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.
It can be inferred from Paragraph 3 that a degree in law has ________.

选项 A、always been difficult to complete and obtain
B、enabled law graduates to secure decent jobs
C、actually hampered some graduates in the job market
D、overqualified students for their future jobs

答案C

解析 根据题干可直接定位到第三段。从该段最后一句可看出,有些学生认为法律学位实际上妨碍了找工作(has actually hurt their job prospects)。C项与文意一致,故为答案。hampered意为“阻碍”。A项“一直很难完成并获得”属于社会常识,不属于从文章中能推断出来的内容;B项“确保法律毕业生找到体面的工作”与文意严重不符,第三段提到a grim report“令人堪忧的报告”表明仅仅65.4%的法律院校毕业生找到了相关工作,还有相当一部分学生很难找到工作;D项取自第三段最后一句,但文中提到的nonlegal positions“非法律方面的职位”并不对等于D项中的future jobs“未来工作”,故D项“使学生的资历高过未来工作的要求”不正确。
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