"But it is the difficulty to enter, the amount of abstract thinking and study required plus the prestige that gets you higher salaries in the end."
The problem is that the "difficult to enter" is artificial and exists primarily as a way of ensuring high salaries of current lawyers through the law school requirement; Clifford Winston explains as much in First Thing We Do, Let's Deregulate All the Lawyers, (http://www.amazon.com/First-Thing-Lets-Deregulate-Lawyers/dp...) which is worth reading for anyone interested in the issue.
It used to be that one could "read" for the bar and hang out a shingle announcing that you're a lawyer. This didn't seem to hurt anyone except existing lawyers. People are reasonably good at figuring out who might be okay at a job and who won't be; the nominal "protection" they get in the form of law-school credentialing is not that far from the "protecting" they might get from Tony Soprano.
The problem is that the "difficult to enter" is artificial and exists primarily as a way of ensuring high salaries of current lawyers through the law school requirement; Clifford Winston explains as much in First Thing We Do, Let's Deregulate All the Lawyers, (http://www.amazon.com/First-Thing-Lets-Deregulate-Lawyers/dp...) which is worth reading for anyone interested in the issue.
It used to be that one could "read" for the bar and hang out a shingle announcing that you're a lawyer. This didn't seem to hurt anyone except existing lawyers. People are reasonably good at figuring out who might be okay at a job and who won't be; the nominal "protection" they get in the form of law-school credentialing is not that far from the "protecting" they might get from Tony Soprano.
P.S. Solid first comment; welcome to HN.