Law is a popular subject – with students and universities. Students, badgered by their parents to do something useful with their lives, reckon the law is a safe bet. It’s a traditional profession, and, what’s more, a lot of lawyers earn a lot of cash. Financial issues also affect the thinking of university administrators. Law is a notoriously cheap subject to teach. Sure, you need a few high-brow and knowledgeable professors, but you don’t need laboratories of expensive test tubes and machinery, as do those irritating science degrees. So students keep applying for places at university law schools, and universities keep adding places. And up until the global financial crisis, professions in jurisdictions around the world had generally been able to absorb the bushy-tailed graduates. But as our recent survey of leading law firm partners illustrates, that position appears to be changing.