Recently, I wrote about the Pless family – remember them? Paul Pless, “convicted” law school fake stats fall guy, and his wife Stacey Tutt who just so happened to get a nice teaching job at the same school at the same time that Paul took the heat for the entire scandal. Yeah, acting alone and all that.
Turns out that family connections are often exploited for employment purposes. Take for example our good friend and self-proclaimed lifelong oppressee Nancy Leong, now an assistant professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law (currently clawing her way up the prestige ladder at UCLA as a visiting professor - I guess only T14 is good enough.) According to her New York Times wedding announcement, she’s shacked up with one Justin Pidot. Back in 2010, Justin was a rising star with the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice. And now, concurrent with Nancy’s arrival at Denver in 2011, Justin is miraculously a law professor at Denver too!
There is an undeniable connection. Just guessing, but I think Nancy pulled strings and helped her hubby get a cushy gig as a law professor, just like Paul Pless pulled strings or made a deal to get his wife a teaching gig in return for him taking the heat for the stats scandal. Furthermore, looking at Justin’s resume, she’s been pulling strings to get his levels of “scholarship” to where they need to be too. For example, she recently worked as an assistant law professor at William & Mary, and he has managed to get an article published in the William & Mary Law Review - another strange coincidence.
(How Justin obtained his plum job with the DOJ is itself most likely another family connection being used, for his father was the chief of the natural resources division of the Maine attorney general’s office and consequently probably had some connections that could be exploited to get his son in the door at the federal version.)
So what does all of this go to show? Is it trying to show that Justin Pidot doesn’t deserve his position as a law professor? Is his scholarship worthless because it’s conveniently published in journals where he has connections? Of course not. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that Justin, with his actual real life law experience, is precisely who we need in law schools. He practiced environmental law recently at a high level, and now he’s teaching it. He’s no “old fart” out of touch professor who has spent the past twenty years regurgitating the notes he took himself while a 1L at Harvard, nor is he some inexperienced K-->JD-->clerkship-->classroom "walking credential collection" with a resume stuffed with high dollar prestigious school names but who has never held a real job, let alone a legal job.
I'm sure Justin is doing just fine in the classroom. He has the education, and more importantly the experience. That is precisely what this blog is advocating for. Law professors who know how to be lawyers, not just who know about the law.
No, my point is nothing of the sort. Nancy and Justin are just an illustration for anyone who still doesn’t get the fact that post-JD employment, especially those legal jobs that are actually worth having (DOJ, for example, or Biglaw, or a law faculty position – we’re not talking about slumming it at some two-attorney strip mall social security claims mill), is not so much a matter of what you know but who you know. If you don’t have the connections, your chances of landing a good legal job when you graduate are slender.
As one commenter to a prior Leong-based post spent so much time trying to argue, it’s not as if we wouldn’t do the same thing if we could. And he or she was absolutely right, to some extent. While becoming a law professor is not everyone’s idea of a dream job, I don’t think anyone would not use their connections to get a good job with the federal government, state government, a great firm, or a cushy corporate gig. I don’t begrudge anyone using those connections. Nothing wrong with that, and I’d do the same. So well done to Justin - you did what you needed to do to get where you wanted to be. That's how life works, and you get it. I’d advise anyone seeking a law job to use whatever connections they have, because the career services advisor at their law school sure isn’t going to help.
But let’s all be very clear and honest about this. Those with connections succeed, and those without struggle. I could have gone to the same law school as Justin Pidot, had the same experience as him, but would never get hired as a law professor because I didn't have an insider connection. Some people have good connections, most people don’t. It’s an unwritten rule of the legal employment game, and one that law schools fail to disclose. For many jobs, you need someone else to put their foot in the door for you. You need an invitation. You need insiders. You need juice. Whatever you want to call it. And for many reasons, those who end up getting nice jobs because of connections tend to hide this fact. It’s not inherently unfair, but it’s distasteful for many who firmly believe that employment should be on merit alone, not legacies and connections and under the table deals and knowing the right people, especially when we’re paying six figures for the opportunity to even get a shot at a legal job. To pay all that money in tuition only to find out that the game was rigged from the start is unpleasant. It’s the way society works though, and the point of this post is solely to make sure that all applicants are fully aware of the two following points:
First, even attending a top school and doing well sometimes isn’t enough to get a nice job unless you have connections.
Second, those successful students at low-ranked schools are often successful not because of the law school, but because of connections.
The second point is the most important, given the fact that students at top law schools can generally find some kind of work. It’s the tens of thousands of law students at the 185 or so non top-14 law schools who suffer under this culture of connections, because they go into law school thinking that the playing field is level, and that they have (statistically) the same chance of success as everyone else. In reality, anyone without proven preexisting legal connections should never go into law school under the assumption that if they succeed they will obtain either a job that pays anywhere in the upper 25% of that school’s reported salaries for its graduates or any secure job in government. Those kinds of nice jobs are generally reserved for students with connections and not necessarily those who work hard and get the best grades.
Connections are vitally important in law (and life), especially now that jobs are hard to come by. Parents hand books of business to their children, and attorney uncles and aunts make sure their law student nieces and nephews get the summer jobs in law firms rather than hiring Joe JD through OCI. Government employees open doors for their relatives and friends while the rest of us blindly toss resume after resume into government recruiting web sites. Without having someone already on the inside, your chances of ever getting through the door are greatly diminished, and your analysis of whether law school is a good choice for you should factor in this unspoken rule of the game. Most of the good jobs are already allocated before you even walk into your first 1L class, so ignore those success stories prominently displayed on your target law school’s web site because the school is hiding the fact that the kid going off to work in Biglaw is the son of a prominent rainmaker, and the kid who is going off to be a prosecutor has an uncle who is a judge.
Turns out that family connections are often exploited for employment purposes. Take for example our good friend and self-proclaimed lifelong oppressee Nancy Leong, now an assistant professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law (currently clawing her way up the prestige ladder at UCLA as a visiting professor - I guess only T14 is good enough.) According to her New York Times wedding announcement, she’s shacked up with one Justin Pidot. Back in 2010, Justin was a rising star with the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice. And now, concurrent with Nancy’s arrival at Denver in 2011, Justin is miraculously a law professor at Denver too!
There is an undeniable connection. Just guessing, but I think Nancy pulled strings and helped her hubby get a cushy gig as a law professor, just like Paul Pless pulled strings or made a deal to get his wife a teaching gig in return for him taking the heat for the stats scandal. Furthermore, looking at Justin’s resume, she’s been pulling strings to get his levels of “scholarship” to where they need to be too. For example, she recently worked as an assistant law professor at William & Mary, and he has managed to get an article published in the William & Mary Law Review - another strange coincidence.
(How Justin obtained his plum job with the DOJ is itself most likely another family connection being used, for his father was the chief of the natural resources division of the Maine attorney general’s office and consequently probably had some connections that could be exploited to get his son in the door at the federal version.)
So what does all of this go to show? Is it trying to show that Justin Pidot doesn’t deserve his position as a law professor? Is his scholarship worthless because it’s conveniently published in journals where he has connections? Of course not. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that Justin, with his actual real life law experience, is precisely who we need in law schools. He practiced environmental law recently at a high level, and now he’s teaching it. He’s no “old fart” out of touch professor who has spent the past twenty years regurgitating the notes he took himself while a 1L at Harvard, nor is he some inexperienced K-->JD-->clerkship-->classroom "walking credential collection" with a resume stuffed with high dollar prestigious school names but who has never held a real job, let alone a legal job.
I'm sure Justin is doing just fine in the classroom. He has the education, and more importantly the experience. That is precisely what this blog is advocating for. Law professors who know how to be lawyers, not just who know about the law.
No, my point is nothing of the sort. Nancy and Justin are just an illustration for anyone who still doesn’t get the fact that post-JD employment, especially those legal jobs that are actually worth having (DOJ, for example, or Biglaw, or a law faculty position – we’re not talking about slumming it at some two-attorney strip mall social security claims mill), is not so much a matter of what you know but who you know. If you don’t have the connections, your chances of landing a good legal job when you graduate are slender.
As one commenter to a prior Leong-based post spent so much time trying to argue, it’s not as if we wouldn’t do the same thing if we could. And he or she was absolutely right, to some extent. While becoming a law professor is not everyone’s idea of a dream job, I don’t think anyone would not use their connections to get a good job with the federal government, state government, a great firm, or a cushy corporate gig. I don’t begrudge anyone using those connections. Nothing wrong with that, and I’d do the same. So well done to Justin - you did what you needed to do to get where you wanted to be. That's how life works, and you get it. I’d advise anyone seeking a law job to use whatever connections they have, because the career services advisor at their law school sure isn’t going to help.
But let’s all be very clear and honest about this. Those with connections succeed, and those without struggle. I could have gone to the same law school as Justin Pidot, had the same experience as him, but would never get hired as a law professor because I didn't have an insider connection. Some people have good connections, most people don’t. It’s an unwritten rule of the legal employment game, and one that law schools fail to disclose. For many jobs, you need someone else to put their foot in the door for you. You need an invitation. You need insiders. You need juice. Whatever you want to call it. And for many reasons, those who end up getting nice jobs because of connections tend to hide this fact. It’s not inherently unfair, but it’s distasteful for many who firmly believe that employment should be on merit alone, not legacies and connections and under the table deals and knowing the right people, especially when we’re paying six figures for the opportunity to even get a shot at a legal job. To pay all that money in tuition only to find out that the game was rigged from the start is unpleasant. It’s the way society works though, and the point of this post is solely to make sure that all applicants are fully aware of the two following points:
First, even attending a top school and doing well sometimes isn’t enough to get a nice job unless you have connections.
Second, those successful students at low-ranked schools are often successful not because of the law school, but because of connections.
The second point is the most important, given the fact that students at top law schools can generally find some kind of work. It’s the tens of thousands of law students at the 185 or so non top-14 law schools who suffer under this culture of connections, because they go into law school thinking that the playing field is level, and that they have (statistically) the same chance of success as everyone else. In reality, anyone without proven preexisting legal connections should never go into law school under the assumption that if they succeed they will obtain either a job that pays anywhere in the upper 25% of that school’s reported salaries for its graduates or any secure job in government. Those kinds of nice jobs are generally reserved for students with connections and not necessarily those who work hard and get the best grades.
Connections are vitally important in law (and life), especially now that jobs are hard to come by. Parents hand books of business to their children, and attorney uncles and aunts make sure their law student nieces and nephews get the summer jobs in law firms rather than hiring Joe JD through OCI. Government employees open doors for their relatives and friends while the rest of us blindly toss resume after resume into government recruiting web sites. Without having someone already on the inside, your chances of ever getting through the door are greatly diminished, and your analysis of whether law school is a good choice for you should factor in this unspoken rule of the game. Most of the good jobs are already allocated before you even walk into your first 1L class, so ignore those success stories prominently displayed on your target law school’s web site because the school is hiding the fact that the kid going off to work in Biglaw is the son of a prominent rainmaker, and the kid who is going off to be a prosecutor has an uncle who is a judge.
