Tuesday, April 1, 2014

The Scamblogs Come Clean

Well, it looks like the scamblogs were wrong.
 
And it's high time we admit it, frankly. After years and years of railing against the "law school cartel," we need to own up to our decisions and our circumstances. We chose to go to law school. We chose to react to the marketplace as we found it. We chose to complain about circumstances in hindsight, rather than "doing the hard work of working hard." The charade must come to an end, and it has been a long time coming. Time to face the music.
 
As Brian Leiter notes:
 
"When a lot of effort and money is invested in an endeavour, but one doesn't get the exact results that one wants, it is natural to blame others - at least for awhile. The Professoriate tried multiple times to engage with the scamblogs forthrightly and honestly, as we have no desire to see a schism develop between graduates and practitioners, one the one hand, and the academic ranks on the other. What is most important is the free exchange of information so that both sides are changed for the better. However, our overtures were rejected.
 

While we empathize with the plights of some graduates, the scamblogs and other detractors continued to sidestep the basic fact that outcomes are actually quite good, if not ideal, for the majority of graduates. Perhaps some will have to engage in a little delayed gratification, but there are certainly worse fates when everyone makes over $150,000 coming out of law school. But when people have already decided the outcome before coming to the debate, or choose to be ungrateful for the opportunities they have been afforded, little can be accomplished, unfortunately."

Stephen Diamond concurred, stating:
 
"As applications and LSAT scores continue to rise in the aggregate, law schools are forced to be more and more selective when granting law degrees. While this sounds like an ideal result, one would rather not have to turn people away at the door as it smacks of elitism. At the same time, we counsel students to take a long, hard look at law as a career and a calling, as well as the employment statistics, as we do not want to see disappointed, disaffected law graduates coming out of our institutions. Granted, the outcomes are generally very positive for the majority, but producing too many lawyers who don't want to be lawyers after the fact helps no one and injures society in the long run. The Scamblogs continue to refuse to face facts and thereby dissuade students for the wrong reasons."

 
Peter Alexander added:
 
"One 'mistake' that law schools made was lowering tuition in order to make law school more accessible, and Deans and Professors in turn took modest pay cuts and tightened their belts for a time as a show of solidarity. We are acutely aware and concerned about how student loans can affect someone in the long term, although that is more of an theoretical concern given demand for lawyers in the marketplace. However, prior actions generated an unanticipated externality in that demand for law school actually went up, and now many schools are facing the daunting prospect of whether to expand their programs and facilities. It's difficult to be in the position of dissuading people from doing the very thing you endorse, as we want to 'protect' the legal profession, not from diversity as some charge, but from saturation."

Well, there you have it.  Demand for lawyers is up, salaries are high, student loans are low, and the Law Schools actively try to limit the rate of lawyer production. The problem isn't "everyone else", it's YOU.
 
In other news, Happy April Fool's Day, everyone!  We'll see you next time - same place, same channel.

10 comments:

  1. What is frightening is that you actually had me going.

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  2. What's really funny is that you can actually picture the pigs uttering such nonsense.

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  3. I just heard that Congress changed the BK laws. Loans outstanding and in repayment for 7 years are now dischargeable in bankruptcy again!!

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  4. The Diamond quote is obviously fake - there is no reference to the bad old days of Professor Kingsfield in the quote.

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  5. I think the people in your post actually believe what they're saying. Otherwise, how could you live with yourself, knowing full well that you are damaging young people's lives in order to feed your own greed and ego?

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  6. For more laughs, take a look at this article that appeared on Yahoo:

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-law-schools-where-salaries-grads-most-outweigh-130000440--finance.html

    Boston University law grads have the same salary outcome as Stanford law grads, according to this list.

    I will say, though, that the University of the District of Columbia actually looks quite reasonable, based on what the list is saying. Whether this list is reliable, that's a different story.

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    1. "The median starting salary for 2012 graduates in the private sector is $100,000"—for the 2½ graduates who are working in the private sector. Of course, for this purpose we disregard jobs behind the counter of the local coffee shop, although for the purposes of You Ass News we include them in the "private sector".

      "The Florida Coastal School of Law had the lowest salary-to-debt ratio out of all the institutions that reported data to U.S. News. Alumni who graduated in 2012 and worked in the private sector had a median salary of $45,000 while 2013 graduates with student loans for law school carried an average debt of $150,360. The school's salary-to-debt ratio is 0.299." But of course this institution absolutely must retain its accreditation (despite admitting five people last year whose LSAT score was 134 or lower), and its "students" absolutely must be given unrestricted access to federally guaranteed loans in any arbitrary amount that Horrida Coastal may designate.

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  7. If that were the truth, there would be no scamblogs.

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  8. The sad thing is shills like Mr. Infinity actually say such things the other 364 days of the year.

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  9. First I thought the above quotes were real. Then I thought they were an April Fool's joke. But then I clicked through to Leiter's post from December, and I saw that the above quote is actually a decent approximation of what he wrote.

    And I ask myself, What planet do he and the others live on?

    - One of the Lucky Ones

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