Agreed that there are multiple margins.

In fact, my experience was that the prestige of academia (plus status quo bias) meant that the very best and brightest were the ones who tried to become professors, whereas the relative dullards (like myself) tried to get a real job.

This certainly was the case 20 to 30 years ago, but I'm not sure it's the case now.

It is possible for the quality of legal advice to go up across the board, and for people to have improved access to legal services, and both these things will improve our quality of life (and the economy) although there are of course costs and diminishing returns.

Sure- but for these gains to impact wages they need to be captured by workers, and it's not clear that this happens on a large enough scale. (It seems to me that many people try to adjust the status of fields mostly to account for these positive externalities.)

(although come to think of it, that does sound like a good scam)

I am under the impression that most of the personal finance seminar offerings of the Rich Dad Poor Dad variety are the slightly less formal version of this.