From Profession to Factory Worker: the Rise of the Contract Attorney from the WSJ

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today that should be mandatory reading for anyone considering law school, although it's nothing new for those already in the know. It's about contract attorney/doc review gigs and how experienced attorneys have turned to these temporary gigs to pay their bills.

This new "third tier" of the legal world illustrates the commoditization of the legal profession, which once offered most new entrants access to prestige and power, as well as a professional lifestyle. It also shows how post-recession belt-tightening is permanently altering some professions.

For 10 to 12 hours a day—and sometimes during graveyard shifts—contract attorneys such as Mr. Aponte sit silently in a big room, at rows of computer monitors. Each lawyer reads thousands of documents online and must quickly "code" every one according to its relevance in litigation or an investigation.

Supervisors discourage talking and breaks are limited. The computer systems count each lawyer's speed...

About 10% of all private practice jobs accepted by last year's law school graduates were reported as temporary, a steady increase from 5.4% in 2007...

The article notes that many of the 3rd-party companies have seen surges in their business this year from large white-shoe firms that used to actually hire more associate attorneys (or summer associates or clerks) to do much of this grunt work. The article's only mistake is thinking this is a recessionary phenomenon. It's not - doc review has been growing since before the recession.

And consider, young law aspirants, that the ever-expanding pool of unemployed attorneys will continue to drive wages down in these monotonous, soul-crushing, factory-type environments. That 40-50k cited in the article (note: that's not even worth the law school tuition price) will likely drop as a function of market dynamics. Oh, and don't forget that what they're doing is easily off-shorable, moreso than all the factories that easily packed up and abandoned the U.S. in the 70s. (for more on outsourcing, see this recent post from Brett Clark at Minnesota Lawyer).

No one in their right mind would spend three years of their life and a six-figure investment to do this type of work. Yet it was the destination for a few thousand graduates of last year's class, and will likely be the destination for even higher numbers until the the Indians can do it. And those are graduates who get to be counted as "employed."

LaVerne Denied; Others At Risk? Not Really.

As has been widely reported, the ABA has formally denied LaVerne College of Law full accreditation citing its low bar passage rates. I've already written extensively on this topic and have noted that the many of the current students may suffer most, so I'll not regurgitate those feelings here. That said, I'm happy the ABA took a stand against a mediocre institution and only wish they would do it in areas other than bar passage (which, let's face it, can be taught with an intensive study course and can be gamed like any other standardized test), like actual attorney employment [x] months after graduation.

Now that the hammer has fallen on LaVerne, should anyone else be sweating?

According to this link, Thomas Jefferson, Whitter, Western State, and Southwestern were all at least 15% below the California State average in 2010. But all of them are already fully accredited, and they didn't do nearly as bad as LaVerne, so I don't expect any action here.

What about the nation's other four provisionally-accredited law schools? Well, none of them provide an easy out for the ABA.

The Charleston School of Law had a 72% bar pass rate last July, -4% against the overall, and -11% compared to the University of South Carolina. The previous exam was similar. Although there's no compelling reason to have more than one law school in South Carolina, they're in almost no danger on this front, and they're in the worst shape.

Drexel had an excellent year in 2009 and posted the state's best result in Feb. 2010. Elon has done well, and Charlotte isn't doing nearly as bad as LaVerne.

So unfortunately, I fear this will just be a one-time thing. The other new schools apparently have learned how to emphasize bar pass rates and teach to the test so that the ABA won't have a good reason to reject them. Not that being a graduate of Elon will be any easier for a prospective student than being a graduate from LaVerne, but I suppose one less school in the mix is a net positive.

EDIT: Looks like Charlotte and Elon both gained full accreditation (the title of the article reads "earned...") at the most recent vote despite graduates from either having little to no chance at meaningful legal employment. Way to go, ABA.

Viva Reform! ABA Adpots Some Changes to Reporting, Industry Shill Objects

The ABA Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has adopted more enhanced reporting standards. Law school transparency has a good write-up of the changes, and I encourage readers to just go there, but the basics, and my minor criticisms, are as follows:

1. Job placement: Will be divided into (1) employed in position w/ JD; (2) employed w/ JD preferred; (3) another professional job; (4) non-professional job; (5) student; (6) unemployed, seeking; (7) unemployed, not seeking; (8) unknown.

I really dislike keeping the "unknown" category, and believe those students should be presumed unemployed, seeking. I also dislike the "professional/non-professional" dichotomy and feel a generic "non-law" category with salary data would suffice. My fear is that schools are going to count legal and administrative assistants and anything "sales" as "professional" jobs.

A very welcome change is that schools will now apparently be required to disclose if they are funding any of the positions. The type of job (firm size, government, etc.) information looks the same, but they've added an "employment location" section, so prospective law students can know where they'll likely wind up, how they have no prayer at practicing internationally, etc.

2. Salaries: As far as I can tell, this is the biggest change. Salaries are now going to be divorced from the institution. They seem to be doing away with school-specific salary information, citing the unreliability of the surveys, the lack of available data, the granularity of the data, etc. Instead, they're going to look at it by state.

I think this is still subject to being confusing (e.g. Syracuse and SUNY-Bufallo are going to be advantaged by higher New York City salaries, right?), but it's a step in the right direction, because it at least seeks to address the "skewing" that takes place that allows schools to report median private practice salaries in the six figures.

LST has a summary of the other minor concerns. Also on their entry is a comment by Linda A. Spagnola-Wendling, assistant dean at N.C. Central, who whines for far too many paragraphs about the "statistics beast."

Law School Career Services Offices (CSO’s) cannot mandate, coerce, bribe, or otherwise direct their new graduates to answer the annual questionnaire. It is a completely voluntary exercise which only goodwill and nagging manages to elicit responses.
....
Compounding this stress now is US News & World Report’s new method of calculating the overall employment rate used in their ranking system. Instead of using the number of graduates whose status is known as the denominator, they are using the number of total graduates. What this does in practical, mathematical terms is calculate all unknown graduates as unemployed. Regardless of the reason that the graduates failed to respond, to presume that they are unemployed is inaccurate, misleading and extremely detrimental to all the constituencies that rely on this information.
...
Calculating the employment rate based upon the known statuses of graduates who have responded supplies us with a representative sample – a well-known and widely accepted statistical practice. To deviate from this simply counters good reporting practices.
...
The statistical beast does not serve any master, either; merely its own greediness. Prospective law students will not get any more accurate information from this process, in fact it may be worse than before. The new ranking system races full steam ahead without notice to the law schools and without a plan of guidance or tools to help them reach the same point.

I've read a lot of dumb comments in my time blogging on this field, but this woman might take the cake in terms of unabashed, lazy inanity, and it appears that her poorly-written whine-fest was copied-and-pasted from elsewhere to boot.

First, she is statistically retarded. Voluntary "opt-in" responses from a diverse population never provide a valid sample when the variable affects the likelihood of response! To even use the term "representative sample" when the survey participants have the option to respond or not borders on statistical blasphemy. This is taught during the first week of any self-respecting college statistics course. But apparently this nimrod didn't learn basic statistics on her way through Rutgers (Bachelors) and Seton Hall (J.D.).

As I've explained previously, there was no basis for the previous U&S News assumption that 25% of the unknown graduates were employed. What that baseless assumption did was promote the unscrupulous to ignore graduates that they might have otherwise known to be unemployed, or to be more aggressive in contacting those who graduated at the top of the class.

No one is "presuming" that anyone is unemployed. But what I and the new U.S. News ranking will not do is presume someone is employed without proof. That's what the old system did. That's why it's changed, and why career service shills are the only people who favored it.

Second, Linda, no one is asking you and your crappy little office to be perfect and collect a response from every single graduate. But what I expect, and prospective law students need, is an accurate portrayal of that data. Notice in the standards that no one is really asking your office to work harder; I'm sure you work hard already. The crux of the changes is on the presentation side.

Her stringent efforts to oppose it with distortions of basic statistics and clumsy, heavy-handed metaphors suggest that she prefers the old, demonstrably-flawed system to the changes being made, which are being unanimously met with approval from groups like LST (although they say they don't always go far enough; I obviously concur). Gee, I wonder why that is?

Is this not a blatant admission that the old system distorted reality in favor of the law schools and the people who benefit from them? Is this not a strong sign that the changes are closing some oft-used loopholes to make the sky appear more blue?

Third, did y'all notice her use of words? "The statistical beast does not serve any master, either; merely its own greediness." This brazen piece of human waste is a law school administrator accusing industry reform advocates of greed, truly a ballsy approach. Linda Spagnola-Wending makes $75,000 a year working a relatively cushy administrative job (stable work week, light summers, etc.) in a low-rate state school whose tuition has increased 90+% for in-state residents since 2005 (hint: that's far more than the flagship university...), all in a state that has seven law schools and no major metro areas (unless you count Charlotte or Raleigh, which you shouldn't).

And yet we - those who want to better illuminate the collected data so that the numbers reflect reality instead a marketing narrative - are the greedy ones. I would have thought her Seton Hall legal education would have given her a better term, but I suppose not. In any event, this is truly Orwellian: those who want to enhance consumer protection and prevent consumer regret are greedy.

The real tell that this woman is an insufferable education-sector bureaucrat comes in the last paragraph of what I've quoted: "The new ranking system races full steam ahead without notice to the law schools ...."

Because, you see, to a career services person, the endgame isn't actually employing students or even getting accurate data, it's gaming the rankings. Don't take my word for it. Take hers. Why else do you think she feels the law schools need "notice" of how a 3rd-party "journalism" outlet ranks their institutions? Why should they be entitled to notice, and what self-respecting journalist outlet would actually give it to them? And if all the law schools are on an even playing field with respect to presentation, is it really a problem? And why, regardless of what the journalist outlet decides to do with the data, does that have anything to do with how the ABA collects data, which, one would assume, would have more to do with accreditation concerns?

In this ridiculous and ill-conceived letter, Spagnola-Wending wants us to believe that transparency is important, but not worth the extra effort for her office; that data collection issues are the same as data presentation issues; that the ABA somehow has authority over third-party ranking systems that should give schools notice so they can be more quickly manipulated; that we can assume many students not responding may "be indeed employed but merely too busy working in fulfilling and demanding legal jobs to respond" (yes, she actually wrote that); and that the ABA/state bars need to put another mandatory hammer on recent law graduates, as if non-dischargable debt isn't enough ('cause, you know, everything should be blamed on students and graduates; note how in this industry the previous customers are the bad guy...think about it).

Again, no one is asking career services offices to track down every last graduate. But if they do present the information, it needs to be an accurate portrayal of the class rather than a misleading presentation where half the class is in private practice making six figures when, in reality, 50+% are working jobs no one would ever go to law school to take. That's what these reforms get at, and that's why I think they're a positive step.

In fact, almost anything is a positive step when the previous methods of data collection have led to complete retards like Arthur Snyder ignoring the brutal job market while he builds a useless law school. The time for the ABA to stop being complicit in the misrepresentation of the legal reality has long passed. It's nice to finally see an attempt to correct some of the loopholes.

MBA USNEWS Flawed Numbers, Kansas Applications Down Big, and Duke Finds New Way to Grab Tuition Money

1. Grad School U.S. News Fraud:

From BusinessWeek:

The Gainesville Sun last night reported that the University of Florida Warrington College of Business supplied the magazine with inaccurate job-placement data, resulting in a higher ranking.

An anonymous complaint made through the university’s ethics hotline in August alleged that 37 percent of UF’s 2009 MBA graduating class had jobs at graduation, while 53 percent had jobs three months later. The figures supplied to USNWR indicated 53 percent placement at graduation and 79 percent three months later. UF was ranked 39th in 2009, falling two spots from the year before; in 2010 it fell to 47th.

An investigation found no evidence of willfulness, but you can't help but wonder at the similarities. Does any school ever drop as a result of submitting false numbers? Gee, I wonder why that never happens. In any event, the article gives us another look into the askew, dullard mind of Bob Morse, the laziest journalist/statistician on planet Earth:

[Morse] said he thought data accuracy was not a widespread problem, but it's one that should be addressed by organizations such as the American Bar Association and the MBA-CSC in their capacity as standard-setting bodies, not by the media outlets that conduct rankings.

"It's not my problem" is just about the shittiest possible answer a bona fide journalist or statistician can come up with. People who are actually interested in finding the truth - rather than serving as a press agent for the official organizations that supply them - actually get off their asses and find the truth, ensure accurate data, stop official manipulation where it's suspected, etc. I think at this point any illusion of U.S. News being anything more than a puppet with no journalistic or mathematical intentions is shattered by Morse's own admissions.

2. Kansas Applications Down

From the K.C. Star:

The University of Kansas Law School says its applications declined 23 percent for this year compared with last year.
...
About 850 students applied to the law school this year, down from about 1,100 last year.

They're still far from being underwater (they only admit about 350-400 each year), but this is a state flagship university. If you want to ultimately practice is Kansas or the Kansas City metro area, you can't find a better school to attend. I wonder how the quality of their applicant pool is, and I wonder what this kind of drop signifies for places like Washburn and UMKC that are 2nd-choices for KU applicants. I imagine we start seeing sub-150 LSATs more prevalently and schools have to reach further than they normally would.

3. Duke Innovates in Ways to Leach

From the Nat'l Law Journal:

The school announced this week that it will launch a master of laws program in judicial studies geared specifically to judges....

The LL.M. program will open during the summer of 2012 to 10 to 15 sitting judges. They will take intensive four- to six-week sessions over the course of two summers. The curriculum will include classes and seminars in which both judges and scholars look at the history of the judiciary and judicial decision-making. Participants will examine topics including judicial independence, bias, the selection process and use of specialized courts.

Tuition for this four- to six-week program? $17k. For roughly 1/6 of the normal school year, with a guaranteed small class size and what surely will be the lightest teaching, lowest resource demand in academic history, the school is charging over 40% of its full-year tuition price.

Ca-ching! I'm sure Duke justifies this by some inflated beliefs that the judiciary could use the advanced training, but let's be real: most courts are overworked and, frankly, the judges have better things to do than take classes at Duke for $17k and a worthless L.L.M. If a judge in my district went to this thing and was subject to election, I'd vote against him/her on principle.

But hey, you have to hand it to Duke. If kids are going to start turning down law school to find better uses of their money and time, the law schools are naturally going to move to pushing education for existing practitioners, more than they have already.

That's the Two-Tiered System I Know!

I bet St. Thomas (Fl) is proud to claim Judge Barbara McCarthy as an alumnus, but after reading this article, I have to wonder what the hell she learned there in three years.

To sum up, this wealthy 36-year old "suburban brat" had over 50 previous moving violations and was on probation when he was drag racing his Porsche, killed two businessmen from Britain, and fled the scene. Florida law provides for up to 45 years in prison for this sort of reckless manslaughter. His sentence?

[He] was sentenced by Judge McCarthy to a mere two years of house arrest — in one of his wealthy parents’ luxury oceanfront condos — after agreeing to write big checks to the victims’ widows.

In clearly defining that the rich have their own criminal laws in this country, Judge McCarthy had this to say:

The need for restitution does outweigh the need for prison.

That's a record-scratching admission from a criminal judge, isn't it? Apparently, the guy made a deal with the widows to pay them off immediately so they would go to the judge and ask her to only give him house arrest. The judge's job in this case is to laugh, politely decline, and actually put people like in jail. If restitution outweighs the need for prison, why don't we just saddle people with non-dischargable civil judgments and call it a day? No jail at all - just pay back whatever victims!

Because there is and was no need for restitution to have anything to do with the criminal sanction. They should generally have much to do with each other. We put people in prison to incapacitate them so they can't do this reckless shit to anyone else. We put them there as non-monetary punishment for bad behavior, to deter others from doing the same behavior.

Besides, there was less risk of the victims' families not getting paid here than there normally is. If he doesn't settle the civil suit immediately and the judge throws the book at him, the widows grab a contingency lawyer and sue the shit out of the guy. It will, of course, take more time and may prove difficult to collect, but that's why you buy life insurance. In any event, the guy's family has an incentive to settle the civil case since he's the heir to a jewelry fortune and I can't imagine they'd want either the bad publicity or the hassle (clearly, they didn't even want the hassle of actually raising a child).

What was really needed here was social deterrence, not restitution. This idiot had already spent six months in prison for drug charges and violating his probation. Looking at this, what, exactly, is going to stop the wealthy from trampling on the peons? What about the societal value in having a justice system that applies equally? We have criminal law to help control anti-social behavior. The entire purpose is blown if we let the elite buy get-out-of-jail free cards. That, Judge McCarthy, is worth more than restitution to two families who have a clear and obvious remedy in the civil system.

So to sum up, if you're poor, you will treated like dirt and often sentenced to prison for lower crimes, like petty theft, low-level drug charges, prostitution, etc. One reason California's prison system is so overcrowded is because their "3 strikes law" is a convenient way to saddle poor people with long jail sentences for habitual "lesser" crimes.

But if you're rich, you can rack up minor violations, drug charges, etc. and mow down people while driving a Porsche and YOU, because your family is loaded, get to watch TV for two months in mom and dad's crib instead of going to jail for 5 years. Maybe play a little X-box, too, games like Grand Theft Auto (Why play the game? He could probably do the real deal and get like a year, max).

It begs the question why Florida even wasted public resources prosecuting the guy when they could have been hammering those evil, evil pot dealers and hookers who can't make a good living doing anything else. Why not just let this Thomas Crown wannabe write a check to the officers?

When McCarthy ordered LeVin at his sentencing hearing to take the gum out of his mouth and make a statement, he turned red and blubbery and said he felt shame, but he never actually apologized.

Why would he? Obviously, the elite parents here didn't know how to teach this jackoff how to act responsibly and in 35+ years nothing has made him figure it out. What does he have to be sorry for, exactly? Judge McCarthy's sentence basically endorsed his extreme recklessness so long as there was restitution. Because he killed two people acting like an asshat? So what? If he hasn't gained many socially-positive virtues in 35+ years, do you think he has any appreciation for the value of human life?

Honestly, what use does someone like that have for the criminal laws if they have no teeth to them? Meanwhile, you, I, and the other schlubs will be subject to the other set of rules. Of course, most of us never act like complete asshats because we know if we do, we'll actually go to the slammer.

It'd be nice if the hyper-wealthy could feel exactly the same way.

Young & Rich, J.D.: One Gignatic, Hilarious Fail

Normally, I don't like linking to blogs/sites that are delusional or full of propaganda or illogical conclusions. But today I'm making an exception to give you the epic fail that is Young & Rich, J.D. Reading it makes for high comedy. I can only hope it's an elaborate joke, but sadly, I'm not sure that it is.

The premise of the blog can be explained by the absurd About Me section:

Young and Rich self-made millionaire with a JD from a third-tier law school. A law school referred to by so called "scambloggers" as a 3rd-tier toilet (TTT). Such law schools are often blamed by the students for their own misfortune. The inspiration for this blog was the class action lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson Law School by a graduate who couldn't find a job. Young&Rich, JD is meant to be the antithesis to the typical law school scamblog. We talk about success. We talk about making it. We talk about money and what it buys. We are inspirational yet condescending. We tell the truth even if the truth hurts. We are real.

Sloppy writing aside, I encourage my readers to check it out. Whether it's ironic or earnest, it's genuinely hilarious. It reads like some back-room administrative assistant at a law school decided to make stuff up on a blogger account, complete with god-awful writing ability.

The icing on the cake is that yesterday's entry celebrates Carson Block, a guy who:

• became truly successful by leaving the law;
• graduated top 10% from a T-2 back in 2005 (I don't think any of us would argue that him getting a gig at Jones Day was a surprise)
• left the law to become a researcher for his father, who is an investor wealthy enough to hire someone in this capacity;
• has done nothing post-law that required his law degree; and
• runs a company that engages in extremely shady behavior by short-selling companies they issue public, sometimes-dubious research on, e.g. when they buried Orient Paper's stock price on what turned out to be mostly false allegations. Just today, their recent target, Sino-Forest, is up 16% on an article that rebuts some of Muddy Waters' recent allegations.

To whomever is behind it, it's very entertaining. Like The Onion of legal field blogs, only there's a chance that some anonymous "millionaire" buffoon actually believes this stuff.

More on Thomas Jefferson Suit

When will Beth Kransberger learn to stop talking to the media? From 760 talk radio in San Diego, she first called the suit "bewildering" (seriously?) and then added this:

"We have always followed the system given to us by the ABA," she told News 8. "We have always reported accurately and as thoroughly as humanly possible."

Emphasis mine. Does she really want to argue that their employment numbers have been "as thorough[] as humanly possible?" I about died laughing when I read that. Really? (note: as far as I can tell, this page is not linked to their most current website; it makes one wonder why they're not advertising the '08 and '09 numbers anymore). Here is how they used to present their '09 numbers:

First, note the disclaimer at the top: the sample size is only 86%. So the "total employed" number should actually be given as 72.8% if it's any kind of fair representation (they can't seriously assume that respondents and non-respondents are equal, can they?). Otherwise, one might assume the 84% means 84% of the total student body. Same with the private practice figure, and one is only left to guess whether the missing 14% is factored into the "average salary" figures. I imagine not.

Second, note the conspicuous absence of any category labeled "non-law jobs." What is "business," exactly? Technically, all law firms are businesses. But in the context provided, "business" doesn't seem to be a catch-all to cover waiter gigs, but rather implies working as in-house counsel somewhere, which wouldn't be implausible to someone not familiar with the legal world. Given that "business" is between private practice and government and judicial clerkships, the logical assumption would be that "business" refers to corporate jobs requiring bar passage and not similar to, say, "continuing studies." But the ambiguity of the term itself reveals a major flaw.

Third, why are salaries not provided for academic, public interest, or clerkships? It seems incongruous to list them for the other categories, but not those. Maybe it just wasn't "humanly possible."

Oh, here we are: "Salary information is only provided below where at least five salaries were reported." Ah-ha.

New question:

Fourth, what was the response rate on the salary figures provided? If 36% of respondents in private practice didn't state how big their firm was, how many actually gave their salaries? With how many grains of salt should we take that 90k+ business salary? Did only 7 people respond? Because one could look at this and get the impression that TJLS is a hotbed for filling high-powered business positions in San Diego (and I suppose LA). Is that really the case, or is the data presented not as "thorough" as claimed? This is a major omission and one entirely in TJLS' hands.

Fifth, the use of the phrase "job offer" implies a professional job, something more than landing an hourly retail gig. Mentioning that an "offer" came before or after the bar suggests that the bar was a necessary part of the process.

Sixth, related to the first point, the percentages given seem to be percentages of the employed number and not percentages of the student body. The numbers between private practice and pursuing advanced degree add up to 100% if clerkships are omitted. That leaves the 11% as a percentage of the class as a whole (and one must wonder if "seeking employment" was an option for the employed). So we have a scale problem that's not readily apparent: employed sub-fields are presented as a percentages of a subset, while unemployed are presented as a sub-set of the whole. In other words, from the chart, it appears its twice as likely to wind up in "business" as it is to wind up "seeking employment." Au contraire.

All in all, here is a better presentation of what was known about the Class of 2009, dubious industry practices aside:

Known: 86%
Unknown: 14%

Known to be in private practice: 42.3% of class
Known to be working for the gov't: 6.4% of class
Known to be working in public interest: 5.0% of class
Known to have clerkships: 0.9% of class
Known to be working in academia: 0.9% of class
Known to be continuing studies: 3.0% of class
Known to be working in business: 15.9% of class
Known to be unemployed, seeking employment: 9.5% of class

The numbers wound up a little off (I assume the gap is "unemployed, not seeking"), but you get the general idea. Thorough presentation would clearly define the categories and provide a consistent baseline for the percentages that make the numbers comparable to each other. It would attempt to factor in non-respondents instead of trying to hide the very real possibility that they're overwhelmingly unemployed.

I recognize my presentation is different than the NALP method, and indeed a disclaimer at the top of the page tells us that TJLS' "annual employment statistics are compiled in accordance with the National Association for Law Placement's Employment Report and Salary Survey."

I guess prospective students are supposed to become mini-experts in statistics and look through the NALP's guidelines and realize its crucial flaws before relying on the numbers at all, even though TJLS was obviously doing "everything humanly possible" to report data accurately and thoroughly. I wonder if anyone in the administration ever questioned the use of the NALP standards as being too lax and open to number shaving.

And I hasten to note that the NALP also directs law schools to "establish and implement practices to ensure the fair and accurate representation of students and the institution in the employment search process." I have to think that includes charts as these, even though they're directed at 0Ls.

Truth is, instead of questioning the simpleton NALP rules, they were probably too busy trying to figure out to best soften the data. You can't tell me the placement of "business" and the lack of a non-law category is just a happy accident. They, and most schools, probably had a meeting long ago to decide just how to present people they wanted to call "employed" but they couldn't put in the private practice or government or the other categories.

To claim compliance with NALP is one thing. To claim that you "have always reported accurately and as thoroughly as humanly possible" is a whole new level of audaciousness.

Speaking of audaciousness, check out these quotes from a San Diego "career counselor":

"Even if they keep totally valid statistics, that doesn't say anything about what's going to happen to you personally," said career counselor Judy Kaplan Baron.

Kaplan Baron added that schools are in the business of educating, not finding its graduates work.

"It is the responsibility of the person who is paying so much for an education to figure out what they're going to be able to do with it," Kaplan Baron told News 8. "That is going in with your eyes open: I guess it's a very expensive life lesson."

And what if the school is purposely obfuscating the view when one's eyes ARE open? And why does it matter what eventually happens to one person four years later when the allegedly-fraudulent transaction occurs well before the result is known?

The issue here is inducement. The school doesn't have to do anything to find its graduates work. That isn't the issue. The problem is that the school open advertises solid employment and good salaries for its graduates. Once it does that, it has a duty to be honest if individuals only buy the education with reliance on those numbers.

I reiterate: if this takes place in any other industry, we have no problem enforcing class-based consumer protections and placing the responsibility on the company to have truthful advertising and avoid misrepresentations to consumers. Auto, cigarettes, real estate, foodstuffs, furniture, you name it, even intangible goods and services. Almost always, we place the most stringent burden on the company for a variety of reasons. But you cross over into buying and selling educations and suddenly it's back to caveat emptor.

"Very expensive life lesson," my butt. How about we actually provide consumer protection befitting the scale of the investment and the collective action problems, as we have with real estate, securities, automobiles, and every other product that may cost someone six figures.