Thursday, March 7, 2013

Activism 2.0?

The response to my post from earlier today was, to put it politely, underwhelming.  Few, if anybody, seemed actually interested in that little idea.  But like Simon Pegg said in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, “I’m just spitballing here. It’s not all going to be solid gold.”  (Not sure I got the quote quite right, but it’ll do.)  Not every idea is a winner, but we’ve got to keep getting ideas out there.  (But the warning label scheme is still available, so if that’s your bag, then go for it.  I'd love to see some photos.)

So…

What people did seem to be interested in today is the idea of digging up news stories about law school, legal education, and related subjects, and en masse visiting those sites to post comment after comment after comment.  Quality comments, not trash about Leiter and Painter.  Good arguments for why whatever the story is promoting (e.g. law being a great career etc.) is not the case in real life.

So Activism 2.0: How do people feel about occasionally visiting this site, picking up on the latest target story, and clicking through to that site and posting comments?

That, surely, has to be the least we could all do.  It doesn’t even involve putting on pants!

I’ve had multiple offers from readers who would be happy to highlight those kinds of stories as and when they appear, and we can get in with ten, twenty, maybe more comments that might really put our message out there in these diverse stories and forums where people need to be set straight.

Can I get a “yay” on this?  Thoughts?  I’d like to get a handle on the level of support before I start getting volunteers to spend their time finding quality stories in places where we can post comments.

And if this doesn't seem like a good starting point for getting the message out there, then please - what would you be prepared to do?  Because twenty comments per day here, half of which are about Painter, really isn't cutting it.  We need to move forward, not get stale.

17 comments:

  1. Phurst!

    And F Yay!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Set it up. I'll play.

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  3. We need a weekly chronicle about the fast times of The Valvoline Dean.

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  4. You want to end the lawl skool horror, just steal tons of dynamite and blow up school after school, then flee to Mexico.

    Kidnap Leiter and blow him up too.

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    Replies
    1. Wouldn't you be surprised when the "dynamite" you sculpted out of your turds failed to actually explode?

      LOL

      Delete
  5. It's a good idea. One reason why I think scambloggers have been so successful at criticizing pro-law school deans and profs like Larry Mitchell is that a lot of young people don't get their news at the source, but from a diverse range of blogs. So Larry Mitchell writes an OpEd in the NYT and 80% of people read a summary on Salon and then read the comments section where people take it apart, or get linked to ITLSS. So there's none of this 15 second soundbite in rebuttal stuff, you really get to see every point rebutted line by line.

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  6. Non-ABA schools beginning to fold: http://www.kake.com/news/headlines/344051.html?site=full

    Re ABA schools:
    Lower-ranked schools "combining resources" (read: engaged in desperate move before folding or drastically downsizing). Talkin' Rutgers here.

    Stand alones in deep shit, as in who even knows what's going down at Vermont LS...some stand alones will be closing soon.

    As soon as final lsac app tallies come out, the shit will hit the fan and even the "better" schools will be downsizing. Look to this summer, early fall. Nobody wants to look like Scrooge and lay people off right before the holidays. Faculty pay cuts/ increased teaching loads/ sabbaticals cut in near future.

    Yep, stab the law schools with a fork and get them off the grill, they're done.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wanna spread news and stories? Use the internet. No need to go out and protest; that's so 60s; see how Occupy Wall Street ended up?

    Just write stories, based on fact, add a bit of opinion, and ask people to spread the word through Google+, Facebook, etc.
    You have to think of this in terms of guerrilla warfare. Law schools and ABA are the established armed force. If you fight them in the open, they'll beat you up. They have a lot resources on their back, like access the media, print, and politicians. See what happened to the law school lawsuits?

    But although these resources are powerful, they are old and losing power. Also, the people that run these institutions are themselves old and do not comprehend new and emerging technologies, like the internet. That is their achilles heel.

    Reach out to "new media." I am talking about established blogs. They have been very friendly to the scambloggers' messages. In essence, you have to continue doing what has been done so successfully for the last three years or so. Those results have been amazing: applicants have dropped from about 100K to an expected 55k this cycle. That alone, in the long-run, will lead to the closure of tens of law schools.

    Keep up the good work!

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  8. Also, start a petition on the White House website (https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/) to deal with real source of the problem--student loans. Student loans finance all these wrong doings and scams.

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  9. Over at The Faculty Lounge, looks like Tamara Piety is butthurt over scamblog hooligans posting on her site and disrupting all the wonderful arcane poetaster discussions going on. From now on she's gonna moderate on yalz azzes. Considering she "works" at the 99th most awesome and prestigious legal academy in the nation (tied with Rutgers Camden!), maybe her panties are knotted for other reasons...career reasons. Does Tulsa even have another school to combine resources with? I'm assuming they have a shitty undergrad institution. TTThe FaculTTTy Lounge. More like the TTT Rent Seeking Lounge... You had a nice run scamsTTTers...

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    1. Notice how the law schools are behaving like terminal cancer patients with nothing left to lose? Try this experimental drug; no, try this; what about homeopathic remedies...
      Cut the third year; six years for undergrad/JD; take bar during second summer; make third year an internship; offer more clinics; hire more practice-oriented faculty; have the law school open its own firm...
      Not a single one of the above propositions will create jobs for new law grads. Several will result in increased costs to be passes on to students with further tuition hikes (unless faculty take dramatic pay cuts. HAH!). Dealing with a dying patient...time for hospice and dignity. Not all the hand wringing and running around like chickens with heads cut off. Law deans and faculty are the least qualified types to be negotiating the shoals in these tough times. Bunch of personality-stunted boobs.

      Delete
  10. Someone please reach out to Partner Emeritus, a frequent commenter on ATL. He/she is amazing. Just read his comments to this ATL post written by Dean Yellen:

    http://abovethelaw.com/2013/03/the-deans-office-why-the-aba-is-resistant-to-change/#disqus_thread

    Partner Emeritus wrote:

    I didn't realize ATL resorted to satire, which is exactly what this article is. Dean Yellow, you missed your calling as a carnival barker.

    I have been a member of the bar for over 4 decades. I was already a licensed attorney before you were old enough to pleasure yourself to the bra and panties section of the Sears catalogue. Sometime in the '90s, the ABA was hijacked by your ilk and began operating with only your best interests in mind. How else can you explain the creation of Cooley satellite law schools or the proposed Florida Space Law School? The ABA's motives are clear: keep the gravy train running and keep depositing slops at the trough so that you pigs can continue to feast while the taxpayer picks up the tab. You are not a peer Dean Yellow. No--you are a sorry excuse for a non-peer carbon unit (I cannot summon the strength to call you a human being).

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  11. Might want to link as much as possible to this, or print out where possible and distribute

    http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/professional_responsibility/taskforcecomments/032013_coalition_revcomment.authcheckdam.pdf

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  12. www.abajournal.com/legalrebels/article/lawschool.next/

    Interesting too ... forecast that as many as 20 law schools will have to shut down. Probably not enough ... but still.

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  13. You're absolutely correct, and I like your pluck. Respond to this comment with a comment and contact information and I'll contact you.

    Activism is where it's at. For all the improvement in generally available information about cost/benefit analysis of law school, and some law schools in particular, the culture is still hostile to reality. I think the best way to counteract this is to provide a compendium, school-by-school, of true and non-encouraging information.

    If that can't dissuade (evidently) lemmings from jumping, that's on them.

    Let's do this for all the semi-smart money out there that can be made to realize that fattening the wallets of participants in a price-fixing cartel will not buy them respectability or a future! For the rest, at least they were warned!

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    Replies
    1. You can reach the blog via outsidethelawschoolscam at gmail dot com.

      Delete
  14. Quality comments, not trash about Leiter Minnesota Law Firm and Painter. Good arguments for why whatever the story is promoting (e.g. law being a great career etc.) is not the case in real life.

    ReplyDelete