Friday, October 25, 2013

The Law School Scam is Like a Highway to Dreamland: An annotated fictional tribute to Law Prof. Nancy Leong's scholarshit article: "The Open Road and the Traffic Stop: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of the American Dream," 64 Fla L.Rev. 305 (2012).

Nancy Leong, JD 2006, is a Professor of Law at the University of Denver School of Law, where she teaches Criminal Procedure, in spite of having zero background as a criminal law practitioner and near-zero experience in legal practice of any sort. Last year, Leong stunned the criminal bar with her watershed law review article: "The Open Road and the Traffic Stop: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of the American Dream," 64 Fla L.Rev. 305 (2012), asserting, in 48 closely reasoned pages, that caselaw analyzing the constitutionality of traffic stops is boring compared to movies and songs that reflect the "American dream" via an open road motif.

http://www.floridalawreview.com/2012/nancy-leong-the-open-road-and-the-traffic-stop-narratives-and-counter-narratives-of-the-american-dream/

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Scene: A dorm room or an off-campus apartment. Snowflake and Lemming, two procrastinating and stoned-out-of-their-minds 1Ls of a particularly stupid and egotistical variety are pondering the boringness of the law and what it all means.

Snowflake: Dude, reading this caselaw is, like, sooooooo boring. [1]

Lemming: Yeah, I would much rather, you know, watch movies. [2]

Snowflake: What kind of movies?

Lemming: I don’t know. Maybe Zombieland. [3]

Snowflake: That is exactly what I am saying. Caselaw is boring. [4] Compared to movies like Zombieland or The Good Girl. [5] You watch those movies, you groove on the transcendent motif of the open road. But you read caselaw and all you get is a bunch of old judges writing mundane stuff about some traffic stop. [6] Road movies are enjoyable, but Fourth Amendment caselaw is dull. Just like how the open road is cool, but traffic stops are a drag. [7]

Lemming: The Good Girl? Dude, that was a chick flick.

Snowflake: I found it very touching. Not just movies. I’d rather listen to songs by musicians such as Jon Bon Jovi, [8] Springsteen, LL Cool J, and Ice Cube. Music makes me dream extravagant dreams. [9] Dreams about the American dream. [10]

Lemming: What we just said, I think it is very insightful.

Snowflake: Yeah. They should pay us to teach law, not charge us to study it. We could, you know, write down what we just said and they could publish it in a law review or something. Our insights. They are scholarly. Doing scholarship is why law professors make all that money. [11] Also, it is what makes them such great teachers. [12] Of course, we would have to make our article sound, you know, professorial or something.

Lemming (giggling): Pompously professorial.

Snowflake: Yeah, we would have to use words like "narrative" and "counternarrative."

Lemming: How many times would we say "narrative"?

Snowflake (thinking grandly, the psychoactive effects of the drug really kicking in): I bet we could use the word "narrative" 164 times in a single 48 page article! [13] And, of course, we couldn’t just say that caselaw is boring, we would have to refer to it as "sterile texts,"" "that dry medium," "banal," "narrow," "mundane," "focused on minutiae," "a rude awakening from the sweet American dream" "no poetry in these narratives," "notable for [its] depressing sameness," "stark," "a dystopian counter-narrative to the joyous parable of the open road," "a sober counter-narrative to the alluring saga of the open road," and "read[s] like the documentation of an audit." [14]

And let’s refer to movies and songs featuring the open road as "iconic cultural texts" and "our most exalted cultural texts" and "fables of freedom" and "joyful liberated narrative[s] and "alluring saga[s]" at the "heart of the American dream," occupying "a revered place in our collective imagination," and conveying "cultural meaning. . .etched into our deepest consciousness"--a "soundtrack for our obsession with the road," "standing for the "possibility of possibility itself." [15] Also our readers will appreciate it if we use Jack Kerouac to ask some ironically rhetorical question-- you know, like, would he have written On the Road if some cop had pulled him over for an obstructed windshield? [16]

Lemming (sadly): You have to use footnotes in academic writing. Footnotes are a drag.

Snowflake: But we could cite ourselves in the footnotes. You know, cite to what we think of the movie Crash or something.

Lemming: I found it didactic and full of itself.

Snowflake: Then we could say that in a footnote! [17]

Lemming: It will be great to be a law professor. All that money. Plenty of free time to get high.

Snowflake: And they would pay us to present our findings to scholarly conferences. Scholarly conferences in posh seaside resorts in Hawaii, Amelia Island, and Hampton Head. [18]

Lemming: That will be sweet. All that talk about a crisis in legal education is baloney. A JD is surely the open road to the American dream. [19]

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footnotes:

[1] Nancy Leong, "The Open Road and the Traffic Stop: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of the American Dream," 64 Fla L.Rev. 305, 328 (2012) ("These dry judicial narratives contrast starkly with the joyful, liberated narrative of the open road that we find in our most exalted cultural texts.")

[2] Open Road at 324-325 ("In addition to the sort of cultural texts in which we find the narrative of the open road, another highly influential chronicle of the traffic stop is the judicial opinion—a cultural text antithetical to our literary and cinematic staples. That dry medium has nothing of the poetry or magic of our best novels and our favorite movies. Rather, the sterile chronology of a typical judicial opinion examining a traffic stop represents a rude awakening from the sweet American dream of the open road.")

[3] Open Road at 314-315 ("Zombieland likewise pays a dark homage to the road’s power to forge human relationships. Set in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies, the four remaining humans band together and gradually shed their disagreements, united by their road journey as much as by their determination to survive in the face of a common foe.")

[4] Open Road at 328 ("Judicial narratives that begin with a traffic stop are notable for their depressing sameness. There is no poetry in these narratives. They read like the documentation of an audit.")

[5] Open Road at 313 ("Dreams of escape inevitably involve the road—in a literal sense, almost necessarily so. But the road also becomes an inextricable component of the dream itself. In The Good Girl, Jennifer Aniston’s character Justine. . . agonizes over whether to leave her husband. . . Her decision—already weighing on her emotionally—becomes vividly physical as she waits at a traffic light.")

[6] Open Road at 330 ("This clinical evaluation of the content of the traffic stop effectively punctures the uplifting fantasy of the open road. The symbolism of the road as a route to a better life—one free and unencumbered—dissipates in the face of bickering over whether a host of minutiae means that a police officer saw enough or heard enough or knew enough to establish "reasonable suspicion." The American dream has no time for such details; put another way, someone whose fate hangs on those details has no time to chase the American dream.")

[7] Open Road at 334-335 ("The traffic stop, then, disrupts or simply precludes the close interpersonal bonds that the open road facilitates. By interposing the force of the law, the traffic stop tears at the fragile fabric of human relationships and precludes the deep connection so often found in long road journeys.")

[8] Open Road at 317 ("The road leads to the American dream, and it is the American dream. We may choose to reject the mythology, of course, but the cultural meaning remains etched in our deepest consciousness. The most jaded among us still understands exactly what Jon Bon Jovi means when he proclaims, "My heart is like an open highway.")

[9] Open Road at 346 ("Hip-hop texts communicate the imaginative costs imposed by the traffic stop narrative. One such cost is the lowering of standards for what constitutes a good life: those trapped in the traffic stop narrative lose the ability to dream extravagant dreams that transcend the mundane worries of daily existence.")

[10] Open Road at 349 ("Of course, no one—black, white, or otherwise—can ever truly and fully claim the American dream. The infinite potential represented by the open road is truly both infinite and potential. Indeed, part of its appeal is its intractable status as fantasy.")

[11] See Society of Law Teachers 2012-2013 survey of law faculty salaries, http://www.saltlaw.org/userfiles/SALT%20salary%20survey%202013.pdf Note that the salaries listed exclude health care benefits, retirement benefits, dependents’ tuition benefits, domestic partner benefits, travel funding, book allowance, research assistant funding, and summer research and teaching stipends.

[12] See Nancy Leong's comment on this Workplace Prof Blog thread, at Aug 11, 2012 8:14:41 PM: "It seems obvious to me that scholarship contributes in important ways to the quality of teaching. Scholarship requires us to stay current on cutting edge legal issues. It requires us to remain curious, excited about the material that we teach, and intellectually nimble -- and if we ourselves lack these qualities, we stand very little change of inculcating them in our students. . . .Without that broader frame, our students become narrow-minded legal technicians who never pause to think about the normative implications of what they're doing."

[13] Open Road, passim.

[14] Open Road at 307, 324, 325, 328, 329, 341.

[15] Open Road at 307, 312, 317, 328, 341

[16] See Open Road at 331 ("Did Jack Kerouac pause to count how many air fresheners he had? Was he concerned whether his travel plans might appear "consistent" to the reasonable, objective observer? These questions answer themselves.")

[17] Open Road at 133, n123 ("I feel compelled to mention here that I really did not like Crash. I thought it was didactic and full of itself, and obviously Brokeback Mountain (Alberta Film Entertainment et al. 2005) should have won the Academy Award instead...")

[18] Nancy's CV.

[19] Nancy Leong's slop-- or to use her precious language, her "medley" or mélange" (Open Road at 309)-- uses the phrase "American dream" no less than 50 times. George Carlin used it only once, to better effect, in the following quote: "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it."

50 comments:

  1. Makes me nostalgic for "The Human Body as the Center of Resistance."

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  2. As I recall, that road trip didn’t work out so well for the Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper characters in “Easy Rider.” Listen up lemmings! When you graduate from law school, the realization will come to you: We blew it, man.

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  3. Too funny!!

    I dig those footnotes. I have a serious footnote fetish.

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  4. I'm pretty envious, acutally. Some people just like to "write", you know? It's what they enjoy doing. It doesn't matter what its about, or who it is for, or if anyone ultimately reads it or cares about it - they would do it anyway, becuase they love writing.

    I've got to find some six-figure way to get paid for doing what I enjoy while No One Cares about the result. Seems like a sweet, no-stress gig. I haven't figured out either of those points yet, but I had no idea that being a LawProf was a way to go about it. I thought they actually did "work" and "scholarship" and all that, like other professors at a university.

    Except I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror, knowing that my pedantic bulls**t was consigning thousands to debt slavery just so I could get paid exorbitant amounts to hang out and "do what I love". I've actually changed careers over this very fact - fat lot of good it did me, though.

    At some point, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. LawProfs should get that concept more than most, I would think, but I guess the money really is just too damn good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Say, duped, I enjoy your writing quite a bit, both your posts and your comments. But I'm uncertain what you mean by "I've changed careers over this very fact."

      Delete
    2. Thank you very much, and that line I wrote wasn't very clear. I meant that I found my prior career to "not be a good fit" for a variety of reasons (some philsophical) so I moved on. Yeah, it would have been easy to sit back and stay fat and happy, but I couldn't bring my self to do it.

      The problem is that, in order to reinvent myself, I went back to law school. Oops. But, I still give myself some credit for trying to make a change, as opposed to being another brick in the wall. Or something line that.

      Delete
    3. I did the same thing you did Duped. I was fat but not happy at the old job so i thought law school was a way to reinvent and start fresh. And like you...oops. i still have trouble digesting the level of the scam. You think you are doing the right thing and that more education cant hurt. It didnt hurt...it destroyed. I think i am close to a new non law job. But its been hell the last few years. I hope the law school numbers keep dropping. They need to feel the pain like us. I also Enjoy your writing. Keep it up.

      Delete
  5. Of course, this professor doesn't have to teach much. How can she be expected to teach? She so busy writing this stuff that it's insane!!

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  6. Dybbuk documents her monotonous repetition of certain words and phrases, which is a sure indication that she's a poor writer with a stunted imagination. This isn't someone who was born to write; this is someone who just wants to hang out and watch movies.

    Nice work if you can get it.

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  7. On the other hand, "The Road" offers a potent metaphor of postgrad life for most JDs: cold, starvation, desperation, and relentless cannibals coming Sallie Mae-like for your skin!

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  8. What an honorable "profession," huh?!?!

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  9. This is beyond a good critique of the bull s**** of legal academic writing! How do these "legal professionals" take themselves so seriously? What drug are they on? Give me some!

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    Replies
    1. The drug they are on is called....(drumroll please)....MONEY. It is enough to convince anyone that what they are doing is important.

      Delete
  10. Dybbuk is quite possibly the first person to actually thoroughly read this article. Most law journals are student not peer reviewed aren't they? Would the student reviewers have the time or inclination to properly read it? All they have to know is the author graduated from Stanford Law School, so, hey, whatever she writes must be good stuff.

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    1. If you have ever participated in a law review you would know that students have to painstakingly blue book and edit any piece (since they almost all arrive as even worse first drafts with horrendous blue booking and all kinds of issues) before publication. Many a law student hour was spent polishing whatever she submitted to even this level of quality. Nothing will teach you how little law professors value student time quicker than the laziness of the drafts they submit to law journals.

      Delete
    2. Good to know law students are so conscientious. Although I wonder if this is such a productive use of their time.

      But there are too many law professors pumping out too much scholarship, most of which isn't very good. That most journals are student reviewed actually ensures there are enough venues to get this all dross published. Since being on journal review looks good on ones resume (from what I've read) this leads to every law school having multiple journals.

      With all these students looking for stuff to publish, they can't afford to be too picky. But if journals were all peer reviewed this would put a brake on how many articles could be published.

      Delete
  11. And boom goes the dynamite:

    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/10/law-school-dean-threatens-to-summarily-fire-faculty-who-dont-accept-buyouts-or-doubled-teaching-loads

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    1. You think I became a law professor in order to have to work in my office from 9-5 five days a week like a serf?

      That's for the little people!

      I'm taking this to the Hague!

      Delete
  12. Off topic, but you should do a post on the new movie The Counselor, and how it reflects popular mythology about the legal field. I could go on at length regarding the high-flying main character's lifestyle (drives a Bentley, etc.), but what I found most notable was a scene in which he and his girlfriend were planning to go into hiding in Boise, Idaho. The girlfriend searched for hotels on a travel website, and when a list appeared, she blithely, almost mechanically, clicked on the most expensive, highest rated one. A real JD graduate would be more likely to head to an Econolodge.

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  13. I don't want to add to the professor's misery given how mean-spirited this post is, but she really is quite an attractive woman. Anyway, of more relevance, even I agree that she's a good example of someone absurdly young and inexperienced to justify an expensive law prof salary. If I walked into Her Hotness's classroom when I was a 20something law student, I'd be pissed (though confusingly pleased at the same time). I went to a solid T30 school that gave me a great career, and every prof I had seemed like a demigod to me given their age, their wisdom, and the amazing war stories they all had of Supreme Court battles, or facing down sheriffs in the trenches of some civil rights injunction blood bath.

    These were men or women who demanded your attention because you'd be a fool not to give it. But Nancy Leong? 2006 grad plus a year of clerkship so she's actually like a 2007 grad. Her only real world experience appears to have been a 1-2 year fellowship stint (so, not actually real world) at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I guarantee you this: while there, she took zero depositions, cross-examined zero witnesses, stared down the barrels of zero sheriffs’ guns, and would get lost at a Supreme Court oral argument.

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    1. Hey, her wedding made the New York Times!

      After all, the NYT needs to validate who is in the Ruling Class...

      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/fashion/weddings/16LEONG.html?_r=0

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    2. uhh she's "Her Hotness"? I'm not saying she's bad looking, but I think you're overestimating things... esp after you look at the NYT photo.

      Note her husband's last name. To get cushy jobs like hers in legal academia, that kind of last name helps.

      Delete
    3. Well, I don't know about your law school, but my law profs were all crusty and withered. Of course, having actual battle scars are why they were crusty and withered.

      Delete
    4. "every prof I had seemed like a demigod to me given their age, their wisdom, and the amazing war stories"

      As someone in academia, I want to say that I am so HORRIFIED that students think their teachers are "demigods." Just frightening that human beings can be so gullible, especially the "progressives", "contrarians", "skeptics" and those "suspicious of authority figures". Teachers are just like ordinary people but with soapboxes. Please don't ever worship a teacher.

      Delete
    5. I know it's Halloween but I don't think you should be "HORRIFIED" or "frightened." As the author of that comment, I didn't literally think they were demigods, who are defined in the dictionary as persons believed to have god-like powers. It was a figure of speech, see.

      The point is that I had tremendous respect for these professors, and many years later I can confirm that this respect was very much deserved: I remain in touch with many of them, and continue to observe the many contributions they make every year to legal scholarship and to society at large. In this respect, Nancy Leong falls far short, especially when you consider that my tuition was, literally, a fraction of Denver's tuition today. No, I was not smart enough to win any scholarships, and no, adjusting for inflation does not change the "fraction" characterization by a noticeable amount.

      Delete
  14. If law review articles really cost an estimated $100,000 to produce (all-told), then this woman ought to be arrested for fraud. The human cost is real. Two or three students at Denver will have their futures ripped out from under them because this thing was written. They can't get married, have children, or exercise agency in determining the direction of their lives. "Choice" is a privilege they no longer have. The law professorate are modern-day plantation owners whose wealth is built on the back of slaves. They play ignorant of (and sometimes even sit back and enjoy) the human suffering they are causing. This woman ought to be stripped of her titles and thrown in prison.

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  15. "Professor" Nancy has also written a law review article about law review articles. That's bullshit within bullshit. Like Inception or something.

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1345165

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  16. Leong is smart, however - she is currently visiting at UCLA law school.

    Anybody teaching at a mediocre law school that charges forty large needs to be thinking about what their Plan B is.

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  17. She's successfully bridged the gap between poor writing and irrelevant scholarship.

    This over-employed pillar of mediocrity is an attractive young woman? Shocking, I wonder how this situation might have developed.

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  18. She love someone leong time to get herself a law professor position at such a young age.

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  19. She also appears to be mixing it up with her critics over at JD Underground.

    What a tool.

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    Replies
    1. and the upper class twit that serves as moderator for jdu is protecting her.

      Delete
  20. While Ms. Leong is quite proud of the citation to her article by the 4th Circuit, it's quite misleading for her to do so without disclosing that the citation was in a concurring opinion, not the majority opinion, and that the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the entire decision anyway in June of this year. Oops.

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    Replies
    1. Law Profs: Helping suckers be wrong since 1889!

      Delete
  21. She actually DOES say quite explicitly that it was a concurrence. Learn to read. And her point appears to be that that the article was quoted, which refutes dybbuk's claims that judges don't read legal scholarship.

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    1. Hi nancy... You are destroying your students futures with your exorbitant salary funded by loans they'll be paying for years while scraping to get by in a horrible job market

      Delete
    2. I assume from the tone of your comment that you are either Nancy Leong or one of her Facebook friends. Even assuming she has disclosed the concurrence in every single one of her comments on this topic, why are you addressing only one of the two criticisms pointed out above? I think it's quite misleading to cite to judicial opinions, concurring or not, that have been vacated. Even the concurring opinion was necessarily overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court, which refutes YOUR argument that judges love citing to Leong's articles. Evidently, the Supremes were not impressed.

      Delete
    3. One article was cited. Obviously clear and convincing evidence that judges read every article and thus law reviews are widely read scholarship that is vitally important to the judicial system.

      What an idiot Nancy is, and what a self serving and twisted conclusion she reaches in irder to justify her role as a "professor" when she's younger than most people here and has a fraction of the experience we do.

      Delete
  22. Over at JD U, she describes the cowering, faceless critics, and if they are willing to exchange in a healthy debate to reveal themselves as a first step. Of course, she probably never heard of Rockstar 05, remember how that went, bra. &%&^% Also, I can only imagine how many more Nanci's are out there in the legal educational ether??

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    1. Asking for personal information, the favored trick of our unmentionable brush-holding buddy.

      She wants it though because it's the way "top" grads bolster their arguments. "Look at me, I went to a top school, so my opinions are obviously more correct than those of my opponent who only went to a tier two school." She wants to engage in a credential fight. How dare a third tier grad, with his inferior mind, challenge her Stanford education?

      Anonymity strengthens our position. Like "V", the mask works. It frightens the establishment because they don't know who we are, how many of us there are, nor how to contain or destroy us.

      If she wants to put her name out there, particularly on the drivel she passes off as scholarship, then that's on her. Our names are not necessary to counter her arguments. Our arguments and facts speak for themselves. The only reason she's asking for names is to attack us or imply that we're of an inferior intellectual level and therefore incapable of challenging her.

      Nancy, fuck off. You are a charlatan. You are a recent law grad with no experience who has no place teaching other people how the law works. You are cute, and perverted law professors like having a pretty piece of ass around the school because it's eye candy for them and helps bring the boys to the yard each year. Don't let your pussy go to your head. Your looks will fade and you'll be replaced with the next pretty little bitch that the endowed chair old man professors can whack off over in the faculty toilet.

      Delete
    2. Hmmm...don't they have any better p!ace to whack off?

      Don't they whack off a !ot in the c!assroom anyway?

      Delete
  23. Leong's article is banal and bathetic. Her essay reads like an earnest but wrong-headed exercise by a graduate student in comp lit or semiotics, which is nor surprising since Leong was apparently an undergraduate in English and to this day remains a glorified English grad student pumping out essay after essay of politically correct term-papers.
    Yes, it is true that the "open road" theme is common - it is an archetype in American popular culture, starting with Steinbeck (and perhaps earlier), and inspired ultimately by Homer's Odyssey. If she was to to treat the subject in film seriously she should at least discuss the films of Wim Wenders and David Lynch on that subject, rather than tripe like Harold and Kumar. As it stands now, the essay is trivial and would have been tossed straight into the rubbish bin if submitted to a serious film studies journal.
    The "open road" theme has nothing to do with traffic stops, which is a 4th amendment and civil rights issue. So combining the two topics is like picking two subjects at random and trying to tie them together, say, like comparing a potato to nuclear physics. I suppose it can be done, but no one with any sense would do it. Except maybe a untenured law professor grasping for something to talk about.
    You could say something useful about traffic stops by summarizing the jigsaw puzzle of vehicle search laws (which has already been done) and then explaining why the exceptions have been narrowed - presumably for the purpose of administrative ease but really to crack down on blacks and illegal immigrants. (Incidentally, the "open road" theme in books and films is entirely a bohemian, alienated white middle class phenomenon.)
    Leong should be embarrassed to have written something like this. In California there is a practice of "depublishing" legal opinions - perhaps she can write to the Florida Law Review and have her article "depublished".

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    Replies
    1. I am writing only to say you just killed it, anon. Well said.

      Delete
  24. I'm sure she had to do some frantic venue shopping to get that nonsense printed. Those poor, naive, ignorant, overworked student editors in the Sunshine State thought they had to surrender their judgment and common sense in the face of her "impressive" and "prestigious" resume. They may have thought some of that magic "prestige" was going to be transferred to their own resumes by giving her yet another undeserved forum for her sophomoric antics.

    Those student editors were so wrong at every step of the disastrous process. They may understand now what suckers they were, and how unimpressive that paper is to any working attorney. They may even understand now why their resumes get tossed in the trash.

    My advice to any future attorney is to ignore "professors" such as Nancy, to boycott institutions that hire "professors" such as her, and to immerse your young mind in the dry, barren minutiae of authentic court opinions. The courts are where your chosen profession is occurring every day. You don't want to miss out on that just because your "professor" thinks it's hip to show contempt for it.

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  25. Not to hijack this thread, because I think it's run its course...

    I need some advice from my partners in truth at this site. There's going to be an "Expo" next week at my neighborhood "Top 50" scamfest. I've seen some debate on this site about what to do to further expose the scam, and I want to reach a few naive undergrads with an effective approach that doesn't get me banned from campus. (I'm not a student any more, but need to do research on campus.)

    My current strategy is to go to the expo and strike up conversations with a few young men. I may refer them to this site, to Campos' site archives, to the Transparency site. But how do I get them interested at first? I don't want to sound as if I'm just showing off my facts about the scam.

    I'm hoping to get some genuine advice here. I may repeat this request on other threads, with the permission of management.

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    Replies
    1. What if you made a banner advertising this website, and hung it on a car parked next to the school? You could stand next to the car and hand out simple flyers with the name of this website and maybe 3-4 bullet points on the scam.

      Delete
    2. Dress like a bum with torn clothes. Roll around in some dirt. Put a sign around your neck that reads "Unemployed Lawyer, One of Many". Carry a placard that says, "Don't Do It Man, You'll Be Sorry." Bring a wheelbarrow of rotting potatoes with a little sign that reads, "10 cents each." Put a Donations Cup in front of the wheelbarrow.

      If you don't want to do that, print out the post of "T. Money" posted here and hand out:
      http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2013/08/open-letter-to-incoming-delusional-jd.html
      Also include the usual references, Campos, his book and site, Tamanaha, this site, Nando's site etc.
      Or copy the NYT article from last January or so and hand that out.

      Delete
  26. Next post please. We have to think about shelf life when a dozen writers are involved, and especially when the OP is damn hard to read and rather technical.

    Just saying, and I will add the cognomen "Dudes" for the brave dozen authors so as to show my spirit of friendliness with y'all.

    Ok dudes?

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    Replies
    1. You know, when you're getting free stuff, you take it as it comes.

      That's something I understand now better than before.

      Delete