University of Iowa Law Review: The Future of Legal Education, Brought to You By UC-Irvine Law

The University of Iowa Law Review is hosting a symposium on February 25-26 entitled "The Future of Legal Education." Among the topics will be economic viability, preparation for legal practice, judges' perspectives, and the ABA.

On the surface, it sounds like the exact same issues that independent legal bloggers (including the "scambloggers" and the guys at Law School Transparency) have become experts on over the past two years. Furthermore, journalists like David Segal (and even some at the ABA Journal) have examined in-depth the current state of legal education.

But now let's take a look at the distinguished guest list for this symposium, shall we?

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Keynote Speaker	University of California, Irvine School of Law
Dean Gail B. Argawal	University of Iowa College of Law
Professor Judith C. Areen	Georgetown University Law Center
Justice David L. Baker	Iowa Supreme Court
Joel W. Barrows	Assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Iowa
Dean Jay Conison	Valparaiso University School of Law
Dean Michael A. Fitts	University of Pennsylvania Law School
Kelly M. Hnatt	Partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP
Dean Kevin R. Johnson	University of California, Davis School of Law
Dean Richard A. Matasar	New York Law School
Judge Michael J. Melloy	U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals
Dean Cyndi Nance	University of Arkansas School of Law
Associate Dean Larry E. Ribstein	University of Illinois College of Law
Associate Dean Catherine E. Smith	University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Dean Kent D. Syverud	Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Judge Deanell R. Tacha	U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Dean Kellye Y. Testy	University of Washington School of Law
President David E. Van Zandt	The New School

3 judges, 2 working attorneys, and 13 current or former law school administrators.

Doesn't this seem a little imbalanced?

To be fair, some of the administrators, such as Larry Ribstein or Richard Matasar, are actually established in the field or on record as commenting on these issues. But many of them aren't, and it seems to me that letting someone like Dean Chemerinsky of all people serve as keynote speaker eradicates any objective, academic intent of the program. After all, this is a man running a manipulative scheme whose sole mission was to buy high LSAT scores to game the USNWR rankings.

In fact, three weeks ago, when I heard about this event, I emailed the University of Iowa Law Review expressing my detailed concerns on these exact points. After all, you would never host an honest symposium about the future of the automobile where almost all the participants are from Ford, GM, Exxon, Chevron, etc. Why do it for law?

Iowa Law Review has not even bothered to send me a response.

Let's hope some of the honest administrators and non-law school personnel make this a worthwhile event rather than the de facto advertising circus that the guest list would seem to suggest.

Meet Mary Cheney, #3 in her Class, Retail Clerk

For those of you who automatically think people who go to lower-tiered schools and can't find work don't work hard (or if you think that the legal profession is, in any way, promoting an efficient use of human resources, I encourage you to read the testimonial of Mary Cheney on IPWatchdog:

First-year law students are told to study hard, earn that invitation onto law review, become involved in extracurricular activities, obtain real-world experience through legal externships and graduate at the top of their class. They are told that if they do these things, they will land that Associate Attorney position at a reputable law firm. I followed this advice. I earned those honors, and I am currently working, not as an attorney but in the retail industry for about minimum wage.

Mary has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from UC-San Diego. She graduated #3 at Thomas Jefferson Law School (now with new campus!), where she also served as a Law Review editor. She also has multiple items of legal experience, including an intern stint at Pfizer.

If you read this, or her resume, and your first response to her working in minimum wage retail is "she should have gone somewhere like UCLA," you need to have your god-damned head examined.

University of La Verne: A Different Kind of Misleading Advertising

The University of La Verne Law School (located in Ontario, California, and yes, I had to look it up, too) is trying again to bump it's "provisional" ABA accreditation to full ABA accreditation. The ABA's decision on their accreditation was delayed last year after only 34% of the graduating class passed the California bar exam on the first try. The school received provisional status in 2006 and the timeline is 5 years, so some are concerned that its time will expire and it won't be accredited, although it appears things are getting slightly better:

The exam pass rate for the same 2009 group rose to 73percent after students who had done poorly the first time retook the exam. These rates are called "ultimate" pass rates, which are also evaluated by the ABA. The 2010 first-time bar passage rate for graduating students at the law school reached 53percent.

Matt Jones, a first-year student at the law school, is among some first- and second-year students concerned about not being able to take the multi-state bar exam if they graduate at a school without ABA approval. Jones has nonetheless expressed satisfaction with the education he's receiving at the school, but he said the situation is a potential mess for many graduating with as much as $140,000 in debt.

This is a valid concern, isn't it? If you go to a school that's only provisionally accredited, you have one set of rights, but how many 0L's honestly realize that provisional accreditation expires? How many honestly realize that enrolling in a provisional school and graduating from a non-accredited school is a risk to take into account? Is the school upfront about this possible scenario?

Let's ask the Dean.

"They were told as graduates of provisional schools they're entitled to take the bar in all 50 states," [Dean Allen] Easley said. "The harder question is how much detail has gone into conversations with individuals about what would happen if the school loses its provisional status before they graduate. That gets to a level of detail you're not going to get into every single conversation. Certainly if anyone were to ask what were to happen if the school lost provisional approval before graduation, they would get an accurate answer. ... I don't think that question always gets asked."

Law school is a major investment of capital. The entire premise of our federal investment laws are that individuals should be fully apprised of the risks of an investment, especially the risks that have high acquisition costs (like trying to figure out the ABA's rules on accreditation).

And yet, this law school - a six-figure investment over three years - apparently only tells people "an accurate answer" of what would happen if they lose provisional status in the rare event that that person actually asks the question. Such a situation is blatantly contrary to the last 80 years of revelations about investment regulation, and it's also seemingly counter to common law contract principles (e.g., duty to disclose latent home defects).

Personally, I don't think the ABA should be accrediting schools where only ~50% of the class passes the bar exam, but that's just me. I just think the school has a duty to be entirely up front about their accreditation status, including the chance that they'll lose provisional accreditation.

But don't worry, kids, Dean Easley has a plan in case the ABA bucks a trend and actually rejects the school:

If a denial occurs, Easley said the law school would initiate an expedited application process to regain provisional status. He said recent precedent placed that process at about eight months.

"I think there's a good chance (for approval)," Easley said. "I believe we meet all the standards, but it's not my decision. The council is charged with making that decision. I hope we will get full approval and I believe we should."

Well, Dean Easley, you may meet the ABA's standards, but you don't meet mine, and you certainly weren't meeting your duty to prospective students if you weren't being entirely up front in disclosing that the school may lose accreditation.

Professor Donates $6 Million to Law School for Scholarships, Gives Me Reason to Rant About Tuition and Universities

From the Oklahoman:

NORMAN -- University of Oklahoma President David L. Boren has announced the largest one-time contribution in the history of the OU College of Law – a historic $6 million gift from OU Law Professor Emeritus Frank Elkouri and his wife, Edna Asper Elkouri, to support student scholarship programs in the college.

My usual reaction to people donating large sums of money to a law school is "blech!" With so many places to put your money, it kind-of disgusts me when rich people pour it into a system that's so broken, especially when the donation comes from a rich law professor and especially when it's used to construct some new building. Such donations smell of not being made from humanitarian interests, but rather out of some desire for the rich person to slap their name on a new building or auditorium in an egocentric, old-age proxy for sexual arousal. Worse is when their donations bankroll the meaningless research of law professors.

But my cold hear warmed to Mr. Boren when I saw that he was wanting to use his donation to support scholarships for students. In an age where tuition prices are pricing the middle- and lower-class out of responsible higher education, I think that's the only virtuous way to donate to a university. And although I'm cynical, I'm not compeltely dismissive of things like this:

Professor and Mrs. Elkouri said they were grateful to have scholarships while they were in law school, and they hope their gift provides similar opportunities to students today.

“We wanted to do for the students what we couldn’t do for those who helped us,” Professor Elkouri said.

Bravo!

But what stuck out to me in the article was this paragraph:

“Generations of students will benefit from this generous gift,” said [OU President] Boren....

"Generations?" Who the hell are you kidding?

Six million may sound like a lot. But currently, OU tuition is at $28,000 for out-of-staters and $14,000 for in-staters. A $6 million dollar scholarship can give full rides to 215 out-of-state students and 430 in-state students. Or it could give half-tuition scholarships to 430 out-of-state students and 860 in-state students.

But that's only on a one-year basis. On a 3-year basis, you cut the numbers by 1/3. And that's not even factoring in living expenses or the rise in tuition.

For comparison's sake, OU currently enrolls 500+ students every academic year.

And if anyone wants to argue that the scholarship fund will grow over time and provide more opportunities for students down-the-road than may be apparent now, I would like to point out that tuition at OU has risen 50% for out-of-state students and 90% for in-state students over the last 6 years according to LSTB. You couldn't even get that return investing in high-risk mutual funds, much less the bonds that universities shove their endowments into.

Between tuition inflation and state expenditure cuts, the money will not go as far if it's saved. Fewer students will benefit.

The OU President knows this reality. He knows quite well that $6 million isn't going to be around in 15 years, and yet he began a sentence with the word "generations." He did not say "hundreds of students" will benefit." He chose "generation."

Why?

It seems to me that much of the appeal of high education depends on this "timeless" quality. That this is the way things have been for 150 years and when you go you'll pay it forward to the next generation. Elderly donors can be persuaded to part with their money much easier if they believe that they're contributing to something that will extend long past their earthly demise.

It's nothing more than marketing to bring more investment into the university scheme. In fact, one could argue the Elkouris of the world are, in a way, getting lied to as much as the students. Their investment won't last long at all, and once their dead no one on campus will care about them.

For education to return to its proper role in the United States, it seems to me that myth (and similar ones) probably need to perish.

So I applaud to Elkouris, but their contribution must be put into perspective. It's wonderful that they're helping students achieve the same things they did, especially against a system so biased against new entrants. But its impact will be minimal, and in truth OU will probably wind up shifting the money they would have spent on scholarships to other wastes of money, like increases in salary for administrators.

This is, after all, big business, and not some rah-rah wonderland where generation after generation gets the same education with the same impact at a low cost. We need to get through to the 50+ crowd that it isn't the way it was way back when.

Why Does the ABA Journal Neuter A Good Story?

So the ABA Journal has this article about the New Hampshire guy who failed the bar 7 times, was mostly unemployed for 20 years, and has a rather pompous attitude about not paying his 30k-turned-140k student loan debt. (See JJD's coverage here.)

The ABA Journal sums up part of his story this way:

In addition to concerns about criminal charges and a lack of candor [the applicant had significant debt issues].

"Concerns about criminal charges?" Oh, pull up a chair or read the actual opinion yourself.

When questioned about his criminal record, the applicant stated that he lacked mens rea for each of his nine convictions. With respect to the reckless conduct conviction based on his “pretending to be a robber,” the applicant explained, “I was on SSI for six months directly following that incident, so that alone would demonstrate no mens rea. But supplemental to that was the fact that it happened on April Fool’s Day. It was a bad joke. I’d say those would be the two reasons.” At a previous interview, the applicant had also discussed the incident. At that time, the applicant told the interviewer that he “was writing a book at the time and wanted to see what the store clerk’s reaction would be when he showed her a knife with a blade between six and seven inches in length.”

When questioned about his six convictions for violating a restraining order, the applicant asserted that he had been “framed.” As evidence of this, he produced a motion to dismiss the restraining order . . . However, the applicant admitted that he had written the motion to dismiss and had the complainant sign it. He was convicted of having violated the terms of the restraining order by sending her copies of motions. At the Committee hearing, he admitted that he had violated the restraining order in several ways:

“I had tried to call her. I had tried to call a friend. I was within 1,000 feet of her house.” However, he asserted, ["]I didn’t have the mens rea because I believe that she – it may sound fantastic, but she had told me the last time that she was being held in her house, locked up, her keys were being – had been taken, her money was taken, her purse, whatever, so in that sense, I lacked a mens rea because I was trying to see what was going on, to see if she was being held there.["]

The record does not reflect any statement by the defendant concerning his 2004 DWI conviction.

Christ, wouldn't you love to hear his explanation for the DWI?

I know we're all worried about student loan amounts, but forget that on this one; even if this guy were independently wealthy, any state that lets him practice law needs to be kicked out of the union.

$140k in debt is nothing. Throw an orange in a law school and you'll hit ten people with as uch or more. Heck, neither is taking 20 years off from the workforce. Ride public transportation and do a survey.

Having six convictions for breaking a restraining order and claiming it's because the women told you she was imprisoned and you weren't bright enough to call the police? Pretending to be a robber on April Fool's Day because you're supposedly writing a book, and then using being on SSI as an excuse for your criminal behavior? Making a hash of mens rea (or thinking that your bar application hearing is a good time to bring it up) while arguing that you're fit to practice law?

That? That's gold right there. Take note, ABA Journal. Let's hope he's admitted in Canada or something so he can do whatever law school birthed his sorry ass proud.

The State of the Union is Brought to you by Academia

From a former Con-Law professor to his country:

America has fallen to 9th in the proportion of young people with a college degree.
...
Of course, the education race doesn’t end with a high school diploma. To compete, higher education must be within reach of every American. That’s why we’ve ended the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that went to banks, and used the savings to make college affordable for millions of students. And this year, I ask Congress to go further, and make permanent our tuition tax credit – worth $10,000 for four years of college.
...
If we take these steps...America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

And this is a good idea in a country where the majority of recent college graduates (and many post-graduate degree holders) are working in jobs that don't require college degrees because ______________? And how is a tuition tax credit honestly going to help students who finance their education by taking out $100k+ in student loan debt?

Oh, that's right, we have to prop up the massive education bubble (after all, the Dean's Audi isn't going to make its own monthly payments!) and give politicians cute little rhetorical flourishes so they can boast of superficial accomplishment while student loan debt drowns an entire generation.

Brilliant.

Ignorant Idiot of the Week: David Ziemer

I've heard Wisconsin has pretty low bar admission standards (e.g., if you graduate from Marquette or U. of Wisconsin, you don't have to sit for the Wisconsin test), but little did I know one could practice, teach CLE, and write for the Wisconsin Law Journal without even being able to fully comprehend what they read.

Yet, today I've been proven wrong. Enter David Ziemer. David has chosen - about 2 weeks late, mind you - to chime in on the New York Times piece, and to do so in colossally ignorant fashion:

The thesis of this awful piece of drivel is that law school is “three-card monte, with law schools flipping the aces and a long line of eager players, most wagering borrowed cash, in a contest that few of them can win.”

Exhibit A in the article is a recent law school grad who has more than $250,000 in student loans and can’t find a job...

Ziemer then spends five paragraphs talking about Michael Wallerstein (Ziemer doesn't even have the human decency to name the poor guy) and slamming his life choices and attitude. This is somewhat fair game, IMO, as I, like others, don't think Wallerstein was the best spokesman for sympathy from anyone.

But even though a 4th-grader could tell that Wallerstein is merely a frame for an article chock-full of other damning statements, statistics, and anecdotes, and a general theme that transcended Wallerstein, Ziemer calls the piece "awful" "drivel," seemingly because of its focus on Wallerstin.

Which makes it all the more curious that he AGREES with the basic, broad premise of the piece:

But instead, the thesis of the article is that somehow the law schools are at fault, because they lie to prospective students about the job prospects of their graduates.

I’m sure they do. But it is not as if this is news. It’s been common knowledge for years that graduates of fourth-rate law schools have few options.

So David is "sure" the law schools lie about their job prospects, and yet the piece was "drivel?" And if it's "not...news" and has "been common knowledge for years," why did the New York Times piece create such an impact? Why have so-called "scam-bloggers" like TTR and FTT faced highly-skeptical reactions? And David, why are you ignoring the commentary in the article about schools like Georgetown lying about their job prospects?

Could you be any more pompously contradictory? It can't be common knowledge if people are shocked by it, unless he meant "common knowledge in the legal community," at which point I have to ask why he and others kept their mouths shut, or why he thinks a piece is "awful drivel" that calls a spade a spade.

But of course David has a solution to this problem: hard work.

Listen to what this ass-clown writes:

As readers of the Wisconsin Law Journal, you are all more sophisticated than the naïve readers of the Times, so I don’t need to explain how real life works to you; but I’m going to do it anyway, lest someone pondering law school comes across this column.

You sign up for the LSAT, you study for it, and you take the test. If you do well enough to get into a good law school, you go. Then, you work very, very hard.

If you do not do well on the test, or if you’d rather play beach blanket bingo in San Diego or the Riviera than study hard, then you find something else to do with your life.

Yet the Times apparently thinks I should feel sorry for those who don’t understand this.

Good God! Talk about missing the point entirely!

The whole point of the NYT article, the so-called "scamblogging" movement, the whole ball of wax here is that kids who do very well on the LSAT and do very well in a good law school are still getting screwed. Do you really not understand that, David? Are you really that dense? There are Georgetown graduates out of work. There are Duke graduates who have to take temporary jobs basically bought by the school. Last year's Law Review Editor-in-Chief at a top-70 school is unemployed.

Those students obviously did well enough to get into selective schools, and they worked hard enough to either graduate a T-14 or make law review; although it may have been different in your day (given your reading ability, David, I doubt you really worked that hard in law school), you have to work hard to be the Editor-in-Chief on a law review. These kids aren't going to the Riviera or the beach.

The New York Times piece is full of insight into a variety of factors, causes, and ramifications of the current law school climate. It is the most objective piece yet written on a subject that had previously existed outside of the general public's radar. This is precisely what journalism is about.

Somehow David Ziemer read that lengthy, thorough piece as a sympathy call for one single student (whose story was irrelevant to the substance of the article) that was "awful drivel," whose revelations were "common knowledge" even though they meet no definition of "common knowledge." And then he has the douchebag audacity to suggest that Segal lacked "perception" and that the Times has a "naive" readership.

With analysis such as this, there is a pretty damned good reason David Segal works for the New York Times and David Ziemer writes lame, ignorant, psuedo-snarky pieces for the Wisconsin Law Journal.

What a moron.

ChicagoNow's Michael Helfand on Law School and the Myth

ChicagoNow has a nice little blog written by attorney Michael Helfand that has now weighed in on the situation with law schools:

The number of law school graduates is increasing, even though the number of jobs has decreased. And even for those who do get jobs, not many are earning the $150,000 a year they thought they would. It's a myth. And the reality is especially harsh for those with huge loans to pay off.
...
Our society has this idea about lawyers - that they all make a lot of money and have prestigious careers. Like many things, what you see on TV or in the movies is not reality.

Helfand got his J.D. from the Chicago-Kent College of Law (ranked 67th or so in USNWR) and has been practicing law for 13 years.

So, for all those of you who think it's just the bitter recent graduates who can't find work that are complaining, it's not. At least from what I've observed, there's a widespread consensus among Gen. X and Y attorneys that the field of law as advertised by law schools and the Disney Corporation is as mythical as Never Never Land.

Past ABA "Top Dog" Seeking So. Carolina Dean's Position

Something called Fitsnews has a rather interesting write-up criticizing University of South Carolina Board member William Hubbard for seeking the position of dean at South Carolina's law school.

William C. Hubbard . . . wants the job so bad that he is reportedly pressuring his fellow board members to rally behind his candidacy – while at the same time exploring ways to remain on the board while he serves in his new role.
...
Hubbard is no friend to the taxpayers of this state. Over his 24-year tenure on the USC board – including four years as chairman of the board – he has subjected students and parents to massive tuition increases. This money has gone to fund an unprecedented expansion of the school’s snowballing “mission” – including unnecessary duplication of existing programs, numerous unnecessary new programs and the spectacular failure of so-called “economic development” projects.
...
As one of the top dogs with the American Bar Association (ABA), Hubbard was reportedly instrumental in helping our state’s notoriously corrupt S.C. Supreme Court evade responsibility for its deliberate manipulation of a 2008 ABA investigation into its controversial attorney discipline system.

Wow, sounds perfect, doesn't he?

LSAT, Law School Applications Down 10+% Year-over-Year

From Paul Caron:

The Law School Admission Council reports that YTD 2010-11 LSAT test takers are down 10.0% from 2009-10 (albeit the 129,414 test takers is the second largest YTD testing volume in history). Fall 2011 law school applications are down 12.2% (and applicants are down 12.5%). (Hat Tip: Legal Skills Prof Blog.)

No wonder Dean Miller was out advertising for Cooley.

Grand Rapids Enjoying The Thomas Cooley Bubble

Did you know that:

• Law school is merely a "supplementary" education?
• There are people who fly in from San Francisco to attend Thomas Cooley on the weekends because it's that gosh-darned good of a school with its flexible schedule and other amenities?
• Downtown Grand Rapids "sort-of looks like Brooklyn" and would be familiar and cozy to students from Los Angeles and New York City?
  

Well, in case you didn't, you should watch Cooley Dean Nelson Miller's recent appearance on WOOD TV-8 and be enlightened.

You see, even though Grand Rapids is a dying city, Cooley Law School is proving to be an amazing source of prosperity:

Cooley Law School's campus in downtown Grand Rapids . . . started six years ago with just 18 students. Today, nearly 750 people study for their law degree on the school's campus.

Some people even fly in for weekend classes, then fly home, spending money on hotels and downtown restaurants while in town.

If you watch the video, it's explicitly stated that the Dean is using the segment to recruit; there's not even a pretense of journalism. They actually say that they want the graduates to stick around (Grand Rapids needs 200 new lawyers every year? Really?), and the interviewer makes no effort to ask any questions of substance.

I hope the people of Grand Rapids enjoy their minor economic boom. They'll probably wind up paying for it later in one way or another.

And yes, Dean Miller really did say downtown Grand Rapids looks like Brooklyn.

Minnesota Bar's Practice Blawg Running Law School Debt Survey

From Andrea Hable at Practice Blawg:

I feel really, really lucky. Why? I know so many people who have barely paid on their student loans at all. Which is not to say that it’s been easy for me, I just know that it could be much, much worse. I think most of my classmates acknowledge that our law school employment statistics are not close to what we see in real life, and I am no exception, which makes me curious what “realistic” employment statistics would look like. And, in the interests of seeing the bigger economic picture, I’m curious how new lawyers are really dealing with their debt burden.

If you graduated from law school in the last 10 years, please take our Practice Blawg survey below. Are you part of the 25% of new lawyers in temporary jobs? Or are you working two jobs to make ends meet? We’d like to know so we can push this discussion further.

Hable is a 2008 graduate of William Mitchell for what it's worth regarding her "luck."

The survey is anonymous. It asks for basic employment information on work, loans, etc. I strongly encourage readers who qualify (graduated from law school in the last 10 years) to fill it out regardless of your current employment/loan repayment situation, especially Minnesota Bar members who may pass by here.

India: Just Like U.S.!

Inspired by the NYT piece, an Indian law professional has taken his own nation's legal education system to task for high tuition and fudged employment numbers, although because it's India he takes more of a class-based focus than many in the U.S. would. I frankly don't understand all the nuances of the Indian educational system, but I thought I'd repost some choice bits here for comparison's sake:

Each institution considers it its claim to fame to have ‘X’ number of people joining law firms with a salaries ranging from Rs. 8,00,000 to 25,00,000 (Rs. 8-25 lakhs) p.a. There are few who join foreign universities to pursue higher studies. The remainder of the students, those joining the bar or pursuing social careers (NGOs etc.) form part of a group characterized by the irony they represent. On one hand law schools propagate their commitment to society and Convocation dignitaries urge students to join the bar and stress on the ‘social commitment’ of lawyers, while on the other hand these students don’t form a part of the law schools achievements or even get their picture in the prospectus for the courageous step they’ve taken.

... I assert that national law schools are generally catering to the needs of the upper middle class society thus alienating themselves from a vast majority of the Indian population that wish to receive quality Indian education....

About a decade ago, the Supreme Court stated that education in this country still ought to serve a socialist purpose and not be regarded as a profit making industry. The present structure of National Law Universities defy both these ideas....

A student from a disadvantaged section of the society then surely doesn’t stand a chance in this system.

Education being run like for-profit and causing problems for lower- and middle-class people - sound familiar?

Lawyers, Addiction, and Law School as the Anti-AA

The Huffington Post has an interesting, thought-provoking piece about treating lawyers with addiction problems:

Whether it is because they are members of a stressful, high-stakes profession or because personalities with a penchant for addictive disorders are drawn to the law, studies have shown that lawyers have twice the addiction rate of the general population and are three times as likely to be depressed.

As if that weren't enough, lawyers are also notoriously reluctant to seek help for these problems...."Lawyers are uniquely treatment resistant," said Dr. Link Christin, adjunct professor of law at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota...

The article goes on to allege that law school is a breeding ground for addiction, mostly by custom, and that 20-40% of law students are depressed.

This had me thinking about the nature of AA and the nature of law schools. Having never been to an AA meeting, I can't give any personal knowledge, but my understanding is that the whole point is that you solve a problem by finding there are others like you who face analogous situations and admitting that group help is necessary. Thus, an individual problem is countered with the power of numbers via group support.

It seems to me that law school, in many ways, is the opposite. When one comes as a law school, they come on individual achievement. Up to that point in time, most law students have excelled in the academic sense, at least relative to their peers. In law school, they meet dozens and dozens of people who are exactly like them and often went to law school for the exact same reason. The same sense of uniqueness and exceptionalism that gave rise to thoughts of succeeding in law (and investing tens of thousands in an education) is destroyed by the introduction of two hundred carbon copies. The identical members of the group cause a breakdown of the belief of uniqueness, of success, of achievement.

Thus, a sort-of cognitive dissonance develops. The young lawyer has been trained to believe he or she is exceptional. The empirical evidence suggests otherwise, even for the top 10% graduates. I'm not going to play armchair psychiatrist and say this leads to addictions, but it can't help, and it certainly can't help in treating addiction.

It seems to me that the root problem here is that you have people who on some latent level believe they're some sort of superhumans. While the article speaks of innovative therapy programs targeted solely at lawyers and law school awareness programs, my gut feeling is that the problem needs to be addressed significantly earlier, possibly as far back as high school.

If putting people on a pedestal and calling them exceptional for what are frankly non-exceptional things causes psychological problems that make one resistant to addiction therapy, maybe we should stop putting kids on pedestals for non-exceptional things.

State Budget Cuts "Hurting" Arizona State

From the National Jurist:

As state governments struggle, many have slashed their high-education allocations. . . At Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law . . . Dean Paul Schiff Berman has suggested a five-year plan where tuition will rise between 5 to 10 percent and student enrollment with increase from about 195 to 225 per class.

Other schools facing "significant shortfalls" mentioned in the article include Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia.

But what strikes me about the article is that their definition of "significant shortfall" seems to be slightly different than mine, especially as it applies to Arizona State. To wit:

"The University has asked us to find a way to make us self-sufficient with regard to our operating expenses," [Berman] said. "That requires us to generate about $6.5 million more than we currently generate over the next five years."

Arizona State, as a whole, received approximately $380.93 million in state appropriations for the 2010-11 fiscal year. If the law school only has to make about $6.5 million over a 5 year period to become de facto private, that means that, excluding interest considerations, its 2010 revenue from the state is about $1.3 million, or about 0.3% of Arizona State's total take from the state.

That is a paltry, token amount that few law schools wound have any serious trouble raising (or finding in the budget, if necessary). Arizona State tuition is current $21,598 for in-state residents. At that total, adding 30 in-state students would raise roughly half the yearly total instantly with almost no additional burden on the school as long as they have auditoriums that seat more. If alumni fundraising drives couldn't raise the other $650,000, across-the-board salary cuts of like 8% (or equivalent layoffs) would take care of the rest (this is a rough estimate looking at their number of staff and guessing an average salary of over $100k, which is reasonable given that it's a top-50 law school).

Even a modest tuition increase, like the one Berman proposes, isn't that bad (although I think staff and program cuts should come before tuition increases as a matter of ethics).

But I have a problem with Berman's general attitude towards the situation.

Berman said students will be minimally impacted by increases in tuition and class size. To that end, ASU is boosting its financial aid to qualified students, and it has created a post-graduate public interest fellowship program, designed to provide a stipend to students entering the public sector. And first-year students are looking at following the example of their 3L peers by creating a fund-raising effort to help fund new scholarships. (Emphasis mine)

Wow, what a business running a law school must be.

• Your consumers are "minimally impacted" by paying $9,000 (over 3 years) at 7.5% interest.
• Although your budget has a "significant shortfall," you can boost financial aid (discounts) to guaranteed customers (e.g., to boost offers to high LSAT kids) and give out stipends to boost your post-graduate employment numbers.
• Your current consumers are setting up voluntary, unpaid fundraising drives to help with your expenses.

And now you get the advantage of being free of the guesswork involved in state budgeting.

Thomas Jefferson's New Campus: Few Jobs, But They Do Offer a 50s Diner!

Thomas Jefferson Law School is christening a new campus tomorrow. This is apparently what charging $35k+ in tuition can allow you to do:

The 178,000-square-foot campus will have two outdoor terraces and a student lounge that looks like a round 50's diner. Meeting rooms, a cafe to open this spring and a law clinic will be available to the public.

"Open to the public" is often a concession made by the facility when taxpayer money has been leached somehow. But for a 50s diner, I'd gladly suffer through the homeless of San Diego who figure that out. Imagine not just reading Brown v. Board, but getting to do it in a place that looks like it should be abuzz with Pleasantville kids chatting about the latest sock hop and the "swell" TVs mommy and daddy just purchased.

Sounds great, doesn't it? For just $13,500, you can experience it as a part-time student!

"This is the most extraordinary law school campus in the nation," said Rudy Hasl, a school dean. "It is designed to facilitate interactions between everyone on campus in a comfortable, collaborative setting. That is the key to success in law school."

"[D]esigned to facilitate interactions?" "Comfortable, collaborative setting?" Does this mean it has ROOMS in VARYING SIZES? What an inspired miracle of design!

Also, it has a chevron roof, it's going for gold-level certification by the U.S. Green Council Building, and "is sure to be a landmark in San Diego’s vibrant, exciting East Village where it sits just a few blocks from Petco Park."

For the price of a Cadillac luxury sedan, this fantasy can be yours for two full-time semesters.

Hiring Bottleneck for Lower-Level New Jersey State Courts

This shouldn't surprise anyone, but it's a message that should be shared since there are apparently people still under the delusion that the tip-top law school grads still have it hunky-dory and that you have to do something "wrong" to not get a good job.

Competition for jobs as a law clerk making $48,000 in Passaic County, New Jersey has skyrocketed.

State Superior Court judges in New Jersey have seen a substantial jump in law-clerk applicants — many from Ivy League schools all over the country — as big law firms cut back on hiring attorneys fresh out of law school.

“Over the last two years, I would say I’ve had four times as many applicants. And of those applicants, they’re all with superior grade averages of over 3.5 from law schools all over the country,” said McVeigh. “I normally get excellent r[e]sum[e]s. But the volume of excellent r[e]sum[e]s — even the quality — far surpasses anything I’ve ever seen. These are the kinds of applicants that would normally have gone to [state] Supreme Court, or one of the large-starting-salary firms.”

There are no Ivy League law schools in New Jersey, so if he strictly means "Ivy League," that means there are Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Harvard, or Yale grads applying to this place. If "Ivy League" was a misstatement for "top schools," that probably means there are U. of Chicago and Cal-Berkeley kids sending their resumes to the New Jersey State Supreme Court.

And tell me, exactly, how even lower-tier schools can continue to claim 100k+ median starting salaries if their 3.5+ kids are applying en masse for $48k jobs? At most law schools, a 3.5 is a pretty high GPA given the harsh curve. I'd estimate a 3.5 translates to being in the top 15-20% anywhere, and that's with a loose curve (with a tight curve - say, where the 1L median is a 2.5 - maybe only 5% of the 1L class would have a 3.5 or higher).

Out of all law students in the country, kids applying for these jobs are easily in the top 10%. The job pays $48,000 and is not that prestigious. How can anyone at this point believe the other 90% made a sound investment?

Hypocrisy at the Ohio Supreme Court

As others have reported, a law graduate in Ohio has failed the "character and fitness" portion of the bar application because "the applicant has neglected his personal financial obligations by electing to maintain his part-time employment with the Public Defender’s Office in the hope that it will lead to a full-time position upon passage of the bar exam, rather than seeking full-time employment." His financial obligations include $170,000 in law school debt and about $16k in credit card debt.

This is, of course, absurd, a sort-of Kafkan nightmare in a world where the state's flagship public law school costs 100k over 3 years. A non-wealthy student going straight from undergrad would have to borrow the majority of that sum, and that's after the student has gone through four years of undergraduate school. The cost to attend The Ohio State University is roughly $25,000 for Ohio residents.

So for seven years at OSU - undergraduate and law school - an Ohio resident would need roughly $200,000 at minimum. Most middle- and lower-class students have no option but to borrow that money. And yet $170,000 in debt while a student tries to get a job in the law is deemed "financially irresponsible." Even a student who works part-time, 20 hours a week, for all seven years, every single week, averaging $10/hour would still have $130,000 left on the tab.

What really galls me is that every member of the Ohio Supreme Court signed the opinion without realizing their own blatant hypocrisy. Let's take a look at the justices individually (costs and fees either taken from Law School Numbers or from the school's websites; reasonable estimates made where necessary):

Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor got her B.A. from Seton Hall. She received her law degree from Cleveland-Marshall. Resident cost of attendance for Cleveland-Marshall is about $93,000 for three years. Four years of undergrad at Seton Hall? $30k a year on tuition alone, roughly 15-20k more in living expenses. For someone starting today, Justice O'Connor's education would cost at least $273,000.

Justice Paul Pfeifer "raised purebred Yorkshire hogs to finance his college education." That education? Both undergraduate and law degrees from OSU. He had his J.D. at 24, so I don't think he was working full-time before law school. Even if farm kids today had the means to raise hogs on any scale that made money, I'm pretty sure that kid isn't going to be able to bank the $200,000 needed to "finance his college education" from any profits. Someone with humble farm origins would almost certainly need to borrow most of the cost of his education today.

Justice Evelyn Lundberg-Stratton was "[b]orn to missionary parents in Bangkok" and once "returned to America alone with only a few hundred dollars in her pocket." She "[w]ork[ed] her way through school" at the University of Akron and then at OSU Law. As already noted, OSU law costs 100k for three years. Akron? For residents, it'd be 9k in tuition and an estimated 12k in living expenses every year. Relatively cheap, but the 4-year price tag is still $84k. With law school, that's $184,000 to bankroll Justice Lundberg-Stratton's education that has obviously served her well from a lower-class background. As noted, working part time would result in a 70k reduction. Where is the other $114,000 coming from?

Justice Terrence O'Donnell went to Kent State and then Cleveland-Marshall. As a resident, you can go to Kent State for under 20k a year and Cleveland-Marshall costs around 93k. $173,000. Cheap date, all things considered, although I wouldn't bet on the success of a Kent State/Cleveland-Marshall grad today.

Justice Judy Lanzinger is the "granddaughter of coal-miners" and the "first in her family to attend college." She attended the University of Toledo for both undergraduate and law school. For undergrad, Toledo costs about 7k a year in tuition. A room, board, and food estimate would be around 17k. Three years at Toledo Law costs $20k per year in tuition alone. Add living expenses and it's a 37k per year expenditure. Total for those seven years at Toledo? $207,000. How, pray tell, is a first-generation "coal-miner granddaughter" supposed to pay for that without taking out over 100k in loans?

Justice Robert Cupp hails from "rural Allen County and grew up on his family's farm." His educational choice was limited to Ohio Northern University for both his undergraduate and law degrees. That school's private. Total costs are 37k for law and 42k for undergraduate. The grand total? $279,000 for this private school education. Working may take it down to 200k. How many farm kids can even make a dent in that from their family contributions?

Justice Yvette Brown went to Ohio University and then matriculated to Ohio State for law school. As stated, the law portion, starting today, would cost 100k. Undergrad at Ohio University? Tuition is 9.5k for in-state; estimated costs would be around 14k. The total would be 94k for undergrad for a grand total of $194,000 to fund this woman's education.

To duplicate their chosen educational paths today, each of these justices would have to find more than $170,000 to fund their educations, yet, apparently, $170,000 in student loan debt makes one "financially irresponsible" unless one quits all ambitions of having a law career and takes a full-time private sector job.

I understand that many of these individuals likely had scholarships, and to be fair most of these schools are generous with scholarships today to lower the tuition costs, but someone somewhere has to pay the sticker price. Even those that get scholarships and work part-time often wind up with substantial debt.

The fact that the Ohio Supreme Court cannot recognize that financing an education is fundamentally different today and that not one of them could repeat their educational path (even with raising hogs or working 30 hours a week) without incurring absurdly-high expenses, often paid with student loans, is an indictment of how out-of-touch the Court is. Having student loan debt over $125,000 is the new normal, not some prima facie evidence of fiscal ineptitude.

For all seven justices to obviously benefit from their now-expensive educations and then categorically deny bar admission to someone who took a remarkably similar path is hypocrisy at its finest. That at least four were of humble origins and a fifth (Brown) is a minority makes the opinion all the more offensive. The average middle-class kid can simply not get a law degree without borrowing six figures or getting generous scholarships at every step of the process.

There's problems with the system, yes, but barring admission to students with normal debt loads on "character" grounds is not the solution.

Study Immigration Law Near the Scenic Rio Grande: Another Law School Proposed!

I swear, I couldn't make this up if I tried. People are trying to build law schools faster than the federal government can process the financial aid stuff. Yet another political group is attempting to get a law school in a place that doesn't need one. This time? South Texas. From the Texas Tribune via the New York Times:

Texas produces more law school graduates than it has jobs for. But that has not stopped some lawmakers from proposing that the state build a public law school in the Rio Grande Valley.

Supporters of a new school say there is geographic inequity. The public law school nearest the state’s southernmost region is more than 300 miles away, at the University of Texas in Austin. In addition, they point out, the Rio Grande Valley has one of the lowest lawyer-to-citizen ratios in the state.

Also cited in the article are the state's alleged shortage of attorneys that can cater to low-income people and the possibility that a more southern public college of law would increase the ranks of minority lawyers.

Of course, never mind the fact that Texas has severe budget problems and a new law school costs $80 million. Never mind that their state higher education board is against it. Never mind that Texas pumps out an excess of graduates for the jobs available. And never mind that there is already a South Texas College of Law and a Texas Southern Thurgood Marshall College of Law, both in Houston. With those choice names gone, what's this fourth-tier monstrosity going to be called?

Are we seriously now building law schools just because some small percentage of the population has to move to go to law school? Are there actually elected officials out there who think this harebrained strategy is a good approach to higher education?

Texas already has four public law schools (Texas, U. of Houston, Texas Tech, and Texas Southern), two well-regarded private schools (SMU and Baylor) and a trio of bottom-tier private schools (St. Mary's, Texas Wesleyan, and South Texas). Another public, North Texas, is opening next year in Dallas, since the people there had to drive all the way to Austin or Lubbock to go to public school. Are they in some sort of competition with Florida or New York or flood their state with lawyers? Is the next Civil War going to be fought using the Federal Rules of Civ. Procedure or something?

I understand Texas has a growing population, but the reasons for building law schools become more silly and ripe for satire by the month. "Geographic inequity?" My God, this is law school, not buying groceries or voting. It's not really a big deal that some people might have to move if they want to take such a large career step.

About Columbia Law School and Employment

In case you've missed it, Columbia Law School has been rather vigorous in their attempts to correct the impression made by the recent New York Times article that an indebted student featured in the Times' expose graduated from Columbia Law. A good summation of the situation can be garnered by checking out the recent posts at First Tier Toilet, whom the Law School has repeatedly contacted regarding the error and on which the former student has allegedly posted in an attempt to clear the matter up.

Columbia is, of course, correct, and they're entitled to their correction. The student, it appears, was never an enrolled student in Columbia Law, and he did not graduate from there as the article implied.

But by no means does clean Columbia from the article's scope. Consider the following:

• Columbia claims on their website that "98% of the Class of 2009 was employed by graduation in a variety of legal fields," although they provide no source for this claim. It seems high, considering only 90% of Columbia grads taking the NY Bar passed on the 1st try in 2005. Why would someone hire a 90th percentile Columbia grad knowing that? Is working at the law school a "legal field?"
  
• On the same webpage, Columbia claims that "82% of Columbia's Class of 2009 chose to join law firms of varying sizes and areas of practice immediately after earning their J.D. degree...6% immediately entered public interest, government, or academic positions; Eight percent of the Class of 2009 received federal clerkships throughout the country; and 2% entered the business sector." (emphasis mine).
  
• But, in May of 2009, Columbia "offered their unemployed graduates low-paying eight- or nine-month-long fellowships so as to be able to count those students as employed for the purposes of USNWR." According to Above the Law, there were five of these fellowships offered.

Now, I would hope readers of this blog are sharp enough to figure out that something here smells repulsively of bullshit. And no matter which part is bullshit, somehow it all comes back to Columbia School of Law.

The grand point here is that even if Columbia wants to cry foul over the bruising indignity of having a Columbia M.A. in International Law / Florida J.D. graduate confused with a Columbia J.D., Columbia is playing the numbers shell-game as much as anyone else.

No one has a 98-100% response rate on voluntary surveys sent to 300-400 people. Temporary fellowships are not employment, and they wouldn't be necessary if 98% could actually find "legal field" employment. "Within nine months" is not "immediately," and I imagine few of Columbia's lower-tier graduates had the pleasure of "choosing" the firm they practiced at.

I'm not going to sit here and say that Columbia is not a good school. On the contrary, it has an excellent placement record and is probably worth the expenditure for a student going in to law school fully-informed; for a student whose goal is to work in the Manhattan skyscrapers, there might not be a better option than going to Columbia provided he or she can gain admission and put up with the people there. It's one of maybe 20 or so schools I'd actually consider paying full tuition at.

But let's not pretend schools like Columbia are exempt from the "creative accounting" explained in the New York Times article. Whether a fourth tier for-profit counts Arby's employees as "employed" or a certain school concocts some fellowship to boost employment and stay ahead of a NYU and Penn in the rankings, it's manipulation, it's unfair to consumers, and it's ethically abhorrent, no matter what the ABA finds permissible.

On Advertising, Law School v. Medical School

When I run a simple google search for "medical school," I don't see any legitimate American medical schools advertising, not even for lower-regarded, lesser-known ones. The only advertisements I see are for places in the Caribbean (like this and this) or Mexico.

Even if they were allowed to (I'm not sure that they are), I'm not sure medical schools would advertise on the internet. They really have no need to.

But law schools? I wasn't surprised to see Thomas Jefferson advertising on this site, or St. Thomas advertising on other sites, but some of the following surprised me. Even when Thomas Jefferson advertises, it amazes me that they don't censor what articles their advertisements appear on better:


Extremely dignified, isn't it? Advertising on an article about law school being overpriced, right below the "sympathetic" family law people?

In case you cannot read it, the one on the lower right is Hofstra, a top 100 school; upper left is St. Thomas, a Catholic law school in Minnesota.

But if I had to guess who the real high-roller on google ads would be, it'd be Syracuse:

Yes, if you run a search for law schools near ARIZONA, Syracuse Law comes up. I'm pretty sure you have to pay quite a bit of last year's tuition money to get a placement so absurd.

If salaries really were in the stratosphere and being a lawyer really was the cat's meow, would school really have to take such steps of desperation, the same routes as countless "get-your-degree-now!" places?

You expect cheap ads from lawyers trying to pull in mesothelioma clients or pushing for father's rights, but for law school?

That's some pathetic, desperate penny stock advertising for a $100k+ investment that alleges a high rate of return. Medical schools don't (and don't have to) do this.

Just some food for thought.

Fallout from NYT Article: Are Economists Dumb?

There are a number of articles regurgitating what was said in the NYT yesterday, including the Baltimore Sun, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal (wouldn't it be nice if these guys spent their morning time working on their own stories instead of recycling someone else's?)

But one short reaction piece that especially struck me came from Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. To wit:

Most of the thousands of economists gathered this weekend at the annual convention of the American Economics Association in Denver would probably agree with MIT economist David Autor, that the big problem facing the U.S. labor market is that our workforce is not being adequately educated.

By contrast, the NYT devoted a lengthy article to tell readers about the dismal job market facing young lawyers. . . . It is worth noting that if Autor is right, then the NYT has seriously misrepresented the state of the legal market.

Wrong. Completely, stupendously, absolutely wrong.

First, Autor and the other economists are correct on some small level. We do need a more educated workforce, but it must be education that fits our economic needs. Piling on random years in school does not meet that need, and a society where everyone has a law degree is no more "educated" than a society of high school dropout dunces. We need people to study medicine, hard sciences research, international business, foreign languages, etc.; a law degree for a lower-tiered grad right now is no better than an art history degree in meeting our need to be "more educated."

Second, screaming "more education" from the mountaintops is no answer to American's economic problems; rather, it's calling for a band-aid after a grenade has torn two limbs and left shrapnel all over Uncle Sam's back. We have simply farmed out everything that can be farmed out without sharing the profits of the farming even though the costs are carried by everyone. That's essentially created a class of people who are forever screwed in this economy.

What happened with law school (and in undergraduate education and by some accounts in pharmacy school and in film school and in paralegal programs) can certainly happen in every other area of education where apparent demand (boosted by naive economists, advertising, and mass media) can far outpace actual demand, causing a glut of applicants, skyrocketing enrollments and tuition, a veritable economic bubble, and a lot of aspiring, otherwise-intelligent young people getting screwed with non-dischargable debt.

People have been "getting educated" for years. There are people in my law school who are trilingual and on advanced degree number three. Generation Y is the most paper-educated in history thus far and guess what? It's no defense when there's someone in India who can do the job for cheaper. The Indians and Chinese and Vietnamese and Malaysians can educate themselves just the same as we do. Why would a degree be any defense when the Board of Directors at Company XYZ decides to move some operation overseas or to Mexico to cut costs?

Such thinking is silly and short-sighted, a thoughtless solution to a weighty, perplexing problem.

The fact that something calling itself the Center for Economic and Policy Research can neither see right through this nor see that even if it were entirely accurate the New York Times may have been dead-on accurate is rather pathetic.

Administrative Hypocrisy Rampant in NYT Article

Wow. For those who haven't seen it, the NY Times (David Segal) has done a seven-page article on the problems with law school (the law school "scam"). Special recognition to Kimber at SMS is owed for her presence and role in the piece. BIDER and JJD have already commented on the article, and there's little I can add to either their commentary or the article itself on its basic idea.

But I do want to call some of the administrative hypocrites in the article out for what they are, as it seems that part of the article may get lost in taking in the whole seven pages while people digest the enormity of having the problem showcased in the NYT. Considering the administrators in isolation shows why change to the current system must come from the outside, as the law school administrators become too biased in maintaining the status quo that benefits them. I think this is a point that needs to be made explicitly.

I greatly respect the work of Mr. Segal, so I'm going to borrow as minimally as possible to make my point, and I encourage all my readers to go to the Times and read the entire article; it's absolutely worth it.

First up is Beth Kransberger, associate dean at Thomas Jefferson School of Law (one of the law schools who occasionally advertise on this site via cheap google ads), who offered this:

[She] stands by [their 92% employment] figure, noting that it includes 25 percent of those graduates who could not be located, as well as anyone who went on to other graduate studies — all perfectly kosher under the guidelines....

“You need to take the high road,” she said. “Schools that are behaving the most ethically want students who come to law school with their eyes open."

Ms. Kransberger, you know very well that less than 25% of the non-respondents are employed, don't you? And you realize that graduate school is not the same thing as a remunerative job, right? So if you really want to "take the high road" and give students enough information to keep "their eyes open" as they enter law school, why are you adding them in?

No one cares about the "guidelines" except the USNWR people and the ABA. Students need to know how many of your respondents are actually employed as lawyers or at work similar in prestige and pay. "Schools . . . behaving . . . ethically" do not include an arbitrary figure of non-respondents as "employed" merely to boost their numbers, regardless of what the guidelines say what you can and can't do. You also should not be including baristas at Starbucks to behave "ethically." As a lawyer (I presume), you should know that law and ethics do not always align. As a legal educator, you should not be mistaking compliance with the law with moral behavior.

Next up is Phillip Closius, now dean at the University of Baltimore School of Law, who manipulated where low-LSAT students were placed to cause his former employer, Toledo, to shoot up in the rankings. He gets on the list with one paraphrased, self-explanatory sentiment:

In his estimation, a dean who pays attention to the U.S. News rankings isn’t gaming the system; he’s making the school better.

...as if the average student could tell one lick of difference in the education he or she received because the school's USNWR rating shot up 50 spots. On the previous page of the article, Dean Closius had said there were fallacies in the USNWR rankings; now he says following them makes the school better, which is an admission that they have value, which would suggest they are not based on fallacies. Make up your mind.

Next is Dean Yellen at Loyola, who gave this revelation:

...I do know that a lot of schools are hyping a lot of misleading statistics.

Yes, Dean Yellen . . . LIKE YOUR OWN!

Finally we have Yellen's cross-town rival David Greenberger, associate dean at DePaul, who added this:

I think [prospective students] should have all the info, and the info should be accurate, but saying once they know that they shouldn’t be allowed to come, that’s predicated on the idea that students are really ignorant and don’t know what is best for them.

Dean Greenberger, if this is what you believe, why does your school not give "all the info" and why is it not accurate?

Take a look at the following, directly from DePaul's prospective student profile in its admissions department:

Employment & Career Services Information

In 2009, 92.8% of the graduating class reported employment within nine months of graduation. While most DePaul graduates choose to stay in Illinois, specifically in Chicago, many choose to practice in other states. Popular employment locations for 2009 DePaul graduates include California, Indiana, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Washington, DC, and Wisconsin..

Employment Categories

Private Practice	50%
Business	26.1%
Government	12.1%
Public Interest	4.4%
Judicial Clerkships	1.5%
Academia	4.4%
Unknown	1.5%

Salary Statistics

Average Starting Salary in Private Practice	$97,056
Average Starting Salary in Business	$74,267
Total Starting Salary Range	$25,000-190,000

That's it for the website. What in the hell does any of this tell the average prospective student?

Anyone who's taken even an elementary course in statistics knows that an average is not a good measurement for data like this, as they are more susceptible to being skewed by outliers (like the $190,000 graduates) than a median.

What does "business" mean? Is stocking shelves at Costco "business?" How does one know anything by knowing the "average starting salary in business?" Is that all non-J.D. positions, or is it consulting and sales gigs? Is it J.D.-required jobs serving as inside counsel for major corporations?

What does it mean to say "92.8% of the graduating class reported employment within nine months of graduation." Is that permanent employment or do temporary gigs count, i.e., if they were employed for a 2-week gig during the nine month period? Is it really ALL graduates, or just survey respondents (ABA guidelines would suggest it's just survey respondents). Is it legal employment or non-legal employment? How many people even responded to the survey about their salaries? Obviously, if you had at least 7.2% unemployed, your salary range should be 0-$190,000, right?

To Dean Greenberger, I have no problem with the attitude in the latter half of your quote, but the students must have sufficient information first. Unless people like you and Dean Yellen start at home and have your own schools providing accurate, helpful information, your words are meaningless. It's one thing to talk about full and accurate information; get off your butt and do it. Set an example for your peers and the rest of the legal community and push for change in the ABA.

Until then you are nothing but another hypocrite spitting out empty buzz-words and platitudes trying to thrust blame on someone else. You have the power to change the system.

But unfortunately, as the article suggests (notably by Prof. Henderson), change is not likely to come from that quarter. There are at least six law school administrations mentioned or quoted in the article (including Georgetown's) and not a damned one of them comes off as defending anything of virtue. The quoted non-administrator professors all know what they're talking about and as far as I recall, each one puts a hammer to a nail. Something must change when you become an administrator; either that or the wrong people get promoted to that type of work.

These are the people who are to lead the next generation of lawyers, a field where ethical considerations are paramount. If they cannot perform their jobs without blatant hypocrisy or a confusion of ethics with following some silly guidelines, it speaks volumes about the state of legal education, as well as the ability of the profession to self-regulate.

Massachusetts School of Law: Can You Love and Hate A Thing Simultaneously?

Michael Coyne is the Associate Dean at the regionally-accredited Massachusetts School of Law, although given the tone of his recent piece in the Worcester Telegram, he might be promoted to Minister of Propaganda.

It's hard to disagree with sentiments such as this:

• Tuition costs at law schools accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) have doubled in the last nine years....
• Nowhere is the need for reform of higher education more obvious than in legal education....
• The ABA continues its monopolistic control over access to legal education, imposing its costly outdated model of 19th century legal education on all ABA law schools, where annual tuitions have now reached $50,000, with $60,000 annual tuitions likely just three years away.

I love that there is, somewhere, someone operating a law school that is pissing off the ABA. I love that they do not use the LSAT and rely instead on personal interviews. I love that they try to keep tuition down (40% of other schools) while spitting out functional lawyers.

What I don't like are ridiculous statements like this:

Mortgages, bonds, and long-term loan forgiveness programs are now needed to pay for the cost of a law degree at an ABA law school.

With ever-escalating tuitions and access to loans dwindling, our country’s middle class finds itself hard-pressed to see the promise of opportunity that a law degree provides as nothing more than a mirage on an ever-elusive horizon.

Access is not really the issue. Virtually anyone has access to federally-backed loans to go to school. The problem is that the return on the investment is not high enough to justify the cost. In my experience, very few people have problems with "access to loans;" if anything, the problem is that loans are too freely given without concern for the loan being paid back. There's no need to rephrase this issue as one of class or access. It's bad enough that they lie about the return on investment to rake in more money.

And then there's this strain of junk:

The MSL model is a highly successful, practice-based, lower-cost method of legal education patterned after the medical school approach to higher education.

...

MSL is now nationally recognized for its effectiveness at training law students and its success in winning various regional and national advocacy awards. Legal journals are reporting on the growing number of ABA law school graduates vocal about having been forced to sacrifice their lives on the altar of high ABA law school tuitions.

Highly successful? Nationally recognized? Really? And why do complaining students show that your school makes any more sense than the rest of them? Again, the problem isn't restricted to tuition, it's a debt- and rate-of-return problem. MSL could cost $10 for a degree, but if the degree is only worth $5, it's just as much a scam as any other school, just on a smaller scale.

And then there's this whopper:

Americans have a God-given right to higher education. It is the promised path to a better future that every generation of Americans has passed on to those that followed. Let freedom and innovation ring. We will then be able to provide the “justice for all” that the inscription above our Supreme Court promises.

Um...yeah. The inscription is "Equal Justice For All," higher education is not a "promised path" to anything, and if we were really to "let freedom and innovation ring," the last remnants of professionalism in the attorney field would perish.

There's a bunch of phony rhetoric about how the LSAT discriminates against minorities and how law schools are too white, but to me the real problem in the article is that he misses the point.

That outdated model of 19th century education is not "costly" to run. On the contrary, it's quite cheap: pack 80 students in a room and get someone to talk about negligence or equitable servitude. The high costs seem to come from elsewhere, specifically the human resource department. Many law schools are still profit centers, and the fact that for-profit enterprises can compete with public schools and non-profit universities should give you a hint that the cost really isn't that prohibitive.

The problem isn't, either, that we've closed access. It's that demand for a legal education has risen dramatically on manipulated statistics, a distorted public perception, and federally-backed loans that are remarkably easy to get.

Remember the housing crisis? One of the factors of rapidly escalating home prices was the fact that we had this idea that there was a strong preference (bordering on a right) for everyone to own a home. Lender standards were relaxed so more minorities and other poor people would have more access to home ownership. Within a decade, people were defaulting like crazy - and it wasn't just those who purchased expensive, overpriced homes, but also those poor people who suddenly had access to 75k-100k homes. Message: you should not be "promising" or give a "right" to what are basically high-cost economic goods.

I swear this all just happened less than 5 years ago, but people like Michael Coyne seem to have missed the message. If the MSL's idea of fixing the law school problem is to admit all comers on lower tuition than the other guys with no regard as to the chances of paying it back, they're just as bad as everyone else. How do they think poor minorities come up with the 15k a year needed to pay tuition? Last time I checked, not many poor people have 45k in the bank and very, very few could pay that and their living expenses without incurring more debt. And when they graduate with 45k (or more) in unsecured, non-dischargable debt, how are they going to pay it back? Their school will not have a good reputation and they will have little chance at getting a mid- or large-firm job.

To my eyes, there are two things that need to fundamentally change with law schools; there are many minor changes, but many can be seen as tangents of these two:

1. The curriculum needs to be changed to adequately prepare and develop modern working lawyers; this is an issue with the ABA's standards.
2. The law schools must reduce the number of graduates and/or the cost of a legal education to accurately meet the demand for legal services; this is an issue with ABA accreditation, federal bankruptcy law, federal higher education lending standards, and plain old false advertising.

MSL seems to have figured out the first. But Mr. Coyne seems out to lunch regarding the second, and MSL's solution would only serve to saturate the legal marketplace ever more. There may be fewer students with 300k in debt under the current MSL model. But if lawyer work is only valued at 25k a year, is 75k in total law school debt even worth it? With completely-opened access to legal education, the market only becomes more saturated, and the earning power of every law degree - especially MSL'S pieces of paper - drops dramatically.

Grasp that, Michael Coyne, and you'll see why I can't embrace your school, even though I salute it's general attitude towards the ABA.

News Roundup: No Wisconsin Bar Exam?, Brooklyn LS Strikes a Deal, Florida Legal Education for Free, and More

Many items around the news today.

We start in Wisconsin, where a member of one of the state bar's committees has suggested eliminating the bar exam altogether. Wisconsin currently exempts those in-state graduates from having to take the test, but may go further.

“I think the bar exam should be just removed as a requirement and I don’t think there is any evidence that it creates a better lawyer,” attorney Eric S. Brittain, who serves on the State Bar of Wisconsin’s BBE Review Committee, told the WLJ.

As someone who sees little to no value in the bar exam, I have to agree with Mr. Brittain. A move towards other alternatives that actually prepare students for the real-life practice of law seems to be ideal.

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The ABA is considering lessening the importance of tenure in their accreditation of law schools, which has some professors upset, apparently. The article is subscription, and I do not have one, but I thought it worthy of note.

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The Brooklyn Law School struck a deal to sell a 12-story graduate residence hall for $12 million dollars. The building is scheduled to be within a historical district that would cause student rents to increase. The developer who purchased the building - which had been owned by BLS for over 30 years - plans to turn it into 24 condominiums that he will market for $1 million a piece.

"We are seeking to consolidate our housing and are looking for another project," said Joan G. Wexler, president of Brooklyn Law School, in a statement regarding the sale of the residence hall, which is currently occupied by graduate students.

My guess is that "consolidate our housing" means getting out of it altogether and "looking for another project" means putting the profitable proceeds in the bank.

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The Clearwater (Fl.) (near Tampa) Bar Association is going to be offering a "People's Law School." Although this sounds like something Mao Zedong would come up with, it is a free weekly program running for 15 weeks for two hours every Thursday night that will give an overview of "everyday" law.

If you are a law student at one of Florida's many schools, this might not be a bad idea. After all, it costs $35k a year to learn about things like the role of primogeniture and the fee tail in English property law, but to learn debtor's rights or how to file a simple divorce in the state in which you live, the bar association is willing to teach you for free. I realize most of what they say could be found with a simple Google search, but the fact that their 30 hours of commentary would likely be far more relevant to students who actually want to practice law locally - for free, mind you - is both hilarious and sad at the same time.

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Elon Law School, which is anticipating receiving full accreditation from the ABA this spring, has been authorized by the university's Board of Trustees to purchase more land near the law school in order to "accommodate enrollment growth, legal clinics and student organizations." This probably means they're hearing very position signs from the ABA, which shouldn't surprise anyone.

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While unemployed graduates may have a hard time finding work, the same does not hold true for unemployed politicians.

• Marquette University will add to its roster - which already includes Bud Selig - with former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold.
• The U. of Pennsylvania is adding former Senator Arlen Specter to teach a course on the Separation of Powers.
• Stetson is looking to add former Gov. Charlie Crist as a "Distinguished Professional Lecturer."

Unlike Selig, all three are actually trained lawyers, but it still makes you wonder about the system, doesn't it? All of these guys failed at their last job and none have been in private practice for some time, nor do any have teaching experience. They really have nothing that can actually help the current law student, but the schools here are likely paying a premium in order to boost the school's prestige, and that's obviously worth more than producing graduates fully ready to practice law at the lowest cost possible.

Why Pay Tuition? Get Your Law Degree on eBay!

Yes, a(nother?) disgruntled graduated has decided to sell her degree on eBay...but only for the right price:

“Resume Goddess” is selling a six year old law degree on eBay, never used, from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. She tells NetNet that loans from the third tier law school have “ruined” her life.

The price for this wonderful piece of paper? $200k starting bid. Looks like someone was looking for return on her investment!

I can't get the actual eBay auction to load. It's probably been taken down, since eBay values the integrity of its system and all, but at least it made it to CNBC.

Patriotism = Defaulting on a Student Loan

If you're ever in need of a quick statistic/drunken quip for cocktail parties as to how our lawmakers perversely incentive all sorts of government-fueled fiscally-suicidal behavior, take a look at today's Wall St. Journal:

After paying the companies that actually collect the loans and other costs, the U.S. Department of Education expects to recover 85% of defaulted federal loan dollars based on current value. The recovery figures are quite generous when compared with other corners of consumer debt. Banks, for example, often retrieve less than 10 cents on the dollar from overdue credit cards.
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According to [Mark] Kantrowitz [of finaid.org], the government stands to earn $2,010.44 more in interest from a $10,000 loan that defaulted than if it had been paid in full over a 20-year term, and $6,522.00 more than if it had been paid back in 10 years. Alan Collinge, founder of borrowers' rights advocacy Student Loan Justice, said the high recovery rates provide a "perverted incentive" for the government to allow loans to go into default. Kantrowitz estimates the recovery rate would need to fall to below 50% in order for default prevention efforts to become more lucrative than defaults themselves.

So because student loans are non-dischargeable, the federal government can wallop the private sector on the collection of unsecured debts. The result is that government has no incentive whatsoever to correct the problem because, sure as I'm sitting here, that number would drop right down to 10% (maybe lower) if students could discharge, even if it were only after a time period (my preferred suggestion, if my Congressman is reading). Likewise, government has little incentive to stop lending money anytime soon with that kind of rate of return (representatives don't usually make good bankers, so they're probably not adjusting for inflation).

If the state makes more money on defaulted loans than properly-paid ones, it's seems like it might be one's patriotic duty to let it default and pay more. Fiscal responsibility ceased being an American virtue at the federal government quite some time ago, so why should it promote individuals to keep up the charade?

Know Anyone At East Tennessee State?

I know undergraduate schools have law school fairs all the time, but I thought this one coming up at East Tennessee State on Jan. 18 was especially interesting. Here's a list of the participating schools:

• Appalachia
• Ave Maria
• Belmont
• Campbell
• Charlotte
• Drexel
• Florida Coastal
• Liberty
• Lincoln Memorial/Duncan
• Memphis
• Mercer
• Tennessee
• Stetson

Apparently, if you ever want to have a regional pow-wow of lower-tiered law schools, just have a law school fair at a lower-tiered undergraduate school. There must be a Batman-like sign that goes up that calls admissions people to the trough of possible tuition-payers.

There is one school on this list I would pay a dime to attend (Tennessee, and that's only if I was a Tennessee resident and didn't get a scholarship to somewhere nicer).

One of the panel presentations is going to be called "Why Go to Law School." If anyone near ETSU is free on January 18th and wants to have some productive fun, go and ask the representatives what percentage of their graduates are employed, what percentage default on their loans, etc.

I understand ETSU probably thinks its doing its students a service by hosting the educational equivalent of a "buy-a-Timeshare-now" circus, but ETSU's "best and brightest" would be best served by having an objective picture rather than an orgy of propaganda.