Erwin Chemerinsky, the "constitutional scholar" who recently argued a First Amendment case before the Supreme Court -- well, he tried to turn a non-First Amendment matter into one without success -- has been give access to a prominently placed long column in the New York Times. He is pleading, groveling, for your money. Without any evidence whatsoever, he tries to counterattack many of the suggestions for reform, including Obama's suggestion of killing the third year of law school (which Chemerinsky thinks should be devoted to even more "interdisciplinary" classes).
UC Irvine's law school must be doing poorly indeed if he is resorting to this level of shilling. Read all about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/opinion/dont-skimp-on-legal-training.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0
Update: Campos attacks this column on LGM.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/04/wouldnt-print-wasnt-true
Update 2: During the short period of open comments after this op-ed, the majority of people left negative remarks, discussed the fake employment statistics that the authors cited without a source, and drew attention to the financially self-serving shilling of the authors (and significant others). It is refreshing to see the tide continue to turn. The more we make our voices heard, the lower those application numbers will drop.
Update 3: Fun day today! Oregon Law Professor Robert Illig complains about the consipracy to use his raise for hiring recent graduates to game the USNWR rankings -- not because it is unethical but because it deprives him of money!
http://abovethelaw.com/2014/04/law-professor-outraged-by-plan-to-use-his-raise-to-fund-jobs-for-unemployed-graduates/2/
AND the good lawprof is reading and answering some comments here if you'd like to give him a piece of your mind...since he seems to have no clue:
http://www.uomatters.com/2014/04/uo-law-school-prof-angry-about-plan-to-use-his-raise-for-scholarships.html
Campos does not think much of this effort either:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/04/wouldnt-print-wasnt-true
"The first person Chemerinksy hired onto the UC-Irvine faculty when he got this self-abnegating enterprise rolling five years ago was his wife. In 2012 this dynamic academic duo pulled down a combined salary of $597,000 from the University of California’s perpetually cash-strapped system.
Meanwhile Menkel-Meadow took home a salary of $320,000, so it’s safe to say a career in public service is working out OK for her as well."
You know, I love Paul Campos and his writing, but I don't think that "self-abnegating" is the proper word to use here. I think that Dean Chem is more self-aggrandizing than self-abnegating, with a bit of reckless and self-destructive spending thrown in for good measure.
DeleteAnon at 11:20, either your reading comprehension sucks or you did not RTFA. The sentences before the quoted lines say:
Delete“Legal education is still an excellent choice for those committed to serving others in a rewarding career,” they primly observe. Yes, it’s certainly been an excellent choice for them. Let’s take a moment to contemplate how well these public-spirited scholars are doing for themselves by “serving others.”
"Self-abnegating" is clearly being used sarcastically here.
Yes, pompous fraud at 3:56. I did read the quote and not the article. I come here to read what's here. Is that so surprising?
DeleteThat has nothing to do with my reading comprehension "sucking," or with any of your other Leiteresque delusions.
It is obvious from context that "self-abnegating" there is being used ironically, just like "dynamic academic duo" and "public service".
DeleteSooner or later everyone ends up believing whatever it is they feel they have to believe.
ReplyDeleteThe Chemical dean failed to mentioned the high cost of providing free WiFi to its students as a contributing factor of skyrocketing tuition. Not to mention the dearth of good quality law schools in a state that is saturated with about 40 operating law schools.
ReplyDeleteAlso law school text books have gotten more expensive because humanity is depleting the Amazon basin of trees and paper has acquired the value of a precious metal. Forget that the internet can replace text books. The law professors who spend countless years assembling reported cases into a compendium need the supplemental income to survive since $200k for teaching 4-6 hours a week is hardly a livable wage in the OC, right Dean Kaminski?
Oh and those expensive clinics are having an inflationary effect on tuition. Those expensive labs must be staffed with adjuncts who charge an arm and a leg to lend their expertise since doctrinal law professors cannot be bothered to teach practicums.
Poor Dean Kaminski... his UCI project, which is his metaphor for an inflated ego and sense of self-worth is failing. California does not need another toilet law school, especially one that charges over $50k a year for a public education. Here is some advice Dean Kaminski: 1) Cut tuition like your peer, Brooklyn Law School; 2) Offer buyouts to your dead weight faculty like your peers, Buffalo and Nova law schools; and 3) Increase teaching loads of tenured professors. Instead of requiring them to teach 1 course a year, impose a 2 course minimum per semester, including summers. Eliminate paid sabbaticals. If you encounter resistance to 3), tell your resisting professors that option 2) is on the table.
#ChemerinskysFolly
DeleteThe filthy, vile, excrement-covered pigs are getting desperate for asses in seats. They know that they cannot sustain many more years of smaller enrollment. As much federal loot these bastards take in each year, they also spend a ton of it on commercial development, "professor" salaries, and other ventures. Many of these commodes are leveraged to the hilt - especially the independent trash pits. Hell, Crooklyn Law School recently sold a bunch of the their real estate.
ReplyDeleteHell yes. Why all the buyouts *right now*? These lying thieves are looking at their enrollments and realizing they can't make it through *next year*. Excellent. Burn, baby, burn.
DeleteI don't want buy-outs; I want kick-outs.
Delete"The profession needs law schools to produce lawyers who are better prepared to practice law, not less well trained." So one year of exorbitant tuition and classes full of lazy/depressed 3Ls is going to make them better prepared?
ReplyDeleteChemerinsky is an academic. Academics do not create economic utility. Education is only the potential for economic utility. An education is not economically useful until it's employed in an economically productive fashion. Academics are beggars. They must beg for tax breaks, for lobbying law loopholes, and for labor law loopholes (think NCAA athletics.). They also must market to impressionable young people and make them believe a piece of paper will turn their lives around. When times are good, we forget that academics don't provide anything necessary to the economy. But when times are bad and people realize that going into mortgage-sized debt for a piece of paper that won't earn you a good salary is insane, the layers of BS get stripped off and we come to understand that the academic like Chemerinsky is just a beggar. He is not an engineer or a scientist who creates or makes things of value. So, he must beg. Sure, he is granted the enviable platform of the New York Times - still one of the most powerful soapboxes in America - but nevertheless, he is begging.
He is begging that students don't closely scrutinize the debt and job outcomes of law school graduates. He is begging that students continue to sign promissory notes and incur enormous non-dischargeable debts to finance his lifestyle (and people like Drexel Law Professor Lisa T. McElroy, who writes a blog about eating food and her international vacations). He is begging students to come to law school. He creates nothing that people actually need so he must resort to begging.
The public is sick and tired of the lies and BS from law school deans and professors. This NYT column is ripe with sickening misdirection: "as recently as 2007, close to 92 percent of law-school graduates reported being employed in a paid, full-time position nine months after graduation." Note that he doesn't include "bar passage required" jobs here. Also keep in mind that very few "paid, full-time full time positions" pay enough to service huge law school loans. It's all a scam. It's confounding that young kids are still signing up for the LSAT and trudging off to law school.
Unless you get into Harvard, Yale, or Stanford (and I wouldn't even go at full price) or your parents/relative can guarantee you a law firm job that pays well or you get a full tuition scholarship, I wouldn't go to law school. It's a gamble. And if you're smart enough to get into an elite law school, you're probably smart enough to know better or to do other, better things with your life.
"According to the Association for Legal Career Professionals, as recently as 2007, close to 92 percent of law-school graduates reported being employed in a paid, full-time position nine months after graduation. True, the employment figures had dropped by 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, but only to 84.7 percent."
ReplyDeleteWhich is a shameful confession that more than 15%—one in six or seven—of 2012's graduates were unemployed nine months after graduation. As for the others, many were on nine-month gigs (conveniently timed to end just as soon as these data were reported) paying $9 per hour at the admissions office or library of the very law school from which they had graduated, and others were pouring coffee or operating cash registers or answering telephones for similar wages. Many of the "employed" were actually unemployed people masquerading as lawyers in a doomed practice of one or a few recent graduates. Some were in dreadful positions paying $20k or $30k. And even those few that got jobs with the potential to meet the payments on their monstrous debt from law school cannot expect to keep those jobs for more than three or four years. By the way, even this rosy 84.7% figure includes only those people—disproportionately employed—who bothered to report their results to their law skules.
"The number of graduates who are employed is higher if the measure is over a longer interval than just the nine months after graduation."
Sure, because eventually most people have to find some job. But it won't be in law.
"And with the economy improving and law-school enrollments shrinking, there will be more jobs available for new law graduates."
When? How many? What kind of jobs?
Part II.
ReplyDelete"As with any other field of study, the ability to get a job out of law school obviously depends on where a person went to school and how he or she performed."
And on many other factors. Yours truly excelled at an élite law school but cannot find work as a lawyer and was even advised by the dean himself to give up on becoming a lawyer. Age and class are two strikes against me.
In any event, I thank scam-dean Chemerinsky for conceding here that some law schools and some levels of performance come with poor prospects for employment.
"A recent conversation between the deans of various public policy and international affairs schools in Foreign Policy suggested that law degree graduates were faring much better than both doctoral and master’s students in specialty programs such as international studies."
And Mars is far closer to my home than Pluto is. So what? I'm unlikely to be able to visit either place.
"Legal education must continue to educate those who seek to serve as legal “problem solvers,” not only in the board room or courtroom, but in all areas of civil society — our legislatures, administrative agencies, schools, workplaces and beyond."
How many openings are there in those institutions? How much do they pay? Do they require JDs? Is a JD actually a disadvantage?
"For law schools, the increased costs can be attributed to a variety of factors: significant decreases in state funding at public law schools, increased faculty salaries, the growth in clinical education that requires smaller classes, and providing more services to students."
And others, such as hiring one's own wife. Whatever the reasons may be, the cost of law school is unjustifiably high.
"Law schools specifically should do more to provide need-based financial aid to students — rather than what most law schools have been doing in recent years, which is to shift toward financial aid based primarily on merit in order to influence their rankings. This has amounted to “buying” students who have higher grades and test scores."
That's rich coming from the founding dean of a new toilet that bought its entire first class by offering zero tuition.
Part III.
ReplyDelete"For law schools, the increased costs can be attributed to a variety of factors: significant decreases in state funding at public law schools, increased faculty salaries, the growth in clinical education that requires smaller classes, and providing more services to students."
And others, such as hiring one's own wife. Whatever the reasons may be, the cost of law school is unjustifiably high.
"Law schools specifically should do more to provide need-based financial aid to students — rather than what most law schools have been doing in recent years, which is to shift toward financial aid based primarily on merit in order to influence their rankings. This has amounted to “buying” students who have higher grades and test scores."
That's rich coming from the founding dean of a new toilet that bought its entire first class by offering zero tuition.
"Finally, the talk of a crisis often cites the decrease in law-school applications for each of the last three years. This overlooks the fact that the number of applications has fluctuated for decades."
The past three years have seen not fluctuation but a sharp decline.
"Even if some law schools do not survive the current contraction — though none have yet gone out of business — that would not necessarily be a bad thing. After all, in so many other fields, we rely on market mechanisms to weed out the weakest competitors."
Among those "market mechanisms" is the selling of a bill of goods to students whose signature is needed for guaranteed funds from the federal government in any arbitrary amount designated by the law skule.
"The profession needs law schools to produce lawyers who are better prepared to practice law, not less well trained. That would be impossible in two-thirds of the time."
It's already being done at some law schools. In any event, this argument could be used to ju$tify extending law school to four years or five years or twenty years. The fact is that most of what is "taught", and supposedly learnt, in law school bears little relevance to the practice of law. Not for nothing does the old description of law school end with "and in third year they bore you to death".
"These have adapted to new economic realities by emphasizing the teaching of leadership, corporate governance, new finance and negotiation skills."
Subjects that hardly any hackademic grandee is qualified to teach.
"The public is sick and tired of the lies and BS from law school deans and professors."
ReplyDeleteWould that it were so. 99%+ of the public has no clue.
When will these academic frauds be brought to justice?
ReplyDeleteFirst you have a pair of hucksters who issued a report proclaiming a JD as a million dollar ticket. Then you have scam deans such as Larry Mitchell, Wu, Yellin and Chemerinksy all citing pre-recession stats which are also fallible to keep the wheels of these fleecing operation going. When will DOJ step in and stop the looting of our treasury to fund these luxurious lifestyles? Team Chemerinksy "earns" over half a million for public "service?" Well fuck, sign me up at half the salary. I am sure I can do a better job to shill legal education. Shit I can offer free iPads to the first 50 people who submit seat deposits. Or offer scholarships on a raffle basis. I can have strippers come in on Thursday to keep student morale, inter alia, up. I can do so many things rather than grovel and beg like this hustler.
Recently, when an acquintance asked an official of Indiana Tech about job prospects, she sent him that article claiming that a JD is worth a million dollars.
DeleteExcellent comments Anonymous at 8:03, 8:04 and 8:06 AM.
ReplyDeleteChemerinksy: "The number of graduates who are employed is higher if the measure is over a longer interval than just the nine months after graduation. And with the economy improving and law-school enrollments shrinking, there will be more jobs available for new law graduates."
ReplyDeleteOH REALLY? Who is tracking that? Where's the citation to the proof? Is UC Irvine tracking employment outcomes after 9 months out? Show us the data! No one is tracking that, he made that "fact" the hell up. LIAR. LIAR. LIAR!
UC Irvine's year-over-year change in employment for graduates is -19%. That man pushed a new law school into California at the height of a recession, and in the few short years it's been around it's churned out victim after victim.
'It's the lack in state funding" meme: LIAR! The bleed from public support from the UC system amounts to a few million bucks per school over the last decade (AND has gone BACK UP recently), while tuition has been raised of the same period by millions and millions in excess of the drop in funding. The California budgets are available online. One can verify that for himself.
Erwin Chemerinksy is a lying, scumbag, rent-seeking leech. Like all of them, he's ever so eager to volunteer an entire generation for economic martyrdom on the altar of his salary. VILE.
Whenever it is suggested that law school should be reduced to two years, the usual response from the law school industrial complex is that it should remain three years (there is also the proposal that it should be extended to four years). By eliminating the third year, millions of dollars would be saved on less tuition (and interest), graduates would be entering the workforce a year earlier and it would also be a year away from unnecessary electives and classroom horseshit. Of course, thinking in the students' best interests takes a very far, distant second in the scheme of higher education...now more than ever.
ReplyDeleteOh, even four years is far from sufficient. I recommend that law school become a six-year program. That way we'll be able to bolster the curriculum with numerous valuable courses and workshops on leadership and problem-solving, not to mention my pet seminar "Neo-Rawlsian Perspectives on International Talmudic Environmental Aeronautic Entertainment Law and the Open Road".
DeleteCheck out the highly illuminating whine of the Oregon law prof complaining about the school using the faculty raise budget to fund full time post grad jobs to boost the school's USNews rating. Above the Law has a good article on it, and the text of two ranting notes he wrote.
ReplyDeleteThis merits a stand-alone post on this site. Some of his rants are priceless.
Among them:
Is this some kind of faculty version of white-man’s guilt? We see students without jobs and think that if we throw them a few of our dollars we can go back to our scholarship and not worry about whether they are getting real careers and real training? We can study the 17th Century and believe we are preparing them for the 21st?
What we owe them is our time and effort and skill, not our paltry raises (which, by the way, don’t even cover the increase in the cost of living).
And why stop at our raises? Why didn’t the proposal include the summer stipends that a shrinking minority of the faculty received? Why not donate those to the students as well?
How can I trust the administration or any of my faculty colleagues? No wonder we’ve become a third-tier law school. Who’s going to want to come here to study or teach in this kind of poisonous atmosphere?
As soon as money got tight, we seem to have turned on one another as if this was a zero-sum game. Well, it isn’t. And enough is enough.
I’ve watched as our culture has eroded now for almost three years. Everyone is in everyone else’s business, instead of their own. Everyone is worried about what everyone else is getting, not what they can personally contribute. If some professor or professors want to donate their raise to the students – or to some other worthy charity – that’s their business. (Personally, I give to Food for Lane Country, Planned Parenthood, and the United Way. I feel that having given up the chance at a seven-figure annual income is charity enough for the students, and I am particularly saddened by hungry children. Maybe I should move that the recipients of summer stipends donate those funds to the poor and needy?)
" I feel that having given up the chance at a seven-figure annual income is charity enough for the students"
DeleteYep. Sure you did.
LMAO. Give us a link!
Deletehttp://www.uomatters.com/2014/04/uo-law-school-prof-angry-about-plan-to-use-his-raise-for-scholarships.html
DeleteAffording this twat oxygen is charity enough to him.
"Everyone is in everyone else’s business, instead of their own. Everyone is worried about what everyone else is getting, not what they can personally contribute. If some professor or professors want to donate their raise to the students – or to some other worthy charity – that’s their business."
DeleteAs a taxpayer, I am not sure why my money is used to fund the student loans/ IBR that pay Illig's salary. Donations to Illig's paychecks should be voluntary. I personally donate to some local homeless shelters and the humane society, so I am good. If other taxpayers want to pay Illig's salary, they should start a collection. Why am I being forced to donate to Illig's salary via IBR, when there are hungry children and homeless people out there?
Pleas for money?
ReplyDeleteTry this one on, for size:
http://www.law.buffalo.edu/giving/dean.html
JDUnderground is skewering the Oregon prof
ReplyDeleteThe Oregon website comments (including some by Prof Ilig) are terrific!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.uomatters.com/2014/04/uo-law-school-prof-angry-about-plan-to-use-his-raise-for-scholarships.html
That's a beautiful thread, and anyone can vote up or down. No need to register.
DeleteCampos and his commentators have also skewered the Oregon professor:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/04/ok-now-really-serious
For yet another take down of Chemerinsky's article see:
ReplyDeletehttp://thelawyerbubble.com/2014/04/15/another-unfortunate-op-ed/#comments
Regarding the UO matter, funding one-year jobs at non-profits is basically a way to lie to OLs about the real employment statistics. We hear law professors (and others) say all the time that students are responsible for their own research regarding whether or not law school is a financially sound proposition and should be able to make an assessment based on the information "out there." If these non-profit jobs get funded, the information coming from UO law school regarding the full time/long term employment rate will include these jobs which will no longer be declared as school funded positions even though they are school funded but the school pays the non-profit, not the student). If UO law school doesn't some how advise prospective students of this particular funding mechanism, then prospective students will assume (as apparently UO Law school wants them to assume) that they have a greater chance of obtaining real legal employment than they actually do. Somehow, I don't think a law funded position at a non-profit is what most OLs have in mind when they enter law school.
ReplyDeleteAny UO law professor like to comment on the ethics of this statistical manipulation?
Far from being an act of professorial generosity (not exactly an abundant commodity), this scheme is a cynical, self-serving attempt to reverse the law skule's sharp fall on the dumb rankings put out by You Ass News.
DeleteBeware Greeks bearing gifts.
Also this brilliant academic legal mind Illig went to law school tuition-free! He brags about it in his faculuty profile. I love how these pigs are fighting each other and being jealous since they know the game is up. You cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand. The law schools could have been less greedy and be more humble in their operations but they chose greed and wreckless spending now supply and demand are working their wonders.
ReplyDeleteWhat if we kick this protest into high gear?
ReplyDeleteAll schools, including law schools, become ineligible to receive federal student loans monies if their "cohort default rate" (i.e. the % of their graduates that default within 3 years of graduating) reaches certain thresholds.
See, the department of education's Cohort Default Rate Guide: http://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/CDRGuideMaster.html
If a school's cohort default rate reaches 40%, it's immediately ineligible to take federal students loans for 3 years. See, pg. 70 and Chapter 4.9 of the guide.
Also, if the default rate tops 30% for three years running, same deal, the school can't take federal funds; the school is "sanctioned."
In other words, if enough recent graduates for any given school remove themselves from IBR and let their loans default, those protestors could close a law school overnight and permanently.
Spike the football? Nah, spike the cohort default rate.
That policy only applies to for-profit schools. They are evil, unlike law schools, because they manipulate placement rates in order to get students to take on crippling debts to keep themselves afloat and, well, never mind.
DeleteYou are on the right track. If law schools and other "non-profit" schools faced a similar situation they'd be dropping like flies. Applying the policy to law schools would solve a lot of problems very fast.
The "non-profit" ones also seek profit; they just make sure that it gets distributed in the form of obscene salaries and other unnecessary expenditures.
Delete@ 10:33 a.m. No, you're incorrect.
DeleteThe cohort default rate restriction applies to every single institution that is eligible to receive federal student loans under the FFEL and Henry D. Ford Direct Lending program, including, "an institution of higher education"..."public or private nonprofit educational institution."
All the schools that are eligible and do take federal student loans have their cohort default rates calculated, and you can look up your law school's here, left sidebar:
http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/defaultmanagement/cdr.html
An interesting tidbit: the default rates are calculated on a fiscal year basis. The guide explicitly addresses the following instance: a student borrower defaults, and the default is reported for the fiscal year, but the borrower - after the fiscal year - follows the steps available to take the loan back out of default. What happens? The default is still counted in the cohort. It doesn't matter that the loan was taken back out of default in the few months one has to do so.
Consequence: get enough people together who are already unspeakably fucked, and time your voluntary defaults to hit the cohort fiscal year. Get 40%, and the school loses eligibility for federal student loans in 30 days. The debtors have loan rehabilitation available to them to remove a default from their credit reporting...
I've got absolutely nothing to lose. If I could get enough people together from my law school, I'd do it.
There were some devastating statistics about UC Irvine in the LGM thread following Campos' post. Both their overall legal employment and BigLaw+FedClerk employment are down by 19 percentage points, largely because the graduating class rose from 56 poor souls to 84 poor souls. At this rate, the law school will acquire an irreparable TTT reputation well before they ever reach their goal of 200 students admitted per year.
ReplyDeleteThis, Dean Chem, is your legacy. Are you proud of yourself now?
Oh, yes, he must indeed be proud. He and wifey have sucked millions out of that toilet.
DeleteHey guys, check out the "Most Repugnant Law Professor" poll at Law School Lemmings, which is a link available on this site. There are 52 votes so far, and I wish there were thousands. Please take the time to vote.
ReplyDeleteI did notice one glaring omission from the list. Don't let that keep you from voting.
Diamond and Leong are amateurs, compared to the people on the list.
DeleteLeiter, on the other hand...
Asshat Brian Leiter just keeps on making typos on his shitty law schools blog:
DeleteA dispute at Oregon about whether to eliminate faculty raises, in order to use the money in other ways (apparently [sic], to bolster the school's falling US New.com rank by funding more jobs for grads) has burst into public.
Previously, he published this:
"One surmises that at least part of what is happening is that (1) students waivering [sic] about going to law school are realizing that they don't have other tangible professional plans,"
So maybe his own words apply to himself:
"who is regarded as a joke by his colleagues at his own school and in the academy at large..."
Damn this auto-correct. Leiter's blog reads appraently
DeleteI think that when Leiter's written product disagrees with the spell-checker, he just assumes the spell-checker is wrong.
DeleteIs there any end to the number of shills?
ReplyDeleteDo law professors never learn that getting into pissing matches with disgruntled students online always looks bad? I've followed Prof. Illig's story with much interest, and he seems unable to stop pouring gasoline onto the flames. Worse, he thinks that the gasoline is actually water and he doesn't understand why things keep getting hotter and hotter...
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that the self-important Illig deigns to associate with students at all.
DeleteThis lawprof could be swapped out for almost anyone and it would not effect the career outcomes of the students. And if he has such marketable talents, throw the bum out and let him pursue these lucrative paths.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else who sent selfish emails like this to all of his coworkers, leading to a leak and terrible publicity during financially difficult times, would get fired immediately.
Illig, most of your students have no luxurious tenure protections, six figure salaries, and pay raises. Your complaints sound so out of touch that you should go stand beside your beloved students in the unemployment line for just a week and see how long you last.
Your teaching has no effect on job outcomes. It has little effect on even preparing your students for the bar exam. And it has nothing to do with preparing them for law practice and for the harsh world of struggling in low-paying jobs that cannot ever come close to repaying mortgage-sized debt.
Your greed and sense of entitlement is disgusting. Your posturing about knowing what is best for your students is disingenuous. I cannot imagine someone from my generation throwing a public tantrum over not getting an expected raise.
-adamb
I posted this on the Oregon website that Illig is reading. If you have something to say, he is reading.
DeleteBravo, and correct.
DeleteHey, Prof. Illig, what's your fair share of nothing when your "school" closes? Don't these people realize who pays their salaries? He wants to talk about what he's "worth" in a free market! Wouldn't it be nice if we all didn't have to enter the legal profession through the monopolized door of law school with its price-fixed, debt-fueled costs?
Free markets for me, but not for thee! Gee, professor, if you weren't protected from competition of adjuncts you'd be making 5k/class like they do...teach 3 classes a semester...the fair market value of your services is actually something like 15,000/ year. SUCK IT.
Fantastic Post!
DeleteBut what I find unnerving is the ignorance of some of the commenters on the Oregon website in their belief that the faculty is being generous. There are no heroes in this story. The faculty is simply trying to keep the gravy train running. Funding non-profits to pay students (and I assume for ten months) is only to craft a clever deceit to US News and to OLs. They would not be so generous if these positions didn't count as full time/long term employment in their employment stats. As I posted above, some law professors and deans maintain that The Truth is Out There and it's the law students' fault for not doing their due diligence concerning the ROI on a law degree. Here is a classic example of how the employment numbers are manipulated by the law schools and are therefore unreliable. OLs should be able to look at any law school's website and find accurate and reliable numbers regarding full time/long term employment.
The fact that the law faculty voted for this charade is shameful. "Helping a non-profit" is the law faculty's equivalent of the GOP's "voter fraud."
And by the way, Illig asks a very good question:
"And why stop at our raises? Why didn’t the proposal include the summer
stipends that a shrinking minority of the faculty received? Why not
donate those to the students as well?"
The question here is why are the law faculty getting summer research money in the first place. The law faculty teach fewer courses than any other faculty. It seems like they could get their damned research done during the academic year and this summer research money could go back to the students in the form of a tuition reduction.
" I cannot imagine someone from my generation throwing a public tantrum over not getting an expected raise." I don't want to defend this professor, but the fact is that almost everybody is interested in their own self interests and would not want to sacrifice a raise for the purported benefit of the students. The way Illig sees it is simple: He has a contract to teach. He teaches. He wants to get paid as much as possible for what he does. He does not see, nor do most Profs, that it is his responsibility to ensure his students get jobs or that they are even prepared for law practice. Its not on his plate and is not his concern or problem. He convinced no one to go to law school, convinced no one to take out loans to go to law school and so it is clear he is taking no responsibility for the plight of law students. All he knows is he has a job and he does. In a realistic sense, you can't blame him for feeling this way. It was stupid though for him to make it a public issue like he has. But the problem with the scamblog movement is blaming lots of the problems on the Profs. They are merely cogs in the large wheels of the legal industrial complex. Blame the law school administrations and deans. . . they are the ones committing the fraud. The Professors are simply teaching.
ReplyDeleteWhile there are indeed many lawprofs who quietly "teach" and collect their paychecks, there are many lawprofs who are in fact apologists for the law school scam and therefore are actually "convincing students to go to law school". Examples include Stephen Diamond, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Ben Barros, etc etc. In fact there are quite a few lawprofs that actively shill and downplay the terrible state of law grads in speeches, op-eds, blog posts and so forth.
Delete"The Professors are simply teaching."
DeleteAch, ja. Sie haben nur Befehle ausgeführt.
Translation: "I just do what I'm told ... don't blame me!"
DeleteAll law faculty are expected to do a certain amount of "selling." It's considered part of the job.
DeleteYes, that's what it means. It's a pointed reference to Eichmann's defense.
DeleteActually it was the Dostler Defence - first presented by German General Anton Dostler at his trial for executing Uniformed US soldiers (though part of an OSS team) captured on a mission to blow up a railway tunnel. His defence was the execution was pursuant to Hitler's 1942 "Commando Order," or "Kommandobefehl" - sometimes mistakenly called the "Night & Fog" or "Nacht und Nebel befehl," in part because under that order secret executions (disappearances) were designated with a "n.n." in German prisoner records, including the murder under the later Kommandobefehl.
DeleteLaw professors just like most academics are completey replaceable just as much as a cashier at Big Box store. The egos of law school academics is through the roof as if they think they are special. Any of competent law school graduate can teach law and in some case probably do it better.
ReplyDeleteBut the set of competent law school graduates is a lot smaller than most lemmings think.
DeleteA comment from one of Chemerinsky's recent graduates:
ReplyDelete"But at the end of the day, the school — particularly the administration — just doesn’t walk the talk. I’ve been out of school for 16 months (I graduated a semester early), passed the CA bar exam on my first try, and still haven’t found full-time work. Parts of that are certainly not the school’s fault, but parts of that certainly are."
http://thelawyerbubble.com/2014/04/15/another-unfortunate-op-ed/#comments
Chemerinsky is utterly shameless, and all too typical of law school shills.
An excellent point to keep in mind about law schools (the great majority of which are 'non-profit'):
ReplyDelete"The term “non-profit” serves only two purposes, tax status and public relations. As an analytic tool is is useless. A better analysis is that every economic organization throws of a surplus above its expenses. In “for profit” entities the surplus is dedicated to the owners (usually partners or shareholders). In a non-profit they are distributed to the most powerful stake holder."
williamockham at 5:44 pm
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/04/end-law-school-scam-limits-transparency
I would only add that the most powerful stakeholders in a non-profit benefit from maximizing their institution's surplus just as shareholders and partners benefit from increasing their for-profits enterprise's profits.
Dear scammed law school graduates:
ReplyDeleteYour financial futures were literally eaten by these people. And they need to eat every year.
They need students to borrow their future mortagage payments, car payments, money to start a family, etc. and then hand all this over to greedy useless professors and deans who just don't care that their grads' futures are ruined.
They seem to care as much as the conman cares that the elderly lady he cheated out of her savings and now has to go through hard times.
Profs need to live off their student's borrowed money and the future suffering that entails for the conned students.
5:01 The people who are borrowing today to pay for a law degree are idiots, with only themselves to blame. That includes the 46,000 or so law students graduating from law school this year. Maybe 6,000 of those will have what is a six figure income today from that degree by the time they hit age 53. High costs and low odds of success.
ReplyDeleteMaybe so. But that doesn't make ripping them off any less reprehensible.
DeleteActually more reprehensible. Most Millennials act and think like they have Down's Syndrome. Only the lowest of the low preys on the most exploitable year after year under the guise of the education industry.
DeleteDon't bring up Down's Syndrome, 5:22 PM. That just makes you look ignorant. But I do agree with your underlying point.
Delete@5:22pm
DeleteFirst, I'm a Millenial, I'm graduating this year, and I have a great job lined up. I'm a lucky one. You'll hear that "lucky one" phrase often because we who have jobs realize how F'd the whole situation is for our peers, and we are doing what we can to spread the word about the scam.
This shit about Millennials being stupid is so tired. It's nonsense propagated by a generation that had everything handed to them. You clearly never had to experience skyrocketing, mind blowing tuition costs, horrible economic circumstances, and globalization of all industries. If you haven't noticed, this is something every generation does to the younger generation. It's complete and utter bullshit. Plain and simple. These Millenials you speak of with such contempt are taking on all the baggage left for them by the lazy, entitled boomers. It's probably not their fault, but they had the ability to pay their way through school without loans, buy a house, have a family, etc. Millenials are drowning in student loan debt, because if you don't have a degree you're screwed (lower jobless rate for those with undergrad/grad school education). Millenials can't afford the American Dream, i.e., starting a life, getting married, buying a house, etc. Count yourself lucky, I wouldn't wish this legal market on my worst enemy.
Grow the fuck up.
5:01 here. My point is that law school today is a suicide mission in the long run for most people. You can learn a trade and then start a business where you are your own boss. As a boomer who never in a million years would have taken this on with a top record from one of the top 5 rated undergrad schools in America, I would have done something else with the information that is out there now.
DeleteFor some people - the class president who goes to Harvard, the person in high school who is super- respected and at the leadership level in every school activity and who everyone likes, even though that person is just a B+ student - law school may be a good idea today. For most people, even the double Harvards, who do not have these characteristics, well, they are on the road to failure. Failure can occur sooner, or later through a layoff.
Today the double Harvard who is not perfect will be laid off. That person will be a temp starting at age 45 if they can work at all.
There is no free lunch here. The legal profession is troubled and very, very oversaturated with workers. You are going into a lifelong battle against unemployment if you are going to law school today. That includes many people who go to Harvard, Yale or Stanford Law Schools.
Too many lawyers by leaps and bounds. Too little work. Up or out policies at most law firms that make staying employed as a lawyer a game of survivor. Too few jobs to go to after being uped or outed. Abrupt non-cause terminations of lawyers, because it is so easy to get someone else for the job - lawyers are mostly fungible with one another.
Unless you are that very special person with real smarts and great social skills, and can count your achievements in clear terms in high school in the academic, extracurricular and social areas, skip law school, including Harvard, Yale or Stanford. It is not going to work out for you. When you are my age, you will regret not having listened to me.
Boomer - you never had to deal with any of the choices that we have faced in this terrible economy in this terrible country, so stop ranting like you know something.
DeleteI don't think that was ranting by 6:53 PM.
DeleteIn fact, the analysis is pretty much spot-on. The only things they forgot to mention are the aspects of coming from money and having juiced in, solid connections. A lot of success in law is achieved by those who are hired because of who they are related to and who they know.
Other than that, I think they covered the bases nicely.
@7:17pm
Delete(This is 10:33am)
First of all, we seem to agree that those in the law school business are taking advantage of law students in a most heinous, and unforgivable way. So, Kudos for that.
However, your comment demonstrates precisely the type of mindless dribble that is damaging in discussions regarding the law school scam. You make sweeping generalizations about an entire group because it's trendy, and because you believe you are superior. I'm sure you worked oh so hard all on your own to get where you are, so good work. However, your views on Millennial "Down's Syndrome," are at best mindless follow-the-leader, bash-the-younger-generation BS, and at worst, immoral, pompous garbage.
This Flexing-your-Internet-Muscles, Gen X'er, older, wiser foolishness is so incredibly childish.
Please stop.
One way under-emphasized point:
ReplyDelete"Part of the reason people continued to apply to law school over the years was the belief of applicants that if the average starting salary from Widener is $60k, then by the time I am 5 years out, i'll be making close to 6 figures. As a general principle, salaries in law do not increase as consistently in law as they do in other fields because of turnover, burnout rate, and instability."
Posted by: JillyfromPhilly | April 19, 2014 at 08:34 PM
http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2014/04/brian-tamanaha-has-asked-two-interesting-questions-in-response-to-steve-freedmans-recent-posts-on-jobs-and-law-school-admi/comments/page/7/#comments
how much did they pay the NY Times for this advertisment?
ReplyDeleteDean Chen has a lot of connections. He even had clout at one point, although Toilet King is not a title that he probably envisioned five years ago. Maybe Nando could do an updated write-up on this clown.
Delete