Friday, January 17, 2014

The Scam Goes Back Further Than The Scam Profs Would Like You To Believe

Lest people think the law school scam is something people began writing about in the last few years, I present an excellent essay by Patrick Griffin in the Chicago Reader. From 1992. People like Michael Simkovic and Brian Leiter want you to believe that law school was free of any of its present problems during that time. Not so. The scam goes back much further than the 2008 financial crisis. Even back then, Griffin saw the writing on the wall as the system was pumping out many more grads than jobs. But, the scam angle of Griffin's article is secondary to his masterful writing about the malaise many undergraduates with worthless humanities degrees feel and how this feeling can lead one to law school. Griffin also talks about how that malaise carries on into one's legal career and ultimately pushes many people out of the profession.



Griffin originally went to law school to continue ensconcing himself in the warm embrace of academia and to get an education in a "respectable" field. Armed with a traditional humanities education, complete with thinking about the big issues and being motivated to seek answers to problems that lie deep below society's surface. Law school seemed like a good way to continue shielding himself from the real world. As icing on the cake, Griffin was looked at as an admirable young man getting an education in an important field. I would add that most prospective law students strongly believe in their own exceptionalism. The hubris such an attitude creates is what leads most law students to believe they will defy the odds and get that Biglaw job in a major metropolitan area, even if they are paying over fifty thousand dollars a year to study at Cooley. Witness the inanity and self-delusion on "Law School Lemmings".

The working environment in BigLaw back then was almost as bad as it is today. Griffin relates the experiences of a lapsed lawyer, who still had "waking nightmares" about the experience. To read through the description Griffin gives of the BigLaw life, the reader can feel how boxed in and helpless a lot of the people in BigLaw feel. I did a short stint as a doc reviewer at a BigLaw firm. The atmosphere was toxic. I felt tense the moment I stepped in the building. Everyone I dealt with was either harried or vaguely hostile. The "real" lawyers worked from 6am until 10pm or later every night. There was a condo complex opening across the street from the office later that year, and I heard that many of the junior associates were planning on moving in so they could squeeze in even more hours at the office. As I stated in my earlier article about the working environment for attorneys, this is not a normal way to live.

Some lawyers are not jaded and defeated by the system. One of Griffin's bosses at the firm of "ex-hippies" he worked at fit this description. But, Griffin describes how the procedural roadblocks and the way the law wants to thwart action frustrated this woman to no end. She was a person whose only wish was to do good. When Griffin describes what ultimately happened to her, the shock gives way to abject sadness that a system as cynical as our court system is designed to frustrate the efforts of those who want to use their legal education for good and not just as a way to make a buck.

Griffin felt like an "impostor" in the legal profession. The artifice and pretension fostered by the legal profession caused some dissonance in Griffin's mind, and I suspect that this is how a lot of new lawyers feel. Part of this is attributable to the fact that law school doesn't actually teach you anything of value. But a greater part of it is due to societal expectations. I can relate to this part of Griffin's experience. When I graduated, my parents' friends, who until that point regarded me as a kid, began to ask me questions about the various idiotic messes they had maneuvered themselves into. It was expected that as a lawyer, I had a procedural magic wand that would allow me to use an obscure statute to defeat their enemies. I felt a palpable disappointment in them when I would let them know that their illegal and sometimes unethical conduct could not be washed away by a motion filed with the court.

I urge readers to forward Griffin's article to all prospective and current law students. It is not too late for these misguided souls to save themselves the heartbreak and unhappiness the enormous debt load and lack of any practical knowledge brings. If they still decide to go through with it, at least you can rest easy that you did all you could to help before it was too late.

58 comments:

  1. Great find, MA! A couple of years ago, someone on my blog made mention of this article but did not include a link. I have also had commenters note that there were a few sparse articles such as Griffin's in a few lawyer publications in the early to mid 90s. However, many of those pieces are no longer available online or one needs a subscription in order to view them. Thank you guys for finding some of these gems.

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  2. This article makes a very important --and perhaps forgotten-- point. The problem of law school overproduction has been with us for at least 25 years.

    The law school 'scam' in 1992 --and for the several previous years-- was that 1) only the top half of a class (or so) would land in decent or legitimate jobs, and 2) the vast majority of these jobs were associateships that had 3-4 year shelf lives .... if you worked your butt off and produced. Less if you didn't.

    Number 1 was sort of well known even then, but rationalized away by hardworking, ambitious students: We're all above average. Number 2 was the real hidden factor. The law firms and their entrenched partners needed the firm 'revolving door' system and the law schools profited by it, too.

    Things rocked along this way until the last couple of years. Thousands of underemployed or outright unemployed lawyers would enter the marketplace every year having washed out of their jobs. The schools/firms got away with the revolving door scam for years because:

    * firm castoffs had a colorable chance of landing in small-law, a micro-firm or even a viable solo practice in the days before the market was hyper oversaturated and the US economy had downshifted; this was characterized as getting training;

    * the top half of students landed in jobs.... and tracing the shelf-life of these jobs was difficult and not really an option;

    * firms portrayed castoffs as having 'performance issues' and castoffs desparately struggled to avoid being stigmatized by having been fired by a firm; after all, most people get fired because they are F-ups, right?

    * there was no Internet and castoffs suffered in silence. Firms and law schools had the only 'narrative' going. Sorry, I had to use that academician's word.

    * and did I mention, there was no Internet? No Nando, no BIDER, no ITLSS, OTLSS. Life before the Internet sucked.

    People working through this system found it horrendous and, as said above, thousands of underemployed (or outright unemployed) lawyers would enter the marketplace every year having washed out of 'their' jobs. Law schools were probably aware of this but no one spoke up. And given they were profiting handsomely from it, why would they?

    Now, the cat is out of the bag and the law schools --like thousands of their grads-- are trying to survive.

    Roll out the reform.

    Don't buy bit it.

    The vice of the law school system has been the deliberate overproduction of lawyers. This essential problem has nothing --absolutely nothing-- to do with the fact that Pennoyer v Neff is a turgidly written antique opinion, the utter irrelevancy of studying about fee tail, the fact a professor wrote a scholarly article about something that has no connection with commercial practice, the fact that new grads aren't given the phone numbers for appellate bondsmen, etc.

    The Great Recession accelerated yet did not cause the exposure.

    Academicians can (and probably should) consider updating or modifying the cirriculum, but let's not lose sight of the fundamental inherent vice-- overproduction of lawyers.

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    1. And it is factor 2) "the vast majority of these jobs were associateships that had 3-4 year shelf lives .... if you worked your butt off and produced. Less if you didn't" that has been deliberately hidden. This pervasive exploitation of law graduates by way of a pyramid scheme that needs attrition and leverage to generate profits for those at the top is never published or revealed. I know I learned the hard way that this is how law firms operate. This is a major factor why the likelihood of remaining employed as a lawyer decreases with time. As bad as the 9 month post graduation employment data are, this is the best that the data ever are for a law school graduating class.

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    2. Excellent post - particularly the part about how the difference the internet makes. As they say, "the truth will set you free".

      I agree that law schools have always taken far more students than the market needed - pretty much as many students as their physical facilities could hold - the marginal cost of another student is close to zero when all you're doing is packing them in in lecture halls.

      But in the past, law schools were more willing to flunk people out, and to maintain some degree of standards in admissions, if only to prevent being embarrassed by low bar passage rates. It was always a money game, but greed had not triumphed the way it has since student loans became non-dischargable and law schools could charge more or less whatever they wanted for tuition.

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    3. Washing out is the most important point - there is a huge amount of built-in attrition in the legal profession. Most law graduates, even from T14 schools, will fail to be able to use their law degrees for a career. Most lawyers will be forced to work a lot less than a career.

      Even if you win the lottery for a time - get a high level job - you are likely to wash out and not get a second chance if you lose that job after your early 40s.

      The problem is the acute lawyer oversupply - so washing out of a job means you will be unemployed or a temp and able to work only for a temporary period, if and when you can get work as a lawyer. Washing out of a lawyer job after age 40 today means you probably won't get another full-time permanent legal job.

      Legal jobs are very insecure. All it takes is someone in a position where they enjoy playing cruel games with your life and take pleasure in destroying you - and your career - whether you are from Harvard or Hofstra - is effectively over if that happens to you after age 40.

      Don't forget the First Wives Club - of dumped older women in the movie. The same thing happens to older men and women in the legal profession. That is because the law firms are letting go thousands of lawyers in their 20s and 30s who are much more attractive to legal employers than any 50 year old. When that 30-something year old comes calling for your job, you are likely to be shown the door.

      So good luck hanging onto your legal job - you need that luck more and more the older you get.

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    4. I agree. The oversupply of lawyers is such that all sorts of games and tournaments are played within law firms to get work. Know that everyone has to produce in a law firm to survive. All it takes is being on the wrong side of a tournament within a law firm to wind up completely unemployed.

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    5. It is not only law firms. Some major corporate legal departments practice up or out as well. If you are not promoted to a high level attorney position within the legal department, you will be shown the door. No non-promoted lawyers can work beyond their early 50s. They will be shown the door. People in their 50s and beyond - they won't be hired into most in house slots - they are too old and set in their ways. Not a fit.

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  3. Nice find, MA, and good discussion. Everybody, keep a copy of this so you can post it the next time some ScamDean or LawProf tries to demonstrate the so-called flexbility and long-term value of a JD.

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    1. Yeah, and next time an older attorney says, "We had it tough, too," you can no longer deny it. Today's recent grads always talk about how we had it better than they do. Poppycock. We had to survive, and many of us did. Same as today.

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    2. Well there was a Golden Age, Jeff, in the early 1970's. In the mid-1980's I worked for a firm that split off big law. First named partner was 42. Ivy grad from very humble origins. In 16 years he had amassed a non-working wife, children at elite private schools, huge house in a tony suburb, lakefront house in another state and ski house in the mountains in another. He was a very talented lawyer but someone with his talents today could never make it that big that fast. Even his partners who were 4 years younger and equally talented Ivy grads couldn't. He graduated in 1971. Check out how many law schools have opened since then.

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    3. It never existed. We can all find "a guy" who did well, and the sort of thing like that. For each guy who performed as you described in the 1970's, there were 20 others who were beating bushes and pounding pavement to make ends meet.

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    4. And today, that guy has a working spouse, kids in public schools, a one weekend timeshare in alabama and there are 67 guys struggling to make it.

      It's never been easy but it's a lot worse than previously.

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    5. At some of the top law schools few students graduate with educational debt. Looks like a lot of people at these schools start law school with family money.

      There are lots of young people buying multi million dollar apartments in New York City, and a good number of these are lawyers. You need to conclude that a good percentage of the student body at top law schools and even not so top law schools in New York City comes from family wealth or marries wealth.

      Of course, some younger women simply marry established older men and can foot the tuition that way - the man pays living expenses. On a few hundred thousand dollars a year, with no dependents, the man can afford to pay the law school tuition.

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    6. @ Jeffm,

      It was different for many reasons. The debt was lower. Even if you failed, failure was not life debilitating. If you succeeded, you were better off than most people. Now, even if you win in law, you are much worse off than many people out there without comparable education:

      http://www.jdunderground.com/ot/thread.php?threadId=63567

      Also, the tax burden is higher and essentials cost more. This applies to all private sector proles, but lawyers especially, because of the dwindling opportunities, long term and short term, and the increased entrance costs.

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    7. @2:37. I totally, totally agree with that. The amount people are paying to attend is absurd - in fact, it's massochistic. On that point alone, all the difference is made between "then" and "now." I just disagree a bit with the claims about how it's so impossible to get clients, etc.

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    8. @Jeffm,

      The amount they are paying, which impacts the magnitude of the loss, AND the fact that even if you win, I.e. big law or successful solo, you are still likely going to be worse off than a cop or tradesmen in a big city (in addition to a whole host of other careers). In the past, at least most of the winners in law did better than those without a law degree. Now, even most of the winners lose (eventually).

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  4. Wonderful article. Thanks for linking it.

    I predate even Patrick Griffin, and can say that law school in some sense has always been a scam - less than half of any given class in the 70s (outside of HYS) went on to make long term careers in law. But the tuition was reasonable (under 20K adjusted for inflation), the job market was not hyper-saturated and student loans were DISCHARGABLE in bankruptcy.

    So while law school in the past was often a wasted 3 years, it wasn't a life-destroying experience the way it so often has become ever since student loans became NON-DISCHARGABLE.

    I will also say Griffin's description of how lawyers behave, particularly in Big Law, has probably always been the case - the profession self-selects for ego, greed and gunner (aka serial killer manque) personalities. Honesty, decency etc have always gotten thrown by the wayside in the quest for status and money - the only question someone in BigLaw asks is "Can I get away with this?"

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  5. Fascinating that, at the end, he basically proposes a pre-internet version of the scamblogs. You guys are the Catchers in the Drain.

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  6. I was on the client side in the securities industry during the 80’s & 90’s. The big law firm we used had associates sleeping in the office for days on end when a deal was being negotiated – and unfortunately, we expected 24/7 access. None of the associates I worked with are still in big law. The partner we had a relationship with was eventually hired as a CEO at a hedge fund. He loved the work as an attorney, but hated the pressure to bring in clients as he moved up in the ranks. The “profession” is hard on relationships, health and overall quality of life. Very few will make a go of it long term.

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  7. On the subject of worthless humanities degrees, take a look at this column over at Time. It will make you want to smash things:

    http://ideas.time.com/2014/01/16/why-i-let-my-daughter-get-a-useless-college-degree/

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    1. Lol a degree on the politics and culture of food. If this writer and her husband have money to throw away on this and are willing to pay back their daughter's loans that is their choice I suppose. What if their daughter had to finance it herself?

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    2. Perhaps this wasn't such a bad move on her part after all. With the ridiculous credentialism in America now you need a bachelor degree to get a chance at even some menial white collar jobs. Why not study something that interests you? The main thing is not to get into debt (or at least absolutely minimize it) and to understand your degree doesn't guarantee any kind of job.

      "But if she studies STEM she will increase her chance of getting a job". Maybe so, but not everyone has what it takes to study those majors and if you don't no point risking flunking out. Furthermore it looks like we may be building up to an oversupply of STEM graduates too.

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  8. I think the best way to utilize this article is to ask the new 0L lemmings to read it, then ask them when they believe it was written.... Many would be shocked to know it was before they were even born.

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  9. I always knew that law school in the US was a very bad idea for many people: the hordes of "students" whose LSAT scores dip deep into the 140s and lower; the many who intended to get pig-drunk six nights a week and watch television the seventh; the tens of thousands who go to toilets (all but two dozen or so schools).

    What I did not know is that an older student graduating at the top of the class even at one of the non-toilets had almost no chance of working as a lawyer. Evidently I was naïve, but I really didn't know that I'd be excluded outright.

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    1. I'm curious: When did you graduate? How old were you at the time? And what market were you looking in?

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    2. I graduated last year, in my mid-forties. I've looked for work all over North America.

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    3. 8:09, I wish you well but let me say this. In the nine years I worked in firms I saw many non-trads who did not work out. Too set in their corporate world ways to work the kind of murderous hours we K-3Ls who were single or married without children were willing to put in. There were those who did take to the grind but overall there is a feeling that non-trads tend to fit the negative mold and in a day and age when profitability isn't so easy there is a warning here that needs to be broadcast to anyone thinking about starting law school beyond their mid twenties.

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    4. @ 8:09 -- That sucks. Somebody should've given you better advice.

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    5. I would say that unless you have a guaranteed job, do not even consider law school if you'll graduate over the age of, say, 32. For all the reasons listed above.

      I know it sucks, especially because some of us gave up decent careers and we have less time to make it up before we retire.

      This is an important and underlooked aspect of the scam. Unfortunately, i am not sure how to prove age discrimination in legal employnent except anecdotally.

      The vile pigs will soon start raiding retirement communities and nursing homes, touting law school as a "twilight" career.

      Does anyone have any ideas as to how one could get more data on employment outcomes for older law school students?

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    6. I am 8:09 again.

      I'm sure that some older graduates prove to be unsuitable in law firms. I'm equally sure that some of the young people who do get jobs at these places are unsuitable not only for law firms but for legal practice in general.

      At least the large law firms appear to want connections to big money—something that an older student tends not to have. I got only a handful of interviews from more than a hundred applications, while rich kids near the bottom of the class got not only interviews but also jobs.

      I am single and have no children. I was prepared to work hard; certainly I did in law school.

      The baleful warning about starting law school beyond one's mid-twenties is correct. Even 32 is a late age at which to finish. Beyond that, expect not to be considered anywhere even though you walk on water. Mind you, I'm not sure which other doors are still open. The only position that I've found involves teaching LSAT courses in distant cities, but it's not even a half-time job.

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    7. Anon @ 5:35,
      It was not my intent to sound baleful. I feel your pain. I graduated from a t60 at the hoary age of 35 and spent 2 goddamm years trying to find a job. I am lucky to have a JD advantage job at the age of 41 and count my blessings daily. I just wish the facts were out there so that older lemmings could understand the dangers of the scam.

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    8. Glad that you finally found work. Indeed, we need to warn everyone not to go to law school at our age. I really couldn't have done anything better in law school; the only way to save myself from this fate was not to go to law school in the first place.

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  10. I was waiting for law schools to respond to my applications when this article was first published. . . . If I had seen it I would have cut an run. "Versatility" was my talking point back then, and nobody (even "lapsed lawyers") disabused me of that notion.

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  11. The scam goes back to the early 80s, at least; if you didn't go to a top school, good luck if you graduated in the middle of your class: PI or insurance defense for you(maybe). And those practices chewed up and threw out associates with the ease of biglaw, but without the salaries. And the scam was public: back then Cheers was a big hit. On one episode, Sam had to go to court; he hired one of the bar regulars. At the end of the trial he looked at the guy and said "My hedges need trimming-I'll see you this weekend, right?" Just another example of the versatility of the law degree-it helps get jobs in manual labor.

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    1. Does it? I'm trying to find just any sort of job right now, and I've felt the need to remove all degrees (not just law) from my résumé.

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  12. Nostrodamus predicted the Law School Scam in his last Folio, 1566:


    "After the great wars ended and the wall fell,
    the one who wilt be called Leether shalt sit in the windy city
    and on his throne.

    Thereat a great scam shalt be divulged.
    and upon unsuspecting lemmings great in number
    and young in years.
    And the symbol of the scam shalt be the commode of baked clay."

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    1. Amazing guy, that Nostradamus. Accurate in every respect.

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  13. Thank you 8:58 for bringing this up. Minorities are suffering much worse from the scam than anyone else, but you don't hear Tamanaha, Campos, or Nando talking about it. Are any of the bloggers on this site a minority?

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    1. This site has mentioned that exact possible issue a number of times.

      Furthermore, I'm pretty confident Nando has written about this issue, I know Tamanaha has written several times about class and access in legal education (which is a proxy of the "minorities are getting screwed" argument), and I'd be shocked if Campos has not addressed this.

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    2. Younger minorities are well represented in good legal jobs. Old minorities - forget it. They just don't fit into any type of full-time permanent lawyer job - just like old women and old men who have not reached the tippy top of the legal profession.

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    3. i believe Nando is short for Fernando, which is most likely Latino/Hispanic, so yes there are minority bloggers. the real issue is that the scam has stretched to community college recruiting into LS. that is where the minorities are ripe for the picking.

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    4. Tell us about yourself, 9:04. Are you a minority, or are you a hypocrite?

      That would exhaust the logical possibilities.

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    5. 904 is in all likelihood the Paintroach, nuff said. He's positively banned from this site, but he disguises his roachscribblings and thereby gets .001% of his poo etchings posted.

      That lazy fucking turd has refused to even LOOK for work for the last 15 years or so. He is in his 50s, and he mooches off his parents to survive.

      At any rate, the lily-white lily-lout loves loves LOVES to hurl around accusations of racism. This Anglo-Saxon roach-turd is one of the most despicable and disingenuous race-warriors posting on the internet.

      If that lazy bum devoted even one half as much time and effort to finding and succeeding in a ***JOB***, he'd be earning 100 fucking million dollars per year.

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    6. Hey, Painter is working hard to find a job. He'll probably get one right about the same time that O.J. finally locates the "real killers."

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  14. In any event the law school scam is racist and so are the deans who are running it.

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    1. And that includes the Uncle Tom at Indiana Tech, who is preying upon racialized people.

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  15. One other thing occurs to me after reading this article. We need to place a greater emphasis on teaching masculinity to young boys in our society. I don't mean masculinity in the sense of choosing to study engineering instead some "sissy" subject like English; as many have noted, the market for STEM degrees is not all that great either. I mean masculinity in the sense of the courage to know oneself, what one really wants, and what is realistically possible; the guts to go for whatever that is; and the fortitude to persevere in bringing that to fruition. Some people go to law school because they truly want to be lawyers, but can't face the reality of how unlikely they are to practice. Others go to law school because they can't face their true feelings of what they really want to do with their lives. Both of those conditions provide legions of prey for the scammers.

    Reading this article makes me realize that, as a former high school nerd, his situation is probably where I would have ended up, if the Army hadn't toughened me up, mentally as well as physically.

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    1. Oh come on.....No wonder people accuse this forum of misogyny

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    2. "No wonder people accuse this forum of misogyny."

      Nice try. There wasn't any misogyny displayed above your comment. I wonder what you have to gain by accusing this forum of misogyny?

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    3. You wonder what I have to gain - how about a forum that is taken seriously and not as a hangout for Men's Rights Morons - a forum that is about law school reform, not one where people witter stupidly about masculinity and before you know it,mew should not have let women into the legal profession. A forum that is not easily caricatured

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    4. If one random stray idiot can turn this into a "hangout for Men's Rights Morons" based on 0.001% of all words on this blog/comments, then what can we deduce about various law schools faculties, say, those at Denver-Sturm and UCLA?

      Can we deduce that the University of Chicago as a whole is a breeding ground and shelter for egomaniac bullies with personality disorders?

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    5. Chicago certainly hosts one severe narcissist prone to exploiting stupid throwaway comments (and who knows, writing a few anonymously.) this sort of stupid manliness claptrap is not good for this forum because people will exploit it

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    6. 12:35 here. I didn't mean to create a tempest in a teapot, and by all means let's teach values like courage and fortitude to females as well. I stand by my assertion that I avoided the law school scam, in favor of a career that I actually enjoy, in large part because of the personal growth that I cited above. Mock my words if you want, but the proof is in the pudding.

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    7. Boys do need to be taught more masculinity. The pussification of AmeriKKKa is almost complete. Menfolk are being castrated in droves in most of the more desirable professions. In fact, in law, one damn near has to be a homosexual or white, jew or Asian biotch in order to have a decent job. Masculine men now know that the game is mostly rigged against them. Read the book "Men On Strike" which details this phenomena. God bless!

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  16. Upper class law profs will never say anything even remotely insensitive. Every word is carefully chosen to express the maximum possible tolerance and sensitivity. Yet, at the end of the day, they enrich themselves on the backs of their students and taxpayers.

    They hurt the most vulnerable the most, especially minorities and the poor. Yet they will never express the slightest sentiment against these groups. In fact, they will profess the deepest concern for these people.

    In law prof land, words and sentimental intentions matter, while actions and outcomes are unimportant.

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  17. "Whites and Asians get all the good jobs with Blacks and Latinos being left with the poor paying jobs or none at all."

    Reality is more nuanced than what you see. Poor white males are the worst affected by affirmative action, and Asians are so plentiful that they get held to a higher standard as a group (e.g. they have to score higher on the SAT than a comparative white male).

    You also have to take survivorship bias into account. For every x white guy who is successful, there is many more lower-SES white guys who never had a chance.

    Bottom line: Wealth matters. That is the real invisible force behind affirmative action. Almost all the minority "winners" are higher on the SES ladder than they would care to admit.

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  18. Definitely was true a few years ago at one the T3 Ivies for undergrad -HYP. One school started minority freshmen a week or so early. No one else was invited. When the non-minority kids got there a week later, everyone knew everyone else - nothing like feeling left out. If your suite mates were minority - you were screwed because some of the friendships were already formed. You were not getting into that clique.

    When you looked at the minorities they accepted - it was a scam - kids of doctors and lawyers and the like in the case of the minorities we knew or got to know well ( not being a minority ourselves.

    Sort of a shock to understand that privileged minorities get ahead more easily.

    If you are a minority and had a single mom like a nurse, but she got you into a good private school on a partial scholarship, you also can start on the privileged track without the family money.

    T3 Ivies discriminate in favor of top private schools in admissions. The numbers are mind blowing in terms of the percentages of undergrads from private schools.

    Going to HYP undergrad does not always translate into career success in law though. The state school undergrads and even many graduates of so- so law schools beat out some of the HYP undergrads because they have better soft skills.

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  19. I (the old guy) got my undergraduate degree from HYP, and I can confirm that it doesn't do me a damn bit of good in law.

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