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.

Massachusetts School of Law Dean at it Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least he ends on a bang:

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

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