Kentucky Wants to Hike Tuition Solely for Professors' Salaries

At least the University of Kentucky is being honest, right? At least about their motives? In addition to the 6% across-the-board tuition hike for UK students, law dean David Brennen is requesting an additional 1.8% to pay his professors even more cash.

"Our salary structure is simply not competitive with other law schools with which we compete," Brennen wrote. "For example, the average faculty salary at the University of Georgia College of Law is nearly 40 percent higher than the average faculty salary at our college. Top 20 law schools average almost 50 percent higher faculty pay."

Brennen's salary is $250,000, according to a February 2011 UK salary database.

I actually think Brennen's criticism is kind-of justified (see below) but as an initial matter, I find it hilariously disingenuous that Brennen is comparing his school's situation to the University of Georgia's or to a "top 20" law school's.

Georgia is in Athens, which is not far from Atlanta. In Atlanta, Emory, Georgia State, and John Marshall-Atlanta all hire professors. Emory is a superior school to Georgia and Georgia State is a fairly well-regarded secondary public school (at 61st in the USNWR rankings, it's ranked higher than Kentucky, Kansas, UNLV, Oklahoma, etc.). Furthermore, Atlanta has a sizable legal market where many of these professors might go and practice as an alternative to teaching. That is considerable competition for people the law school wants, meaning higher salaries, so long as they're playing along with the whole prestige thing (and since they're ranked 35th in the USNWR, it's a safe bet they are).

Kentucky is ranked 71st is the USNWR. Its in-state rival, Louisville, is ranked 100th. Northern Kentucky is in what used to be the fourth tier. There is no quality private school in Kentucky that may drive up salaries, nor is there a large legal market to give professors an alternative place to take whatever unique skills they think they have. Where are they going to go, Cincinnati?

The cost of living in Athens is more or less a wash compared to the cost of living in Lexington, but these are completely different schools and its completely disingenuous of the dean to use Georgia as a salary negotiation tactic to get he and his buddies more coin to spend at the horse track.

Not that I'm much of a believer in the USNWR rankings, but Kentucky ain't no top 20 law school, so its professors should not be getting paid what a top 20 law professor gets paid. Kentucky is a flagship school in a state with a relatively small legal market. It fills a niche position, much like Kansas, New Mexico, Oregon, etc., and has very little chance of ever seriously competing with the top 25ish schools. At this point, the 1.8% increase seems like nothing more than a wealth grab by the faculty.

But Brennen does have a point to some extent if you look at the right numbers and consider who Kentucky's real competition is. One great thing about Kentucky is that they put their salaries online.

David Brennen - $250,000
William Wiecek - $180,000
Rutherford Campbell - $149,480
R. Schwemm - $146,043
Eugene Gaetke - $138,874
...

These aren't astronomical numbers by law faculty standards, but if any of them (or the ones making "only" $80-100k are having a hard time living in Lexington, Kentucky (median household income = $39k), they should quit, move, and give their position to a recent graduate.

What this really comes down to, I think, becomes apparent when you look at the salaries at their main competitor (real, not imagined), Louisville:

James Chen - $250,858.67
David Leibson - $188,168.00
Manning Warren - $182,114.00
Laura Rothstein - $178,021.04
Leslie Abramson - $162,341.00
...

I'm sure the Kentucky people are wondering why (or rather "furious that") Louisville is paying its faculty slightly more for a "lesser" school and that's at least part of the motivation for the salary request, especially since the cost of living in Louisville is only about 80% what it is in Lexington.

This is a much better point than the idea that Kentucky is trying to compete with the University of Georgia (or, God forbid, with Texas, Emory, UCLA, Vanderbilt, etc.). When you compare its numbers to Louisville's, the UK faculty really is getting screwed about as much as a law faculty can.

Of course, the real answer to this "dilemma" is not to raise Kentucky's tuition as a penalty for its administration's failure to keep up with salary inflation. Instead, the proper solution is to lower Louisville's salary levels and keep Kentucky's at the same rate. But with this ruling generation and this governmental climate, the answer is never to stand pat as a matter of fiscal responsibility. The answer is to raise expenditures and then jack up taxes (or in this case, tuition), albeit often this is accomplished indirectly (as in "we'll do it 10 years from now when the main beneficiaries of this thriftless zeitgeist are frying in hell").

Regardless of what one's peers are getting paid and whether or not its "just" between comparable employees, I still think it's deplorable for a group of six-figure earners running a non-profit educational racket to make their students fork over an additional $300-400 every year because they're the laughing stock of the AALS convention.

So in conclusion, David Brennen has a point from a fairness standpoint, but he argued it very poorly (he gets paid $250k and in 30 minutes I (salary = $0) found an argument that would probably work better to most aware people) and it's not a very morally-digestible argument, even if it's "fair."

And I think that's a good way to wrap up April.

19 Year Old International Lawyer? Um...No.

If you ever want to see a collection of delusional human beings, look no further than this article here and half the comments it's generated:

[16-year-old Kayla Heard] lives with her mother and brother on the banks of the Hood Canal in Union, Wash. Next month, she will become the youngest person ever to graduate from Washington State University. She pursued her degree online.
...
So positive was Kayla's undergraduate online experience, she hopes to attend law school online and to that end will spend her summer filling out applications.
...
The homeschooler, who will pursue international law, hopes to work abroad one day.

This is damned crazy, isn't it?

I explained my position in a comment, but just to reiterate, I honestly believe this child's parents are grossly negligent, especially if they promote her getting an online degree.

I am all for nurturing prodigies. If our society somehow (against all odds) produces the next Mozart or Keats, we should celebrate their gifts and do everything we can as a society to aid their progress.

But I want to be crystal clear: getting an online college degree at 16 is neither an indication of prodigy or a process that truly can nurture intellectual gifts. Likewise, getting an online degree in law does nothing to nurture one's innate abilities, nor does it particularly improve one's employability.

This individual is obviously gifted. But checking off perfunctory requirements in a race to get the high school diploma, the B.A., the graduate degree, is an absurd task that detracts from their overall intellect by denying them an opportunity to nurture their talents in other ways. Instead of knowledge being an end in itself, knowledge becomes a means to attaining another notch in the belt, whereby the individual can plow through to another degree.

If Kayla does graduate with a law degree at 19, I would never in a million years hire her as a young attorney. No one should. An important part of being a lawyer (or any profession) is having some level of emotional development. I'm all for homeschooling for elementary school in some cases, but if you rarely leave the house and interact with others, you have no business representing anyone.

If we're ever going to change things in American education, we have to start recognizing some fundamental truths. One such truth is that no matter how smart and how driven you are, you simply cannot always get your dream job. A real parent would grab young Kayla by the shoulders and tell her that if she wants to be an international lawyer, she needs to go to a real brick-and-mortar law school, and that going to an online law school will prove to be a worthless sojourn that may actually foreclose her from working in the firms that do international law.

If we're ever to restore our system of education, we must stop telling these lies. People are not skeptics merely because they are "jealous" of another's abilities. They are skeptics because blind faith in anything - including the "I can do anything" mantra - is one of the worst attributes of humanity.

What happens to these poor children is that they are pumped up by a dim-witted Hollywood-fueled society who wants to tell them they are amazing and push them through the ranks of schooling. But at the end of the tunnel, what happens? They wind up with PhD's fighting for faculty positions like the other schmucks who wound up in graduate school. Or, in Kayla's case, they wind up as unemployed attorneys because in the rah-rah lead-up to her online law degree no one told her that no one at the big law firms is interested in a degree from Concord.

There's a disconnect between what the market really wants and between what people tell these kids the market wants. That's ultimately the problem. The truth is that the only people who want a 19-year-old lawyer are people who looking for amusement, that news article about the youngest-person-ever doing something. The people who actually pay lawyers to do international law work have no business for a 19-year-old lawyer who's never been in a brick-and-mortar school.

Who ultimately loses in this arrangement? The kids, and no one else. The amused get what they want - while calling those of us with an ounce of realism "jealous" - and the employers continue employing people who are actually qualified in their eyes. The kid is stuck with whatever baggage the ignorance of the promoters left him with.

In the end, that's ultimately the problem with our entire educational system: no one's really and honestly interested in making the actual students fit market needs. The teachers teach to tests so they can pass politicians' low hurdles. The college professors teach their research interests. The advisers advise to pre-set scheduling sheets. The law professors never bother actually preparing their students for practice, so long as they set up a class that will make exam-grading easy and allow them to teach socratically.

And so employers are left finding clumsy heuristics. If a student has a B.S. degree, surely at some point, they learned how to function in an office and do basic mathematics. If a student has a M.B.A., surely at some point someone taught them how to manage inventory and do basic accounting. And so with every generation, another degree is required. In my parents' generation, getting a bachelor's set one for the labor market. In my older cousin's, getting a master's degree meant you were in good shape. In my generation, not even an advanced graduate degree can save you unless it's in a niche field of need.

To fix our education system, we have to stop thinking this way. But poor Kayla obviously has too many people in her life telling her that her next step should always be to get a degree. Whoever told her officially entering college at 10 was a good idea should be slapped across the face, and whoever is telling her now that entering a law curriculum at 16 is a good idea should be slapped across the face. And the journalists who perpetuate these myths by appealing to the stupid should be slapped across the face.

The best thing Kayla can do right now is avoid school like the plague for a good 3-4 years. Grow up (from 16-20 is a crucial and large developmental step for anyone) a bit. Travel, work, learn in those ways that people used to learn but now they eschew in favor of yet another degree. Do something else, but for the love of all that's good and holy, do not stay in the education vortex. The world (the real world, the one that matters) simply does not reward you for racing through an education, regardless of what the Hollywood-minded tell you.

And sadly, you are not "unique" enough to change the fundamentals of the world. No one is, and anyone who tells you otherwise is derelict in their duty as a parent, adviser, or global citizen. Knowledge is power, but it has to be the right kind of knowledge, and until you learn the world enough to know who gets hired as international lawyers, you'd be wise to stay away from legal education.

I Should Be Optimistic Because . . .

This is from Larry Ribstein, who has written previously about the slow collapse of biglaw and the future of the legal profession in general:

"I think the horizon for what you can do with a legal education hasn't shrunk, but has actually expanded," said Ribstein, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law. "Change can be bad for some people, especially for those who have a stake in the current system, but it can also be good, and I think the future is going to be much more complex than envisioned by some critics."

When you say "those who have a stake in the current system," are you looking the mirror at all, Larry?

Regardless, I'm really intrigued by this idea that legal education is now opening more doors than it has in the past, what those doors are (I'd love to find one), and how the educational industry created those doors.

Unfortunately, none of those pesky details made it into the article. They must have been left on the editing room floor. Instead, the writer gives us a rather incoherent stream of reasoning including the following in an unconnected fashion:

• Law schools should focus on meeting global demand.
• Legal education hasn't changed much in the last century because of rigid accreditation standards.
• Biglaw is dying.
• Outsourcing is just a temporary stop-gap until the machines improve efficiency domestically and lawyer work becomes more exciting ("I think this is going to lead to an era of lawyers doing even more interesting things than they're doing now.")
• Most of the professors working now will be dead or retired when these changes really change the profession (as opposed to them being affected by the scores of unemployed recent graduates).

But, yeah, there's room for optimism:

"The plus side for entering law students is that their future is much more wide open than that of their immediate predecessors," he said. "So that's a cause for optimism."

In the future, I hope we have law professors who actually back up their ridiculous statements with actual proof. Frankly, I think a law school graduate in 1960 had it much, much better than a law school graduate of 2010. That is, unless Ribstein can actually show us where these mystical doors that make the J.D. a versatile instead of a one-way ticket to attorney licensing.

The caption on the picture instructs the reader to be skeptical that the future of the legal profession is dire. If baseless statements like "you can do more with a legal education now!" are cause for optimism, I find my healthy skepticism is best used in the opposite direction, especially since people like Prof. Ribstein the marketers with the vested interest in keeping the system pumping.

In the meantime, I'll continue to consider statements like "the horizon for what you can do with a law degree hasn't shrunk, but has actually expanded" no better to the crap spewed by liberal arts advisers selling sociology degrees to future retail workers. Way to aim high, legal education.

Law School Psychology 101 And A Texas A&M Law School?

When researchers study the psychology of consumers, they often find that individuals will continue researching information about a product they've already purchased after they've bought it in order to rationalize their behavior and cure any buyer's remorse.

We see this all the time among law students. Today's example would be Marisa Mittelman, who seems excited about going to the University of San Diego Law School in the fall:

When choosing between my final two schools (UC-Hastings and USD), however, I have to say that from every angle these things seemed nearly equal. I heard amazing things from students at both schools, saying they loved their professors, that the administration is always helpful and available, and that job prospects weren’t looking great anywhere. Is this last part discouraging? Of course. The fact is, though, that students who are working hard are still getting jobs. Clearly, the market is not what it once was. That applies to any law school, though, and I think that if you’re one hundred percent sure you want to be an attorney, you need to just sort of go for it. I plan to work my ass off and hope for the best—I don’t think there’s anything more that someone who is intent on practicing law can do.

Here's an idea: How about getting rid of this idea that's it's justifiable to make a bad decision so long as you're "intent on practicing law." Can you imagine this logic applying to any other product?

"But, honey, I was intent on being a Bentley owner! That's why I signed the papers!"

And Marisa is remarkably cavalier about the lack of job opportunities. "[S]tudents who are working hard are still getting jobs" is (a) complete crap that's disrespectful to recent graduates and unemployed 3Ls who are probably smarter than her; and (b) not dispositive of whether she'll have a job if she works hard. (On the bright side, you may not have a job, but you'll integrate words like "dispositive" into your everyday vocabulary.)

Again, this type of logic never shows up in intelligent investment situations. "Yes, I understand the entire sector is down in the toilet and has limited prospects, but this little stock is the best of this small, affordable bunch, so I'll buy it." Not quite. Getting a law school degree right now is like buying a house in 2007. It may work out for you. You might have a nice place to live. But it's a catastrophic financial decision even if you're "100 percent sure" you want to be a homeowner. There are much better options out there. A helpful administration and lovable professors can't pay bills or compensate for the loss of your mid-20s.

USD is an amazing school...Call me an eternal optimist, but I can’t wait to become a lawyer. And I can’t wait to begin my time at the University of San Diego School of Law.

Reality check: USD may be the best school in San Diego, but it is not a well-regarded law school outside that city, therefore it cannot be "an amazing school." This woman wants to be a family law attorney. There are two other law schools in San Diego who feed into areas like family law in addition to the transplants from places like Loyola and Pepperdine. And if she has any designs on moving back to New York, she'll be in for a rude awakening when Brooklyn Law School grads are beating her out for jobs.

And it's not like family law is generally a field for self-styled "eternal optimists," anyway, but she may be saved from that rude awakening by the rude awakening that a much-smaller-than-advertised segment of her graduating class will have full-time employment, no matter how hard they work.

As if it were bad enough that places like San Diego are still reeling in those blinded by an irrational desire to be a lawyer at all costs, Texas Governor Rick Perry threw out the idea of a Texas A&M law school:

Gov. Rick Perry floated the notion in an offhand comment today as he began a speech honoring women in the state Legislature. After being introduced by actress and conservative activist Janine Turner, the governor talked about trying to convince Turner’s 13-year-old daughter, an aspiring lawyer, to enroll at A&M, his alma mater.

“By the time you get there, they will have a law school,” Perry predicted.

With the rate they're being proposed by insane politicians, it wouldn't surprise me if he was serious in his intent to mar a great university with a bubble-fueled law school.

Prof. Paul Campos Does Some Independent Research for The New Republic

Although this article in The New Republic by Paul Campos, Professor of Law at Colorado, seems to be phrased more as a general myth-busting piece about how law schools push misleading statistics and the results thereof, the most interesting part of the article is when Prof. Campos reveals he did some revealing in-depth study of one school's employment numbers:

In order to calculate [the number of graduates employed in full-time positions], I used employment data drawn from 183 individual NALP forms, in which graduates of one top 50 school self-reported their employment status nine months after graduation. This data suggests that fully one-third of those graduates who report they are working in full-time jobs that require a law degree are in temporary, rather than permanent, positions....

When we take temporary employment into account, it appears that approximately 45 percent of 2010 graduates of this particular top-50 law school had real legal jobs nine months after graduation....

In what may have been a separate research task, Prof. Campos claims to have audited a sample of NALP responses:

[I] found several instances of people describing themselves as employed permanently or full-time, when in fact they had temporary or part-time jobs (I found no instances of inaccuracies running in the other direction). Perhaps some graduates exaggerate their employment status out of embarrassment, or for strategic reasons, but, whatever their reasons might be, this apparently not uncommon practice suggests that the true employment rate should be lowered even further.

Completely unsurprising but still revolting. This article speaks for itself, but I want to make four brief observations:

1. The New Republic is hardly a sworn enemy of higher education; if anything, I would guess a significant portion of their readership exists because liberal arts majors, graduate students, and professors persist.
2. The University of Colorado-Boulder was ranked 47th in the most recent US News and World Reports. Should we assume it's the "top 50 school" he's referring to?
3. Granted, Paul Campos is generally a skeptic of American law, but one reason I think professors like Paul Campos come forward and actually show concern about this colossal mess is that - lost in the system among the tweed jacket privateers - there are actually people who care about their students and build relationships with many of them. As these types of professors see great students and good, hard-working people utterly fail on the job market, they can't help but research what the hell is going on and how this mess happened. I would expect more professorial inquiry as it becomes clear that many high-quality students from the classes of 2008, 2009, 2010, and now 2011 will get absolutely swallowed by an unjust system.
4. If this were published just one year ago, it would have been ground-breaking journalism that would have seemed out of left-field and startled some of those who used to staunchly write-off the so-called scamblogs as bitter extremists shouting in the woods. Now it's fairly routine and accepted fare. Think about that for a second.

Maryland Rakes the Money In

A few days ago, I made a post comparing the elite schools in America to a well-marketed luxury product that attains the additional power of actually increasing one's employability (as awesome as owning a Porsche is, what are you going to do, drive it to the interview? Put "Porsche owner" on your resume?).

An additional perk that separates colleges from other brands is that the consumers actually welcome the opportunity to donate a fortune to them. Instead of finding this clinically insane, people applaud the generous act of so-called public service. Here is an example:

On Monday afternoon, the W. P. Carey Foundation plans to announce that it will give $30 million to the University of Maryland School of Law, which is in Baltimore. It will be renamed the Francis King Carey School of Law, after [William Polk] Carey’s grandfather, an 1880 graduate.

Holy mother of goodness. The university of Maryland law school has about 800 students. Non-resident tuition at Maryland is about $17.5k this year. So ignoring fees and part-time students, their minimum tuition intake this year is about $14 million.

Do you think the Maryland administration is smiling right now?

With that amount of cash pouring in, the university could slash tuition for the next few years. And although that wouldn't be happening in any event, it looks like the money will go mostly towards aiding a joint MBA/JD program, because if you combine two saturated public school degrees together, they might make something marketable.

So what could prompt this crazy uncle moneybags to give away a fortune to a law school despite the absurd amount of genuinely-needy and socially-beneficial alternatives?

“It’s time to think about the future of Baltimore, a great city with a great history,” said Mr. Carey, the 80-year-old founder of W.P. Carey & Company, a corporate real estate financing firm. “The law school is now in the first tier. I’m looking forward to a joint J.D.-M.B.A. program, where it will be one big great happy family, giving people the best education imaginable, in Baltimore.”

He envisions a program linking the Carey School of Law with the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business — named for Mr. Carey’s great-great-great-grandfather after a $50 million gift from the Carey Foundation in 2006.

Is there anything sadder than the name-whores who dump cash into institutions that - all things considered - don't need it just to slap their name on something "prestigious?" If he really believes in education, couldn't he have given his money to the struggling and downtrodden Baltimore public school system, which would infinitely aid the local economy more? And what's this about Maryland being "now in the first tier?" That's really an effective marketing pitch? Really?

Sometimes I think the rich in this country are as ignorant and socially-blind as the French blue-blooded nobles in the 18th century, although I don't see anyone building a guillotine any time soon. All it takes is a phone call and Mr. Carey could have found a thousand different places where his money would have made a real, ground-floor difference in the Baltimore community. Legal aids, for example, could all use the funding to help protect the poor from injustice. Disease research at Hopkins would bring more educated people into the Baltimore community. For $30 million, he could have set up programs and - gasp - actual businesses that could help the mass of urban poor who have few alternatives. Instead, he puts his millions into the economic sink-hole of a law school. Even an ounce of basic, hubris-free, informed humanity would have compelled him to put his money elsewhere. Instead, he gets lauded in the New York Times for his massive waste of resources.

I appreciate his generous spirit. Not all of the wealthy in this country have a philanthropic mindset, but just about the last thing our economy or our people need is massive gifts for law schools.

What's Up with the Virginia Bar Exam?

We all know that schools manipulate employment information because it's self-reported to the ABA and the rankings guru, but I wouldn't think a school could have any way of manipulating its bar exam passage rates. But then I saw this article today and I wondered if the wizards behind the curtain at Liberty had pulled it off:

Liberty University School of Law students achieved a 100 percent pass rate on the Virginia Bar Examination in February 2011.
...
Liberty is the only Virginia school to achieve the 100 percent rate in the state this year. Washington & Lee was at 90 percent; George Mason, 84.8 percent; University of Virginia, 75 percent; and the College of William & Mary, 73.3 percent.

I might actually believe the 100 percent claim with minimal skepticism if all the schools were above 90 percent. But with UVa and William and Mary at 75 and 73.3, I'm not sure I can buy it. I'm not an elitist by any stretch, but come on. Liberty is bottom-tier. The median LSAT in 2009 was a 150. 1L attrition in the Class of 2008 was 27.1%.

Liberty has in the past overstated its bar performance, but as far as I know there's no accounting metric that allows you to say student x passed they bar when they clearly failed. The official page says they hit 100%. Did only 5 students sit for it? The percentages look as though it may have been a low turnout.

In any event, it looks like the University of Virginia is taking measures to boost its pass rate (and claim it's doing something for unemployed graduates), but in the grand scheme of things, isn't this report - and others where third-tier toilets occasionally have higher pass rates than better-ranked schools - either an indictment of the bar exam process OR of the rankings system and prestige-based law?

The bar exam is either a good metric of competency or it isn't. If it is, the fact that lower-ranked schools can "do more with less" by taking 153 LSAT kids and getting them licensed while a school with 165 LSAT kids cannot get as many to pass signifies that the former institution is actually a become a competent lawyer. If it's not, then we should just scrap the thing and find a different way to certify people.

See also: http://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/index.php/1/desc/Bar, where it shows in the 2009 data where you can see many lower-ranked schools outperforming higher ranked peers.

The Waste of Legal Scholarship

This shouldn't surprise anyone, but Richard Neumann of Hofstra has pointed out that legal "scholarship" costs almost $100,000 per article by a full-tenured professor during a recent educational conference on tenure and the future of legal education:

Even articles written by assistant professors at lower-paying law schools come with a price tag between $25,000 and $42,000, he estimated.

Neumann also pointed to research suggesting that 43% of law review articles are never cited by anyone. "At least a third of these things have no value," he said. "Who is paying for that? Students who will graduate with six figures of debt."

Neumann actually uses this as a reason to argue for protecting tenure; he seems to believe that the tenure protection will allow faculty to think creatively about revamping legal education. I think he's a bit biased by his stake in the fight, but no one's perfect, and his realization that student's increasing debt loads are caused in some small part by subsidizing worthless research is a good start.

Also on the panel were Dean Yellen of Loyola-Chicago and Dean Matasar of NYLS. It seems like these guys do nothing but travel to conferences and pontificate. I wonder if Neumann will ever talk about the wasted money paying deans to fly around the country. There's nothing really unexpected from either.

Those unread articles in law journals cost tens of thousands to produce with very low benefits (as in, more people will read this sentence than who honestly read most secondary journals). Under no cost-benefit analysis would these things ever get greenlighted, but unfortunately, American universities not only eschewed cost-benefit analysis, but most made production of this worthless crud the hallmark of a tenure-worthy professor (instead of, say, teaching). Instead of producing only truly meritorious scholarship, the academy (including its legal peers) took to publishing as a CV-stuffer and convinced itself that its "scholarly mission" requires constant publication regardless of the quality. Their work becomes important because they produced it, not because it shares any qualities with truly important work.

And the students are left shouldering the cost of these things, all so the university can feel better about itself under standards and "missions" it fully made up.

I'm not saying all scholarship is worthless, not even all legal scholarship; that would be absurd. But the system we have now is a crap machine that has allows people to be employed at lucrative salaries for writing things no one wants. For the time, effort, and energy spent on articles that have no economic value, all to impress some students on a law review board, these individuals could be doing things that have some value to society, like running clinics to represent indigent clients. At the very least, it's unjust to have students subsidize these quixotic efforts, just as it would be to force students to subsidize novel or screenplay or poetry anthology attempts.

$100,000 with a good chance it never proves worthy enough to cite. If you think of all the alternative uses for that $100,000 per full-time professor article and you write out all the possible options, your list is guaranteed to be far more interesting than 95% of what's come out of legal academia in the last few decades. And it will probably contain some items the paying customers would actually use and appreciate.

Yale Daily News Puts Legal Elitism in Black and White

So today the Yale Daily News gives us a long-winded, comprehensive look at "elite" law students, where they come from, how they adjust to life at grand ol' Yale, what happens while there, etc. For anyone who still harbors any silly thoughts of meritocracy, this article should help you see that the upper Ivy League is basically run on a a series of elitist tautologies.

But in the midst of an article trying to make the Yale student body and its aspiring lawyers feel even better about itself, we get a flat-out admission regarding legal hiring:

Rivera interviewed roughly 40 professionals involved in law firm recruitment and hiring, and found that these people give particular preference to candidates from Harvard, Yale or Stanford law schools when reviewing job applications.

Although many recruiters actually believed that graduates of non-elite law schools were more prepared for the practical aspects of being a lawyer, they still preferred to hire from super-elite schools because of the prestige associated with them.

Yes, right there, in the Yale Daily News is an admission that many recruiters believe other "non-elite" law schools prepare their students better for practice.

And yet, (1) Yale is still the best law school in the country, says US News and World Reports and (2) Yale law graduates still get jobs much easier than others.

They're not even trying to hide how screwed up this system is anymore. It's right there in black-and-white, despite the various arguments thrown out by shameless elitists. (Side question: Did the Yale Daily News even realize they were admitting Yale must not be an excellent law school if others prepare their students better? Think about it.) Normal rules of capitalism simply do not operate at the large firm level; or, if they do, the value of a degree that says "Yale" is worth infinitely more than a degree that says "St. Johns" or "Ohio State."

Could you imagine any other trademark having this effect? You're a completely mediocre guy, but you buy a HONDA and all of a sudden your earning power triples what it would if you bought a TOYOTA. It'd be a commercial basically. You buy the product, life changes. Women want to sleep with you, men want to be you, and live in perpetual bliss while the schmucks who buy the cheaper Toyota actually have to work for a living.

This is, of course, absurd, but it's exactly like what happens in legal hiring all the time. The same kid goes to the local state school for dirt cheap and even if he makes law review and wins a gazillion awards and ranks top 5%, he'll be a longshot for BigLaw, whereas if he went to NYU or Virginia and hit the median or higher, he'd have a much easier shot.

Unfortunately for the makers of every other product in the country, their customers aren't as prestige-drunk as large law firms. Yet those in charge of legal hiring are apparently convinced that clients would balk at paying non-elite graduates high billing rates, even if the non-elite associates are more competent lawyers than their Yale peers. One has to wonder if the lawyers can't justify their own best-interest hiring practices (like paying slightly less for equal or better quality from lesser-known schools) to their clients how they can win borderline cases, but I digress...

At least this isn't lost on some Yale students.

While his classmates are well-qualified for these jobs, [one student] said, the law firms’ selective bias overlooks other candidates — such as his friends at the University of Iowa Law School — who may be just as qualified.
...
[Aanother student] said that the recruiting system reinforces the system of class privilege, in which richer students are more likely to attend good high schools, get into elite colleges and professional schools, and then score jobs at top-ranked firms.

Although she is only in her first year at Yale Law, Luna said she already has a summer job at one of the top firms in Seattle — a job she feels she may not have gotten if she attended a different law school.
...
But this is not always the case, said Hedy Aponte, director of attorney recruiting and development at the prestigious Kirkland & Ellis firm’s Washington D.C. Office. Aponte said her firm sometimes chooses recruitment targets based on geographic proximity to the firm rather than elite status.
...

Kirkland & Ellis focuses on schools ranging from Yale to University of Virginia to George Washington University, she added.

When asked to provide data on how many Kirkland & Ellis lawyers were hired from Harvard, Yale and Stanford, Aponte declined.

Whoa, Hedy! Talk about diversity! George Washington? Virginia? Gosh darned, that's egalitarianism at its finest. What, no Emory or Georgetown graduates?

By the way, Yale Daily News, if these people decline to give you the data, you might want to run a Google search. Kirkland and Ellis puts all of its attorneys information online and it's searchable by law school. I get that our ideals of journalism have sunk, but real journalists would at least check publicly available information.

I actually ran the Kirkland data back when I did part 2 of my rankings project (still going on, since I know people are wondering about it).

In the survey, Harvard had 74 partners (12.7%) and 65 (9.3%) associates, the most from any school in either category. Stanford and Yale are actually way down the list; instead, Chicago, Northwestern, NYU, Columbia, Georgetown, Michigan, and the University of Illinois rounded out the top eight. With DePaul, GWU, and Fordham above Yale, it's probably safe to assume it has more to do with their offices in Chicago, NYC, and Washington D.C. than anything. But ultimately, despite Hedy's assertions to the contrary, Kirkland is still elitist (1.7% of your hiring pool came from DePaul. Yippee).

This would be one of those spots where I think the article was very under-researched. Harvard, Yale, and Stanford aren't the end-all of prestige hiring or elitism. But that's really getting beside the point. The point is that it's an exclusive club, and no matter your merits, you're probably not getting in unless you have the right stamp, even if you have objectively offer a superior quality of underlying product at a lower price.

The branding of the Ivy League with regards to prestige is, perhaps, the greatest marketing and advertising success in global economic history. One can only wonder if and when the ultimate consumers (i.e. clients of large firms) will fully catch on.

Texas Flushing Money Down the Toilet While Slashing State-Funded Services

From the Dallas Business Journal:

Legislators have earmarked more than $3 million to $5 million for the UNT downtown Dallas law school, but the funds have yet to reach final approval and anything could happen, Jackson said.
...
University officials could start construction immediately after final approval is given and the facility could open up to students by August 2013.

There's plenty of law schools in Texas, but apparently the Texas legislature is still okay with wasting the state's money building another one.

Granted, in a state of 25 million, this only represents about $0.20 per person. But hey, that's $5 million that could go into road construction, or cancer research, or training people for jobs that 21st century America actually needs instead of building a school that cannot, in any way, compete with SMU and the University of Texas for Dallas' legal affections and will most likely wind up transferring wealth to educators by dumping debt onto 20-somethings who haven't gotten the memo that the legal field is dangerously over-saturated.

But hey, who am I to judge since Texas is in such great financial shape? Oh, wait. Maybe it's just me, but if your state is slashing education and pension funding, the last thing you should be doing is setting aside money (so much as a dime) for a frivolous law school.

No one's ever accused the post-secondary education complex of not having clout. But the incongruity of building another law school while slashing the elementary and secondary education budget would be quite droll if it weren't so damn ridiculous, socially-damaging, and ultimately sad.

Capitalism at its Finest: Pre-Law School Socratic Training

Normally, blogger filters out comments that blatantly advertise some crappy product. But yesterday, one slipped through and I awoke to find a comment advertising for this god-awful product. Usually, I'd have a concern about promoting the product, but this one is so bad I can't see any sane person being interested. So I will commence with the lambasting.

The idea is this: the only way to prepare for law school is by taking classes. So, if you enroll in our program, you can take four weeks of classes with actual professors working with the Socratic method. From the "About the Program" page:

The program exposes students to

• the Socratic method of teaching,
• reading cases as a foundation for their law school education, and
• the new, foreign language of law with which all first year law students struggle at the outset of their legal education.

...

We aim to keep the required time students need to prepare minimal while still providing solid exposure to the language of the law and using cases as a basis for learning in law school.

The LSE program simulates law school as accurately as possible. The program does not provide an introduction to the content of law school – the substantive law – instead it aims to teach students how to learn in (and enjoy) law school once they start.

First, how do you give students the flavor of law school is their preparation time is "minimal?" The real joy in law school is when you have 50 pages on civil procedure to read and no real time to actually read some of the driest stuff on the planet.

Second, if you have a Bachelor's degree, you should be able to read an opinion and figure out what happened. With Google, you can look up any pesky Latin terms the court uses. Honestly, if you can't read and understand a case without someone holding your hand, a crash course program isn't going to help you any.

But at least the students will get to feel the advertised terror of the Socratic method, of being in a room with 60+ other people who all stare at you while some smarmy asshole in a toupee throws out absurd hypotheticals while you hem and haw and think of the best way to show him you actually did the reading so he'll put a check mark next to your name, right?

Uh...no.

Once enrolled, students need only a microphone and a headset or speakers (web-cam participation for students is optional), a web browser installed on their computer, and a decent internet connection.

We can't have digital law schools, but digital pseudo-law school preparation courses? Party on, Wayne! And look, kids, you don't even have to SEE the person who's doing the Socratic method on you! No eye contact; victory for social anxieties, eh?

Conceding that the Socratic method is hard to deal with for some, this product just ain't going to help you. The fact that the professor is staring at you is part of the game. So is the fact that you're often not prepared because you really didn't have to read everything two or three times. Neither of those are going to be present when you can sit at home in your pajamas and listen in. And not every does the Socratic method similarly, so knowing the style of one doesn't necessarily help you with others.

So the program is of dubious quality and I haven't even tried it. But what's the cost of this thing?

$395.

No, I didn't make that up. They're charging $395 for six sessions of this shit. (But they offer limited scholarships!)

My guess is that it's really that expensive because they're supposedly hiring law professors, although they don't actually name them and the link says they're soliciting for more. A search around their website finds only one cited - a "Professor Johnson" - and there's no school listed.

Similarly, the Founders names are absent.

The founders of the Law School Experience are all former law students – now current or former attorneys and professors. We all enjoyed law school greatly – the people we met, the academic challenges – but we were not ready. No one really is.

And yet they give us no names. This should be a red flag.

Another red flag? They seem to have given themselves a Yelp review. And they're spamming websites like this one.

In the end these people are leaches feeding off of the law school marketing machine and its recurrent theme of law school prompting fear, which prompts aggressive spending on preparation materials. These people are a lower-rent version of what Bar-Bri and Kaplan do.

Look, if you want to go to law school, law schools are fairly open about letting students sit in on classes. Email the admissions department and see if you can see a 1L class, like Civil Procedure or Torts. That will give you a real idea of what to expect - and a real idea of what is expected of students. Given the really high number of attorneys in this country, it's not insurmountable.

And for the record, I have yet to be in a class where what you do in the Socratic method has a significant negative effect on anyone's grade. Aside from drafting classes, 99% of law school grades are determined finals week in my experience. This is especially true for the 1L year when the professors know very few students. If you do especially well on the Socratic stuff, you might get a bump on your grade, but that's about it. Read the syllabus. For most classes, even if you show up unprepared and nervously mumble your way through Socratic dialogue, you grade will still come down to finals.

It can be nerve-racking, but from my experience, how well you do on it really isn't that important unless you're one of those tools who really wants to impress your classmates, who probably going to think you're a big-league douche, anyway.

If, after my consumer review, you STILL think this product is a good idea, let me make you an offer:

I will do what this company does for $13.50 an hour.

I'm not kidding. Send me an email, I'll give you three or four 1L cases, you'll send me money over paypal, and then we can talk over the phone as if we were in a law school classroom. I'll give a five-minute lecture, make an awkward joke about alimony payments, and then I will spend 45 minutes being a complete dick to you.

Act now, kids, my summer is filling up fast with your peers who will all get A's.

I believe some law schools have "boot camps" to help with the anxiety of 1L. But paying $395 to sit in some online cesspool while some third-tier professor looking for a paycheck talks to you about a random case is not worth it.

And you have to wonder about the group of law graduates setting up this site. If they all could make $100k+ a year, why are they adding this worthless product and its scam-like website to the marketplace?

Let that one digest.

Elie Mystal Gives Terrible Advice

It's easy to pile on Elie Mystal, who must give nightmares for Harvard Law School's marketing department by being a public intellectual lightweight. But gosh darn it, it's kind of fun.

So today Elie - in contrast to his self-proclaimed skepticism about law school - has decided to tell a disgruntled 1L who wrote in that he should stay at his "elite" law school. What a shocker, eh?

Here's the kid's basic info:

• At an unidentified "top 10" school
• At the bottom of his class despite "working really hard"
• Lost motivation and is pessimistic about his future in the law
• No great pre-law work experience
• Liberal arts major
• "Significant financial help" from parents.

Now here are Elie's reasons for staying in law school:

(a) He picked the right parents.
(b) He got into the right school.
(c) He doesn’t have any other burning passion in his life.
(d) The worst part of law school is over.

Why wouldn’t this guy finish law school? Here is a situation where there is almost no downside. Assuming he’s going to be in a position to graduate debt-free or nearly debt-free, with a degree from an elite institution, what’s the harm? He can do anything he wants after it’s over. No, idiot law school marketers, not because you can do anything with a law degree. But because you can do anything with financially supportive parents.

This is retardation at work. Let's take these in order.

(a) "Rich parents" are not a valid reason to continue in law school. Elie claims that the kid is graduating "debt-free" if mom and dad pay for the whole thing. Furthermore, he claims that this guy can go to law school for "free."

That's an outright lie. Just because he's burning mom and dad's money instead of the federal government's doesn't mean that it's now "free." If anything, I'd feel guiltier about hoodwinking my parents into paying 50k a year instead of getting the government-banking complex to pay 50k a year. Furthermore, our concepts of "debt" and "free" should be broader than whether some 3rd-tier financial institution sends you a bill after graduation. The kid is sacrificing two more years of his life, plus taking the limitations of having a J.D. on his resume. Lost opportunities are a major downside, especially for someone in their early-to-mid 20s.

And if "you can do anything with financially supportive parents," that actually counsels against staying in law school doesn't it? Or it's a neutral at best? Your parents can help you start a business, travel the world, pursue other passions. There's plenty of investment alternatives here, so even with rich parents, you have to defeat the alternatives and prove law is a strong enough investment to keep that capital invested in it.

(b) There's no such thing as the "right school" for someone who finishes at the bottom of the class. Elie the elitist called it a "top 10" school, so I'm guessing it's somewhere like Penn or Northwestern or NYU and not Harvard or Yale. Given the continuing BigLaw and government cut-backs, I would not gamble on being a bottom-quartile graduate at Northwestern or Penn. Georgetown has already been caught fudging its graduate employment numbers, and Duke had to set up a program to ensure all its graduates landed jobs.

Never mind that to be an attorney, one actually has to pass the bar exam. Depending on what "bottom of the class" means to this kid, he might find the bar exam a very difficult challenge. For example, according to Law School Numbers, at NYU 6% of bar takers don't pass on the first try. For Michigan, 8% of in-state bar exam takers did not pass in 2007. For Cal-Berkeley, 6-16% fail the"notoriously hard" California bar exam the first time around.

I can guarantee you some of this kid's classmates didn't work that hard at all. If he put in a top effort and wound up near the bottom, he's probably going to have a difficult time with the bar. At which point in time, his "top school" doesn't matter at all. Investing all that time only to find the bar exam an insurmountable hurdle (like >2% of the class often does, even from "elite" schools) is a major downside; you cannot ignore this possibility.

So the bottom line is that even at a top school, this kid needs to have the right attitude to be paying the not-so-free full sticker price.

(c) The question is not whether he has some other burning passion, it's whether he actually has a burning passion for the law. This person seems very pessimistic and burnt out. He has no motivation by his own words. If he has no motivation at the end of 1L (before spring exams, when he might have a chance to redeem his fall performance), how is he going to feel answering interrogatories at 9 pm? How is he going to do well in the next two years? How is he going to have to drive to do top work for his clients and/or his firm? How is he going to be gung-ho about finding work opportunities in his 2L and 3L years?

This student seems to have gone to law school because he had nothing better to do. That's not a good reason to stay in law school when he has no strong desire to actually practice law.

(d) The worst part of law school is not necessarily over. People like to talk up 1L year like it's some sort of boot camp, but at least in my experience, parts of 2L are worse depending on your array of classes. And at least during 1L year, any thoughts of unemployment and debt repayment are far in the distance. Try talking to a generic 3L right now and the fog of unemployment and taking the bar exam plagues them worse than even 1L exams. 1L is time-consuming and stressful, but it's a time-limited stress; once mid-May hits there's no more 1L Socratic method or harsh-curve exams. That doesn't work with debt default.

All in all, this person needs to think long and hard about the law, and if they have no honest drive to be a lawyer, they need to get out after this semester. The connections are, for the most part, already made. With "financially supportive" parents, the life reorganization won't be that bad, and new experiences can quickly wipe away the tarnish of a bad year in law school.

The loss of time and money is a major harm, Elie. To spend significant amounts of both, the student should have a positive, compelling reason for staying in law school. This student does not.

Would you personally spend $100,000 and two years of your life on something you had no enthusiasm for that had no guarantee of paying any kind of a reward down the road? Of course not, and if this didn't involve an "elite" law school, I can't believe even Elie Mystal would be so dumb as to suggest otherwise.

Update on Rakofsky Story

This is from three days ago, but I think most commenters missed it and I didn't see it until late last night, but the Washington Post did a follow-up on the Joseph Rakofsky story (the recent Touro grad who decided to defend one charged with homicide in a different state). The Post found the defendant's grandmother, and her explanation of how he wound up to be her grandson's attorney is - well - completely unsurprising:

Watson, 71, said she told Rakofsky that she wasn’t interested in hiring him even for the murder case because the family couldn’t afford the $25,000 to $30,000 normally charged in such cases.

But Rakofsky, 33, called her, Watson said. And again. She said he told her that he had worked on criminal cases before. And he told her that he would charge $10,000. Watson decided to “give him a chance,” she said, impressed with his tenacity and his willingness to work on her grandson’s case, especially for such a low fee.

Note there's multiple dynamics at work here. Race-to-the-bottom fees? Check. High-pressure sales tactics? Check. Exaggerated representations to clients to get them to hire a desperate soul? Check.

And remember all that verbiage deans spit out about how more lawyers equals lower fees for poor people? Isn't that exactly what happened here? Isn't this the ABA's wet-dream: a family priced out of the homicide defense market can now buy the product because Touro - God bless them - keeps spitting out attorneys so desperate for work they'll do it for 50-75% off. Poor people can finally afford representation - hallelujah!

But, like settling for a cut-rate prostitute, it had its consequences. Of course, the fact that I just compared cut-rate attorneys to $25 prostitutes should signal that something's wrong, even if it's mildly funny-'cause-its-true.

Web sites and bar licenses don’t provide enough information, said Saul Singer, senior legal ethics counsel for the D.C. Bar. Potential clients need to get references and check out a lawyer’s reputation, Singer said.

Yeah, that sort-of kills the whole idea of this being a well-regulated "profession," doesn't it?

And to complete the hucksterism:

During a two-hour phone conversation, Watson said, Rakofsky declined to refund her money.

I don't know if I can say this enough, but a 15k attorney surplus each year leads to more Lionel Hutzes on the market, so this should not be seen as a one-time story. Because many students are swamped with debt and pigeonholed as lawyers, they will not easily exit the market. Many 2009 and 2010 graduates of varying quality are still looking for jobs. The desperation level will rise along with the ethical tensions as young lawyers try to price themselves competitively.

For better or worse, this is the system our elites have created. The true tragedy here is that their response is not to fix the system, but to circle the wagons and place the blame entirely on the Rakofsky's of the world. As I've said before Rakofsky is an idiot worthy of blame. But he's got a big-time accomplice in a system that fails at multiple points.

"Great World University" Binghampton Contiues Its Streak of Idiocy

As law school plans are being sensibly scrapped elsewhere, Binghampton University has decided to continue its pursuit of building a law school.

If ignorance is bliss, these guys must live on a natural orgasm-on-crack-level high.

"A law school at Binghamton would be very good academically and affordable, which are two great strengths," said John Appelbaum, pre-law adviser at BU. "I do think there is a need for a legal education that comes at reasonable price — that would be a public law school."

You mean like SUNY-Buffalo, which charges about 55-60k in tuition for in-state residents for a degree that may increase earning power only minimally and decrease other opportunities? You mean that kind of "reasonable" price?

And I'm sure Pace and Touro are "very good academically," too. It doesn't stop them from being completely unnecessary places and inefficient wastes.

"I think Binghamton has taken a number of steps over the past couple of decades not only toward becoming a great regional school but a great world university," said John McNulty, a political science professor at BU. "Providing law degrees is important for this expansion."

Yes, because that's exactly what schools like Princeton and M.I.T. needed to become "great world universit[ies]." And when I think of Binghampton, I think of a "great world university" like Yale, Cambridge, or the University of Tokyo.

[Prof. Jonathan] Krasno said he believes that the state could use more affordable graduate school choices.

"Almost every state has public law schools. I think New York state is way below the national average," he said.

New York state currently has two public law schools: University at Buffalo Law School and CUNY Law School.

That's the standard? Whether you're not as saturated with public law schools as other places? How did these people make it through grad school?

In any event, California has five public law schools. Virginia, Florida, Texas, and Ohio have four. Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have three. After that, everyone is at 2 or less, so I don't think New York is below the national average. Even if they were, their private schools make up for it. And for the record, many of those public schools (e.g., UC-Irvine, Texas Southern, Wayne State, Northern Illinois, Florida A&M) have no real reason for existence, and are hardly a list you'd want to be associated with.

But there's more garbage Kresno has to spout:

"This is investing in public education, which is an effective way to spend money," he said. "There is also economic development for the city, and it will bring in more students. But more than anything else, turning out lawyers with less of a debt load after three years of public law school, who tend to stay in the state, will be a very good thing."

If we could close down Touro or Pace or Albany and replace it with a public school, that would be true. But it's not, because those places aren't going to close. What will happen is that they'll continue to spit out debt-ridden students while Binghampton adds more debt-ridden students to the pile.

To go to a public school like Binghampton, one would still have to take out 55k+ for tuition (in-state) and would probably need to take out an additional 60k+ for living expenses. Students who go there sans scholarship will regularly carry debt loads north of 100k (excluding undergraduate debts) with little to no increase in earnings potential.

New York is the most saturated state in the union. Can the Binghampton idiots not read that? Somehow, New York doubles the saturation of California, Texas, and Minnesota. That's impressive.

There is no reason for this, and it will bring nothing of value to the Binghampton area compared to the damage of indebtedness and unemployed people who can't find work in their chosen profession, all depressed at burning three years out of their prime.

These people are as bad and delusional as 0Ls who still think they'll go to law school and wind up driving a Mercedes and arguing thrilling trials every day. Either that or they're just dishonest.

Widener Dean Not Working in Hypotheticals Anymore; NY Bar President Living in Reality As Well

First, I can't believe I hadn't yet posted on this, but Widener professor Lawrence Connell, who, as I noted previously, got into trouble for what seemed to be a routine law school hypothetical, has now actually brought a lawsuit against the dean for her statements in the post-incident administration hearings.

Lawrence Connell contends that dean Linda Ammons falsely characterized him as racist and sexist in administrative proceedings when she sought to oust him from his job of 26 years after he used a hypothetical involving her murder, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The complaint was filed last week in Sussex County Superior Court, in Delaware. Connell, who is white, and his lawyer, Thomas Neuberger, contend that Ammons, who is black, targeted him because of his conservative beliefs, according to the Associated Press.

I'm frankly surprised that this came back up, because usually when people threaten lawsuits, they're just blowing smoke out their butt, but this is interesting to say the least.

For what it's worth, Dean Linda Ammons spent five years as a television personality and worked in public relations for four years. I wonder if it ever crossed her mind that bringing formal proceedings against a long-tenured professor was the best step for Widener's reputation.

Also, after law school, it appears she went directly into administrative service (and after six months jumped into the governor's service - anyone could do that, right?) and never really worked as a lawyer. Not that I think that's a requirement, but aside from her administrative position with the state public defender, I don't see anything that actually requires bar passage.

Definitely a story to watch. In one corner, a long-tenured male conservative. In the other corner, a black female ladder-climbing administrator transplant from Ohio. Race, gender, politics, career trajectories - this is so scripted it seems like a law school hypothetical for teaching kids about libel or academic freedom, or maybe a final exam question.

In happier news, I encourage readers to check out this report from the New York State Bar Association president. It basically points out four areas (firm structure, training, work-life balance, and legal technology) and how those areas will change and it's spot-on on pretty much everything. Aside from a few dumb ideas (e.g. requiring public service), there's some good stuff in there:

The Task Force recommends that the State Bar Association examine potential licensing reforms, such as . . . sequential licensing, which would permit limited practice for new attorneys pending further training and examination; [and] adjusting an applicant's score on the bar exam to reflect the successful completion of skills courses. . . .

As the economy recovers, it is apparent to many observers that the legal profession will not return to business as usual. Competition for legal work will be intense. Law firms that do not understand and address these changes will have difficulty competing in the emerging marketplace.

Yup. Hopefully other state bar associations continue to catch on to the "new normal" and they can spearhead the changes necessary to meet tomorrow's demands of this "profession" before it loses all marks of an actual profession.

No, UCSD Does Not Need a Law School

The good news is that UC-San Diego has scrapped its plans to take over 4th/5th/6th-tier Cal-Western School of Law and turn it into a more attractive option by virtue of the UC appellation (still waiting for UC-Irvine to start filling Supreme Court clerkships every year).

The bad news is that we have to put up with dim-witted propagandists for the education sector like John Davies, who thinks UC-San Diego really, really needs a law school.

Just 50 years old – young by major university standards – the University of California San Diego rivals some of our nation’s most prestigious universities and is listed among the top 10 public research universities in the nation.

Yet one thing would make this research powerhouse even greater. A law school at UC San Diego would offer substantial benefits for the university, the UC system and the region as a whole.

Already we're in trouble. But it gets worse:

Very few public universities have achieved or sustained greatness without offering professional legal education. And most outstanding law schools reside within public universities. That is why four of the major research campuses in the UC system have established law schools, and why the San Diego campus should also do so.

Huh? Of the consensus (e.g. US News and World Report) top 15 law schools, 4 are public universities, and they're all major first-choice state flagships. UCLA, Illinois, Iowa, etc. have good law programs, but claiming that most outstanding ones are at public school is an outright lie. So if THAT'S why there's a law school at UC-Irvine, someone forget to read the precious rankings carefully.As an attorney and a former regent of the University of California, I know that the benefits of a university-affiliated law school are significant.
Cash?

One discipline – law – has traditionally lagged behind the development of new scientific breakthroughs in terms of creating policies and regulations. This places innovators at a disadvantage since law is a critical component of all new knowledge.

Wait - are you saying you want MORE policies and regulations? And that it places innovators at a disadvantage when there are no politics or regulations? Or am I just reading your senseless argument wrong? Because if I'm not, that's the dumbest thing I've read in a long time.

Academic research today will shape our society in unimaginable ways tomorrow. Such research is rife with legal, social and policy issues. Graduates of universities that offer legal education will lead, while those from universities that lack legal education will play catch-up. (emphasis mine to accent the dumbness).

Readers, did you know that if you get an engineering degree from somewhere, the value of your degree will go up or down depending on whether the school offers JDs? I bet all those kids spending money at M.I.T. and Princeton are pissed. Sucks that they and the crowds at Dartmouth, Brown, Cal-Tech, Johns Hopkins, Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, [pick favorite random liberal arts college], etc. are doomed to never lead because their schools lacked the foresight to set up a law school.

A UC San Diego law school would enjoy a unique focus. This would be a law school focused on research that defines the future. It would graduate practitioners and researchers who understand the social and policy implications of innovation. Such a school would benefit the region’s most promising economic sectors, including biotechnology, telecommunications, nanotechnology, health care, oceanography and international relations.

Who wrote this, the admissions department at Florida Coastal? Is debt collection a "promising economic sector" now? Unemployment? Because very, very few Cal-Western/UCSD law graduates will be working in any of those areas, unless strained personal injury claims classify as "health care," and representing illegal hookers who crossed from Tijuana counts as "international relations."

In the long view, tough times are no excuse to forego great opportunities. Tough times just demand greater certainty about the benefits.

This ain't no great opportunity for anyone.

This profession is already oversaturated, especially in San Diego, where elite Thomas Jefferson graduates are not able to find their chosen work, but the school keeps raking in enough dough to be the envy of other law schools.

If there's one thing that I'm certain about, it's that there's no need for UC-SD to add a law school, whether it's Cal-Western or one they pull out of their butt. The market doesn't need it, and a law school adds nothing to the scholarly abilities of anyone else on campus. Seriously, John, MIT and Princeton have no law schools. Look it up. They're both doing fine.

Massachusetts School of Law Dean at it Again

As Matt at LSTB has pointed out, Massachusetts School of Law associate dean Michael Coyne is back with another editorial about why the ABA model of law school education sucks. I dissected one of his editorials in January, noting that while I love his jabbing-at-the-ribs spirit, I think he still falls into the myth and propaganda division on many points. And this one's no different, although he does get some points for, at some level, calling ABA law school a "scam." I'm not even sure I would go that far.

This one has a better title than the first one: Law school for the white and wealthy, and it's in a better place than the Worcester Telegram (I wonder how often he shoots these invectives to newspapers?).

The first few paragraphs are exactly the same as his previous rant, but he's added a few things. To wit:

The fact that Massachusetts School of Law charged tuition that was less than half of what ABA law schools charge (today that figure stands closer to one-third) meant it threatened the ABA's reason for its existence: ensuring high fees for lawyers by charging exorbitant admissions fees to enter its exclusive club.

If there's one thing Americans love, it's lower prices. With law schools, we have a clear case of indirect price restraints set by a centralized organization. But that doesn't necessarily lead to "ensuring high fees for lawyers." Aside from fixed costs, the undersupply or oversupply of labor is what dictates service fees. Lawyers' fees have been in a race to the bottom in the last 20 years everywhere except the high-stakes corporate law of the largest firms. Profit margins on simple, straightforward legal tasks have dropped relative to inflation while law school tuition has risen sharply. If the ABA served to ensure high fees for lawyers, it's already failed.

And low tuition isn't really a direct threat to the ABA or its existence. The MSL wouldn't be in competition with the ABA. It would force other schools to slash prices or reevaluate their curricula, but the ABA could still serve as the gatekeeper without any functional change. The problem is that MSL's potential competitors - the Suffolks and even the Boston Colleges of the world - all lobby the ABA about how crucial their accreditation standards are, sometimes with genuine concerns and sometimes as a pretext to keep prices and salaries high.

Again, love the spirit, but the reasoning needs work. Appealing to high lawyers' fees seems like little more than baseless populism that isn't necessary in villainizing the ABA.

But there's more: Coyne continued playing the race card, now with a cited authority:

As law professor Vernellia Randall, a well-known public speaker on issues of health, race and representation of African-Americans in the legal profession, has noted, "Institutional discrimination in law schools is really about maintaining the legal profession as 'The Whitest Profession.' "

After referring off-offhandedly to Jim Crow (as if someone can offhandedly refer to Jim Crow), Coyne again noted that African-American enrollment has declined. Compelling stuff on its face, but again, this needs more explanation. How do the ABA standards keep the profession abnormally white? How do you explain the decline? Is it because of the tuition or just because of the culture of law school? Is the LSAT keeping qualified and willing African-American applicants out? Without these logical connections, Coyne looks like little more than a biased polemicist.

At least he ends on a bang:

So to the ABA: Spare us the kind words and coronets. Reform our higher education system now. Allow innovative, low-cost colleges and law schools to develop. Let those schools compete on an even footing with the barons in their ivy-towered campuses who preside over schools for students to whom money does not matter. Allow the graduates of all our law schools to take every state's bar examination and compete in the marketplace. Hope, opportunity and competition are what made this country great; they can do so again.

I think the English royalty metaphor is a bit trite and strained, but it's hard to argue with the rest of it. Once we've allowed capitalism to be the reigning force in the legal profession (and we hvae), nothing should stop law school from following suit. If you're going to keep it as a "profession," keep it as a profession in all regards, including limiting entry into the market. But once professionalism's gone (and it pretty much is), there's no reason lawyers can't be trained at schools like MSL so long as they pass the licensing requirements, especially if places like MSL actually can prepare people to practice better than the casebook method used by students at other schools.

Joseph Rakofsky: Both an Idiot and a Symptom

This entry was corrected for possible minor errors due to possible discrepancies I learned of during the week of May 16. A summary of the minor changes can be seen here.

Others have already commented on the Joseph Rakofsky story, but in reading commentary on the issue, I'm a bit bothered by how many people want to call him a moron and move on as if that's the end of the inquiry.

To refresh everyone's memory, Rakofsky, a 2009 Touro grad with very little actual experience, and a law license in New Jersey, decided to try a murder case in Washington, D.C. As one might expect, it did not go well, and multiple people, including the judge and the Washington Post courthouse reporter, found Rakofsky's performance a sign of "incompetence." I trust their judgment.

Is Joseph Rakofsky an idiot? Absolutely. Let us count the ways.

But he's also a symptom of one of the fundamental problems of attorney oversupply. Back in December, I pointed out that having a large mass of desperate unemployed attorneys can put ethical obligations into jeopardy in the context of foreclosure mills. There, attorneys looking for a job - any job - would have an incentive to sacrifice morals to bring in a paycheck.

Rakofsky is the Horatio Alger, "pull himself up by his bootstraps," side of that same coin.

Rokofsky's website is now down, but here is his "About Me" paragraph that I rescued from google cache:

Mr. Rakofsky has worked on cases involving Murder, Embezzlement, Tax Evasion, Civil RICO, Securities Fraud, Bank Fraud, Insurance Fraud, Wire Fraud, Conspiracy, Money Laundering, Drug Trafficking, Grand Larceny, Identity Theft, Counterfeit Credit Card Enterprise and Aggravated Harassment. Following graduation from law school, he worked for one of the biggest civil litigation firms on the east coast and has worked for boutique white-collar criminal defense firms in Manhattan. During law school, Mr. Rakofsky interned at the Legal Aid Society (in Suffolk County). Prior to studying law, Mr. Rakofsky studied Economics and interviewed at a well-respected investment bank with branches all over the world. Prior to law school, Mr. Rakofsky earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology, concentrating his attention on DNA.

Hey, my attention was concentrated on DNA too, specifically the kind at Tri-Delt. But I digress again.

It's clear that Rakofsky's bio is milking every minor experience he's ever had especially since he just graduated in 2009. Filed a service return for a credit card collection? Sounds like identity theft experience to me! But this is the monster we've created. The options for attorneys who can't find real jobs out of law schools are either to try something else, settle for doc review-type jobs, or set out on their own. Commentators often promote the idea of setting up shop as a viable alternative to getting a job, and many law school deans (Thomas Mengler, as one example) justify purposefully flooding the market by claiming that more solos and firms means lower prices and better lawyering (a really stupid conclusion, but that's for another day).

Well, here we have a kid who clearly wanted to do criminal law. He set up a slick website (financialcrimelaw.com; great url!) to make him look like the smooth legal hucksters on TV. He set up four offices. To account for his relative virginity, he listed every conceivable experience he could. Such is necessary to compete with the 40+ crowd who market their prematurely-gray hair like a badge of honor rather than a sign of stress.

Isn't this exactly what the Menglers of the world want him to do? Even if it isn't, is this not the natural result when you saddle kids with $100k+ in debt and pigeonhole them into an overcrowded field? Aren't they going to set up sleek websites and offer discounts and hope and pray that they make it through their first cases without looking like a doofus? After all ,can't have a gap on the resume. Must be working, getting out there, networking with other solos, gaining experience. Prior to last week, most industry apologists would have likely held up Rakofsky as an example of what unemployed law graduates should be doing, that they should be entrepreneurial.

But entrepreneurship is not good when the product being peddled is an inferior quality and public welfare is placed at risk. Rakofsky may not have even been aware that he was peddling an inferior product; he probably honestly believed he was competent, and such is part of the problem with a "Wild West" view of licensing, accrediting, and more or less forcing some graduates to solo it.

Everybody lost except the people at Touro who cashed his tuition checks. Everybody.

In medicine, graduates of medical school are not allowed to just "hang a shingle" and set up their own practices. They must go through a 3-5 year period called residency where they learn to actually practice medicine on real people in real hospitals. You are not allowed to become board certified and practice medicine without supervision until you have completed a residency program. All graduates of medical school programs are more or less guaranteed a space in a residency program because the medical profession actually cares about integrity and welfare and limits the output of medical schools. They made a sound policy decision to be cautious and prevent unprepared doctors from being unleashed on the public.

I hold no illusion that law is as important as medicine, but I completely fail to see how anyone in their right mind can continue to license attorneys to do things that they are entirely unqualified to do. Why is there not a residency requirement, or the equivalent? Changing law school to be two years of study and two-three years of low-paid study under a practicing attorney doesn't seem to be too big of a burden. Neither does requiring specialization or making the bar exam more practical to the actual day-to-day practice of law in a specific jurisdiction.

The system is completely broken. It cannot filter out people like Rakofsky; instead it allows them to flow through by the thousands and onto an unsuspecting marketplace. It has no training safeguards to ensure that people handling murder cases can actually handle murder cases. The more hubris-filled unemployed attorneys will do exactly what Rakofsky did; his story made the rounds, others' do not. But he is by no means unique. He is exactly what happens when you license type A personalities to do things before they've actually shown they can do it.

We do not license people to drive classes of vehicles they have never touched before. We do not license surgeons who have never held a scalpel. Yet in many cases attorneys can handle matters they know little about merely because they've duped some poor client into believing they're "the guy."

A real profession doesn't let that situation develop, and it stops the nonsense once it becomes apparent.

Rutgers-Camden Draws Faulty Conclusions, Case Western Students Show Some Fight, and Reminder Re: Program on April 7

For all those of you who may think rankings and lists are benign tools, I give you this nauseating press release from Rutgers-Camden:

In the midst of a challenging economic climate, the Rutgers School of Law–Camden is emerging as a smart investment for strong career preparation.

What is their proof for this high-flown, completely contrary statement that spending $200k in real cost on a legal education is a "smart investment" when it may yield only a negligible increase in earning power for the majority of graduates?

Oh yes - surveys! First, they cite the flawed US News and World survey I've already discussed (even if the survey were accurate, it wouldn't necessary mean that Rutgers-Camden is a "smart investment" given that there's no discussion of alternatives). Second, they cite some meaningless Forbes survey ("The Best Law Schools for Getting Rich;" no, I did not make that up) that tracked mid-career earnings of people a generation or two above the current class of applicants as proof that Rutgers-Camden will bring the current class the same piles of lucre.

Folks, if that logic worked, people should forget law school and invest every dime in IBM, GE, and Microsoft. After all, if it worked for people in 1980, surely it'll work for today's kids.

Given how ridiculous such a proposition is for ordinary investing, it's preposterous that (a) anyone serious argues that because going to law school [x] made some 45-year-old rich, it'll do the same for today's 22-year-olds; and (b) anyone actually believes it.

But don't worry, Rutgers-Camden is obviously a very special institution that is clearly different than its peers on multiple levels:

“The true measure of the Rutgers School of Law–Camden is in the success of our students and graduates, the excellent scholarship of our faculty, the friendly service delivered by our staff, and our ability to help the citizens of New Jersey through our highly effective pro bono and clinical programs. Rutgers–Camden excels in each of these important areas.”

Additionally, the Rutgers–Camden law school is included in the 2011 Princeton Review Best 172 Law Schools.

Whoa, can I still transfer to this magical, unique place? I'm convinced I'll be rich in 10 years.

In other news, Case-Western has been without a real dean for a while, and now one of the finalists, former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith, is coming under fire as some of the Case-Western community has launched a website opposing him:

"CaseAgainstSmith.com seeks to inform members of the Case Western Reserve University community about Smith's radical views and history," says an unsigned press release on the web site. "Smith has been described as the intellectual powerhouse behind efforts to roll back Watergate-era campaign finance reforms. . . . We are concerned that the appointment of a radical such as Smith to Dean of the Law School could distract from the many strengths of Case Western Reserve University."

You can view the actual website here. Basically, Smith was amicus curae for the very unpopular side of Citizens United, has connections to the Koch Brothers, and has a murky ethical history when it comes to corporate-political-judicial entanglements. Frankly, I understand the concerns. It's simply impossible to separate some people from their politics when their views are so radical and antithetical that it detracts from their ability to lead a large organization, especially one like a law school that is (supposedly) committed to educating students in ethics, fairness, collegiality, and all the traits that should make the profession and its social function worth a damn; they may fail much of the time, but that's the ideal. And if students have no respect for the people running the system, the school's mission is undermined (which is another reason why schools' misleading of students is so nefarious, but I digress).

In addition to claiming the Supreme Court's adoption of his views relieves him of being a radical (need I remind him that the S.C. once adopted pro-slavery views?), Smith has responded that "One doesn't seek a deanship to advance a political agenda, and the school isn't choosing a political leader." I find that highly disingenuous and an absurdly narrow view of what "political" means, or what a deanship symbolizes to a school.

In a final piece of news, I'd like to promote the upcoming panel "JDs in the New Economy." It's going to be this Thursday April 7, 2011, at 12 eastern/11 central. Third Tier Reality's Nando will be participating along with a number of esteemed people (including Dean Closius of Baltimore, whose contradictory statements in the NYT article I discussed back in January). The group will specifically discuss the value of a law degree and law school curriculum. Unfortunately, I won't be able to listen in but it looks to be fun, it's free and I encourage my readers to do so if they're available.

Applications Increase at Colorado

Yes, the headline is correct. While applications elsewhere are falling - to the tune of 11% per year - applications at Colorado-Boulder are up a whopping 12.7%. Of course, the numbers are coming from the school itself, and as we all know from the 'Nova example, people lie. But still, why are people going to Colorado, especially if its neighbor to the east saw a precipitous decline?

“Our faculty continues to focus on a quality educational experience that combines theory and practice,” Dean David Getches says in the release. “When you combine that type of education with our student teacher ratio and our relatively low costs, there is a great value in our education. We believe that is what prospective students are seeing when they choose to apply here.”

Gee, that sounds like almost every other public school in the country.

Incidentally, this more or less shoots down my "part-time/evening" program theory from Saturday, as CU has only a full-time day program.

I really don't get it. The COA is still 43k which is more than Kansas, Wyoming, etc. It's not like the Denver legal market is booming, and it's not like CU grads have any kind of edge in national hiring.

I suppose some school had to keep the application numbers high. Maybe Colorado offered more fee waivers or something, but again, I just don't see the genuine interest.

What's With the Application Decline Disparity in Pittsburgh?

The Pittsburgh Tribune has run its own story about the law school applications decline, which would be unremarkable except that buried deep a the bottom I found something interesting about the two local Pittsburgh schools:

Charmaine McCall, assistant dean of admissions and financial aid at the Pitt School of Law, said applications are down about 13 percent...

At Duquesne, Law School Dean Ken Gormley said applications declined "a couple of percentage points." The school's evening division might have helped keep the decline from being more dramatic, he said.

Both are located in Pittsburgh, and it's indisputable that Pitt is the more prestigious school. From lawschoolnumbers:

• Pitt = 158-161 LSAT (25-75); +5% bar passage.
• Duquesne = 151-154 LSAT (25-75); -11% bar passage.

So why would the application drop be steeper at Pitt than at Duquesne? If you're the Perez Hilton of the legal blogging community, you might try to finding a way to label applicants lazy. Or it also may be true that the Duquesne dean is lying; it's not like there isn't a track record of law school administrators glossing over statistics.

But what if the difference in declines is legitimate? That, despite Pitt being a "better" law school, less people want to go there?

Here is a rather quickly-drawn, late-night-can't-sleep hypothesis: Duquesne, as its dean noted, has an evening program that it advertises prominently. Pitt, so far as I can tell has no evening program. What if the dean was being refreshingly transparent and that evening applications are remaining constant while full-time day division applicants are actually dropping more than the reported 11.6% nationwide?

It makes sense on some level. Current undergraduates and other academics with no particular connection to the law are the weakest applicants in terms of desire; they merely want a job, and frankly any good career option would do. But working professionals already have a job. Many of them work in the legal sector and may be banking on their connections to spring back into the field as an attorney once they get their license. And in any event, if they maintain a full-time job while attending night school, the fear of unemployment shouldn't be expected to obstruct the applicant hell-bent on a J.D.

It's just a thought, but I find it an interesting one at that. If it's true and the gifted undergraduates are turning from the law while the harried professionals continue enrolling in the 2nd- and 3rd-tier programs that have evening divisions, I'm sure that reality will worry quite a few of the T-14 mandarins, especially if those evening students are using their current connections to secure work after graduation.

This would be a very interesting trend if true. Will possibly have to look into this further.