More Leach Entrepreneurship, Woman Getting Screwed As Much as Men, and Lawyers' Poor Predictive Abilities

1. Meet "Adam Smith," Capitalist Leach

It seems that the last few years have brought a rash of legal software gimmicks designed to pull money out of the bubble. There are multiple e-mail resume bombing platforms for recent graduates to throw money into an electro-abyss. Now the completely unintentionally-named Adam Smith, a "management consulting firm to the global legal industry," has launched JD Match, which will supposedly help large law firms better match with 2Ls during the "flawed" OCI/associate recruitment process.

Law students from any accredited U.S. law school can create a profile on JD Match for the inaugural fee of $99, which covers the 2011 2L recruiting season. Law firms joining JD Match pay an annual subscription fee based on their lawyer headcount, a common pricing structure for the profession. Membership for law schools is free.

Great, so now third-tier graduates can pay $99 to find out that big firms aren't hiring like they used to and that median-level law students at "prestigious" institutions will likely trump them, no matter how hard they work or how highly they are ranked or how good of future lawyers they actually are. Sounds like a winner.

2. Women Getting Screwed as Much as Men

From mlive.com:

Recently released Census figures confirm that for the first time, U.S. women surpassed men in gaining advanced college degrees as well as bachelor’s degrees.

...
When it comes to finishing college, roughly 20.1 million women have bachelor’s degrees, compared with nearly 18.7 million men. Women passed men in bachelor’s degrees in 1996.

Viva equality! Although the article phrases this as an unqualified positive, I'm not sure women being disproportionately burdened with student loan debt is any kind of a good result. There are already reports of couples refusing marriage and relationships over student loan debt. And not to sound non-PC, but I'm skeptical women have the same earning power as men if they're unable to find employment in their chosen educated field.

3. Lawyers' Poor Track Records

As Demosthenes pointed out yesterday, a recent study looking at the accuracy of predictions by pundits noted that "prognosticators with a law degree were more likely to be wrong."

This shouldn't be a surprise, but I imagine if you asked attorneys if they were good at predicting things, they would likely be more confident than others that their perception was correct. After all, a key part of lawyering involves predicting how a court would rule on something.

But the trick is that the real world is not a court. The real world is dynamic. Technology constantly changes the process of how things are done efficiently, while resource imbalances and shifts cause actors' values to subtly change over time. The real world has an infinity of variables that interplay and create a system that is chaotic and fueled by self-interested actors with very limited information.

A court attempts to provide certainty by removing the real world elements. Allegations of wrong are reduced to long-established causes of action. Evidence is reduced to that which the judge finds relevant and reliable. Despite the complexity of modern litigation, cases are presented simply, in a point-by-point manner with each side having an opportunity to bundle its case neatly. In contrast the to real world, the system is static and conservative. For example, American attitudes towards promiscuity have changed radically over the last century. But libel per se (assumed damages for falsely calling someone a whore) persisted regardless of dynamic social changes. There are numerous areas of law such as this, both substantive and procedural.

The point is that much of the law is about looking backwards, putting controlling weight on what authority figures did five years ago, what causes of action are already established, etc. The lawyer is not trained to predict how the world will change. The lawyer is trained to predict how the world will be if what happened in the past happens exactly as it did in the future. However, this is not realistic. History, hackneyed phrases aside, does not repeat itself. General rules of human behavior may develop, but any idea that the "rules" of the 1970s can be applied to the 2010s is so silly I shouldn't have to debunk it. And yet, attorneys regularly find themselves giving undue weight to overstated cases from the 70s and 80s in determining what will happen in their little sphere tomorrow. And if you find something dead on-point, then you have a very easy case and the world will not change.

There are merits in how the common law decides winners and losers, but attorneys and judges (and prospective law students) should be aware that it's a very artificial system that has no real-world application in how to "think" better than others'. If it did, lawyers may be more successful at starting businesses and investing than other people. But they're not; lawyers are regarded as notoriously bad businessmen, likely because they spent years of their lives thinking in very narrow, constructed boxes.

Yes, law school may teach you how to break something down piece-by-piece and argue variations on each piece against conflicting evidence. Often, sound policy determinations are emphasized. But the policy revelations are almost always retroactive, realized after some actors have started abusing the system. I fear as much as the law makes one "think" in a rational and isolated matter, for all the good that may bring, it seems like it might damage one's ability to see the big picture and think dynamically about how variables interplay with each other in a chaotic system. We really need people who can do that (e.g. invent things, propose new political ideas) and not more people who can pick the elements of a products liability claim and analyze them to death using reasoning from the pre-digital age.

Kentucky Students Fight Back

A few days ago, I discussed the case at the University of Kentucky, where the dean actually had the chutzpah to admit directly that his proposed tuition hike would go towards compensating professors.

Now, some blessed UK law students have decided to put up their own Facebook page to protest.

Law student Derek Hall and two others started a Facebook page entitled "UK Law Students Against Dean Brennen's Tuition Hike."

Hall, who met with the dean for about an hour on Monday, came away believing the proposed 1.8 percent tuition hike is just the beginning. "My fear is that he is going to continue doing this year after year," said Hall.

Hall, who's from Flemingsburg, believes the law school's money problems are being placed on the backs of its students. "Many of us are about to graduate into the worst law job market we've seen in decades. Many will have near $100,000 debt. It costs that much to go to law school. You close off a law degree to people like me who are fully paying for it themselves and who are from less fortunate urban or rural areas."

I already like this kid, and pledge to buy him an adult beverage of his choice if I'm ever in Lexington. He points out (as I did) that comparing UK's salary structure to the U. of Georgia's is absurd. He further points out the dean's timing couldn't have been worse for an honest discussion of the tuition hike, as it came within finals week, immediately before the Board's vote, and only a few weeks after a school forum where the issue was not discussed. Talk about a true lesson in governance.

Apparently, the Facebook page is already rife with some good content regarding the situation, to wit:

[O]ne contributor took a pot shot at the drop in the UK College of Law ranking. "So the salary increases are intended to keep the faculty we currently have from jumping ship? The same faculty that contributed to our 15-plus spot rankings plummet in the last two years?"

Unfortunately, I cannot find the Facebook group, but I definitely encourage and approve of what they're doing. At some point, students have to put up a brick wall and say "no more" to thriftless administrators who want hike after hike to line their own pockets under some ridiculous rationale, like competing with unreachable schools in a rigged ranking system. Here's an idea: how about you focus on training the next generation of Kentucky lawyers, people like Derek Hall, and stop this crazy and shameless resource grab.

On The Scholarship Game

Many of you have probably already seen the New York Times article where David Segal discussed the law school scholarship game. I think others covered it fairly well, I just wanted to add a few points of my own.

My over-arching reaction to this piece is simple: What the **** did you expect?

Here's the thing about humans. If you set up a system where parties are perversely incentivized. They're going to act perversely. It doesn't matter if its Catholic pardoners or law school deans. Law schools aren't necessarily more immoral than the next exploitable institution, but the law school system is so warped, it's practically a given that this would happen.

What you have in law is a situation where the US News and World Report rankings became such an obsession in a field where many students fight for a small number of cushy positions. Schools, naturally, want to move up in the rankings. The rankings, it turns out, are so flawed that they look only at incoming classes (and not who's still there at the end of 3L year) and disproportionately weigh the LSAT and undergraduate GPA even though they have very little relevance on how good the actual school is, unless, of course, you make some ridiculous assumptions (e.g., that if a good student goes there, it's automatically a better school regardless of what happens to him while he's there).

The natural response for schools is not to increase the quality of their curriculum, but rather to increase the quality of their matriculant pool and then forget them after the first year. And so it was and is.

Of course, there are two obvious ways to stop this. The ABA could have stepped in and regulated the offering and retention of scholarships as an accreditation metric. After all, if a law school has to have a tenured faculty and a full-blown library, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest they only offer scholarships under reasonable conditions, such that everyone has a chance to retain their scholarship if they do well with the first-year material (which is not currently the case). At the very least, they could protect students by preventing schools from stacking all the full-ride kids in the same section and by taking other tactics designed to increase the first-year scholarship pool.

The second filter could have been (or be) Bob Morse at US News and World Reports. On one hand, I feel sorry for Mr. Morse in that it's not his fault his magazine's ridiculous and stupid rankings gained such regard among administrators desperate for something good to tell their bosses/student bodies. On the other, however, every time Bob Morse opens his mouth, he sounds dumber and dumber.

Why is merit scholarship retention not part of the U.S. News data haul? “The main reason is that we haven’t thought about it,” said Robert Morse, who oversees the rankings. “It’s not a great answer, but it’s an honest answer.”

Then Mr. Morse thought about it.

“This isn’t meant to be sarcastic,” he said, “but these students are going to law school and they need to learn to read the fine print.”

Except, as the article points out, often there is not any fine print!

And how do you not think about it? The whole point of these rankings is to find the best law school, at least ostensibly. You should be trying to prevent schools from gaming the system through shifty means. You haven't even thought about it? That's the kiss of death for when an American system is in disarray. Some jackass didn't even bother thinking about the fact that his decisions and actions actually have consequences for those working in the system. That's why our primary schools are so decayed. Bob Morse's blindness to how schools act in reliance on his publication's rankings is impressive, the type of journalistic insight one surely develops while staring at a wall and banging bricks against his head for dozens of years.

How can you possibly have any integrity in ranking these places when you have no idea what actually goes on at them? Could you imagine the health bureau saying "we haven't really thought about it" when asked why they didn't check a restaurant's air ducts for mold? Evaluating law schools is this man's business and he admits he hasn't even thought about how they act and how it may jeopardize the authenticity of his rankings. What a clown!

Another major problem I have with the situation is that the law school deans are trying to push theory and technicality over practicality. For example, check out this excerpt about Golden Gate:

[I]n recent years, only the top third of students at Golden Gate wound up with a 3.0 or better, according to Ms. Ramey, the dean....

Ms. Ramey says it is statistically possible for 70 percent of first-year students to maintain a 3.0. She also maintains that Golden Gate 1L’s are well informed about the odds they face in keeping scholarships.

“Students who have done well in college assume they will do well in law school,” she said. They would know better “if they read our materials, if they listen to anything we told them in our admission process, or read our course catalog."

There are two major problems here.

First, the dean knows very well that 70% of the 1L class cannot wind up with a 3.0 or higher. If I'm not mistaken, for that number to happen, the same students who get As would have to get a few B-s. In other words, you can't have the same people set the curve in every class (otherwise, they push more people below the median, which makes it impossible for the below-the-line people to have a 3.0 or higher). Never, in the history of law schools, has there been an entirely different set of people set the curve in each 1L class. Given that reality, focusing on what is technically possible is grossly misleading and makes it sound much easier than it actually is to get a 3.0. It's technically possible I'll wake up in the Playboy mansion with a girl in each arm or that an asteroid will crash into Earth tomorrow at 6:17 am. In most areas of the law, including, so far as I know, consumer law, we focus on what is reasonable rather than on what is possible. It just isn't reasonable to tell kids that up to 70% of them can retain their scholarships knowing full well it'll never happen in a million years.

Second, how in the **** can Dean Ramey claim their materials would apprise someone of the risks of law school?!?! The admissions process is a sales pitch, not a risk factors section of a 10-K filing. In fact, let's check out Golden Gate's JD Prospectus on page 22:

Golden Gate Law awards both
full-tuition Dean’s Scholarships and
partial-tuition Faculty Scholarships
to qualified entering students. All
entering scholarships are awarded
on a three-year basis for full-time
students and four-year basis for parttime
students. There is no separate
application for entering student
scholarships as all students are
considered for scholarships at the
time they are admitted to the JD
program. Entering scholarships are
typically awarded to students whose
application materials demonstrate
outstanding achievement in one or
more of the following areas: academic
record, LSAT scores, writing ability,
professional experience, volunteer
service, or community leadership.
...

Is this a change, or are they being dishonest? The date on the PDF is 2010. According to the New York Times, these scholarships are contingent on a GPA requirement, but, as Dean Raney says, their admissions department makes the odds of retaining clear. You think if they had changed their policy, she would have let David Segal know.

Going to the Student Handbook helps answer these questions, on page 123:

The Law School Admissions Office awards merit scholarships to eligible entering students during the admissions process. Scholarships awarded prior to matriculation are awarded on a three (3) year basis for full-time or on a four (4) year basis for part-time students. The scholarship amount is stated in the student’s admission letter. To maintain eligibility for a scholarship as a continuing student, a student must earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative required course GPA at the end of each evaluation period. [emphasis mine]

Okay - so they consider them 3-year scholarships with a continuing maintenance requirement. Here's my question for Dean Raney: Why is that not in your JD Prospectus? (second question: what 1L actually looks at a course catalog, when a 1Ls classes are predetermined?).

Do you see, Bob Morse, that there WAS NO FINE PRINT on the JD Prospectus? That's how they roll. Golden Gate is effectively selling their entrance scholarships as a 3-year deal when it's actually a 1-year deal with a reevaluation period.

In the ordinary state consumer protection law context, that's fraud with very few questions asked. (I actually think it's borderline fraud to even sell them as opportunities for a 2L scholarship when there's more chances offered than spots available).

Overall, this is a situation that developed from a flawed system where - again - transparency and regulation would help, or at least we could hope.

Consider what happens at Chicago-Kent, the school that offers students less scholarship money ($9,000) if they want it guaranteed, and more ($15,000) if they can clear the 3.25 G.P.A. hurdle. Ninety percent opt for the larger and riskier sum, according to school officials. A “significant” number later lose their scholarships, says the school’s dean, Harold J. Krent.

“The real issue is that students don’t think about this decision in the sophisticated way that you’d like them to,” he added.

Well, Dean Krent, that's nice in theory, but it's hard for them to think about it in a "sophisticated" way with (a) limited information and (b) an assumption, which the law schools prey on, that getting a 3.0/3.2/whatever is easy in law school, since it was easy in undergrad for 90% of law school applicants and its easy in other graduate settings.

What really galls me is that the administrations, ABA, and Morse all seem to have a "the consumer should do his homework/caveat emptor" attitude.

Historically, when we have a system where unsophisticated players get screwed by repeat players who know the rules in and out, we put a filter on the system to ensure a fairer process. We've done it countless times in the business/financial sector, and individual states have all sorts of laws governing industries like used cars, pawn shops, antiques, etc.

What's truly sad is that in an industry designed to teach rational argumentation, fair process, and, hopefully, justice, it took so long for people to wake up to the reality of the system and that those in power still have the attitude that nothing really needs to be changed. People are getting screwed by these type of deals and for the Dean Raneys and Bob Morses of the world to just throw up their hands is unfortunate, at best.

Kentucky Wants to Hike Tuition Solely for Professors' Salaries

At least the University of Kentucky is being honest, right? At least about their motives? In addition to the 6% across-the-board tuition hike for UK students, law dean David Brennen is requesting an additional 1.8% to pay his professors even more cash.

"Our salary structure is simply not competitive with other law schools with which we compete," Brennen wrote. "For example, the average faculty salary at the University of Georgia College of Law is nearly 40 percent higher than the average faculty salary at our college. Top 20 law schools average almost 50 percent higher faculty pay."

Brennen's salary is $250,000, according to a February 2011 UK salary database.

I actually think Brennen's criticism is kind-of justified (see below) but as an initial matter, I find it hilariously disingenuous that Brennen is comparing his school's situation to the University of Georgia's or to a "top 20" law school's.

Georgia is in Athens, which is not far from Atlanta. In Atlanta, Emory, Georgia State, and John Marshall-Atlanta all hire professors. Emory is a superior school to Georgia and Georgia State is a fairly well-regarded secondary public school (at 61st in the USNWR rankings, it's ranked higher than Kentucky, Kansas, UNLV, Oklahoma, etc.). Furthermore, Atlanta has a sizable legal market where many of these professors might go and practice as an alternative to teaching. That is considerable competition for people the law school wants, meaning higher salaries, so long as they're playing along with the whole prestige thing (and since they're ranked 35th in the USNWR, it's a safe bet they are).

Kentucky is ranked 71st is the USNWR. Its in-state rival, Louisville, is ranked 100th. Northern Kentucky is in what used to be the fourth tier. There is no quality private school in Kentucky that may drive up salaries, nor is there a large legal market to give professors an alternative place to take whatever unique skills they think they have. Where are they going to go, Cincinnati?

The cost of living in Athens is more or less a wash compared to the cost of living in Lexington, but these are completely different schools and its completely disingenuous of the dean to use Georgia as a salary negotiation tactic to get he and his buddies more coin to spend at the horse track.

Not that I'm much of a believer in the USNWR rankings, but Kentucky ain't no top 20 law school, so its professors should not be getting paid what a top 20 law professor gets paid. Kentucky is a flagship school in a state with a relatively small legal market. It fills a niche position, much like Kansas, New Mexico, Oregon, etc., and has very little chance of ever seriously competing with the top 25ish schools. At this point, the 1.8% increase seems like nothing more than a wealth grab by the faculty.

But Brennen does have a point to some extent if you look at the right numbers and consider who Kentucky's real competition is. One great thing about Kentucky is that they put their salaries online.

David Brennen - $250,000
William Wiecek - $180,000
Rutherford Campbell - $149,480
R. Schwemm - $146,043
Eugene Gaetke - $138,874
...

These aren't astronomical numbers by law faculty standards, but if any of them (or the ones making "only" $80-100k are having a hard time living in Lexington, Kentucky (median household income = $39k), they should quit, move, and give their position to a recent graduate.

What this really comes down to, I think, becomes apparent when you look at the salaries at their main competitor (real, not imagined), Louisville:

James Chen - $250,858.67
David Leibson - $188,168.00
Manning Warren - $182,114.00
Laura Rothstein - $178,021.04
Leslie Abramson - $162,341.00
...

I'm sure the Kentucky people are wondering why (or rather "furious that") Louisville is paying its faculty slightly more for a "lesser" school and that's at least part of the motivation for the salary request, especially since the cost of living in Louisville is only about 80% what it is in Lexington.

This is a much better point than the idea that Kentucky is trying to compete with the University of Georgia (or, God forbid, with Texas, Emory, UCLA, Vanderbilt, etc.). When you compare its numbers to Louisville's, the UK faculty really is getting screwed about as much as a law faculty can.

Of course, the real answer to this "dilemma" is not to raise Kentucky's tuition as a penalty for its administration's failure to keep up with salary inflation. Instead, the proper solution is to lower Louisville's salary levels and keep Kentucky's at the same rate. But with this ruling generation and this governmental climate, the answer is never to stand pat as a matter of fiscal responsibility. The answer is to raise expenditures and then jack up taxes (or in this case, tuition), albeit often this is accomplished indirectly (as in "we'll do it 10 years from now when the main beneficiaries of this thriftless zeitgeist are frying in hell").

Regardless of what one's peers are getting paid and whether or not its "just" between comparable employees, I still think it's deplorable for a group of six-figure earners running a non-profit educational racket to make their students fork over an additional $300-400 every year because they're the laughing stock of the AALS convention.

So in conclusion, David Brennen has a point from a fairness standpoint, but he argued it very poorly (he gets paid $250k and in 30 minutes I (salary = $0) found an argument that would probably work better to most aware people) and it's not a very morally-digestible argument, even if it's "fair."

And I think that's a good way to wrap up April.

19 Year Old International Lawyer? Um...No.

If you ever want to see a collection of delusional human beings, look no further than this article here and half the comments it's generated:

[16-year-old Kayla Heard] lives with her mother and brother on the banks of the Hood Canal in Union, Wash. Next month, she will become the youngest person ever to graduate from Washington State University. She pursued her degree online.
...
So positive was Kayla's undergraduate online experience, she hopes to attend law school online and to that end will spend her summer filling out applications.
...
The homeschooler, who will pursue international law, hopes to work abroad one day.

This is damned crazy, isn't it?

I explained my position in a comment, but just to reiterate, I honestly believe this child's parents are grossly negligent, especially if they promote her getting an online degree.

I am all for nurturing prodigies. If our society somehow (against all odds) produces the next Mozart or Keats, we should celebrate their gifts and do everything we can as a society to aid their progress.

But I want to be crystal clear: getting an online college degree at 16 is neither an indication of prodigy or a process that truly can nurture intellectual gifts. Likewise, getting an online degree in law does nothing to nurture one's innate abilities, nor does it particularly improve one's employability.

This individual is obviously gifted. But checking off perfunctory requirements in a race to get the high school diploma, the B.A., the graduate degree, is an absurd task that detracts from their overall intellect by denying them an opportunity to nurture their talents in other ways. Instead of knowledge being an end in itself, knowledge becomes a means to attaining another notch in the belt, whereby the individual can plow through to another degree.

If Kayla does graduate with a law degree at 19, I would never in a million years hire her as a young attorney. No one should. An important part of being a lawyer (or any profession) is having some level of emotional development. I'm all for homeschooling for elementary school in some cases, but if you rarely leave the house and interact with others, you have no business representing anyone.

If we're ever going to change things in American education, we have to start recognizing some fundamental truths. One such truth is that no matter how smart and how driven you are, you simply cannot always get your dream job. A real parent would grab young Kayla by the shoulders and tell her that if she wants to be an international lawyer, she needs to go to a real brick-and-mortar law school, and that going to an online law school will prove to be a worthless sojourn that may actually foreclose her from working in the firms that do international law.

If we're ever to restore our system of education, we must stop telling these lies. People are not skeptics merely because they are "jealous" of another's abilities. They are skeptics because blind faith in anything - including the "I can do anything" mantra - is one of the worst attributes of humanity.

What happens to these poor children is that they are pumped up by a dim-witted Hollywood-fueled society who wants to tell them they are amazing and push them through the ranks of schooling. But at the end of the tunnel, what happens? They wind up with PhD's fighting for faculty positions like the other schmucks who wound up in graduate school. Or, in Kayla's case, they wind up as unemployed attorneys because in the rah-rah lead-up to her online law degree no one told her that no one at the big law firms is interested in a degree from Concord.

There's a disconnect between what the market really wants and between what people tell these kids the market wants. That's ultimately the problem. The truth is that the only people who want a 19-year-old lawyer are people who looking for amusement, that news article about the youngest-person-ever doing something. The people who actually pay lawyers to do international law work have no business for a 19-year-old lawyer who's never been in a brick-and-mortar school.

Who ultimately loses in this arrangement? The kids, and no one else. The amused get what they want - while calling those of us with an ounce of realism "jealous" - and the employers continue employing people who are actually qualified in their eyes. The kid is stuck with whatever baggage the ignorance of the promoters left him with.

In the end, that's ultimately the problem with our entire educational system: no one's really and honestly interested in making the actual students fit market needs. The teachers teach to tests so they can pass politicians' low hurdles. The college professors teach their research interests. The advisers advise to pre-set scheduling sheets. The law professors never bother actually preparing their students for practice, so long as they set up a class that will make exam-grading easy and allow them to teach socratically.

And so employers are left finding clumsy heuristics. If a student has a B.S. degree, surely at some point, they learned how to function in an office and do basic mathematics. If a student has a M.B.A., surely at some point someone taught them how to manage inventory and do basic accounting. And so with every generation, another degree is required. In my parents' generation, getting a bachelor's set one for the labor market. In my older cousin's, getting a master's degree meant you were in good shape. In my generation, not even an advanced graduate degree can save you unless it's in a niche field of need.

To fix our education system, we have to stop thinking this way. But poor Kayla obviously has too many people in her life telling her that her next step should always be to get a degree. Whoever told her officially entering college at 10 was a good idea should be slapped across the face, and whoever is telling her now that entering a law curriculum at 16 is a good idea should be slapped across the face. And the journalists who perpetuate these myths by appealing to the stupid should be slapped across the face.

The best thing Kayla can do right now is avoid school like the plague for a good 3-4 years. Grow up (from 16-20 is a crucial and large developmental step for anyone) a bit. Travel, work, learn in those ways that people used to learn but now they eschew in favor of yet another degree. Do something else, but for the love of all that's good and holy, do not stay in the education vortex. The world (the real world, the one that matters) simply does not reward you for racing through an education, regardless of what the Hollywood-minded tell you.

And sadly, you are not "unique" enough to change the fundamentals of the world. No one is, and anyone who tells you otherwise is derelict in their duty as a parent, adviser, or global citizen. Knowledge is power, but it has to be the right kind of knowledge, and until you learn the world enough to know who gets hired as international lawyers, you'd be wise to stay away from legal education.

I Should Be Optimistic Because . . .

This is from Larry Ribstein, who has written previously about the slow collapse of biglaw and the future of the legal profession in general:

"I think the horizon for what you can do with a legal education hasn't shrunk, but has actually expanded," said Ribstein, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law. "Change can be bad for some people, especially for those who have a stake in the current system, but it can also be good, and I think the future is going to be much more complex than envisioned by some critics."

When you say "those who have a stake in the current system," are you looking the mirror at all, Larry?

Regardless, I'm really intrigued by this idea that legal education is now opening more doors than it has in the past, what those doors are (I'd love to find one), and how the educational industry created those doors.

Unfortunately, none of those pesky details made it into the article. They must have been left on the editing room floor. Instead, the writer gives us a rather incoherent stream of reasoning including the following in an unconnected fashion:

• Law schools should focus on meeting global demand.
• Legal education hasn't changed much in the last century because of rigid accreditation standards.
• Biglaw is dying.
• Outsourcing is just a temporary stop-gap until the machines improve efficiency domestically and lawyer work becomes more exciting ("I think this is going to lead to an era of lawyers doing even more interesting things than they're doing now.")
• Most of the professors working now will be dead or retired when these changes really change the profession (as opposed to them being affected by the scores of unemployed recent graduates).

But, yeah, there's room for optimism:

"The plus side for entering law students is that their future is much more wide open than that of their immediate predecessors," he said. "So that's a cause for optimism."

In the future, I hope we have law professors who actually back up their ridiculous statements with actual proof. Frankly, I think a law school graduate in 1960 had it much, much better than a law school graduate of 2010. That is, unless Ribstein can actually show us where these mystical doors that make the J.D. a versatile instead of a one-way ticket to attorney licensing.

The caption on the picture instructs the reader to be skeptical that the future of the legal profession is dire. If baseless statements like "you can do more with a legal education now!" are cause for optimism, I find my healthy skepticism is best used in the opposite direction, especially since people like Prof. Ribstein the marketers with the vested interest in keeping the system pumping.

In the meantime, I'll continue to consider statements like "the horizon for what you can do with a law degree hasn't shrunk, but has actually expanded" no better to the crap spewed by liberal arts advisers selling sociology degrees to future retail workers. Way to aim high, legal education.

Law School Psychology 101 And A Texas A&M Law School?

When researchers study the psychology of consumers, they often find that individuals will continue researching information about a product they've already purchased after they've bought it in order to rationalize their behavior and cure any buyer's remorse.

We see this all the time among law students. Today's example would be Marisa Mittelman, who seems excited about going to the University of San Diego Law School in the fall:

When choosing between my final two schools (UC-Hastings and USD), however, I have to say that from every angle these things seemed nearly equal. I heard amazing things from students at both schools, saying they loved their professors, that the administration is always helpful and available, and that job prospects weren’t looking great anywhere. Is this last part discouraging? Of course. The fact is, though, that students who are working hard are still getting jobs. Clearly, the market is not what it once was. That applies to any law school, though, and I think that if you’re one hundred percent sure you want to be an attorney, you need to just sort of go for it. I plan to work my ass off and hope for the best—I don’t think there’s anything more that someone who is intent on practicing law can do.

Here's an idea: How about getting rid of this idea that's it's justifiable to make a bad decision so long as you're "intent on practicing law." Can you imagine this logic applying to any other product?

"But, honey, I was intent on being a Bentley owner! That's why I signed the papers!"

And Marisa is remarkably cavalier about the lack of job opportunities. "[S]tudents who are working hard are still getting jobs" is (a) complete crap that's disrespectful to recent graduates and unemployed 3Ls who are probably smarter than her; and (b) not dispositive of whether she'll have a job if she works hard. (On the bright side, you may not have a job, but you'll integrate words like "dispositive" into your everyday vocabulary.)

Again, this type of logic never shows up in intelligent investment situations. "Yes, I understand the entire sector is down in the toilet and has limited prospects, but this little stock is the best of this small, affordable bunch, so I'll buy it." Not quite. Getting a law school degree right now is like buying a house in 2007. It may work out for you. You might have a nice place to live. But it's a catastrophic financial decision even if you're "100 percent sure" you want to be a homeowner. There are much better options out there. A helpful administration and lovable professors can't pay bills or compensate for the loss of your mid-20s.

USD is an amazing school...Call me an eternal optimist, but I can’t wait to become a lawyer. And I can’t wait to begin my time at the University of San Diego School of Law.

Reality check: USD may be the best school in San Diego, but it is not a well-regarded law school outside that city, therefore it cannot be "an amazing school." This woman wants to be a family law attorney. There are two other law schools in San Diego who feed into areas like family law in addition to the transplants from places like Loyola and Pepperdine. And if she has any designs on moving back to New York, she'll be in for a rude awakening when Brooklyn Law School grads are beating her out for jobs.

And it's not like family law is generally a field for self-styled "eternal optimists," anyway, but she may be saved from that rude awakening by the rude awakening that a much-smaller-than-advertised segment of her graduating class will have full-time employment, no matter how hard they work.

As if it were bad enough that places like San Diego are still reeling in those blinded by an irrational desire to be a lawyer at all costs, Texas Governor Rick Perry threw out the idea of a Texas A&M law school:

Gov. Rick Perry floated the notion in an offhand comment today as he began a speech honoring women in the state Legislature. After being introduced by actress and conservative activist Janine Turner, the governor talked about trying to convince Turner’s 13-year-old daughter, an aspiring lawyer, to enroll at A&M, his alma mater.

“By the time you get there, they will have a law school,” Perry predicted.

With the rate they're being proposed by insane politicians, it wouldn't surprise me if he was serious in his intent to mar a great university with a bubble-fueled law school.