[jellicle]

This is an excellent comment.

The law-degree-heavy nature of Congress should be understood not as a Congress full of lawyers, but as a Congress full of the children of rich people checking boxes on their career path to high status jobs.

The modern rich kid angling to be a Senator one day might want a short stint in the military. They might want a degree in either political science or law. They might want a job as a public prosecutor or one as a TV personality (either one gives public exposure). These are essentially box-checking to be done in the years from 18-30, and after 30 you've checked a bunch of the boxes and are ready for your run for local, state, or federal office.

At no point in most of these people's lives did they have any intent of becoming a lawyer as a full-fledged career, and the convoluted nature of much US law-making is not due to the inherent nature of lawyer-politicians. The average politician spends approximately zero seconds per day writing legislation.