Investment bankers are worse.

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Last Halloween, I wore a suit, a dapper hat and a noose around my neck.

While they do nothing productive for society, being an Investment Banker sure makes for a hell of a costume.

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But don't people keep telling me that we're not a goods-based economy anymore, we're service-based? Keeping that in mind, doesn't this make Scalia look like kinda a dumbass?

I'm not saying you should go to law school. But as someone who seriously considered being a lawyer, I find the statement above not very helpful.

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Whether we exist in a goods, service, or knowledge-based economy, innovation and encouragement should flourish in more fields than just one, no matter what it is.

The point is not that lawyers aren't important, it's that there's so many other fields that could use the knowledgeable, dedicated people that are often pushed into law. There is little point to having so many talented lawyers around when there aren't others who are pushing the status quo that require the services they provide.

Scalia even says himself that the function of being a lawyer is an important one (being a lawyer and Supreme Court Justice himself, I'd be concerned if he didn't think so).

If you want to go into law, all the power to you, but if you found the statement by Scalia to not be very helpful in your own endeavors, it's probably because it wasn't intended to be.

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Scalia, as a lawyer, is definitely a jackass for opening his mouth and saying that too. AS I would have expected, he grossly ignores the ability of lawyers to level the playing field under the law for those who have been wronged by a person or group or company more powerful and affluent than they. He reeks of privilege.

Anyway, I don't think you should go to law school regardless. It's not something you want to do unless you both know you'd be good at it and you would actually like it.

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Scalia doesn't have to try very hard to look like a jackass in a great deal of what he says, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a point in this case.

He's not saying that lawyers aren't important, they are, and I agree with you that they level the playing field for many people that require it. The point is so many intelligent, able people are often pushed into professions like law (or investment, as an aside) that do very little for anybody else but the immediate clients that hire them. Many of these people are ones that defend the less fortunate, but there's no small percentage of people that go into law for profit-motive as well as the intellectual challenge.

What prompted this quote by Scalia was the former lack of good legal counsel that now is being met with flying colors. He was lamenting the fact that so many intelligent people are joining the profession when there's so much that could be done elsewhere.

The worst-case scenario in this case is having more people out there to defending innovation than those actually innovating.

As far as law school goes: I think I would enjoy the field, and I find it interesting, but I want to make new things and change the world in that way. The reason I mentioned it is because I've been told that's the field I should go into all my life, and I still get some pressure from my family to do so. Heavens forbid that I squander my efforts in the Computer Science and Psychology.

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