No, UCSD Does Not Need a Law School

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This ain't no great opportunity for anyone.

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

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

Massachusetts School of Law Dean at it Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least he ends on a bang:

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

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

Joseph Rakofsky: Both an Idiot and a Symptom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Applications Increase at Colorado

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's With the Application Decline Disparity in Pittsburgh?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April Fools, UVA Students, No Jobs for You, Either

You know the employment situation is dreadful when a supposed top law school's newspaper runs an article claiming the law school will found a firm for unemployed graduates called "MMMJK (named after some of Virginia's Deans and Professors):"

“We’re very serious about MMMJK,” said Dean Paul Mahoney. “Because they will be full equity partners in this groundbreaking venture, the faculty will be incentivized to teach actual law and practical skills rather than meaningless abstraction. More importantly, we’ll be able to leverage faculty expertise and our unusually strong clinical programs in order to hit the ground running in terms of our junior associates’ workload.” In light of this strategy, the firm is expected to have especially strong practices in the areas of Supreme Court litigation, feminist legal theory, and international human rights law.

Well done.

What isn't as funny is that Sen. Barbara Boxer is now calling on the ABA for change. I hope other members of Congress follow suit and start investigating the ABA's practices and not only how we got into this mess, but what kind of negligent mismanagement led us here.