If I wanted to be a lawyer from the outset, I'd say the 8 years I spent in post-secondary school was about 5 years too long. That's not how they do it in England, for example, where law is a 3-year undergraduate major. I'm pretty critical of the fact that legal education has been taken over by academics--there is large and growing disconnect between the three years of mandatory schooling and anything you need to actually know as a lawyer. Shortening law school to one year plus a few years of apprenticeship would be vastly preferable.

My undergraduate degree is in aerospace engineering, and you do really need a 4-year degree to do that. You can't learn aeroelasticity on the job. But the traditional engineering disciplines (aero, chemical, mechanical, etc.), along with medicine and pure sciences are the exception. The vast majority of people don't need 4 years of post-secondary education, including many "professionals" (bankers, lawyers, etc.).