<p>It has, and will continue to, boil down to three simple underlying problems:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>There are more lawyers in the US than there is demand for lawyers, with more being pumped out every year</p></li>
<li><p>New lawyers coming into the market frequently carry absurd quantities of debt that, as a result of the first point, often become difficult if not impossible to reasonably pay off given the average pay obtainable in an over-saturated legal market </p></li>
<li><p>Despite both the above being widely publicized for some time, and even the ABA recently coming right out and saying that many need to seriously question if law school makes sense, everyone think’s they’re the exception, the masses continue to plow forward anyway, and the market becomes yet even more saturated</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, all the above is really rooted in fundamental problems with the US legal industry. The 2008 recession certainly didn’t help the situation, but it didn’t cause it.</p>