Read, Spot the Similarities Between Law and Higher Education

Although I maintain that there are some entirely unique aspects of the legal field (the limited transferability of the law degree, the seismic shifts in BigLaw creating a domino effect), it's hard not to see some similarities with how education has been handled in other fields.

See, for example, the run-of-the-mill PhD, as explained by this excellent article from The Nation by William Deresiewicz. Reading through it, it's hard not to see the similarities with the legal field:

1. "[T]he feeling is universal. Most professors I know are willing to talk with students about pursuing a PhD, but their advice comes down to three words: don’t do it."
2. "In the past three years, the market has been a bloodbath: often only a handful of jobs in a given field, sometimes fewer, and as always, hundreds of people competing for each one."
3. "[T]hings kept getting worse. Instead of replacing retirees with new tenure-eligible hires, departments gradually shifted the teaching load to part-timers. . . "
4. "Less visible but equally important has been the advent and rapid expansion of full-time positions that are not tenure-eligible. No one talks about this transformation—the creation of yet another academic underclass...."
5. "Graduate programs occupy a highly unusual, and advantageous, market position: they are both the producers and the consumers of academic labor, but as producers, they have no financial stake in whether their product “sells”—that is, whether their graduates get jobs. Yes, a program’s prestige is related, in part, to its placement rate, but only in relative terms. In a normal industry, if no firm sells more than half of what it produces, then either everyone goes out of business or the industry consolidates. But in academia, if no one does better than 50 percent, then 50 percent is great. Programs have every incentive to keep prices low by maintaining the oversupply."
   

In other words:

1. Practitioners regularly advise people not to go.
   
2. A dismal hiring market.
3. Systemic changes that have decreased opportunities for recent graduates by replacing them with off-shored and non-barred employees.
4. A downward shift in wages and job titles that creates a whole new underclass.
5. The education system has perverse economic incentives to flood the market and little to no incentive to actually place all of its graduates, only so long as it has relative success (i.e., US News and World Report).

Yup. Of course I'm simplifying for the sake of comparison. The article runs four pages and is full of nuanced differences in academia vs. other professions, but overall, it's hard to ignore that education systems seem to be run exactly like for-profit businesses, albeit at a slower pace. Those running graduate schools have seemingly cast aside the structural protections of professionalism just as quickly as those running law schools have.

And in both cases, you can ultimately blame federally-backed loans and this stupid folk religion that getting a chiseled-column degree - any degree - is better than working as a tradesman or garbageman or any other blue collar job that the American suburban bourgeoisie has turned its nose at for decades, along with a obedient capitalist media that has made higher education into a necessity of respect and a way to thin the labor pool instead of what is should be: a product evaluated for its usefulness and return on investment.

And that brings me to my next point, on the claimed need for happiness and personal satisfaction in a degree. This article is not only absurd puffery of the job market with lots of go-getter fluff (and it repeated the constant business lie that they want "analytical ability" and "writing" and therefore are peachy with liberal arts grads; earth to Ms. Pynchon: they've been saying that for decades, and it's just not true), but the comments betray a really irrational attitude on behalf of the author:

I went back to school and majored in Literature as had always been my plan – my passion. I figured I could always find A JOB but I had only one chance to study the thing I loved. Would my choice have been the same had my U.C. San Diego education cost tens of thousands of dollars rather than simply a couple of grand? I don’t know. But I’ve never for a moment regretted majoring in Literature – a subject that continues to feed my spirit 35 years after graduation.

Tragically, it's common to completely confuse education and knowledge in this way. People feel that if they want to know, say, "literature," they have to get a fancy certificate from Western Tech State. And the converse: if they don't have the certificate, they don't know it.

Well, neither proposition is true. I know dozens of English majors who wouldn't know a Shakespeare reference if it slapped them in the ass. I know a history graduate student who doesn't know what I consider to be basic nuts-and-bolts talking points of world history. And don't get me started on certain political science, psychology, or sociology disciplines who spend 50% of their time restating the obvious.

Conversely, I know many people - mostly older - who have become mini-experts in a particular area solely out of interest. Military buffs are common. Do you think a Civil War lover who visits battlefields and devours books about Sherman and Lee feels unfulfilled by not having done the procedural requirements to get a master's? In our age, almost anyone can get an advanced degree. Only a few actually love learning and seek knowledge to genuinely pursue it. And if you need some kind of structured setting to learn, get in contact with people in the field or set a schedule of visiting conferences or something.

There's simply no reason to confuse education - a certification process - with the love of knowledge, or its effects. That's precisely what the marketers at the universities want you to believe. Same with law schools: "won't you love learning about the law? You'll be enriched by your law degree, even if you don't practice!" Well, bullshit.

Truth is, if you want to be enriched by literature, you always have the chance to pick up a good book. There is no "one chance" with genuine knowledge, nor is the process ever complete become some trash bin gave you a gloried dead tree. Since anyone can pick up a Norton Anthology or explore the annotated classics at their local library, I see no reason to not apply full investment principles to a degree.

Law works in much the same way. No, you won't be able to get a law license, but if your interest is in "learning the law," there's nothing stopping you from reading good books about constitutional law or a history of English property law. Your odds to practice will only be slightly lower than some of those who spend three years, and your personal fulfillment will be identical, if not greater, since yours wouldn't end with some tenured jackass making you regurgitate every nicety in the rules in a three-hour span and then finding a way to slice 50+ practically-identical exams into grading categories.

Thoughts on the Thomas Jefferson Law School Class Action

As many of you likely know, Thomas Jefferson College of Law, brand new campus and all, has been sued in a class action lawsuit:

According to the complaint, plaintiff Anna Alaburda graduated with honors from the San Diego law school in 2008 and passed the California bar examination, but has been unable to secure full-time employment as an attorney. She sent more than 150 resumes to law firms and received only one job offer that was "less favorable than non-law related jobs that were available to her."

...

She accrued more than $150,000 in student loans during her law school years, the complaint says.
...

Beth Kransberger, associate dean for student affairs at Thomas Jefferson, said that the school does not misrepresent its employment statistics.

"The school has always followed the guidelines established by the ABA. We've always been accurate in what we report, and we've always followed the system given to us by the ABA," Kransberger said. "This lawsuit is very much about a larger debate. This is part of the debate about whether it's practical to pursue a graduate degree in these difficult economic times."

Others have already covered this fairly well (see First Tier Toilet, PresTTTigious, and SubprimeJD) and I have skimmed the complaint and I don't wish to go on a point-by-point review of the merits, suffice to say that: (a) I'm happy that someone finally did this; and (b) it will be very interesting to see if the fraud claims can get past a motion for summary judgment. My opinion, devoid of any knowledge of California law and not exactly experienced in fraud, is that there are a few hurdles that might prove tricky to clear (e.g., reasonable reliance). It will also be very interesting to see if the USNWR or the ABA become involved somehow.

But I would like to point out a few things from the National Law Journal's write-up.

First, this student attended TJLS from 2005-2008, when the cost of attendance was around 43k (LSN currently lists the 2006-2007 number at $42,948). Her $150,000 in debt may seem obscene, but consider that in the 3-6 years since she's been in law school, tuition alone has risen to over 40k per year. The TJLS website does not list a total cost of attendance with this figure, but it has to be around 60k. As bad as the complaint looks with respect to Ms. Alaburda, students entering in the fall of 2011 are going to significantly worse off.

Second, Beth Kransberger is.... well, wrong. That's about the nicest way I can put it.

As far as I know, compliance with standards established by one's own industry almost never can completely relieve an industry participant of liability when they're dealing with an outside party; at an absolute minimum, it shouldn't. For example, if every participant in the automotive industry uses the same style of brake pads because the brake pads are endorsed by the safety committee of the industry's trade association, the automotive manufacturers may (and should) still be possibly liable in tort for brake pad failures. Why? Because it's possible that the entire industry has the standards wrong, for whatever reason.

Another example of this is in accounting and securities fraud. If I'm not mistaken, a company can comply 100% with standards set by FASB in its financial reports and still be liable for misrepresentation under various fraud provisions. Compliance with the existing standard is positive evidence for the company, but it's not dispositive because the standard itself may not completely align with the other area of law (here, fraud).

There's no perfect alignment between the ABA's reporting metrics and the California fraud statutes, and I doubt that the California legislature has ever endorsed compliance with ABA rules as a safe harbor against fraud claims. Fraud ultimately isn't about forcing companies to comply with their own industry's practices. It's about forcing companies to be honest with the public at large. So TJLS' compliance with the ABA's guidelines should have very little to do with whether their admissions presentations were deceptive to the average consumer.

Furthermore, this idea that this action is merely part of a "debate about whether it's practical to pursue a graduate degree in these difficult economic times" is laughable. This has nothing to do with "difficult economic times" and nothing do with general graduate degrees.

Am I skeptical of graduate school - and higher education - in general? Yes. But not all graduate degrees are cut from the same cloth. Medical school and dental school live by their own rules. Liberal arts PhD programs often have an intrinsic, non-economic value, and the market in those areas has been tight dating back decades (and has relatively little to do with the economic cycle). Advanced degrees in the sciences and engineering are more dependent on the economic cycle, but are generally still in demand (or so people say).

What is spelled out in this complaint is unique to law and exists independently of the economic cycle. Indeed, the complaint itself mentions that TJLS supposedly increased its graduates' employability in the 2007-2010 years. If Beth Kransberger insists that this is really about a JD possibly diminishing in value solely from external economic forces, why was there no drop after the recession began in earnest?

The numbers cited in the complaint say that TJLS law graduates weren't terribly effected by the recession. Dean Kransberger suggests otherwise, that it might be "impractical" to get a JD because of the rough economy. Well, which is it? Either Kransberger is lying and it has little to do with the economy or - gasp - the numbers were misleading.

But this is a side issue about an administrator who apparently didn't think through her words. The real point is that this isn't an economic issue at all, but rather something that has gone on for years. The complaint itself goes back to the early 2000s and if the student enrolled in 2005, the recession was non-existent when she chose TJLS, which is the time point truly relevant to the fraud claim.

And as others have pointed out - including our favorite Emory speaker - the changes in the legal field are not temporary adjustments of scale to account for a revenue shortfall, but rather systemic changes that affect the number of laborers needed in the field. Law firms are continuing an ongoing change that drastically reduces the need for new law graduates. Kransberger and others use the recession as a salve, a sort-of "get out of jail free" card that can relieve them of their failure to adjust to the brave new world where menial tasks are sent to India, partner tracks are non-existent, and paid work for young attorneys generally evaporates.

We're at a very interesting point in the law school bubble with the commencement of this suit. Rumors are circulating about possible class actions in New York, California, and Michigan (please see the message on Nando's page if you attended law school in one of those states). I imagine someone, somewhere, is researching the Florida schools, the Massachusetts schools, and perhaps even the Illinois, Ohio, Virginia, or Texas schools. If this class action against TJLS is successful in any way whatsoever, about 180 lawsuits will be filed the very next day.

It's an interesting time period, and although I'm skeptical and not sure what will happen with this particular case, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't more optimistic for the future as a result. It's uncertain, and there are all sorts of hurdles and pitfalls and complications, but no one ever said undoing and correcting a lousy system was easy. The fact that there's now a professional, non-pro-se complaint written by a decently-sized Los Angeles firm filed against a law school is a huge step from where we were just a year ago.

Edit: I just found this article on Miller Barondess' website that makes Kransberger look like an even bigger fool than I thought she was. Choice quotes:

Kransberger said student debt involves complex class issues, since those without inherited family wealth will almost certainly have to take out loans. Thomas Jefferson’s students are 35 percent first-generation college students, 25 percent first¬generation U.S. citizens and 40 percent students of color, she said. The school is one of the least expensive in the state, with annual tuition at $40,100.

Yikes. If I was an attorney for TJLS, I'd put a muzzle on this woman and attach it with superglue. She basically admitted that the school targets poor minorities, who, one should note, are less likely to find legal work sufficient to pay off the debt than those who have preexisting connections. Sorry if I'm not being politically correct, but to be honest, the legal field isn't, either. Diverse law schools are only a good thing to academics concerned with what the working world sees as a frivolity. Surely the school knows this, since it's a training ground for the legal profession and all. Given that TJLS is alleged to be a bad investment engaging in deceptive practices, admitting that you were targeting an abnormally high number of minorities, poor people, and new arrivals (read: less-sophisticated parties) seems like a very ill-advised move. And the school being "one of the least expensive" is a tallest dwarf competition, or a purest hooker competition. You get the idea, even if Kransberger doesn't.

Kransberger said Thomas Jefferson doesn’t cater to the rankings and that she’s been appalled by reports of other schools’ misdeeds.

You mean like building a new campus while your honors graduates are unemployed or working as waiters?

“A law degree remains an amazingly versatile degree, and that continues to be what drives us.”

No, what "drives" you is abuse of federally-backed loans, you lying sack of garbage. Versatile, my ass. Does anyone believe that crap anymore? And note that she's countering a fraud allegation with a bald-faced lie. Stop and think about that for a second.

Emory Graduation Speaker, Part Deux

If you recall, earlier this week news broke that a speaker at Emory told the students to "get over it," with it being their disappointment over not getting those $160k jobs that are far more endangered than the Emory admissions materials circa 2008 let on.

Above the Law got around to running the story yesterday and today has printed some responses from alleged Emory students (I say alleged because the letters are devoid of actual names) defending Professor Stadler's speech. None of the letters defend the "entitlement" line that really made me (and others) angry, but there are some tidbits worth commenting on. I'll stick to the first letter that ATL decided to publish.

She was not a shill for the administration; her speech was not further evidence of administrative mistreatment. She was there because [the students] asked her to be, with the knowledge that she had free range [sic: way to go, Emory education!] to speak on any issue....Professor Stadler spoke on behalf of the students and at our request.

This is evidence of the absurdity of higher education. The consumers actually believe in their little hearts that the employee-agents of the corporation who sold them an inferior product are on their side speaking on their behalf.

Companies try to get people to think this way all the time, to associate the company's own representative as one working "on behalf of" the consumer. It's a classic sales technique. It doesn't matter if it's Joe's Used Cars or Emory University, the principle is the same. Even if she's selected by students, Emory is ultimately paying her wage at the end of the month. And if you attended three years of a pseudo-elite law school and you believe that she "had free range to speak on any issue," I've got some land I'd like to sell you.

Yes, she very pointedly told people to “get over it,” but she did so as part of a speech extolling the need to see the pursuit of a career as a way to find fulfillment and happiness. Her message, as she plainly told us at the start of her speech, was one of honesty coupled with hope.

"The one thing standing in the way of your happiness is a sense of entitlement" is neither honesty nor hope, it's fantastical delusion. I have no problem whatsoever with a speaker being honest, saying the job market is lousy, most of you should find non-legal work if you're not employed at 6 months, etc. I try to be honest here.

But there's a difference between rational hope (a good thing) and elitist naivete (a bad thing). Stadler's "hope" about being a giver and discarding senses of entitlement and moving to Nebraska and whatnot tends towards the latter.

And the honest thing is that many of the students who want to be givers and work those 45k jobs for the public sector will not be nearly as fulfilled as they think, even if they can land the job. As I'm reading the excerpts and the letters, Stadler basically mischaracterized reality to give an Obama-style hope massage to her students' post-beatdown loins.

She did not tell us to simply get over it — she told us to understand the changed nature of the legal market and to use those changes to find a career that will make us happy, to look for opportunity and to make a way forward.

I got that; the point is that, for most of you, there are precious few careers that will actually use your law degree that will make you happy. Her distortion of that is basically PR for the university. Honestly, how can you not see this speech as shameless PR for the legal education industry?

She did not suggest that we willingly or happily accept low paying small firm jobs or that we ought to heap scorn on Emory; instead, she suggested that we should broaden our horizons and consider alternative opportunities in a world where the coveted BigLaw job may not exist.

Again, imagine this in a different industry: "I know your Dodge's transmission is irreparable, but if you broaden your horizons, it really adds a sparkle to your lawn!"

And as I noted in my write-up, the BigLaw angle is a pure straw man at this point. Most students have already broadened their horizons and considered alternatives, and they're just not there (at least ones that provide a return on the law degree). Again, that's the issue. For another analogy, it's like a city that has multiple bridges going over a river. One (BigLaw) is broken down, so the engineers (Stadler) tell everyone to use one of the other bridges. But they're so clogged you might as well swim or try fording the river. Get it?

I can understand being wary of Professor Stadler’s speech from quoted bits alone, but I think that it is brave for a professor to admit that Emory has failed some students, and to be honest and harsh where necessary.

The first part is brave, I suppose. But there is nothing brave about sugar-coated faux "honesty." If the response to the message was overwhelmingly positive, it wasn't "honest and harsh where necessary." And actually, there's nothing "harsh" at all in such a speech, unless the crowd is a bunch of masochists.

My problem with her speech still isn't that it was harsh or honest or full of hope. I wouldn't object to any of these. The problem is that what was quoted was downright oblivious to the hiring conditions below BigLaw, it glossed over student loan debt and costly tuition (the absurd "entitlement" line), and it distorted reality with the same chicanery the clergy used in the middle ages. The problem isn't that she recognized the hiring poor market (also: the sky be blue), it's that she basically phrased the speech to assuage graduate anger in a situation where I, and most others, think anger is entirely justified. The three letters ATL printed confirm my belief that the crowd was mostly docile sheep, for they completely failed to see hypocritical, blame-shifting corporate PR when it was spoke directly at them.

Introducting a Hot New Practice Area - Move Quickly!

From, of all places, the ABA Journal, it appears that 2007 Quinnipiac graduate Joshua Cohen has developed a solo legal practice around doing nothing but student loan debt counseling and negotiations, all in an attempt to help him pay off his $160k in student loan debt.

Lawyers make up 30 percent to 40 percent of Cohen’s clients, and all of them graduated from law school in the last five to 10 years. “The fact that I have a practice based on student loans is ludicrous,” Cohen told the Hartford Business Journal.

No kidding, but when you think about it, someone had to do it. And frankly, I'm kind of happy it was a TTT/TTTT graduate and not some BigLaw layoff from NYU or a veteran boomer whose real estate practice crashed.

Debtors helping debtors work with the monied elite. Is there a better fact situation to explain today's America, or tomorrow's legal reality? And as an aside, anyone want to partner with me to open a student loan counseling service?

Emory Graduation Speaker/Professor Tells the Indentured Peasants to Stop Whining

It's not surprising that one of the themes of this year's graduation season has been "we didn't promise you jobs," along with its tag-team accomplices, "broaden your horizons" and "you should serve the poor for nothing."

But statements like this, apparently made by Emory Professor/Graduation Speaker Sara Stadler as reported by law.com, still seem jarring:

At the law school's May 9 graduation, she dumped optimistic commencement speech cliches for a lesson in tough love, telling the Class of 2011 to stop fretting over the dearth of big money jobs.

"Get over it," said Stadler. "The one thing standing in the way of your happiness is a sense of entitlement."

What a head-in-the-clouds, audacious, rudely oblivious thing to say. You'll be happy if you just stop having a sense of entitlement? It's so daft, it's offensive. What about the students who don't have a sense of entitlement and never had one? What about the ones who just want a 45-50k a year job as a full-time attorney (e.g. those people who want to do public service from the get-go), the ones who are willing and ready to bust their ass, but can't get their foot in the door because the market has become so saturated? Did she even address that?

Where does this straw man that most students expect "big money" jobs come from, anyway? I know Emory is a higher caliber than most law schools, but very few law students, even at that level of school, are still pining for the "big money" after three years; most often, the illusion is destroyed the winter of 1L year if it existed at all. I would guess that a majority of recent Emory graduates would immediately accept a full-time position making 65k a year.

In any event, some sense of entitlement is justified when students are spending over $200,000 for a three-year education, including costs of living. Many of these students only paid that much on the belief that the product would provide a reasonable return on their investment. Paying $200,000 for a license that, it turns out, can only make one $45k a year (a marginal earnings increase - if that - for most students who get into Emory) is a perfectly-valid reason to complain.

Could you imagine other industries trying this? There's always some entitlement in purchasing a product; it's why we have implied warranties. Now, the legal marketers tell us, we're to have no sense of entitlement, so that if and when the product turns out to be virtually worthless, there's no reason to complain. Right...

This is yet another attempt to make systemic problems the problems of single individual students. The reason many of these students will be miserable, says resident genius Sara Stadler according to the source here, isn't that they'll be paying 1500 a month for the next 30 years for a degree that only marginally increased their earning power, but rather that they had any expectations at all. It's their problem, not any issue with the system that sucked them in with implied promises of being a lucrative (or even reasonable) move.

"I'm sure Emory has failed you in some way," Stadler added, saying she wished she could change that. But the terrible job market, she said, offers opportunity for happiness.

"You might have to move to Nebraska. … You might have to join a small firm where they don't make the big bucks," she said. "You might also have to learn to be a giver, not a taker. Givers tend to be happy people. Takers are never satisfied...."

When you consider that, according to her bio, Prof. Stadler jumped from federal clerkship to BigLaw (three different places) to professorship, this sets a high bar for absurdly hypocritical bullshit, doesn't it?

Who in God's name thinks of the world in terms of "givers" and "takers?" Did she read some low-rent daily devotional? And, if the world really were that way, wouldn't the takers view the givers as suckers? And, as part of the law school system, isn't she clearly a "taker?" Isn't this the same sort of pseudo-religious crap people have used to make the proletariat and below hunky-dory with social inequality for centuries? And why does she think the small firms of Nebraska will be willing to hire the Emory cast-offs who can't get jobs in Georgia?

It boggles the mind.

Chinese Law School(s) Revisited

Law.com has a nice update on the continued attempt by the Peking University School of Transnational Law to gain accreditation. The entry basically boils down to a back-and-forth between sense and nonsense. For example, this makes sense:

"This proposal makes absolutely no sense, unless we just want to implode the legal field in the United States and get our unemployment rate in the double digits for decades to come."

This, however, makes no sense:

With barely 50 students set to graduate in its first class in 2012, compared to the more than 4,000 foreign lawyers who take the New York bar each year, STL could have little impact on the U.S. job market, even if it sent that class en masse to America.

It's clear that this isn't a story about this one extra-national school gaining accreditation; it's about setting a precedent whereby the ABA will accredit extra-national schools, which would lead to a plethora of institutions popping up in India, China, Brazil, Eastern Europe, you name it, all in the name of selling American legal educations to rising economic players on the cheap.

And it completely ignores that the sole reason for a school like this seeking accreditation is so that it's graduates can sit for the bar exam in U.S. jurisdictions.

Furthermore, the willful ignorance by Dean Jeffrey Lehman is alarming:

But if the ABA is ultimately swayed by arguments about the bad U.S. job market for lawyers, Lehman thinks that the organization should be forthright about it.

"Then the ABA should announce they aren't accrediting any more law schools anywhere because there are too many lawyers," he says.

Right, because there's no difference between a Chinese law school and an American law school...

Contrary to what these capitalist blockhead superheroes want to claim, the purpose of an American law school is to train lawyers to work in the American legal system. It is not to ensure that people in foreign countries are learning western values or any other nonsense. There is no logical reason that training for American lawyers should be done in China, and there are valid reasons to prohibit such activity even if it offers economic benefits for the chosen few who run the system. On the plus side, however, this may be the one issue where American law professors are (or should be) on the same side as the jaded students. If legal training is exported, the gravy train and the six-figure salaries vanish.

If the ABA accredits this operation while maintaining its entry barriers that prohibit domestic innovation (e.g., online-intensive law schools, insistence on a tenured faculty, etc.), we'll truly know that the organization has no interest in actually serving the interests of American law.

Holder Gives Good Advice to UVa Grads

Attorney Eric Holder spoke at Virginia's commencement yesterday:

He asked of the audience, "I hope in the spirit of Robert Kennedy your most famous predecessor and mine, that you will dare greatly. That you will question what is accepted, and that you will change what is objectionable and that you will weed out injustice in all it's [sic] forms and that you will always remember the truth of his enduring words - 'The future is not a gift, it is an achievement'."

Absolutely.

I'm all for "weed[ing] out injustice in all its forms." Not that it's the most pressing form of injustice, but I certainly wouldn't object if they started with the law schools themselves.

On a related, here is the University of Virginia's "Facts and Statistics" page, where you can see that they're clinging to the '07, and '08 numbers:

More than 96% of the Class of 2008 reported employment at graduation

More than 99% of the Class of 2008 reported employment nine months after graduation.

Presence in Top Law Firms, Classes of 2007-09

• 73% with firms in American Lawyer's top 100 by gross revenue
• 11% with firms ranked between 100 and 200
• 16% with smaller firms

*Rankings according to American Lawyer 2008 survey

Public Interest Jobs, Classes of 2007-09

• 31 public interest groups
• 22 federal government
• 14 state and local government
• 16 military

Clerkships, Classes of 2007-09

• 9 U.S. Supreme Court (alumni clerkships, 2006-08)
• 44 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
• 93 U.S. District Courts and other federal courts
• 12 state courts
• 1 international court

It's now 2011. With a school the size of Virginia (>350 students per graduating class), there's no reason to lump classes together aside from rigging the statistics to allow the 2007 numbers to balance out the 2009 numbers. And you have to wonder why the 2010 graduates aren't mentioned at all.

Meanwhile, employment is so "99% guaranteed" amongst Virginia 3Ls that someone actually saw fit to publish this piece as an April fool's joke.

As its US News and World Report entry states, the salary discrepancy between public service employees and private sector employees (i.e. BigLaw) is over $100,000. But as this article states, the class of 2010 had a record number of people entering the public sector. Of course, the school tries to play it as a "we're committed to service" type of thing, but it can't be an accident that Virginia had a record number go into the government and public sectors in 2010 while the law school still finds it necessary to include 2006-2008 numbers in its employment and placement presentations, can it? Hmm....

Comments On The Latest Troll

This morning, I found, perhaps, the dumbest comment I've ever received on this blog:

You are no better than the elite that run this country.

Let me get this straight, if you were queen of the world you would ONLY allow the uber-smart people attend law school? Does is stop with law school? Or is this a general application of all fields of studies? Practicing law is not as glamorous as you purport it to be.

Personally, I have much more respect for someone that can plumb a house than another who can properly apply the facts to the elements of manslaughter.

You blog is nothing more than pseudo-intellectual masturbation. sickening.

Disgusting. Really.

I don't even know where to start with this troll, but I feel the idiocy therein leads to a few talking points:

1. "Let me get this straight, if you were queen of the world you would ONLY allow the uber-smart people attend law school?" Absolutely not! As actual readers of the blog know, I have very little regard for the LSAT, even though I did well on it. If an institution can admit people with moderate intelligence and achieve a high bar passage rate with a real positive return on investment, I would welcome it. For example, I think the University of South Dakota is a good law school, all things considered, even with its low median LSAT; I would recommend an in-state student go there instead of any number of "higher ranked" schools.

The problem with LaVerne is that it's not performing up to par with peer institutions. If it could admit 148 LSATs and put out a bar passage rate equal to Loyola, UC-Davis, etc., then I'd have no problem with it. But they aren't doing that, so their continuance of accepting 148 LSATs should warrant skepticism.

2. "Does is stop with law school? Or is this a general application of all fields of studies?" I think all post-graduate education should be ultimately governed by economic principles. Law is only unique to the extent that the government continues to authorize the antitrust behavior of the ABA.

3. "Practicing law is not as glamorous as you purport it to be." I have never claimed law to be a "glamorous" field. I actually object to the way law schools perpetuate the myth. Dignity and glamor are two entirely different concepts.

4. "Personally, I have much more respect for someone that can plumb a house than another who can properly apply the facts to the elements of manslaughter." I would say both are fully competent in their chosen professions, and that there's not much more that can be said. I think many students today would be better off as plumbers than as lawyers, but that doesn't mean a lawyer's work is not valuable. It absolutely is, in most cases.

All I'm advocating is that some type of standards be put in place to protect consumers from the perils of a bubble that produces heaps of non-dischargable debt and lost opportunity costs. Or, rather, to prevent further damage. As far as I'm concerned, this can take one of two shapes:

1. Market-based regulation, where the ABA loses its monopoly, the federal government stops back-stopping loans, barriers to entry are removed, and schools can compete like actual businesses. The overall cost of a law license would drop dramatically as schools would no longer have to follow ABA guidelines, but instead could sell a glorified long-term bar preparation courses to whomever wanted to buy. Plus, rising tuition would be checked by the fact that schools could no longer rely on Uncle Sam's thriftless loan policies.

2. Profession-based regulation, where the ABA keeps its monopoly, but it and state bar associations enforce more rigorous training and accreditation standards, enforce transparency regulations to ensure schools are being honest with students, force schools to audit their recent employment information, etc. The gist here is that the ABA would take active steps to prevent the massive oversupply of young attorneys who are misled into poor investments and/or unsustainable debt loads by gaining a pigeonholed credential in an oversaturated field.

The two obviously aren't mutually-exclusive.

More on La Verne College of Law's Accreditation

La Verne College of Law has received official notice from the ABA (by way of a 14-page letter; did this really take 14 pages?) that its accreditation committee recommended denying La Verne because of low bar passage rates.

This shouldn't surprise anyone when a school's bar passage rate is less than 70% after the 2nd try and the 1st try takers lag behind the state's other schools.

But of course, Dean Allen Easley has a defense/excuse: "we need more time!"

"We think that they've misunderstood some of the facts," Easley said of the committee's recommendation. "They have not given enough weight to all the changes we've made that are likely to produce better results in the future."

Making the requirements for admittance and grading more stringent could take years to show results, he said, adding that the university has also improved its legal-writing program and revamped its third-year bar exam support course.

You've had five years. Is that not the point of "provisional" accreditation, to give a school time to make adjustments before it becomes a fully-accredited institution? What were you doing in those five years? You had 3 full cycles of students. Why weren't these adjustments made already, as in 2-3 years ago? Or - if you had any institutional pride six years ago - after your 2005 class only had a 32% first-time pass rate? And where are these "more stringent" criteria for admissions? You're still apparently admitting kids with 148-150 LSATs. This kid and his/her 149/3.2 (public school poli sci) allegedly got $11,000 in scholarship money.

And let's not forget that the 1L transfer rate is over 17%. At least in my opinion, 1L attrition is a fairly solid indicator of the value of a school. Using LSN's numbers, the following schools are all over 20%: Florida Coastal, Cooley, Barry, St. Thomas (Florida), Cal-Western, Touro (37%!), Western New England, Jones/Faulkner, Liberty, Nova Southeastern, Oklahoma City, Detroit-Mercy, Valparaiso, Western State, Widener, Willamette, Florida International, and Golden Gate. I omitted Whitter because it was on probation at the time, and I probably missed one or two others. All of those are fully-accredited, and it reads as a who's who of poorly-regarded law schools. I think the ABA made a poor decision giving full accreditation to Jones/Faulkner and Liberty and I think any school that has 20+% of its students leave after the first year should be placed on automatic probation.

I'm also wondering how "more stringent" curves will make bar exam pass rates rise. What exactly is the thesis here? They'll force more drop-outs? That getting a C- in Torts instead of a C+ will make Joe Schmo study more?

Here's to hoping the ABA denies full accreditation. Sorting out the law school bubble will be no cut-and-dry task, but an ABA that enforces standards and refuses to add more schools to the mess is a positive step.

My (Hopefully) Final Entry on Rakofsky

I have tried to be as reasonable as possible on the entire Joseph Rakofsky fiasco and I plan to continue that course of action as much as I am able.

As part of the biggest olive branch I can possibly extend, I have decided to correct the possible technical errors in my original entry on the fiasco. Originally, paragraph number 2 read as follows:

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. Although he (smartly) solicited the aid of local counsel, he repeatedly let him own judgment trump his assistant's, actually boasted about his inexperience in his opening statement, awkwardly asked an investigator to "trick" a witness, and basically "won" a mistrial by incompetence (which he bragged about on Facebook).

The edited, new version reads like this:

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.

I view these changes as technical and not altering the "gist" of the statements about Rakofsky; consequently, they do not represent a retraction or an admission of falsity. These changes were made to reflect that the Washington Post may have erred on minor details, including why Rakofsky solicited outside counsel, what that outside counsel's opinion was on the matter (although they were direct quotes), why the judge specifically granted Rakofsky's motion to withdraw, Rakofsky's motivations in doing what he did, what the meaning of the word "trick" is when talking to an investigator/interrogator, etc. I remain apathetic and entirely neutral on these points as they're ultimately irrelevant to my point(s).

In substance, my entry does not change one bit. I only used Rakofsky's story to illustrate a fundamental problem with the legal field that will affect our (my and Rakofsky's) generation the most. Whatever damage had been done to Rakofsky's career was done long before I summed up the Washington Post story in a simple introductory paragraph.

In any event, I stand by my opinion that Rakofsky is an idiot who went out of his league and failed miserably. I also stand by my criticisms of his website and the content of my second entry (discussing his own client's grandmother's explanation of events). I will not be bullied into contrition and I reiterate my opinion that filing this lawsuit was a completely brainless decision.

On Tuesday, Rakofsky sent me an email asking for a "a retraction and an apology" (he also expressly said he's not seeking compensation from me...). I wrote him in response that if he provided proof that the facts were different than what the Washington Post claimed, I would be happy to correct my entries and apologize accordingly. Although Rakofsky's story is completely ancillary to the main point of this blog, I'm more than willing to give space to correct perceptions of Rakofsky that may be based on false understandings. After all, if Rakofsky's concern were truly protection of his reputation, he would jump at the opportunity, right?

Instead, I got this:

I have a transcript, but you're the one who wrote the
story and you need to get it yourself. The transcript cost me $1400. I
insist that you not take my word for it and buy the transcript
yourself, which you should have done before you presumed to harm me.

Aside from thinking I "wrote the story," (I didn't) Rakofsky is attempting to set the most ridiculous standard in internet - nay, reporting - history. Those who want to comment on news events publicly can, apparently, no longer rely on major national newspapers for their news. The First Amendment can have no such result, and surely Rakofsky knows better than this (or maybe not).

As many of the co-defendants have noted, Rakofsky sought to use the internet to gloss over his relative inexperience, and now he's upset that it's been used to expose the truth about him to a broader audience. In the interests of telling that truth, I again reiterate my offer: I'll gladly use this space to publish Rakofsky's side of the story if he demonstrates to me that the Washington Post was wrong in substance.

Of course, it looks like Rakofsky posted a comment on the original Washington Post article and instead of pointing out the errors, apparently decided to pretend like a third party (see the comment by "triallawyerusa," which is Rakofsky's email handle) and view the article as follows:

I wonder if this is a case of a clever lawyer learning about the Government's case in a district where he has no reason to practice and then figuring out a way to achieve a Mistrial. If so, the lawyer accomplished a major victory for his client, in which case, the Government must feel duped....I find it very difficult to believe most of what is written, given that it is so poorly written. I would like to see this alleged "email" to the investigator, but that will likely never happen....

Um...yeah. Why didn't this mysterious "triallawyerusa" try to correct the errors by at least pretending to be someone in the courtroom?

In any event, I do have one additional comment on the original entry. It said this:

[H]e is by no means unique.

When you put it in the context of what I was discussing, he isn't. But in terms of this response? That, my friends, seems unique. At least, I hope it is.

Rakofsky also suggested via email that I put myself in his shoes. The glib (and correct) response is that I wouldn't be in his shoes. But playing the hypothetical, I would try to find honest non-legal employment as soon as possible. And then I would work hard. The end.

Unfortunately, I believe, Rakofsky has chosen a different approach to life. I sincerely hope he wakes up and realizes that this is not a good course of action, and one that ultimately does not make him look good; the widespread internet acclaim to Eric Tukewitz's vade et caca in pilleum et ipse traheatur super aures tuo should be his first clue. That is, if common sense didn't intervene in the first place.

North Carolina Central Grad. Speaker Lifts Speech

Now that we're back on normal programming (I hope), we are faced with an interesting question: what's the perfect way to cap off a third-class legal education?

Well, at North Carolina Central, the answer apparently is to have your graduation speaker rip off another speaker from a third-class undergrad institution:

A North Carolina Central University law school graduate is being criticized by school officials for delivering a commencement speech that heavily plagiarized a YouTube video.

The News and Observer of Raleigh reported Preston Mitchum gave remarks Friday that included much of a speech last year by Binghamton University student Anthony Corvino.

The article goes on to say that Mitchum intended to give credit to Corvino, and that he sought his permission in advance, so the plagiarism is apparently purely technical, but who on Earth spends three years in law school and has nothing better to fill the time with than lifting some other guy's speech from youtube?

And a Binghamton student from last year? Really? Was the library closed? Couldn't you at least plagiarize a famous lawyer? A working lawyer? A well-known writer? Corvino's speech may be good, yes, but that's completely beside the point.

As the Durham paper points out, Mitchum may face discipline:

"He graduated," the dean said. "He's gone. When students have graduated, that limits what the law school can do. This is almost definitely a matter we will have to pass on and leave to the North Carolina Board of Bar Examiners. It's very likely they will be the ones to make a decision about whether this could affect his license."

I think that's a little steep, just as I think some of the reactions are a bit over the top, consider Provost Kwesi Aggrey:

"We completely disavow this behavior by any of our students in any capacity."

Aggrey added that he, too, hoped "this incident will serve as a teaching moment for our students."

You disavow plagiarism? Wow, way to go out on a limb. "Teaching moment?" Uh, kids, plagiarism is bad. You shouldn't do it. That's it. Be disgruntled, laugh, move on. No reason to try to discipline a kid or get the bar examiners involved (it's not academic/professional dishonesty; it's a commencement speech at what I'm sure was a lame ceremony).

An Open Letter to Joseph Rakofsky Re: Rakofsky v. the Internet

Where have I been the last couple of days? I didn't find out until this morning that beleaguered New Jersey attorney Joseph Rakofsy (you might remember my original posts about him here and here) has sued a good portion of the legal blogsphere. This is what I get for associating with the "scamblog" niche.

Lo and Behold, it appears that this blog is a defendant along with 73 others. I have not (and will not) read the full complaint beyond the "parties" section, but you can see it here.

As co-defendant Leah Weaver has noted, this suit is obviously designed to get people to retract their statements, but will likely have a "Streisand" effect of backfiring. As co-defendant Jeff Gamso points out, Rakofsky should really stop digging himself deeper. Another co-defendant views being a defendant along with the Washington Post as a badge of honor. As my regard for the national media is low, I'm not sure I go that far. Co-defendant Carolyn Elefant isn't so gracious, but has pledged to "not be bullied." Finally, co-defendant Antonin Pribetic took the approach of mindful sarcasm after reading the New York long-arm statute:

I will demur in disclosing my position on the merits of the defamation lawsuit, since I haven’t read it yet. Personally, I think that any defamation claim arising from my post is resoundingly [redacted] and I strongly recommend that both the plaintiff and his counsel take my advice and go [redacted].

Finally, co-defendant Scott Greenberg did some digging and found that Rakofsky's attorney is as puffery-inclined as his client. A running list of blogs with commentary can be found here.

For my own part, I though the best approach to this issue would write the supposed plaintiff an open letter outlining my feelings.

Dear Mr. Rakofsky:

The simple and crude response to this frivolous joke of a lawsuit would be "suck my balls," and believe me, I contemplated it. But there are better things to discuss.

In my original entry, my one paragraph summation of your story contained no new factual allegations and merely repeated what I had gained from a good faith reading of all available sources on the subject. Finding the Washington Post and the ABA Journal credible sources, I posted them using quotation marks where appropriate.

The only factual allegations in the second article are repeated statements made by your own client's grandmother that were reported verbatim in the Washington Post.

To both of these factual sets, I added my opinion and interpretation to illustrate the problem of attorney oversupply and a broken law school system. If these factual elements were in error, I will gladly correct them. But I stand by my opinions assuming the validity of those facts, and I hasten to note that as a first-semester 1L I would have understood that you have no real claim for libel in this, Joseph.

Nor, it seems, do you have much common sense. A simple email to the same address you listed in your complaint could have cured whatever issues you have with my previous posts. Although this would have been the straightforward, cost-free, internet gentleman's way of resolving our apparent differences, I never received such an email. Instead, you tacked my name onto a laundry list of other idiot internet bloggers in a really, really stupid lawsuit that will only lead to more mockery and infamy. Not only do you need to find a better lawyer, you need a find a better PR person.

But above all, Joseph, I want you to know that I don't hate you, nor did I have any intent to speak ill of you. I haven't an ounce of malice or spite or ire towards you. If anything, I have complete and utter sympathy for you. Empathy, even.

I'm ultimately your ally, Joseph, because you're a victim, just like most of our generation of law graduates. To make it into and through law school, you obviously have higher than average intelligence. And it's clear that you have an entrepreneurial spirit. You apparently made a series of major mistakes, but honestly, I don't think it's your fault. You entered a system that, sadly, is rigged against people like you and me. You were given an accredited education and a law license and told to "go get 'em." You did that, and now you're being punished because you decided to hang a shingle and do what it was you thought you were trained to do. I think you were foolish, absolutely, but the ultimate blame, I think, goes directly to the system that produced you (and, it appears, your current attorney). Heck, I don't even think you should lose your law license.

But no competent court in this world would let this absurd crockery move forward. If anything, your filing of this hilarious monstrosity proves that you're a naive idiot who has much to learn about the world. And I say that, too, without hatred; my own mother calls me an idiot, as does my significant other, my friends, my siblings, etc. Having one's own foolishness pointed out is a good thing. It helps us learn, and for the last few months, you've had a wellspring of wonderful advice premised on calling out your mistakes.

It's in your best interests to take that advice and stop "digging yourself deeper." Stop bringing attention to these stories. History would counsel you to do such. The money you have spent on this silly lawsuit could have been spent taking out an ad in the New York Times or the Washington Post giving your side of the story. Instead, you've just pissed off/provided humor for a bunch of lawyers and media conglomerates. That's not a good course of action under any circumstances.

In the interest of helping you get your life back on track, I'm going to offer you a "settlement" of sorts without waiving any defense to this meritless garbage: (1) you dismiss this lawsuit in its entirety; (2) I give you an entry on RDTTL, with priority for a twenty-four hour period, where you can tell your life story. Email me at j.dog84@ymail.com if you wish to accept and we can work out the details from there. The non-negotiable offer is good until Friday at midnight, eastern time, and I believe it's by far the most charitable thing you're going to be offered.

My goal with this blog is ultimately to help change the system so that no one is again put in your position, Joseph, feeling pressured to take cases beyond their grasp for low-balled fees because the labor market is so saturated. I apologize if I repeated the ABA Journal or Washington Post's errors, but I will not apologize for my analysis of the situation as my good-faith reading led me to understand it.

If you choose to continue with this high comedy, I will laugh at your expense, defend my words vigorously, and contemplate legal action against you and the two-bit firm that brought this suit.

But as your ally, I hope you take the right path, because if you really want to get your career and life back on track and move beyond this debacle, this ain't going to help. If you can't see that the majority of people who comment on your story really don't hate you, and you continue to press this one-man suicide mission and only make your situation worse, well, then, you can suck my balls, dude.

Sincerely,
J-dog.

Indiana Tech Misses Memo; Will Open Law School

Indiana Tech's dim-witted Board of Trustees unanimously approved the building of a new law school after "careful research." I wonder what that "research" consisted of, since it's fairly obvious that the market for legal education is shrinking rapidly.

“There are potential students who desire a law school education who cannot get that education in this area, and there are people in our state who need legal services who don’t have access to them,” President Arthur Snyder said. “Indiana Tech can help close those gaps.”

This notion that every geographic subregion just has to have its own law school is laughable. Fort Wayne is about a two-hour drive to South Bend, where students can get a pseudo-T1 legal education. For those shooting lower, Indiana's crappiest law school, Valparaiso, is a mere two hours and twenty minutes away. IU-Indianapolis is roughly the same distance. Toledo is two hours to the east. Michigan State is a two-hour drive up I-69.

I cannot seriously believe that local demand for a school is that high. The number of working professionals in Fort Wayne who want a legal education who can't move down the road simply cannot be at the level to sustain a law school. Fort Wayne is roughly the same size as Reno, NV; Springfield, MO; Shreveport, LA; or Anchorage, AK. None of those places needs a law school, and in-depth studies of Anchorage show the demand just isn't there despite not being able to find a law school without going to the lower 48. Thus, I'm highly, highly skeptical of the Indiana Tech "research."

And this idea that more law graduates can suddenly provide legal services to poor people is one of the biggest lies told by head-up-their-asses administrators, and it's got some pretty stiff competition. Arthur, if you think the lack of access to legal services is caused by a labor shortage, you're an idiot who deserves the fate of one who builds into a declining bubble.

If there was any kind of legitimate labor shortage in northeast Indiana, you would see a flood of unemployed graduates and laid-off attorneys pouring in from the oversaturated surrounding areas, from places like IU-Indianapolis, IU-Bloomington, Notre Dame, Valpo, the Chicago schools (U. of Chicago, Northwestern, DePaul, Marshall, Chi-Kent, Loyola), Wayne State, Michigan, Michigan State, Cooley, Toledo, Ohio State, Dayton, Cincinnati, etc. Are you really so obtuse as to think piling another generic fourth-tier on top of the pile will open new doors? Roughly 40-50% of recent graduates from these schools lack full-time attorney positions!

If I were an Indiana citizen, I would be furious at this development. Indiana has one of the lowest lawyer per capita ratios in the country, thanks in part to its universities' restraint in not building new law schools in a state whose population has stagnated. Now Indiana Tech wants to ruin that by pumping out 100 more at 28k a pop.

Hopefully, these very foolish well-credentialed muppets will wake the heck up. Perhaps Indiana is like the Iowa of South Park and it's 3 years behind the rest of the country. Maybe in a few years they'll start to realize what those in Delaware already did, that it's downright stupid (and immoral, given the consequences to a majority of graduates) to build a law school on the current ABA model. I recognize that Indiana Tech's tuition will be low for a price-gouging private schools, but it's not low enough to justify market entry, and it's not going to offer a damn thing that isn't filled by the numerous other schools flooding the legal labor market.

More Graduation Mockery: Integrity? Really?

Justice John Paul Stevens spoke at Northwestern's graduation yesterday, and since he's 91 I'm going to cut him some slack because these really aren't his problems, but this is a doozie of ridiculous graduation-type advice:

Stevens . . . told the students to “remember that your most valuable asset . . . is your integrity.”

“If your adversaries and colleagues know that your word is good, you will be a successful lawyer,” Stevens said.

Even at places like Northwestern, students are feeling the pressure of lawyer oversaturation, offhosring, etc.

Take this Above the Law writer, for example:

I graduated from Northwestern Law in 2009. It is now 2011, my loans are coming due (real due — not the fake, put ‘em in forebearance, due of yesteryear), and I am currently “employed” doing two things: reviewing documents at an embarrassing hourly wage on projects that start and stop without any sort of consistency, and writing “jokes” about the Microsoft Zune every weekday morning, every other week.

Yet, all he needs to "be a successful lawyer" is integrity? What a crock of insulting horseshit. It's like telling a starving African that all they need to eat like kings is hope and prayer. It sounds nice, but it just ain't true.

And to my mind, telling law students that all they need is integrity is especially egregious because their suffering is the result of a system that completely lacks integrity. Where is integrity in bogus and misleading employment statistics? Where is the integrity in training professionals by teaching them things other than the what the profession demands? Where is the integrity in price gouging a non-dischargable debt? Where is the integrity in numerical legerdemain to jump up 5 USNWR spots at the expense of your students' educations? Where is the integrity in drawing a 200k+ salary running an institution selling products 1/2 of the customers can never possibly use?

And all that is not to mention the obvious flaw with Justice Stevens' remarks: if your adversaries know your word in unflinchingly good, in this world, they'll play you like a sucker for it.

The pie-in-the-sky visions of inevitable legal success are insulting and offensive enough, but talking about integrity at a modern law school graduation? That's hypocrisy at its finest, even if the speaker himself has personal integrity to spare.

In non-law graduations, my quote of the day has to come from this Boise State graduate:

“It feels pretty good, it's more of a transition. Walking after law school, I'll be excited.” — Justin Jeppesen, BA in history, going on to University of Idaho law school.

How about you check back in three years and tell me how "excited" you are, Justin, to get that Idaho degree?

Law Grads: You Can Be Just Like Justice Thomas, Too! Just Follow Your Glimmers

It's graduation season, meaning another wave of 40,000 are told they can fit into a shrinking job market that has little use for half of them.

Up first we have Justice Clarence Thomas, who spoke at Nebraska Law School's graduation ceremony last Saturday. Even though Thomas went to Yale Law School almost forty years ago, he attempted to find relevance for today's graduates:

His attempts to get a job at a law firm resulted in numerous rejection letters, stirring anxiety in the future justice who had a young child at the time and staggering student loans. His lone job offer came from the state Missouri attorney general for meager pay and a long distance from his hometown of Savannah, Ga.

"Getting on the bottom rung would have been enough for me, but I couldn't even do that," Thomas said. "But I got to sit where you are today with that solitary job offer as my tenuous lifeline to that glimmer of hope. Little did I know what was in store for me."
...
"As will be the case for each of you, the people who really mattered were supportive," he said. "But many others were not the least bit encouraging, and some even chose to pour salt in the wounds of disappointment and despair. Whether it was those who looked at me with pity, or those who assured me that my one job offer was a waste of a Yale Law School education, many were just plain unhelpful, unsupportive and mean."

What the article (and presumably the justice) left out is that he got his job at the Missouri ADs office because he networked with the sitting attorney general of the state, John Danforth, who wound up being an influential Republican Senator and who was a Yale law alum himself. And on his oyez biolgraphy, it states that he had ample offers and chose to go to Missouri because the AG would left him work on tax and antitrust stuff. And according to a New York Times column, Thomas has previously mischaracterized his past for his own motives.

But all that murky stuff aside, the point is the message, right? That these graduates may be spat on, rejected, or be greeted with people who tell them their education was a waste, but they can really make it if they just follow that "glimmer of hope?"

Yes, kids, if you just happen to be the right color, make the right ally at Yale, finagle your way into the Reagan administration and land a judicial appointment just in time for Thurgood Marshall to retire, you can have great things in store for you, too! Even if you have Anita Hill speaking against you! And when your opinions are mocked by TTT law professors who point out your numerous errors, you get the last laugh!

I'm not going to deny that Clarence Thomas had a rough childhood that he persevered through it all towards success (and I don't question that southern law firms refused to hire blacks at all), but for most of those kids graduating today, their "glimmer of hope" is that a weird disease immobilizes 1/3 of the attorneys in Omaha, or that they win the lottery, or that their student loans are forgiven via an accounting error. Something tells me their networking at Nebraska did not land them in the company of many future Senators.

Frankly, hearing Thomas talk of "staggering student loans" and dim job prospects to this generation is insulting, almost like a celebrity complaining because their double-platinum card's APR rose from 0.7 to 1.2% or because they can't get their custom Mercedes for another month. Thomas' starting salary in Missouri in the early 70s was the equivalent of about 45k today. If you offered that job - which, remember, Thomas got because he was a Yale graduate with connections - 85% of the students in the audience would take it in a heartbeat. And Thomas' student loans from Yale couldn't have been that bad compared to what today's average graduates face. Yale tuition in 1976 was 4150 a year. Assuming it was slightly lower when Thomas was there, his total debt-to-salary ratio would have been manageable, especially since Yale offered him generous financial aid on account of his race. And his student loans were dischargable in bankruptcy. Today, it's become routine for students to try to pay back debt with a 3-1 debt-to-salary ratio, if not higher.

The overall appearance here is one of a condescending, out-of-touch buffoon who thinks his overstated struggles and extremely good fortune can somehow furnish sound advice to people cruelly disabled by a system rigged against them. What these students really need to hear is exactly what Thomas told them to ignore. They need to have a realistic viewpoint and not rely on "glimmer[s] of hope." They need to confront the fact that law is an oversaturated field and that other areas may provide them with better success. For many of them, they need to embrace the fact that their education might have been a waste. If you don't take that view, you wind up with a bunch of people continuing to try and find nonexistent jobs for years.

What really matters to these kids is exactly what mattered to Justice Thomas: finding remunerative work and a healthy role in society. Your family can be supportive, but if you can't find a decent job, all the "you can do it, Billy, we love you, don't despair" in the world isn't going to help you put bread on the table and pay debts. It's a one-way ticket to depression and deep feelings of personal failure where there was very little chance to succeed.

What really galls me is that people like Justice Thomas are in a position (well, at least in theory) to really change things, get people to think differently about education and young adulthood and debt and finding work. And yet they all talk about working hard and fighting through rejection and turbulence and valuing your support system and blah blah blah. I'm not arguing that life should be rejection- and hardship-free (on the contrary, both are necessities), but central to having success in the world are knowing when to fold your cards and knowing when you're being screwed over. If something is more or less impossible, there's no point wasting further energy trying it. We're quickly approaching an age where restaurants, the notorious "look before you leap" business, will have more of an economic life than JDs.

I would love for just one speaker to get up this graduation season and say something like this:

"I'm mad as hell and you should be, too, because 1/2 to 2/3 of you are never going to really work as attorneys. Many of you would be better off finding a restaurant gig and writing your Congressmen daily. Sorry, kiddos, we abandoned professionalism a while back and the law schools decided to exploit the lack of youth jobs, the popular image of the Perry Mason attorney, and the myth that they're all rich. Have fun paying your non-dischargable debt working at the Gap."

Graduation ceremonies are supposed to be a welcome to the next world, right? And in many cases, isn't honesty the best possible virtue you can give to these graduates? It sickens me that the majority of law school students and recent graduates still seem to sit on their hands, waste two years of their life, and have a Pollyanna view of the world that they'll land a high-quality job if they're just tough enough.

Ultimately, that's the sort of passive egocentric optimism that needs to stop. It has nothing to do with you, whether you land a job or not. It's the system. It needs to change, and shame on Justice Thomas for apparently looking away and preaching the same old garbage. You'd think with his background he would be sensitive to social systems that screw people regardless of their merit, hard work, or character.

Blogger Fails As Much As This Career Student

I had a long post yesterday about this article here, where Philosophy PhD student Brandon Hogan claims he stayed at Harvard Law School because he was voted "most likely to succeed." I pointed out the numerous problems with this belief, including:

• Staying at Harvard Law School when you have no intention to practice law is a sign of insanity, not success, especially when one writes and thinks such complete and utter bullshit as can be seen on his Pitt page ("I am interested in understanding what it is that we do with our words," really?).
  
• There's nothing really prestigious or "successful" about graduating from Harvard Law (as opposed to "getting in") in 2011.
• Degrees themselves are not good indicators of success in anything given the modern education system.
• Brandon is 11 years out of high school and training in a field where jobs are extremely scarce, even for top graduates, therefore he is more of an abject failure than a success, even if he's intelligent.

Each one of these points had a paragraph or more of my wonderful and expensive analysis, including a new Elie Mystal dumbness cite and a parody of Brandon's philosophical quote along with a musing on why budding philosophers fall into the education money-grabbing rigmarole just like everyone else.

But alas, Blogger was offline yesterday and deleted my post in its entirety.

Journalist of the Day: Brad Kane

Today I want to feature two articles from the Hartford (CT) Business Journal, both written by Brad Kane.

First, we have Lawyers' Debt Hits All-Time High:

Today’s law school graduate has more debt than ever before, and is facing a market where getting a job is an extensive, grueling process. First-year lawyers are leaning on clerkships and part-time legal work, forced to abandon — or at least delay — their dream jobs to make their monthly debt payments.
...
The large debt is what sets this recession apart from all others, said James Leipold, executive director for the National Association for Law Placement.

That quote isn't completely correct, and I wish he had focused on someone broke and unemployed rather than the cute blonde who landed a job two weeks after the bar exam by "networking," but at least people might start to understand that the law school bubble is different if mainstream journalism keeps repeating these types of articles.

With that need for repetition in mind, Brad is the journalist of the day for publishing a second article on the profession as a whole on the same day, which I haven't seen posted anywhere else:

The message from Connecticut’s attorneys is clear: Unless you love the law, you’ll hate being a lawyer.

That’s the message more lawyers are telling their children.

And that’s a concern for an industry that finds itself in turmoil. The price of admission is up and interest in being a lawyer is down. The passion that once marked the profession is fading in the face of business pressures as law firms race to be the biggest and most comprehensive, judging lawyers’ value on the revenue they generate.

This is obvious to many of us who have already paid the for the boat show ticket, but ordinary people (and businessmen, like the readership of this newspaper) cannot hear it too many times: law is not what's on TV, and it's not what it was even 30 years ago.

And in this article, we get an actual anecdote of failure:

Avon native Daniel Lindenberg graduated in 2009 from Albany Law School in New York. . . .

Over the next 15 months, Lindenberg interviewed for 80 jobs. With $200,000 in deferred law school debt looming, the riches weren’t flowing. He moved back into his parents’ house. Connecticut bar exams, he started his job search.

Over the next 15 months, Lindenberg interviewed for 80 jobs. With $200,000 in deferred law school debt looming, the riches weren’t flowing. He moved back into his parents’ house.

He finally got a full-time job in January. The article talks about cutting costs, disbanding summer programs, and generally how the shift from profession-first to a business-first has fallen disproportionately on new lawyers.

All true, and I wish every newspaper in the country ran a story like this so the masses could see the major problems in the legal field.

Update on U. of La Verne Accreditation; ABA Recommends Denial

So as it turns out, one of the most popular entries on this blog recently has been my entry from January on the University of La Verne, where I discussed their provisional accreditation status. As far as google keywords go, "La Verne" is up near the top, somehow topping the lost porno searchers (seriously, if you're googling "pornography" and you wind up here, you epically failed; also, my hits for this entry will skyrocket as a result of using the word "pornography" multiple times. go me).

As it turns out, the ABA's accreditation committee is recommending a denial of full accreditation to La Verne. According to this article, a final decision will come June 11, after the ABA Council issues its finding on whether it accepts the recommendation or denies it, and whether La Verne will continue to have provisional accreditation if denied. La Verne will have a chance to present its argument for accreditation, but it seems they're not overly optimistic:

"There's a pretty good chance that we won't get full approval because the odds are stacked against us right now," said Allen K. Easley, the college's dean and professor.
...

During [a meeting last Wednesday with 150 concerned students], Easley said college officials were discussing the denial with their lawyers.

Meanwhile, officials said, the university is applying for state bar accreditation to ensure every current student will be able to take the exam after they graduate.

I would hope so, although I think "the" exam is faulty wording; it should be "a" bar exam. Rightfully, students are pissed.

"Even looking at this with the most likely and optimistic view of the school is that we're probably going to lose our accreditation in June," said Rachael Alcorn, 24.

"When I graduate in (May) 2012, I'm only going to have the California bar (and not ABA backing). That's not what I came to this school for."
...

Student Ali Kazmi, 25, of Rancho Cucamonga said he was trying to determine what his next move would be.

"It catches you off guard ... I'm worried about the school's reputation now," Kazmi said.

Well, it's not like the school had a stellar reputation to begin with, but I completely understand where these students come from. The ABA's course of action during the entire law school bubble was to "Always Be Accreditin'." It was a logical assumption to make that all provisionally-accredited would be fully-accredited in due time. The students couldn't have predicted the ABA would wake up and enforce standards, and so I think they have a right to be angry at the situation.

For example, here is what the 2010-2011 Course Catalog says about accreditation:

The University of La Verne College of Law has been provisionally approved by the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association since February 13, 2006. The Section of Legal Education may be contacted at 321 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60610 or by phone at (312) 988-6738.

Provisional approval precedes full ABA approval. ABA policy states that students enrolled in a provisionally-approved school are entitled to all the rights and privileges as students at fully approved schools. A law school must remain in provisional status for a minimum of two years before becoming eligible for consideration for full approval.

Do you see that? It "precedes full approval" as if it's a given, a guarantee, an inevitable turn-of-the-page consequence. No mention of the chance that the ABA will say "no." No mention of the 5-year provisional expiration or the school's previous issue with low bar passage rates. That seems like misrepresentation of a material fact, and that's not right, La Verne.

Unfortunately, the students are the ones really getting screwed here. The school will go on, possibly as a state accredited institution, but that model seems to work in California and they'll have a better reputation than the other California-only schools. The students, however, are stuck with a J.D. from a non-ABA school, which means they can't practice in most states. Even though they'll be denied the benefit of an ABA-approved education, they'll still be paying the massive costs (I think it's around 36k a year). If La Verne loses 2012 accreditation, the Class of 2012 will be truly and royally screwed. Most law students severely overpay for a product. La Verne's 2Ls and possibly 3Ls will be overpaying for a product they can't even fully use.

So here are my pithy, but completely serious suggestions for all involved:

-If you're the ABA, make a rule or exception that allows students who enrolled at a provisionally accredited school to finish as if they'd gone to a provisionally-accredited school.

-If you're a 1L at La Verne in the top 1/3 or so of the class, transfer. For the love of all that's holy, get out of Dodge. If you're in the bottom 2/3, find something else to do with your life unless you have a warm seat waiting for you on the other side.

-If you're a 2L or 3L at La Verne, complain, protest, and spread awareness about the massive screwjob that the school and the ABA seem to be performing.

-If you're the La Verne administration or faculty, ask yourself why you're running an institution that charges around $36,000 a year for an education where students aren't even equipped to pass the bar, may not have a chance to even take the bar, and, even if they pass, are thrown into a saturated legal market that has almost no use for them.

Also, ask yourself why your school has been less-than-upfront about the possibility that the school would lose accreditation (see my previous entry, or the course catalog entry above) and why I'm not able to find up-front tuition and costs on the school's website. Are you hiding this information from prospective applicants? Are these the operational values that you want to be associated with?

Also, I honestly think the La Verne administration should seriously consider some type of rebates to students for the school's failure.

Overall, it's hard to not see La Verne as the epitome of the law school bubble. From the first article linked:

The college has 420 students, up from about 250 or so prior to it gaining provisional accreditation from the ABA, he said.

A 68% jump. Think students don't factor in accreditation? Think the school didn't advertise it to the max?

I have no connection to La Verne, and I know no one who's ever talked about the place, but it's hard to not blame the school in this situation. Hopefully, the school can retain provisional status, only to prevent a large amount of students from being doubly screwed. If the ABA leaves the school with no accreditation, I really hope they find a way to except the current 2Ls and 3Ls, because it's really not right leaving them as the hot potato victims of this mess.

Delaware "Delaying" Law School; Hofstra Professor Rips on Merit Scholarship System

In case you haven't heard yet, the University of Delaware is delaying its plans for a new law school. At some point, cooler heads have to start prevailing. Let's hope we continue to see more articles like this and less articles like the ones where cray Alaskan representatives/candidates who spam my email think a law school in Fairbanks is a good idea.

In a mostly unrelated story, Hofstra Law professor Daniel Greenwood has written an article worth reading for the HuffPost on why merit scholarships are a market irrationally that should be regulated as price fixing.

"Merit" scholarships should more properly be called "US News & World Report Ranking Rebate Fees": schools give them because they need to maintain entering class GPA and LSATs in order avoid sinking in the rankings -- not because they believe recipients are likely to be better law students or happier, competent, just or successful lawyers.

This is a new angle, but one I like given my affinity for the "law schools act like for-profit businesses" viewpoint. I'm not sure it would fly legally (honestly, I don't know; my guess would be that non-profit businesses and those heavily backed by state policy are exempt from anticompetition statutes, but I'm not going to research anything), but I give him major props for creativity nonetheless.

Additionally, he has some dead-on-point remarks about the USNWR rankings scheme.

USNWR's rankings quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Schools that learn how to play the rankings game attract the students, faculty and money necessary to make real improvements, while schools that don't -- don't. Any school that dares to ignore the USNWR rankings risks a death spiral of rapidly departing employers, students and faculty, leading to lower ranking and even more problems.

Unfortunately, rankings are a zero sum game: if everyone learns to game them, no one can get a competitive advantage.

He goes on to articulate fully how everyone loses under the current system.

Throughout the article, he makes it crystal clear that what exists in legal education is not the result of a pure free market, but rather a distorted market, of capitalism gone wrong, in stark contrast to the stances taken by many industry apologists. However, the solution he believes would fix the problems would violate current antitrust laws, he claims.

Overall, I'm not entirely sure I agree with Professor Greenwood's solution of more stringent regulation, but the article's analysis of the problems is spot-on and a welcomed look from the inside of the legal academy.

If Ranking Rebates were illegal, many schools could immediately cut their tuition by a quarter or a third. Admissions officers could focus on the qualities that actually predict success in the law, instead of the ones that are easily measured in numerical rankings. Law students would be better able to focus on education, group learning and building relationships with their peers and professors, instead of competitive grade grubbing to keep their grant or transfer to a higher ranked school. And scholarship money could go to those who would best make use of it, instead of those who make schools look better on USNWR's arbitrary rankings.

It's hard to disagree with that, unless you've drunk from the bin of kool-aid that actually makes you believe LSAT scores are the end-all-be-all of a student and school's worth.

I encourage others to read the article, as there's more good in it than what I could reasonably exploit here.

Bob Morse Responds, Tries to Push Blame on Law Schools

Well, after last week's New York Times story on how law schools use merit scholarships to boost their USNWR ranking, which get pulled away after the first year. As I noted, this is the expected response to such a system where schools are incentivized to act in a way that doesn't always neatly conform to standards of ethics or what an objectively-good law school would do. All of this is the natural consequence of the USNWR rankings having almost no merit in actually evaluating law schools.

Naturally, Bob Morse has decided to respond to USNWR role in the scholarship game and, as seemingly usual, wants to pretend it's someone else's issue. After a "no duh" paragraph about students understanding risks and the need for disclosure, Bob lays out this gem of a passage (numbers mine for purposes of commentary below):

It's clear that the U.S. News law school rankings have a (1) large impact on law schools and prospective law school students. (2) However, the U.S. News Best Law School rankings are not why students lose their scholarships. In addition, the article (3) implies that the U.S. News rankings are the key factor behind why law schools are offering more merit-based aid and less need-based aid in order to enroll students with higher LSATs and GPAs and, as a result, improve in the rankings. (4) Law schools need to take far more direct responsibility for their policies instead of citing the oft-repeated claims that they are forced into these actions solely because U.S. News exerts so much power over law school behavior.

(1) With the power of national journalism (or are we going to admit that USNWR is no longer "journalism?") comes a grave responsibility in understanding the effects of one's words. That's why it's essential for the journalist to report accurately what happens, not base his conclusions on small sample sizes or unexamined self-reporting. And the journalist has a responsibility not to have a conflict of interest in the resolution of what happens. Bob's admission that his rankings have great effect is an admission that he either has a great amount of responsibility to get it right or that he's not a journalist at all.

(2) Technically, no, Bob, but your rankings are essential in establishing a system where parties act on reliance on insincere (as in, they're getting pulled after one year) scholarship offers - often advertised as three-year deals - that only exist because your magazine irrationally believes the LSAT to be relevant to how good a law school is; and many of those students actually do lose their scholarships. It also causes the rankings to favor richer schools, possibly at the expense of more efficient ones, and it causes schools to shift more money to their merit scholarship balances. Your magazine is a but-for cause of this mess, and disclaiming responsibility because you had nothing to do with Johnny taking the bait and getting a C+ in torts is absurd.

(3) "Implies?" No, Bob. The article "implied" nothing, and to say otherwise is disingenuous weasel-wording.

(4) Why don't you take responsibility as a "journalist" for the power your words have over people's actions, especially those who need metrics to boast of their accomplishments? There are countless steps you could take to prevent potentially-deceptive and abusive behavior from occurring. You could factor scholarship retention rates into your rankings. You could factor need-based scholarships into your rankings. You could collect and disclose scholarship offering and retention rates. You could do surveys comparing students' expected debt totals to their actual debt totals and penalize schools for the difference.

There are all sorts of steps to take to aid USNWR be a detached voice that helps the consumers understand the truth and have the facts necessary to make a decision about what law schools are good. To date, USNWR has done none of them and has persisted in using a formula that has nothing to do with actual law school merit. And yet, when they're called on it, they throw up their hands and say "that's the law schools' fault!"

Well, no, it's not. As a news institution, USNWR has a responsibility not to be a party in things like this. As long as they have the word "news" in the masthead, people like Bob Morse can't abnegate that responsibility by some twisted logic. So Bob, don't throw up your hands. Do your damned job.

Either that, or change the name and admit you're just a puppet for the elite educational lobby.