A new book by a former lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis, one of the nation’s largest law firms, has delivered a thrill to the already

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问题     A new book by a former lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis, one of the nation’s largest law firms, has delivered a thrill to the already upset legal profession. In The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis, Steven J. Harper argues that legal jobs are disappearing not because of short-term economic fluctuations but because of powerful long-term trends. The word bubble is an overstatement, but Harper deserves credit for sounding the alarm.
    The decline in the market for lawyers is being driven by an array of forces. For some time now, corporate clients have been less willing to sign off on bulky legal bills. They have increasingly been unwilling to pay the top hourly rates of $1,000 that some partners charge. And as a result of globalization, an increasing share of American legal work is being shipped overseas. Lawyers in lower-wage markets are willing to do the work for a fraction of what American law firms would charge. Taking away even more of this work: newly sophisticated legal software that can do "document review" and other tasks for which lawyers were once needed.
    The legal market is without question soft these days. Last June, the Association for Legal Career Professionals released a grim report stating that only 65.4% of law-school graduates had found jobs for which it was necessary to pass a state bar exam. And the Internet is full of first-hand accounts of law-school graduates who say that their law degree has not helped them get a law job—and, worse still, those who report that their degree has actually hurt their job prospects, since some employers now tell them they are overqualified for nonlegal positions.
    Harper argues that the profession’s leaders are a big part of the problem. He contends that big-firm managers are too focused on maximizing profits for the biggest partners—at the expense of junior lawyers and the long-term interest of the firm. And he faults law-school deans for putting the interests and salaries of law professors ahead of the interests of their underemployed, debt-ridden students.
    Controversial as it is, Harper’s big-picture argument is undoubtedly correct, and it is a real cause for concern. Bar associations and legal academics have begun talking about how the profession should adapt—discussions that should have begun much earlier. The biggest problem with The Lawyer Bubble is not the warning it is sounding but its title; unlike other speculative bubbles in the past, lawyers will always be a necessity not a passing fashion. But then, The Very, Very Challenging Job Market for Lawyers doesn’t have the same ring to it.
We may learn from Paragraph 2 that ________.

选项 A、the decline of legal profession is driven by economic recession
B、globalization has posed a tremendous impact on lawyers in America
C、many lawyers are unemployed with the introduction of legal software
D、the worsening of legal profession is the outcome of a bunch of factors

答案D

解析 根据题干可直接定位到第二段。该段第一句就表明律师市场日益萎缩有诸多因素(an array of forces)。D项中的a bunch of是对该句中an array of的同义替换,而:factors则是对forces的同义替换,故答案为D项“法律行业的日益萎缩是多种因素造成的结果”。A项“法律行业的衰退是由经济衰退造成的”中的“经济衰退”完全是生造出来的,原文中并未提到;B项“全球化对美国律师造成了巨大的影响”属逻辑错误,实际情况是因为美国的律师费用过高才使得国外的律师有机可乘,而且原文并没有提到这一影响很巨大;C项“随着法律软件的引进,许多律师都失业了”也是对原文陈述的过度引申,法律软件的引入带走了更多的工作(Taking away even more of this work),但并不能直接说律师因此而大量失业。
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