Two to Scorn for the Price of One

First up in the "individuals deserving of my scorn" today is Ann Levine. If you recall, I've previously called Ann out for making up bogus and contradictory reasons to attend law school and for not reading or understanding what she cites to in order to support her commentary. So imagine my surprise when I ran across this article today where she does almost the exact same thing.

It's a well-intentioned piece about teaching students how to write a good personal statement. But what jumped out at me was this paragraph:

Q: I should start with something really dramatic.

A: Please don't. Lawyers don't write that way. You should worry less about shocking the reader and more about quickly piquing the reader's interest. Berkeley Law just posted a great example of what admissions committee members really think when you start your personal statement with a melodramatic tale. This is a must-read no matter where you are applying. Rather than trying to seek an emotional reaction, begin your personal statement with something honest and insightful.

If you actually read the article she links to, it says this:

It is very clear that many applicants have been coached by someone that this is how to write a compelling personal statement...This format is transparently manipulative, formulaic, and coached. Except for the occasional novelist we admit, none of our students or graduates is going to write in this style again; none, thank goodness, is going to begin a brief with, “He stood frozen in fear as the gunman appeared out of the darkness.” So, this artifice is irrelevant to law and counter-productive: Once it ceases to surprise – and it did so more than 10 years ago – it just becomes a cliché which really ought to be held against the writer. Not only using clichés, but also having been coached ought to, in an ideal world, discount an application. . . . [I]t is transparent when essay formulas have been coached, and we (should) strongly advise applicants to write in their own voice and style and without trying to dramatize what they have to say in order to attract our attention." (emphasis removed from original and added back where I see fit).

I have multiple problems with these excerpts. First, it would greatly help everyone if we were all honest and just admitted up front that personal statements are like exhibition games. You do it, but it doesn't really matter, and in the end it's your LSAT and GPA that get you places. A great personal statement really isn't going to save your 151 LSAT score unless you put it in an envelope with three-years tuition in advance.

Second, one of my pet peeves in writing is when people don't use consistent terminology. It's critical in legal writing to keep precise terms and know exactly what you're talking about. Here, the original piece is criticizing "cliched," "formulaic," "transparently manipulative" writing. By the time it got to Ann Levine's desk, it was transformed into "dramatic" and "melodramatic" and she tells you to be "honest and insightful." The Berkeley article addresses style, trying to get people to write in their own voice. Ann's mangling of the terms made it a content-based directive; instead of not "dramatizing," students are advised to avoid "drama" altogether. Those aren't the same thing.

Third, I have a major problem with both articles confusing the quality of the writing with the form the writing appears in. The problem with the examples the Berkeley piece provides isn't that they're "novel"-like or that they're dramatic, but that they're just flat-out lousy writing. Not all dramatic writing is bad, even in a legal context. A brief on the right subject matter can be both very effective and dramatic. But they're examples of good writing first. Take this opening of the summary from Paul Smith's Lawrence v. Texas brief:

As the experience of Lawrence and Garner vividly illustrates, Section 21.06 puts the State of Texas inside its citizens' homes, policing the details of their most intimate and private physical behavior and dictating with whom they may share a profound part of adulthood.

Don't you think that's trying to get an "emotional reaction?" That's more dramatic than it has to be, but it's effective, unlike the crappy writing styles that most nearly-illiterate law school applicants believe to be "good." You obviously can't do that with, say, arcane ERISA interpretations or in traffic court, but knowing how to phrase dramatic happenings within good, non-melodramatic writing is a very helpful skill in many areas of law. And being dramatic is the bread and butter of many trial attorneys.

But the biggest problem is what I've bolded above. In looking at said paragraph, it's impossible not to get the message that they hate when it's transparent that students are "coached." There is no way around the fact that Ann Levine is a law school "coach." The end message should be that they want to hear students' own voices and not something that has had the life sucked out of it by someone telling them what to write and how to write it, kind of like what Ann Levine does.

It's blatantly against her niche profession and yet she links to it as if she's above being a "coach," or perhaps maybe she just thinks her readers are dumb, or perhaps maybe she didn't comprehend the point. I don't think either is a great advertisement for her services.

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Second on my scorn list is this 38-year old doofus from the Charleston School of Law who put up 1,550 hours of "public service" at the local solicitor general's office and is now taking praise for it.

Kaufman, who earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, worked as an on-air radio personality for 14 years before deciding to enroll in law school.

It was in that career where he got his first experience with public service work, he said. His station sponsored an on-air campaign that quickly brought in $50,000 for a young woman who needed a liver transplant. "It was the most rewarding thing I've ever done," he said.

If he had done 1,550 hour of "public service" by actually helping people who need liver transplants, I would be all for it, and I would join the chorus of praise. But 1,550 hours for free at the local courthouse? That's 3/4 a work year they could have paid any number of people who are unemployed. Why, exactly, am I supposed to be happy about this?

I stand by my view that doing extensive pro bono work demeans the profession as a whole. Legal work is a valuable service

Bankruptcy: Financial AND Moral - All in One Post!

Every time student debt forgiveness or any variant of said idea comes up, critics emerge from the rotted woodwork like cockroaches and spout the same refrain: these kids should have to pay / you borrowed the money, you pay it / there's nothing securing these loans / etc. It comes about in various permutations, but the motif of refusing to let student borrowers file bankruptcy almost always comes back to either self-perceived personal slights ("I paid my student loan from 1986 off and lived like a pauper...") or systemic concerns ("No one would give an unsecured loan like that!")

Well, all of those idiots should read this article about elderly people filing for bankruptcy to escape crushing debts when their income isn't what they expected it to be.

[P]eople 65 and older are the fastest-growing segment of the population seeking bankruptcy protection. . . .

Of course, the big question most seniors have when it comes to bankruptcy is: Will they take all of my retirement savings and leave me penniless?

"No," Connolly said. "Social Security and retirement accounts (up to approximately $1.1 million) are exempt from creditors so seniors will continue to have that stream of income."

What's more, many states have "homestead exemption" laws, which protect home equity from creditors. In Massachusetts, for example, you're protected up to $500,000.

So let's say Gertie, Age 70, has $1,000,000 in her IRA. She owns a home outright that is worth $400k in market value. She was successful until recently retiring. She was extremely prudent and has no debt. As a retirement gift to herself, she decides to take her excellent credit and go to Europe for two weeks and spend 20k splurging on herself. She gets back and suffers a heart attack and winds up 230k in medical bills.

Gertie has the assets to pay this off entirely and fairly comfortably. Her simple net worth is over $1 million. She's not going to live for much more than 15 years after this, and barring a severe penalty on distribution (I don't know how IRA's work completely if you're that old), she'll still have 50k a year to live off of.

But Gertie - who has unsecured debts of 250k plus interest - decides she wants to "leave a little something for the kids" and so she files bankruptcy and screws the credit card companies and the medical facilities who enriched and saved her life, respectively, on entirely unsecured credit. The rest of us pay for it.

Now consider Gertie's granddaughter Gertrude. I think you all know where I'm going with this. Gertrude takes out 100k to get an undergraduate education. In four years, she graduates magna cum laude from the big state university with a degree in business. She scores a 165 on the LSAT and gets accepted to a top-30 private law school, say Notre Dame, which is her dream because she's a lifelong catholic and blah blah blah. She excels at Notre Dame, makes law review, gets a federal court internship, and graduates in the top 7 percent of her class. She takes out 50k a year and graduates with a total debt around 250k. All of this is quite normal, and she thinks it's a good bargain because with her credentials the top firms in Chicago and Indy will fight for her. And they do - she lands a BigLaw job. It's great until she has a horrible car accident; not an expensive recovery, but her once-beautiful face becomes mangled and scarred, and the partners find a way to weed her out after 2-3 years.

She has about 200k in debt and zero assets. But unlike her grandmother, she cannot file bankruptcy to protect her future, even though she doesn't have the blessing of an approaching natural life expectancy threshold.

To those who are opposed to student loans having bankruptcy protection, what's the difference between Gertie and Gertrude? Both acted reasonably and had circumstances outside their control affect their financial situation, and both wound up with unsecured debts over 200k. Why should the one who has the assets to pay creditors in full be eligible to file for bankruptcy protection but not the one who hasn't a dime? Why does our system let elderly people who won't be around in two decades wipe the slate clean and leave money to heirs while we saddle young people with non-dischargable debt?

Anyone who believes this system of debtor relief has any notion of justice - or even rationality - behind it is not thinking clearly. We're supposed to have consistent laws in this country. A millionaire being able to discharge catastrophic medical bills (often brought by a less-than-healthy lifestyle) while students are stuck with their form of unsecured debt is patently unjust. It would take the brand of circular logic available only to Congressmen and partisan apologists.

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In the moral bankruptcy category, today I give you Liberty University School of Law, which was recently spotlighted in their local rag.

Central to the law school’s mission is the belief that God created law, and law is properly understood through a Christian worldview, Staver said.

Law without a Christian standard, Staver asserts, can become a “cold instrument of force.” ...

Professor Rena Lindevaldsen, who has a background in commercial law and religious right advocacy, teaches “Foundations of Law,” a required course for first-year students. It emphasizes the importance of limited government and the Biblical roots of the law. It also advocates an originalist approach to the Constitution, one that upholds the original intention of the founders, rather than viewing it as a dynamic document that can evolve over time.

“When you look back at any area of law, whether its torts or contracts or pick a topic, you can see that the Bible actually has principles that apply to this. It’s nothing new that we had to invent,” said Lindevaldsen, who has taught at Liberty since 2005 and earned her law degree from Brooklyn Law School.

There's so much more in the article that pretty much damns this place as a serious law school. And in the spirit of Christian fellowship, this school costs over $46,000 per year to attend. It was recently accredited (last 10 years), and your odds of finding a remunerative job are slim. Washington and Lee (ranked in the top 40) is an hour away. University of Virginia (T14) is an hour and fifteen minutes away. University of Richmond (top 100) is 2 hours away. And then there's the megalaw D.C. metro area.

I at least have to credit them for being seemingly honest on their employment statistics. Check this out:

That's brutal. I understand the desire for an organized church to have Christian lawyer-soldiers, but surely there's a better way of going about it than charging kids 50k a year to attend a place where only 47% have a real job 12 months later (and that's what they're reporting...). Ever heard of a scholarship fund? Personally, if I were a legal employer, any resume I got from this place would go straight in the trashcan, as I'm skeptical a brand new, Christ-first school can really teach the skills necessary to excel in the law, especially when the school is little more than a transparent vehicle for right-wing thought. I'm sure they know this, and with that in mind, it seems like a shameless cash cow to feed the University.

If you really wanted good Christian lawyers, wouldn't you be helping young Christians afford places like William and Mary or Virginia, where they can really do damage with a legal career? Maybe sponsor church activities for students already at those schools?

But it's not the first time evangelical Christianity has jumped on the profit wagon, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Sordid in the Steel City? Gender-Based Suits in Pittsburgh

Non-equity partner JoEllen Lyons Dillon has filed a gender equity suit against her current firm, Reed Smith, LLP. Reed Smith is the second-largest firm in Pittsburgh and has twenty-two offices across the globe. Interestingly enough, their motto is "The Business of Relationships." I think they might have taken it too literally. From the first article linked:

Attorney Samuel J. Cordes, who represents Ms. Dillon, said he found "that there is a pattern here of a male locker room, and it includes sexual favors," adding that his client didn't participate in that part of the "games guys play."...

She brought in millions of dollars of business annually, and sought a promotion from non-equity partner -- with no share in the profits -- to equity partner. She was not promoted, and after she took a few months off to have twins, her pay was "decreased almost by half" in 2009, according to the lawsuit. Then in January her pay was "reduced by another $100,000," it said, and her appeal of that decision was denied.

And then there's my favorite line in the story, which, typical for new-world journalism, comes at the very end as an afterthought:

Mr. Cordes said he would produce examples of sexual quid pro quos as the case continues.

Now, this isn't come crackpot pro se plaintiff doing this. This is a presently-working partner at BigLaw, who is both experienced and attractive enough to make the complaint pass any threshold skepticism.

Just a few blocks away, the Duquesne School of Law recently settled a discrimination, retaliation, and defamation claim with a former clinical administrator:

[She] claimed in her July lawsuit that Law School Dean Ken Gormley demoted her and cut her pay, among other things, in retaliation for her filing a sexual harassment complaint against him with the University's Affirmative Action Officer in 2006.

Now, I realize that settling a lawsuit is not an admission of liability and all that, but given that law school ethics should at least promote the appearance of propriety, I would have a hard time believing they settled a merit-less claim since, at least to me, it makes the dean look like a scum bucket, which I'm sure helps Duquesne's institutional integrity, especially with female students. And, as the article notes, there are two more claims for gender/racial discrimination still pending against the law school.

I find both of these interesting in light of the Allegheny Bar Associations explicit initiative - going back to 2008 - to specifically work against findings of massive gender inequality in Pittsburgh with their Institute of Gender Equality. Guess who was outgoing President of the Allegheny Bar in 2008, when this place was founded? Yep, Ken Gormley, who was also Vice-Chair of the Gender-Equality Task Force. This raises an eyebrow, doesn't it?

And curiously, even though Reed Smith is the second-largest place in town, they have no representation on the current Board of Governors (the 3rd-largest firm, Buchanan, Ingersoll, & Rooney, has at least two people on it).

I find these all interesting developments. Was Reed Smith key in the Allegheny Bar's findings that there were severe problems with gender inequality? Was the Institute of Gender Equality a mere meaningless action to look like it was solving the problem? Isn't Ken Gormley something of a gargantuan hypocrite for being on a Gender-Equality Task Force while his own female employee filed a seemingly-meritorious claim against him?

I don't know how to bridge this all together, but I find the seemingly-independent developments quite interesting and revealing of the tangled mess between firms, law schools, and bar associations that sometimes can prevent systemic change. Let's wait and see what happens with Ms. Dillon's lawsuit, especially if she has ammo and she starts using it over offers to settle.

On the USNWR Rankings

Kimber at Shilling Me Softly is reporting that the USNWR will adjust the information presented about its law school rankings to give a better portrait of the information colleges submit to them (i.e. by providing more information to put employment numbers in context, not any change to the methodology) based on articulated criticism from Law School Transparency.

Even though I don't like the concept of the rankings generally, I realize they do have an effect. I obviously think this is good news; isn't anything that presents a more honest picture of the legal profession?

But I wanted to talk more about USNRW in general. I found this article here, about a recent study of which USNWR was a partner that looked at the nature of college rankings (the article is part 2 of a 3-part series:

3. Do the U.S. News rankings "put pressure on institutions to invest in strategies and practices primarily for the purpose of maintaining or strengthening position in the rankings," either consistently or occasionally? An overwhelming majority (95.1 percent) of NACAC's members at both colleges and high schools believe that "Yes, colleges either occasionally or consistently invest in strategies and policies to improve in the rankings."
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4. Does your school or institution make programmatic changes because of rankings? The report concluded that 54.1 percent of NACAC's members representing colleges reported that their particular institutions do not make any programmatic changes based on the ranking. However, it said that 7.6 percent say that their school consistently makes changes and 38.4 percent say that their schools make changes occasionally because of the rankings.

Although this is for the undergraduate sector, I strongly suspect that it applies equally (or greater) to law schools, and I find the timing of these revelations significant.

Notice anything curious about questions 3 and 4 when put together? Question 3 asked if schools in the generic sense put in policies to improve their USNWR rank. Question 4 asked members if their institution in particular did it (although I'm not sure what they mean by "programmatic" change and that seems like a question flaw; under a liberal definition of the word, it would mean anything, but people might interpret it narrowly).

In any event, I find the disparity between 3 and 4 interesting. 95% of respondents believe schools make changes, but only 46% of those reporting say their own school does it. Assuming no one thought they were the only school in the country that did it, that's a hypocrisy/sanctimonious rate of around 49%, i.e., those who thought other schools put in programs with the ratings in mind, but their school did not.

That's really high and USNWR isn't dumb. Although normally I'm cynical about such things, there's a part of me that honestly believes USNWR is getting the results back from this survey (and maybe others) and is realizing how widespread and destructive to academia their ratings have become. In the past few decades, USNWR has gone from being a news magazine to being a journalistic outpost whose sole practical purpose to most people anymore is to put out these silly rankings. And when someone's bread and butter may be tainted - and the above discrepancies show the college administrators have no qualms lying about their actions or their motives - it's usually wise to do something about it and find ways to correct the problem.

In the past few years, they've gone entirely online and faced major criticism from college presidents for their rankings. Given the results of both those developments, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they were actually trying to take care of their rankings and nip accurate criticism - such as LST's that the information presented was not giving a complete picture - in the bud to maintain relevant.

How To Get A Law School Accredited, Part I

Last month, The Legal Dollar did a great post pointing out the apparent conflict of interest in the ABA's Standards Review and the law schools it regulates, as 11 out of 14 members of the committee are professors or deans.

With that in mind, I'd like to direct your attention to Binghamton University. Binghamton is looking for a new President. And although it sits in a state flush with law schools, Binghamton has officially stated its desire to open a law school as its next "logical step:"

With only two public law schools in New York State, at the University at Buffalo and CUNY-Queens, estimates show a law school at Binghamton would be in high demand, both by Binghamton University students and others.
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In addition, standard economic projections indicate new expenditures would reach $10 million annually within five years, with an estimated annual impact of $26.4 million on the region and $33.7 on the state.

Why is this important now? Well, with BU's Presidency open, you'll just never guess who's on their shortlist:

He might not have taken the traditional path to a presidency, but that doesn't mean attorney Jonathan Alger shouldn't be Binghamton University's next leader, he told an audience Wednesday during a campus forum.
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Perhaps the most direct question from a faculty member: "When would you start building a law school?"

Alger, who sits on the American Bar Association's Accreditation Committee, which oversees the accreditation of the nation's law schools, didn't give a date but said he could certainly help facilitate the conversation. The conversation, he said, wouldn't be easy.

Like heck it won't.

Alger currently serves as Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Rutgers, where he's been since 2004. Rutgers is not only the place involving the video taping suicide scandal from earlier this fall, but also is a Big East football school whose program has been caught in embezzlement scandals. I mention this because just last season Binghampton had a major scandal where six of its players were suddenly booted from the team (and its AD resigned) after the University's effort to spend its way to basketball glory went awry.

You would think they would be looking for someone to reshape their image after that debacle, and that a candidate who was compliance officer at a university during a financial scandal.

But, hey, Binghamton wants its law school, and we'll see if they elect this current ABA Accreditation Committee member the leader to do it. The fact that they're considering him in their top five speaks volumes to me.

Law School Professors Protest! . . . But it's just some union thing

The annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools is facing protests. Is it from disgruntled students facing a labor market where only 66% of them have jobs requiring their education? Is it from people with 150k in debt and a 40k job? Is it from excommunicated BigLaw associates who just got spit out of the system?

No - it's from law professors themselves. Is it because of the fundamental injustices that screw over 15-20,000 students every year by leaving them unemployed and deeply in debt? Is it from their educational institutions charging exorbitant amounts of tuition?

No and no. It's because of a labor dispute at one hotel, and it's not the first time our legal educators have gotten political.

...In letters to the AALS, the group said that it opposes the selection of the hotel because of an ongoing dispute between its management and a union representing unskilled and lightly skilled hotel workers.

This year's controversy mirrors problems that the AALS has faced in the past over its site choice for the annual meeting, attended by hundreds of law professors from across the country. In 2008, the AALS was forced to choose an alternate site in San Diego after legal educators balked at the selection of the Manchester Grand Hyatt. AALS members said they would not attend the meeting at that location because the hotel owner had given money supporting California's Marriage Protection Act.

If you all want to get political, how about not messing around with these small potatoes and working on the problems that are leaving two generations of young lawyers depressed and indebted while dragging the prestige and quality of the profession down with them.

Another New Law School? There's No Slowing This Conveyor Belt!

It seems like every day we hear of yet another law school being quickly erected to solve the drastic undersupply of fine legal institutions to learn at. This time it's the University of Delaware that's looking to get into the game:

The University of Delaware’s board of trustees has given administrators approval to pursue plans to build a public law school. The first class could be enrolled in 2015

The school would be Delaware’s first public law school. It would be on UD’s Newark campus. About 200 students would be enrolled in its first class.

Every time I read of a new law school opening - or even being the figment of some greedy administration's imagination - I fancy myself back in 2006 watching a house-flipping show ("you can make $20,000 just doing some paint touch-up and adding new chairs!") reading about yet another planned suburban shopping mall ("it'll have a Krispy Kreme and a Steve and Barry's!").

Originally, I was surprised to learn Delaware only has one law school (Widener), and only a private one at that; I realize it's a small state, but it's also the default state of choice for high-powered corporate litigation in America, and given their legislatures foresight in catering to the American corporation, one would think they'd have a public institution to help run their judiciary. But I suppose there's enough grads on the east coast to fill whatever need there is, and looking Widener up I see that that place is a two-campus behemoth spitting up 400-500 alumni each year, which is much bigger than I thought.

And the University of Delaware wants to pile on 200 more. Most law schools used to be fairly small; starting out as a 600-700-student factory would have seemed odd. But not in our day, where legal education has basically become a rush to set up the rigged carnival game for the next line of suckers walking down the boardwalk.

Delaware only has about 900k people in the entire state. Something tells me it doesn't need 600 new lawyers a year. Heck, I doubt it needs half of what Widener is spitting out.

Let's hope the University of Delaware administrators come to their senses. That Fighting Hen above won't be so happy when he realizes his degree won't be worth as much as his sweet, tasty flesh in a creditor's oven.