By giving the schools a blank check (via giving students a blank check as long as it’s spent on schools), the US government is effectively producing the lawyers.

If there was no free money sloshing around, people would have to do a proper cash flow analysis and look at supply and demand before being able to invest their time in degrees that don’t have ROI.

Same thing happened with pharmacy school, and now there’s tons of pharmacists making very little money for exposing themselves to lots of liability in fast food working conditions.

The problem is that it's also not free money. The students who get their degree but can't use it have to pay the money back just the same as students who got the degree and get the high-paying entry level job.

So getting a degree is a gamble, because you either come out ahead or you get hobbled by it for the rest of your life. Whereas if you did indeed get free money to get a degree it would eliminate the hobble and produce a class of well-educated people who could afford to work for PD wages.

>So getting a degree is a gamble, because you either come out ahead or you get hobbled by it for the rest of your life.

It's a gamble that the government offers to you even when it knows you can't meaningfully pay the loan back.

It’s free money for the schools.

> US isn't "producing" those lawyers. People choose to become lawyers

Isn't there any regulatory body which controls the number of law degrees awarded annually, like there is for doctors?

Law Degrees in the US are not limited by some quota beside the size of the classes and the number of schools accredited. The real barrier is the Bar Exam, the ultimate decider if you are allowed to practice law, every state has there own admission process, there is some reciprocity and I think the Federal level has it's own separate Bar standards.

Not in the same way. IANAL and IANAD but I think:

IN LAW {bar exams + prestigious law firms} ~ IN MEDICINE {board exams + specialty board residency placements}

But, there is no need to work for a law firm prestigious or otherwise to practice law, you just pass the Bar.

Not really. I suspect this is because unlike medicine, lawyers as a collective organization don't benefit as much from an artificial scarcity. MD isn't really a common path to anything other than a career as a doctor, but JD has other practical career paths.

It also differentiates the bar vs. board exams. You can't practice medicine without certification, but there are plenty of lawyers doing law without a bar association, it only constrains you from doing certain types of work.