A Ramble from the Other Side of the Paper Curtain

I don't know if anyone still has this internet way station on their information superhighway maps, but I'm now multiple years into practice, civil litigation, by no means either doing great or doing poorly. But I'm not here to give some grand update about my life, convey pithy witticisms about practice, or evaluate my old entries for hindsight veracity in light of years of further experience.  I'm not even going to comment on the collapses in admissions standards or bar examination scores or what our national political scene says about the role and perception of the judiciary and law.

No, I'm just poking my head in on this old dusty, long-neglected space to smile and gloat.

You can't really gloat in litigation, not only because it lacks civility, dignity, and grace, but because everyone around for more than a day and worth a darn to clients or business wins some and loses some.  Lawyers on the other side almost always have decent positions or reasons for acting as they do, and that good faith should be respected, no matter how cynical we may be about the process, the industry, or even the clients those lawyers (well, all lawyers) represent.  Only once in my young-ish career have I seen a case worthy of gloating in the event of victory and that was where the other side had already crossed the Rubicon and pissed in it on the way over.  You just don't do it unless someone really begs you.

Indiana Tech is different.

Earlier this week, Indiana Tech announced that it plans to wrap up operations.  Upon seeing the news, it reminded me that one of my top ten achievements, easily, in all of the legal field - law school, practice, you name it - is writing a post on this blog reviewing Indiana Tech's feasibility study long before Indiana Tech opened its doors or enrolled a single student.  My only "client" was my anonymous ass's ego, and my only aim the truth.  Nonetheless, it's an XBox achievement for me, with likely far more public benefit towards the ends of social justice than anything I have ever done representing real clients.

And so while dignity and comity are virtues worthy of pursuit among licensed professionals sworn to uphold respect for the courts, the democratic rule of law, and the Constitution, I'm going to take just a brief, fleeting moment, step onto the porch where the internet kids are smoking dope, and let rip an uncouth string of happy vitriol.......

I nailed it.  I fucking nailed it.  It feels swell, and I will be squeezing the models and bottles extra tight this evening. 

I and others who wrote on the issue were 100% correct.  You - Indiana Tech, Art Snyder, the Board, the administrators, everyone who put their names on that inane, witless feasibility study and everyone who said one dumb word about this school being an idea worthy of birth instead of a dirty rubber discarded - you were wrong.

I knew you were wrong.  I have known you were wrong for five years now.  I suspect you knew it as well; you should have.  We - me, Matt Leichter, Paul Ogden, Campos, Above the Law, Lord knows how many others - told you that you were wrong.  In your hubris, you decided to ignore a fairly broad consensus among quite a few people not affiliated with the enterprise.

You embarked on a course that was so utterly foolish it deserves a Darwin Award for bad business ideas.  You blew $20 million, it seems.  $20 million, flushed on what essentially became a vanity project destined to be a trivial footnote in Indiana legal history.  Your university could have invested in cancer research or given juicy loans to Tech grads to start small businesses in Fort Wayne or literally dumped the money out of an airplane.

You didn't buy favorable stocks on the morning of the crash.  You didn't buy a exurb Florida house in 2005.  This wasn't some black swan event that came with no earnest harbinger to fool reasonable minds acting rationally like the sudden shifts of fortune in a 19th century novel.

You didn't get caught up in a Dickens plot.  You boarded the Pequod while Ahab was going nuts.

You opened a law school from scratch at a no name school a full two years after Peak Legal Education had become remarkably clear.  After Alaska (a full state of 700k with no law school) conducted a feasibility study concluding that a law school wasn't cost-effective despite the inevitable monopoly.  After the U. of Delaware put its plans for a law school on hold due to the downshift in the legal education market.

Nonetheless, you insisted that you would draw a hundred students a year - cut from whole cloth, it seems - to attend a non-tier law school in northeast Indiana.

Who the hell expected any different result?  What other possible results were there?  Announce it was a bad idea and humbly close after the first enrollment figures came in to save money?  Hang on another year or two in the hopes of an easier bar exam or that dre' cummings drops an album to support the place?  

It's one thing when someone who doesn't know any better blows money on a stupid sportscar or an investment that doesn't pay off or even shows up to court and raises debunked sovereign citizen arguments.

The people who caused this $20 million dollar monstrosity are something else.

These were experienced so-called educators, white collar stewards of a non-profit institution.  Their choice to pursue this path was reckless and wanton, showing the maturity of a contemptuous, megalomaniacal six-year-old demanding a bucket-full of ice cream despite his lactose intolerance.

Surely, there are a few people deep in the ranks who deserve sympathy, the truly naive who moved with a family member or just needed a low-level admin job or something.  But virtually everyone who willfully involved themselves with this entity at a direct level should have known exactly what they were getting into.  You want to throw sophisticated consumer and caveat emptor at law applicants, fine; if the "truth" about law school was available to applicants in 2007, it was screaming in the ears of those starting an unknown law school in the rust belt in 2011.

For them, I have no sympathy and only scorn.  They took a cynical, callous, irresponsible fantasy approach to their stations, buoyed their will with an obviously and blatantly dubious feasibility study that was probably offensive on its face to honest social scientists, and then spent four to five years doubling-down on their moron's wager even as every piece of evidence reinforced how wrong they are.  If I acted this way with a client matter, I would uninsurable after the malpractice suit and probably would face disciplinary action.

Like a gambler pressing forward with a mismatched 2 and 7 on hand, they deserved to lose everything when everyone at the table called their bluff.  I sincerely hope that anyone who was even remotely involved in the decision to open or maintain a law school at Indiana Tech is scrutinized and proportionately held accountable for this nonsense. I am in no way exaggerating when I say I have seen better decisions made at 3 am by people with a high enough blood-alcohol content to be legally declared dead.  That's how stupid and avoidable all of this was.

That's why I smiled when I saw the news.  The world, on at least this small level, finished a narrative with a just and fitting result.  In a world and industry where the vagaries sometimes seem inexplicable and unfair, it feels really good to see the dominoes fall as they should and see it from the get-go, a distant cousin corollary to revenge being best served cold.

I suppose, on the bright side, it only took five years and $20 million dollars to give me this mildly orgasmic feeling, so I suppose I can at least thank Indiana Tech for somehow creating the most expensively odd and long-winded prostitution-like experience imaginable, and all without dropping a dime from my own pocket.

So....so long, Indiana Tech Law School, farewell, and thanks for the laugh.