All around the world, lawyers generate more hostility than the members of any other profession—with the possible exception of journalism. But there are few places where clients have more grounds for complaint than America.

During the decade before the economic crisis, spending on legal services in America grew twice as fast as inflation. The best lawyers made skyscrapers-full of money, tempting ever more students to pile into law schools. But most law graduates never get a big-firm job. Many of them instead become the kind of nuisance-lawsuit filer that makes the tort system a costly nightmare.

     There are many reasons for this. One is the excessive costs of a legal education. There is just one path for a lawyer in most American states: a four-year undergraduate degree in some unrelated subject, then a three-year law degree at one of 200 law schools authorized by the American Bar Association and an expensive preparation for the bar exam. This leaves today’s average law-school graduate with $100,000 of debt on top of undergraduate debts. Law-school debt means that they have to work fearsomely hard.

     Reforming the system would help both lawyers and their customers. Sensible ideas have been around for a long time, but the state-level bodies that govern the profession have been too conservative to implement them. One idea is to allow people to study law as an undergraduate degree. Another is to let students sit for the bar after only two years of law school. If the bar exam is truly a stern enough test for a would-be lawyer, those who can sit it earlier should be allowed to do so. Students who do not need the extra training could cut their debt mountain by a third.

    The other reason why costs are so high is the restrictive guild-like ownership structure of the business. Except in the District of Columbia, non-lawyers may not own any share of a law firm. This keeps fees high and innovation slow. There is pressure for change from within the profession, but opponents of change among the regulators insist that keeping outsiders out of a law firm isolates lawyers from the pressure to make money rather than serve clients ethically.

     In fact, allowing non-lawyers to own shares in law firms would reduce costs and improve services to customers, by encouraging law firms to use technology and to employ professional managers to focus on improving firms’ efficiency. After all, other countries, such as Australia and Britain, have started liberalizing their legal professions. America should follow.

答案精析：主旨题，需要理解全文意思。文章主要针对美国律师行业费用过高而经常遭到抱怨的问题进行描述。文中指出了导致高昂费用的两个原因：法律教育费用过高以及律所中限制性的所有制结构，而且已经有改革措施被提出用于解决此问题，但由于相关政府机构过于死板，改革得不到实施。对于问题存在的原因，作者给出了相应的建议，所以本文主要讨论了美国法律行业中的一个问题及其解决方案，故正确答案为C。

错项排除：A项只是对文章第五段内容的一个概括，限制性的所有制结构是导致问题的原因之一，并不是全文内容的概述，故排除A项。原文中第三段说到成为一名律师需要经历的教育过程，但并没有说明成为一名成功律师的因素，故B项内容错误，排除。原文虽提到了若想攻读法律专业必须先取得一个其他专业的学士学位，但这只是进入法学院的条件之一，文章也并没有对此进行更深的讨论，体现不出本科学习的具体作用，故排除D项。