Obama Says Law School Should Be Two, Not Three Years
Money Quote: “In the first two years, young people are learning in the classroom,”
Mr. Obama said. “The third year, they’d be better off clerking or
practicing in a firm even if they weren’t getting paid that much, but
that step alone would reduce the costs for the student.”
Faced with job complaints, Loyola Law School accepting fewer studentsMoney Quote: "some administrators are trying to accept fewer students
with low entrance exam scores and grade-point averages who could drag
down schools' important rankings in U.S. News & World Report."
Another quote from the NYT article:
ReplyDelete"With an increasing number of graduates struggling with soaring tuition costs, heavy student debt and a difficult job market, a growing number of professors and administrators are pushing for broad reforms in legal education."
Er yeah rrrright. A growing number of professors and administrators...
We led this fight, we developed the research and arguments and solutions, we did the heavy lifting, And now some carpet bagger professors and administrators - who have been very silent - are coming to the table claiming they were pushing for reform all along?
F them.
If there were two out there pushing for broad reform and one more started there would be a growing number.
DeleteAnd you do not know what they mean by "broad reform." It may just be a new spin on greedy self interest. Maybe they think "broad reform" is what goes on in a women's prison.
Half of law graduates will never work as lawyers. Therefore, even if half the law schools disappear there will be jobs for most but there will also still be exactly the same number of jobs that pay enough to dig oneself out of $140,000 in student loan debt. The issue is that law school costs way, way too much, and it costs way, way too much in large part because the people running the schools get paid way, way, too much, and in some cases because greedy college presidents and trustees milk law students to pay for other things. The cost has to come down and in a service business cost is all about salaries and benefits.
" 'Reality has caught up to higher education,' " said Gold, who has served as dean since 2009. "The job market is still very slow, and we have a moral obligation not to just take tuition dollars and then turn a blind eye when our graduates can't find jobs."
ReplyDelete...but not an "ethical" obligation, as some would say. Indiana Tech/University of North Texas/UC Irvine/Infilaw/Bob's School of Law Talkin' and Auto Repair, I'm looking at you.
Anonymous at 4:42 am summed this up perfectly. Online critics of law school gluttons led the charge. The bastards did nothing, other than toss out the same tired lies and excuses. Once we attracted the attention of the NYT and David Segal - along with many other mainstream sources - then they started somewhat "addressing" the situation.
ReplyDeleteThen Tamanaha and Campos came on board, and the ABA started issuing reports about the costs of law school - and how students should look at this as a financial decision. Now, that the inevitable has happened, i.e. huge decreases in applications and fewer asses in seats despite higher acceptance rates, these cockroaches want to take credit.
This "voluntary" reduction in class sizes is akin to some loser who got dumped by his girlfriend claiming "Yeah, I had to drop her. She was crazy." This garbage reminds me of all the schools that got caught fudging their numbers - and then arguing that they made an "error."
"Anonymous at 4:42 am summed this up perfectly. Online critics of law school gluttons led the charge. The bastards did nothing, other than toss out the same tired lies and excuses. Once we attracted the attention of the NYT and David Segal - along with many other mainstream sources - then they started somewhat "addressing" the situation."
DeleteNot even that - it was when the attention of prospective students was captured, then they had to react, because those people started not paying the law schools for nothing.
I wholeheartedly agree with the President for once. He should make a big deal out of this. Law profs might really listen to him and take steps. He has credibility with them. It could be a real Sista Soulja moment.
ReplyDeleteThe real money quote from the Loyola story:
ReplyDeleteWu said Hastings and other law schools need to "reboot the system" in the face of declining enrollment.
"I'm not a visionary. I'm just looking at the numbers, and you'd be an idiot not to see what these numbers mean," he said. "We have produced a glut."
More money quotes from Loyola story:
ReplyDelete"He added that he hopes to save money through staff attrition and other programs designed to reduce expenses, including solar panels at the Frank Gehry-designed campus that should make energy costs cheaper."
Bwahahahahahahaahaha!!! Solar panels will save the law school scam!!!! And...
Gold said he hopes that smaller classes will lead to better employment prospects for Loyola graduates.
"It kills me," he said, "when our graduates pay what they pay and can't find a job."
Note the mention of alumni not finding jobs in the case of Loyola. Alumni includes a lot more than first years. If these schools, including top law schools, surveyed alumni and found a much bigger percentage of alumni than first years are out of work or underemployed, what happens next? The cat will be out of the bag once alumni are surveyed and it won't be pretty. Will be ugly even at top law schools and show people what a crapshoot a law degree, even from Harvard is. It is not easy to find a legal job, and it is much harder for people beyond associate age. When will the cat be out of the bag on the full extent of alumni unemployment?
ReplyDeleteOkay, I agree with Obama. Law school should not last three years. Frankly, it should not even last two years in the classroom. My vote, one year (only thing that matters is research and writing) and then internships and clerking. But two years is a start. HOWEVER, shortening the law school curriculum still does not solve the problem of far too many lawyers. Actually it could potentially make it worse (more people might go if it is cheaper). The ABA needs to step in and regulate this or the government needs to get out of the lending business.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of how long law school is, the lawyers graduating will still represent people in very serious matters, some noble and some not. But too many lawyers still produces some of the "race to the bottom" effects because lawyers are scrambling for work (too low of prices=not enough time spent on work=starving lawyers=ineffective counsel). One focus should be on keeping the costs--and therefore debt--of new graduates down. But if we keep graduating as many people as we are now, the profession will never recover. The justice system will never recover. And so regardless of the cost of law school--and regardless of the effectiveness of practical training--many lawyers would still not find work, and the scam would continue, just on a (presumably) lesser scale.
I don't know if the issue is necessarily 2 v. 3 in law school, but there's no reason to spend 7 years post-high school to be an argumentative fiduciary file clerk. The JD should be a 5-year program, with year 6 being a residency/internship.
ReplyDeleteThere is no reason why tort law couldn't be taught in year 2 or 3 after high school, and why the first 1.5 years of law school couldn't be covered in an upper-level undergraduate curriculum.
Did anyone see this? Nando and Campos and dybuk, you know what to do.
ReplyDeleteFrom the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
"Charleston School of Law Confirms Sale to For-Profit Chain
Comments (10)
The Charleston School of Law, a for-profit institution in South Carolina, on Wednesday announced that its founders and directors had signed an agreement to transfer ownership of the institution to the InfiLaw System, which operates three other for-profit law schools, The Post and Courier reported.
The law school had previously entered into a management-services agreement with InfiLaw, a step that fueled speculation about an impending sale because it is often the first step toward such a deal. Students and alumni then raised concerns that a sale to InfiLaw would diminish the value of their degrees and harm the school’s reputation.
In order to go forward, the deal must be approved by the American Bar Association and the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education. The school said in its announcement that such approval was expected to take months.
Two of the school’s founders, Robert S. Carr and George C. Kosko, said in a joint statement that the decision had been made because a majority of the founders “expressed a desire to pull back and retire.” Mr. Carr said that InfiLaw Management Solutions, a subsidiary of the chain, would provide consulting services but would “not make any operational decisions.”
The school’s statement said that the directors had indicated that they were “willing to consider well-thought-out and financially viable alternative offers.”
The founders’ statement said that they had “looked at other options, such as becoming a nonprofit institution and a sale to a current owner.” But they concluded that “none of the options would have done as much to protect the interests of the law school for the foreseeable future as the InfiLaw transaction.”