Monday, April 22, 2013

Oh my! Bell tolls for Broke Law Schools as Spring melts Special Snowflakes Away‏



The same ruthless calculation that led colleges to milk their law-schools into near fatal mastitis will also tend to lead the same colleges to decide that that it’s time that dried up old milk cow went to McDonalds. —MacK Comment from other Blog

The above is a very apropos comment to LawProf's discussions of the increasing budgetary problems caused by declining enrollment in law school. In particular, the original post discussed the greater probability of entire law schools closing instead of just some internal budgetary reform within a school; it turns out that actually reforming a law school budget is too difficult due to the various (inflexible) financial and social interests involved. There is no repairing the ship in drydock, as it were, but she must be scuttled. For instance, cutting faculty salaries is a socially problematic decision, and laying off high-earning faculty even more difficult because of tenure. But the parent universities can easily shut the whole thing down at once, tenure or nay. Cute, isn't it? Tenure makes them individually unfireable—but jointly helpless. My academic freedom! Oy! Not if they are all fired at once by virtue of their being no school to teach at. I have a feeling that dismissed "Profussers",as enablers of the scam, will not be given much sympathy in certain places. It will be a magical day when the first TTTT law school announces it will close at the end of the academic year, and the postings of joy throughout the "scamblogs" ensue.

This situation cuts right to the moral heart of the matter. The law school administration and faculty are not morally or ethically driven, but pragmatic, at least when it comes to pursuing their own interests. Pragmatic is actually a (from a) Greek word meaning "no principals" or "no predisposition" (i.e., amoral). It simply does whatever works to complete its agenda. The ScamDeans and Flaw Schools have done exactly that. They have had the social leverage to take as much federal-backed student loan money as they can carry, and they done that, jacking up tuition as fast as they could open new law schools. (MOAR superfluous degrees! Ok, career counselors, repeat after me: if they ask about jobs, just say versatile, versatile, versatile. Close enough for horseshoes!

But they have painted themselves into a corner. The sk00lz bet everything on unlimited human arrogance and ignorance, in the form of what we now call special snowflakes, but the even the frostiest Special Snowfall eventually clears up. The sunshine of reality is slow to thaw, but it will. Thousands of students are opting out of applying and attending to law school compared to just a few years ago. (See also why). The springtime is here; applications keep declining, and with decreased LSAT scores to prevent schools from "hiding the decline". 

The establishment has nothing to fall back on. It has no good graces outside of totally clueless (and financially successful) boomers who think the profession is the same as it was under the Ford Administration, back when a 'Stang cost $3250 with a SelectShift Cruise-O-Matic. No one likes the schools, and no one will speak in their defense besides shills and profiteers. There will not be thousands of regular graduates of the Seton Halls out there protesting if the parent university closes down their precious J.D.-Alma Mater. Imagine if they tried to close down a real university; there would be protests. But a BLS? A CUA? A WUSTL or however you spell it? No one would mourn, except for the owners (Deans & Professors), since they are the almost only ones (of late) to have benefited from it.

That is the sweet irony; although without leadership, permanent structural reform is still unattainable, at least some minor justice will be done. There simply cannot be an endless expansion of a worthless-degree; eventually retraction begins, as it already has. The ScamDeans know this, and are more concerned than they dare let on. Which TTTT will break first? One will, and then another. The spell will be broken even more so, like a cheap knockoff Harry Potter wand from eBay being manhandled by a hyperactive clumsy kid with poor hand-eye coordination and knobby hands. The Scamdean/"Professors" have turned their back on everybody else, and starting at the worst offending schools, soon everybody else will be turning their back on them.

Remember your meditations: And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee, thou absurdly-tuition-inflated fake-job-placement-numbers worthless-credential granting TTTT "law" school that doesn't even teach "law".
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Read my book-length satire/exposé of law school, Smarter Than Socrates: The End of the Law School Era.


8 comments:

  1. The pigs know that the scam cannot last forever. It has persisted for so long, due to the perception that "legal education" leads to comfortable careers. The fraud also needs willing victims, in the form of ambitious college grads. However, when it becomes clear that law school is a gamble for MOST students, even many of the willfully ignorant will start to catch onto the scam.

    The law school swine are simply trying to keep the game going for as long as possible. The cockroaches simply hope to extend their bloated, unjustified salaries until they can hit retirement age. Again, they do not give one damn about the students, recent graduates or taxpayers. The "professors" do not have any skin in the game. The schools - and banksters - bear none of the risk.

    Lastly, these academic thieves CLEARLY have no principles or integrity. They are actively engaged in defrauding and bankrupting an entire generation, for their own personal benefit. Of course, these bitches and hags also have the gall to refer to their roles as "performing a public service."

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  2. Law school closures will come I hope, but I think that there will be big faculty pay cuts first-- seniority rights, egos, and whatnot be damned. The cuts will be voluntary-- or, rather, "voluntary."

    It will go down like this: The University President will send a delegate to a law school committee. Like an Emperor explaining to a vassal king that the king no longer matters to the Empire and lives only by sufferance. And the University delegate will say: "We would you law faculty to take a substantial voluntary across-the-board pay cut. If you refuse, we will close this law school down and you can try to make a living writing articles about intersectionality or by practicing environmental law."

    And law professors, those arrogant souls only recently inclined to scream to high heaven when their Universities threatened to mess with their summer research stipends (below), let alone their salaries, will whimper and agree.

    http://molawyersmedia.com/blog/2012/06/11/furious-response-saves-slu-research-stipends/

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    1. The minor problem with that is that academic freedom is (I believe) a standard in ABA accreditation. If the ABA isn't satisfied that the lawprofs are being coddled enough, it may threaten the accreditation of the law school in order to secure the loot for its resident Yale grads.

      Of course, the university would just close the darned thing at that point, but no one ever said this profession ran on rationality.

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  3. I saw an employment listing seeking a candidate with a Master's degree in Criminal Justice. It also clearly stated, No JD's. So much for versatility. We all know that a JD isn't versatile but to not even be considered illustrates it. I am assuming there will be more of this "JD Exclusion" in the future, especially with more un/underemployment in the legal profession. Many law schools will have no choice but to close because a JD will be common knowledge as a liability instead of an asset which it should be.

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  4. One quirk of this situation is the fact that each law school closure makes it easier for the other law schools to survive, by reducing the competition for students. Sort of like pushing a passenger out of a lifeboat. Each school thus has an incentive to try to hang on until some other school goes under.

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    1. It's not just a "quirk." Before they triggered the first atomic explosion, some people actually warned that the chain reaction would destroy the entire planet. It didn't, but some people apparently believe that the same thing will happen to the law schools.

      It kind of reminds me of the potential "financial Armageddon" we keep hearing about every time Obama doesn't get his way on the budget. An entire economy destroyed - forever and always - by some terrible miracle.

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    2. Right. Remember that in '08 a whole bunch of financial institutions *SHOULD* have gone under with the normal rules of capitalism. Lehman and CIT actually did. Everyone else got merged or bailed out.

      There aren't going to be 75-100 law schools closing.

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