Here, Campos looks at some recent legal education developments.
Here, Campos critiques a critique of Professor Tamanaha's Failing Law Schools for the UCLA law review.
It features one of the moneyest quotes I have read from Campos, who is describing the existing hierarchy that already exists in American law schools in response to Professor Jay Silver, who was criticizing the "two tiered" system of legal education that Failing Law Schools endorses:
We already have, in the legal academic world, Ritz-Carltons and Motel 6s and many exquisitely calibrated gradations in between. But there is an important difference between hotel and law school pricing: If a room at the real Ritz-Carlton costs $300 per night, a room at the Motel 6 does not cost $270 . . .
[But at least] someone who buys a night at a Motel 6 actually gets a motel room. By contrast, at very large numbers of law schools, an actual majority of graduates fail to acquire legal jobs, even liberally defined, within nine months of graduation.
Happy Wednesday.
Stay tuned for a great piece from a guest poster tomorrow, and a longer one from me on Monday.
Seeing that the ABA leeches don't give a damn about standards or quality, I'll bet they would approve a proposed Motel 6 School of Law.
ReplyDeleteIndiana Tech. We'll leave the light on for you.
Delete...until they can no longer pay the electric bill.
DeleteThe Ritz/Motel 6 example is perfect when illustrating the insane pricing of low-ranked law schools. Sure, Harvard and Yale might be worth $50K per year, but paying close to $40K per year for the absolute worst law schools in the US, where there are no jobs and no prospects, is by all definitions of the word an absolute, unequivocal scam, one comparable to the sleaziest online diploma mills. And as Nando highlighted today over at TTR, it looks like the message is having some tangible effects - news of faculty cuts is always good, although I'm sure the golden parachutes will be obscenely large for the first wave of departees. Those profs will be looting the temple on their way out, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, the smart and/or cynical ones will take the money and run, although I'm not sure how much a retirement package is worth from an independent law school when that school swirls down the bowl for the last time. I think that is why you saw UNH absorb Franklin Pierce and Penn State absorb Dickinson.
DeleteIn all my years I have never seen a buy-out from any kind of employer that wasn't followed by a much less favorable buy-out.
New York Law Skule, Brooklyn Law Skule, and numerous other stinking McYales charge as much as the most prestigious institutions.
DeleteOf course anyone who pays Yale's prices to attend one of those toilets is a goddamn fool. But even a full "scholarship" at McYale is a very questionable proposition these days.
I think this situation came about because you have a whole lot of lemmings absolutely convinced they must go to law school, and they will be amply rewarded no matter how much they pay.
DeleteBut they also believe they must go to the very highest ranked school that will they take them, they have no choice, and pay whatever that school asks. They figure they may not quite make what a Yale grad would make, but the higher ranked school they can go to the closer they will get.
So crap schools can charge Yale or Harvard like rates, because if that school is the highest ranked some lemming can get into, that school is that sucker's personal Yale or Harvard.
ReplyDelete"Hotel Brooklawonia"
By The Leagles
On a dark New York highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of gorditas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, on Joralemming Street
My heart grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to enroll for the night [program]
There Joan stood in the doorway;
I rang the admissions bell
And I was thinking to myself,
This school could be Heaven or it could be Hell
Then she whipped out a brochure and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say...
"Welcome to the Hotel Brooklawonia"
Such a f*cking place
Such a f*cking waste
Plenty of room at the Hotel Brooklawonia
Any time of year, you can wind up here
Joan's mind is Tiffany-twisted, she's got a Mercedes Benz
She got a lot of shifty, shifty shills, that she calls friends
How they dance in the school courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to dissemble, someone will cash your check
So I called up the office,
Please bring me my jobs with wine [bottle service]
He said, "We haven't had those spirits here since nineteen ninety nine"
And still those voices are calling from far away,
We showed up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say...
"Welcome to the Hotel Brooklawonia"
Such a f*cking place
Such a f*cking waste
They're livin' it up at the Hotel Brooklawonia
What a nice surprise [after graduation], Joan King has her alibis
Smoke and mirrors at Career Services,
Chin Kee Fatt's telling lies
And she said "You are all just debt prisoners here, of your own device."
And in Joan Wexler's chambers,
They're gathered for the feast
They stab the real stats with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the Beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the life I had before
"Relax," said Chin Kee Fatt, man,
"We are programmed to deceive."
"You can checkout any time you like,"
"But you can never leave [your debt behind]!"
Rather good!
DeleteHeartbreak Hotel
DeleteWho in the hell is Kim Chee Fart? Does she work at Crooklyn?
DeleteMotel Hell:
Delete"It takes all kinds of critters
To make Dean Vincent's Fritters."
Get out while you can. Run !!
Broke a couple ribs laughing at this. You hit all points !!!!!
DeleteThread winner
DeleteYes, ladies and gents, ill informed youngins...you have just been treated to a classic piece by the great ODR. One of the old school law scam posters. Awesome! God bless!
Delete@ OhioDocReviewerFebruary: brilliant, my friend, brilliant. I think it's important to note that for many so-called "Ritz" graduates, their results are identical to Motel 6 graduates. UVA, Cornell, Michigan, Georgetown, George Washington, UCLA, U. of Texas - Austin, Vanderbilt, etc. are graduating hordes of law students with enormous $150-250k debts and no jobs. They're hiring their own graduates to game the U.S. News and then kicking their sorry asses out to the street. The legal education industry is falling apart and it's fun to watch the pigs sweat.
ReplyDeleteI don't have the debt, but I am out of a job. I've even been applying to Motel 6 and the like for work.
DeleteThat's ironic as hell. It used to be that you'd go to Motel 6 for a quick, cheap screw.
DeleteNowadays, that's where you spend your working life AFTER you've had an expensive, three-year screw.
"used to be that you'd go to Motel 6 for a quick, cheap screw."
DeleteI'm sorry but that makes no sense at all. I go to Ace Hardware for my quick cheap screws.
When you consider law school tuition is approaching 50K on average, and living expenses add another 25 K or so, I would think many are not graduating owing over 200K as a matter of course. We know these loans are never going to be paid back . . . so in the end it is the taxpayer who is paying to keep these worthless law schools going. The public would be furious if they understood the way this is playing out. Only people, mainly lawyers and potential lawyers, following the scam blog movement are really aware of this travesty.
ReplyDeleteFrom the comments following Silver's article:
ReplyDelete"Professor Silver, according to the Law School Transparency website, less than 44% of the graduating class of 2011 at your law school got a real legal job, and the vast majority of those were at firms of fewer than 25 attorneys. Over 28% of the class is unemployed. The average debt for those financing their St. Thomas University Law School education is $138,000, a level far above what a gig as a new hire at a <25 lawyer firm can pay."
Hey, it's not Perfesser Silver's fault that 66% of his students are lazy bums.
DeleteThey probably just fergot to network.
OhioDocReviewer;s "Hotel Brooklawonia" was brilliant. OhioDocReviewer, here is a trivia question for you. How many students would it take to enroll at Brooklyn law paying full sticker to pay for Queen Wexlers' penthouse, Mercedes benz, driver, salary, platinum parachute and the other perks?
ReplyDeleteSo, Campos' article is AWESOME insofar as he demonstrates the ridiculousness of the fact that law school is so incredibly expensive (whether or not you attend a highly "ranked" school) and few people get actual lawyer jobs...
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's also great in debunking the "Legal Scholarship has Worth (despite having provided no evidence of this)" and the "Think-like-a-lawyer-BS" arguments.
1. Legal Scholarship: We don't need hundreds upon hundreds of law reviews/journals that aren't cited by anyone, and that are not even peer reviewed... Most of it is jibberish. It's dribble. Read some of it. Full of ridiculous generalizations and restatements of the law. A lot of it is also driven by quasi-literary analysis and "creative" ideas that have no basis in fact, and that add no value to the broader legal system. Maybe it'd be great in a creative writing publication or some fictional work, but otherwise it has no useful application.
Also, JUDGES DON'T READ THE STUFF (they admit this openly).
2. Think-like-a-lawyer: I completely agree with Campos. The minute I stepped into law school and heard a professor saying this, I knew it was complete nonsense. What is this "we teach people how to think" stuff?? It's completely unsupported by any pedagogical analysis. Part of this is the Socratic Method + Case Book teaching style which usually amounts to a professor asking inane questions and "cold-calling" people, while providing no real guidance. Law school classes are a complete waste of time. Has no one else realized this? Thinking like a lawyer becomes some sort of ethereal, bordering on spiritual concept. That's how you know it's made up. Go to the U.K. or any other country, they would laugh at this idea of thinking like a lawyer. It's another way to lie to people and add made-up value to the institution you support... There is no such thing as thinking like a lawyer. You have to be analytical, critical, creative, and hardworking, among other things. There isn't some special secret to it. This is simply a way for professors to justify teaching nothing, and authoring horrible worthless articles that NO ONE READS.
Nobody, but nobody, reads scholarshit. Those law reviews, unopened, collect dust on the shelves of libraries. And I really don't know where Silver gets the idea that profe$$ors routinely attack the power structure and propose legal reforms. Most scholarshit is pseudo-intellectual drivel along the lines of "Neo-Rawlsian Perspectives on the Nexus of Critical Legal Pluralism and Hip-Hop".
DeleteAs for "thinking like a lawyer", what reason is there to believe that profe$$ors in general are qualified to teach anyone how to think in any manner? This "think like a lawyer" crapola is just high-sounding propaganda out of a novel. Law school did absolutely nothing to change my manner of thinking.
If you were a "law school," what would YOU do? I mean, come on. If Motel 6 can get $270 a night, God bless them for all the suckers out there who don't realize they could have the Ritz-Carlton for $300. Seriously, if you could price yourself at $1,000/hour AND ACTUALLY GET PAID THAT BY A LOT OF CLIENTS, who wouldn't?
ReplyDeleteThe solution for law school is the same as that for Motel 6 - i.e., "Let the market speak."
The market can't effectively "speak," when: (1) (a) law schools publish misleading employment numbers, (b) the profession as a whole ignores the fact that around 50% of each year's graduates do not get full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required JOBS, and (c) the ratio of yearly jobs created to graduates is 1:2; and (2) there is a seemingly unlimited supply of federal loan money that (a) law schools will do anything to get their hands on, and (b) students fail to realize is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, meaning that in light of poor job placement and low salaries, they will more than likely be paying their federal loans off for the rest of their lives.
DeleteAs 12:03 PM pointed out, Motel 6 does not have the special deal that law schools enjoy.
DeleteOr to put it another way:
"Who among you in January 2004 predicted that the government would preemptively bail out the law schools by nationalizing graduate student lending without any accountability mechanisms?"
http://lawschooltuitionbubble.wordpress.com/2013/12/24/saved-by-the-magna-carta/
And also (3) whereas hotel rooms are universally understood to be a luxury for those with the means to indulge in travel, law school is widely regarded and promoted not as an article of consumption but as an investment leading to high income; (4) with hotels one may choose between the Ritz-Carlton and Motel 6, but with law school most students are stuck with Motel 6 or nothing, so the Motel 6–type law schools are not competing against the Ritz-Carltons.
DeleteYou raise a good question Jeff, and the answer is that if Law Schools were truly ethical the way lawyers are supposed to be, they would do what is right and charge only a fair dollar for a fair education. But Law Schools are like lawyers . . . all in it for themselves. Its all about the money. That's what our lousy profession comes down to.
ReplyDeleteAlbany Law fires Professor Hitler:
ReplyDeletehttp://m.youtube.com/watch?v=520rhYHmKGg
Spread the word.
DeleteThanks Antiro, I am loved the analogy you used. With the comparison between the Ritz, and Motel 6 prices, versus law schools. It really puts the perspective on Law school graduates not getting jobs, or "hotel rooms", when they pay for it.
ReplyDeleteThanks again.
Wayne. | http://www.buchelawlv.com/services.html
For the record, Paul Campos created the analogy, not me, but I appreciate that you enjoyed it.
DeleteI'm not an employed lawyer but I was educated at a holiday inn express last year. The two year program.
ReplyDeleteHere at the Thomas M Barry Southeastern Tech School of Law | Boston, enjoy Motel 6 quality at Ritz-Carlton prices! With Magic Fingers on every bed and floozies (some with four names written all in lower case) on the corner, we cater to a discriminating clientele. Plenty of vacancies, so come right on in!
ReplyDeleteYou people just don't understand. MY Law School is worth every penny of my $50K annual tuition.
ReplyDeleteHowsoever else would my Law School be able to provide me my quality education in Law And Cetacean Guardian Ad Litem Advocacy?
This one was fun:
ReplyDelete"Yet, as Silver’s essay illustrates, legal academics are especially prone to having the kinds of one-way discussions in which the bald assertion of implausible claims masquerades as reasoned argument."
Scholarshit abounds in implausible claims supported, if at all, only by a citation to some other piece of scholarshit.
DeleteMotel 6 got its name from its price...$6.00 a night. Then came Super 8 for $8.88. Law schools may want to follow with the tuition cost in their name like Hawaii Five-0, 77 Sunset Strip, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea or San Francisco 49ers.
ReplyDelete