the 1980s.  Over the same period roughly 1 in 3 law graduates has not been able to find work as a lawyer.  Surely law schools reacted by lowering tuition or shrinking class sizes?  Everyone knew that not every American law graduate could make a fortune on Wall Street, right?

Hahahahahaha.  No.  From the 1980s forward law schools relentlessly raised tuition, accepted more students, and opened more schools.  Between 1987 and 2010, the number of ABA accredited law schools increased from 175 to 200 and total JD enrollment rose from 117,997 to 147,525.  Law school tuition rose over 1000 percent for in-state residents at public institutions and 400 percent at private institutions since 1985.  Student debt loads skyrocketed as well.  The higher ed bubble indeed.

In 2008 hard times for corporate law firms finally brought public attention to the employment numbers for law graduates, and applications and attendance at law schools have fallen steeply since 2010.  The downward trend is so marked that in 2015-16 fewer students may apply to law school than enrolled in 2010-11.

There have been predictions of mass law school closures (including from my inestimable host), and we have seen our first merger of two ABA accredited law schools, Hamline and William Mitchell in Minneapolis.  Charleston Law School, a relatively new, for-profit law school, suggested that they might not enroll a new class in Fall, 2015, before announcing the “good news” that seven professors would be fired and the school would attempt to survive with smaller classes and a slimmed down faculty.

Nevertheless, mass closures are unlikely.  Instead, troubled law schools will risk dis-accreditation by admitting anyone they can and radically cutting costs rather than actually closing the doors.  This may mean closing the law library altogether or replacing the bulk of the tenured faculty with adjuncts.  It is inexpensive to run a skeleton law school that has few administrators and is taught by adjunct faculty.  The question then shifts to what the American Bar Association (the law school accrediting body) would do.  The ABA has never dis-accredited a fully accredited American law school, and the legal and public relations ramifications of such a move are unclear.  And even if the ABA did try to dis-accredit a school there would be years of appeals, warnings, and legal wrangling.  These are law schools we are talking about!

Things sound grim, no?  Most analysis of these trends has been negative, but it has also been written by the parties most likely to suffer, law professors and lawyers.  By contrast, my book is entitled Glass Half Full: The Decline and Rebirth of the Legal Profession, and argues that after some rough sledding, the public, the profession, and the professoriate will all benefit.  More on that later.

ENGLAND’S LORD RICHARDS: ‘WE NEED TO APPROACH MUSLIM EXTREMISM AS WE MIGHT APPROACH WORLD WAR TWO:’

Britain must stop “sleepwalking” and prepare to tackle Muslim extremism as seriously as it planned for the Second World War, Lord Richards has warned.

Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, said extremism is a “real threat” to the world, as he condemned dithering politicians too reluctant to lead the way.

Warning a “hell of a lot of damage” is going to be wreaked by ISIS in the coming years, he argued the armed forces risk being left “on the back foot” by leaders who fail to plan properly.

“I think the problem is that we have not seen that we need to approach this issue of Muslim extremism as we might approach World War Two back in the 30s,” he said.

“This is a real threat to us and we’re sleepwalking in the way we’re approaching it.”

Related:

“I’m Muslim, not terrorist” t-shirt advertiser & rapper Denis Cuspert is reported to have died fighting for ISIS pic.twitter.com/YsuNBpNwce

— Saif Rahman (@SaifRRahman) June 23, 2015

EVERY STATE FLAG IS WRONG, and here is why. For example:

Go home, Connecticut. You’re drunk. At least you say something that isn’t “Connecticut” but… ”He Who Transplanted, Sustains”? If that’s what you picked, what did you reject? “He Who Mulched, Will Probably Check For Aphids”?

MSNBC STAFF CHANTED ‘F- -K BRIAN WILLIAMS’ AT PARTY: For the earlier, funnier Saturday Night Live of the 1970s, loathing their center-left bosses in the NBC boardroom was counterculture comedy shtick.

But one of the more fascinating subtexts of many of MSNBC’s rants is how toothless the channel’s far left on-air talent is in “reforming” their parent channel. For example, Melissa Harris-Perry rails from time to time against the eeeeevils of professional sports, and yet apparently has no desire to even attempt to nudge her employers into cutting ties with the major sports leagues. The MSNBC hosts’ obsessions with global warming have little influence on their bosses signing a recent ten year contract with NASCAR.

Now the channel is about to have the former face of NBC as one of their own, which might be the worst punishment of all for Williams. As Mediaite founder and former MSNBC host Dan Abrams (who lost his MSNBC timeslot in 2008 to Rachel Maddow ) told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday, “If you had told Brian Williams a year ago he’d be throwing back to Rev. Al in the studio, he would have laughed in your face! This is a big demotion, it’s a big move by NBC.”

It will be fascinating to watch them pose as one big happy family when Williams joins the Delta House of television on the air.

POLITICS IN THE ERA OF SYMBOLIC LIBERALISM: “Today, being a liberal is almost entirely a symbolic project.”

THE MOST DAMAGING HACK OF ALL TIME: Charlie Martin on the “How and Why the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Got Hit With Maybe the Most Damaging Hack of All Time.”

SPIKE IT! When the Media Kill a Story for Political Reasons.

As Jim Treacher once tweeted, “Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.”

WHY DO (AMERICAN) WAITERS CLEAR YOUR TABLE SO FAST? The WaPo’s Roberto A. Ferdman calls it “the most annoying restaurant trend happening today.” Tyler Cowen (quoted in the article) and commenters speculate on the reasons.

The related question of why they’re so quick with the bill is a favorite topic on Quora. If you’re following my advice for enjoying Florence, on the other hand, you may be wondering whether you’ll ever see il conto.

OLDER SON WHOSE SECOND DEGREE IS CHEMISTRY: Would have LOVED this.  (He might still want to play it with our friends’ kids.)

NOT MUCH TO SAY IN DEFENSE OF CONFEDERATES: But to be fair they didn’t kill a hundred million people.

COURT RULES AGAINST IRS IN Z STREET CASE: Paving way to discovery. Nonprofit claims IRS official said org was singling out pro-Israel groups for scrutiny.

HOW DOES IT FEEL?! IT FEELS LIKE AN AARP AD THESE DAYS, perhaps because it was 50 years ago this month “that Bob Dylan walked into Studio A at Columbia Records in New York and recorded ‘Like a Rolling Stone.'”

PERHAPS WE SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT WHAT “ART” MEANS: Artist Posts 17th Century Word on Billboard, Asks That Nobody Else Use It.