Barton's new book on the prospects for the legal profession in the United States offers much, and not just to those with a scholarly interest in the topic. Written to appeal to an educated general audience, Glass Half Full exposes in enlightening detail the many factors that have led the profession to garner so many negative headlines (as well as support a major blogging industry) in the last ten years. In the first two of the book's three major parts, Barton addresses the legal profession and law schools. The third part is Barton's analysis of the “Big Picture” as a basis for optimism about the profession's future.

Barton identifies four groups of challenges to the profession's health: Big Law's pursuit of ever-larger profits, technological replacement of bread-and-butter legal work, state limitations on litigation, and a long-term decline in profits for solo and small-firm practitioners caused by a glut of lawyers. Exploration and explication of these four “deaths” (an homage to Larry Ribstein's The Death of Big Law Footnote ¹ ) forms the body of part I, “The Market for Lawyers.” Preceding the “deaths” is a very brief history of the legal profession in the United States, which serves mainly to show how extraordinary the growth of law firms has been in the past 75 years. Of the four deaths, the technological implications of Legal Zoom and the like are perhaps the most interesting and enlightening. Barton convincingly argues that their arrival has signaled a major shift in the landscape for solos and small firms. Perhaps least convincing is the contention that litigation and tort reform statutes have played a large role in the problems affecting the profession. Barton discusses specific areas of law that have been affected by tort reform, but does not look at overall numbers of actions filed. This chapter also lacks the numeric data that so helpfully inform the remainder of Barton's book.

The second part, “Law Schools,” reviews the history of law schools, including a large post-World War II growth spurt in numbers of schools, numbers of students, law school tuition costs, and law student debt. The current difficulties law schools face with the recent dive in law school applications are all the more stark as Barton portrays them against this backdrop. While this part makes fascinating reading, it coexists alongside Barton's analysis of the problems facing the legal profession without ever being made a part of that analysis. Instead, Barton treats the legal profession and law schools as two different institutions, each with its own problems, albeit with parallels. Nevertheless, he uses similar evidence and, in at least one place, exactly the same evidence to make his points (cf., e.g., p. 44, Figure 3.10 with p. 145, Figure 8.4). More explicit recognition of the apparent role that law schools have played in the problems facing the profession would have been welcome.

The title Glass Half Full effectively signals Barton's optimistic perspective on the future prospects for lawyers in the United States. This optimistic perspective is at the heart of part III, “Big Picture and the Glass Half Full.” Barton's view is that consumers will benefit from the challenges lawyers now face, especially with the expansion of technological solutions to everyday legal problems, and the enforced diet that the legal profession and law schools have been on since the Great Recession will ultimately strengthen them. Here, Barton successfully marshals all the strands of his arguments so that his point of view seems inevitably right.

Barton's endnotes are worth consulting for researchers who wish to dive more deeply into this area. However, at a few points he cites blog posts in lieu of a more authoritative underlying source. For example, footnote 26 of Chapter 11 cites “Adi Robertson, Only 2 Percent of Americans Can't Get Internet Access, but 20% Choose Not to, The Verge, August 26, 2013, http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/26/4660008/pew-study-finds-30-percent-americans-have-no-home-broadband” (p. 290) for the proposition that “Approximately 70 percent of Americans have a broadband connection at home, including more than half of households with incomes below $30,000” (p. 197). The Pew Research Center report alluded to in the cited URL is in fact easily discoverable on Pew's website.Footnote ²

Barton's work offers a valuable American counterpoint to the British-centric work of Richard Susskind.Footnote ³ All academic libraries, and many law firm libraries, will find it essential.