Almost overnight, a persistently sad situation finally has many legal educators squirming. And rightly so.

The problem has been years in the making, as has been the profession's unwillingness to address it. Federal funding mechanisms have combined with lack of accountability and non-dischargeability in bankruptcy to block the effective operation of market forces in legal education. Well-intentioned policies have gone terribly awry; they actually encourage misbehavior among many law school deans.

As law student debt soared into six-figures, calls for change produced the equivalent of catcalls from the “voice of the profession”—the American Bar Association. Its latest Task Force report on the subject should embarrass anyone associated with it, including the House of Delegates that approved it. As the profession's echo chamber convinced itself that all was well, hope for meaningful change was leaving the building.