Sorry, but it's starting to look like we're dead meat. The Chronicle of Higher Education, in assessing the legal market, is not optimistic:

 That loud pop you're hearing is the bursting of the law bubble—firms, schools, and disillusioned lawyers paying for decades of greed and grandiosity. The bubble grew from a combination of U.S. News-driven ranking mania, law schools' insatiable hunger for growth, and huge law firms' obsession with profit above all else. Like the dot-com, real-estate, and financial bubbles that preceded it, the law bubble is bursting painfully.

The gist of the article is too many people went to law school, too few jobs are out there. This post is brought to our attention by The Project Counsel Group in an email via The Posse List, a list-serve that every contract attorney who hopes to actually work subscribes to. The email put the law-bubble burst into context with the contract attorney market and did not paint a pretty picture

For those of our readers who are in the contract attorney market it is the technology that is biting the most:  the adoption of technology assisted review (TAR) software has started to crimp their job prospects.  The two best examples: 1. a document review going on now in D.C.  In the past the corporate client/law firm would have put 75-100 attorneys on the project given the size of the document database.  This time? They are using a TAR software and only have 20 attorneys, and the review is expected to be complete in 2 weeks. 2. a document review running in Paris, France which normally would have needed 25 attorneys but has need of only 5. Same thing: a TAR software in use.

Anyway, the message is we're dead meat. Run for the exits, people. Time to find another way to make a living.