(Nicholas Allard: "I did not leave a successful career navigating the partisan divides and gridlock in our nation's capital for a pleasant pre-retirement picnic in the Petrified Forest of the Land of Academia, where I could watch the moated Ivory Tower burn down.")
"A salesman is an it that stinks to please," wrote e.e. cummings. Indeed, one typical feature of successful salespersons is their infectious optimism. That is perhaps the main advantage that the law school scammers will always enjoy over the blogging resistance--well, that and the huge sums of money they allocate for marketing and recruiting. A steady stream of bad news and pessimism is enervating, even if well-founded, and the scammers provide an emotionally compelling narrative of leadership, opportunity, and justice, starring you.
In my opinion, the most egregious form of law school hype, aside from outright lying, involves packaging bad news as good news by strategically deploying a soothing or flattering word or phrase or a mixed-up analogy. This is not difficult to do, requiring only a certain self-confident glibness, an utter lack of conscience, and a contempt for the English language. But all endeavors have their naturally gifted stand-outs. As Wayne Gretzky was to hockey, so is Dean Nicholas Allard of Brooklyn Law to deceitful self-serving bullshit.
If your lemming-followers seem reluctant to take that leap of faith, assure them that they are mighty eagles. If your investors seem disappointed in their real-world returns, remind them that they enjoy ample and priceless intangible psychic benefits. If some naysayer uses terms like decline or stagnation, declare that it is an exciting season of transformation. If your grads can’t find a job, remind them how fortunate they are to have the flexibility to pursue, and even create, nontraditional opportunities. If some thirsty person seems, nonetheless, hesitant to slurp the hemlock you have served, be sure to describe it as a powerful and life-changing refreshment available only to an elite of true connoisseurs. Bottoms up!
With that introduction, consider the words of wisdom that Dean Allard brayed at the 2013 graduating class of Brooklyn Law School on Commencement Day, June 7, 2013. Wait, did I just say, "graduating class"? Please allow me to amend that drab and uninspiring little phrase. Surely, I meant "secular rabbis," "master[s] of the language of liberty," "agents of powerful legal change," "adventurers," "pioneers," "architects of bridges across divides," "engineers of consensus from chaos," "crusaders for the voiceless," "guardians of our enduring democratic republic," "role models teaching upcoming generations," "drum major[s] for justice," and "Wayne Gretzky."
1. "What a daunting, exhilarating, fabulous time to begin your careers, wherever they might take you, on paths as yet uncharted."
2. "For the first time in the history of mankind, lawyers are the adventurers, the 21st century pioneers."
3. "Today you become the new guardians of our enduring democratic republic."
4. "Whether you will serve as a judge or public official, as an officer of the court, a champion of the unpopular cause, a drum major for justice, or a successful corporate counsel as was Abraham Lincoln, for example, your law degree is not meant to be a mere slip of processed parchment collecting dust with other bric-a-brac and tchotchkes."
5. "The walls protecting the traditional citadel of law practice are tumbling down by super storm trumpet blasts of change. . . letting all of you out to pursue your life’s work wherever and however you choose; free to use your hard earned license for critical thinking and critical problem solving, in myriad new ways; maybe doing work lawyers never did before."
6. "You will also grasp and master how advanced information technology in a mobile interconnected world disrupts and transforms law and you will teach us at the law school how best to prepare your younger legal siblings to follow you using new technology."
7. "You are ready for the new world of law. The education you have gained at our great Law School, the sweat equity you have put into your studies, your hours and hours of training, the honing of your mind into the finest tool known to mankind prepares you to be agents of powerful legal change — change for the better."
8. "What, indeed, is the worth of your legal education? What value will it have to justify the investment you and your families have made with your dollars, your efforts, and your time?"
a. "First, by mastering the language of liberty, the language lawyers speak, you learned much more than how to do well for yourself, you now can do good. . . .I look out at you today and I see each of you who have such promise. I truly hope we have encouraged you to use law to fight the good fight, to correct wrongs, resolve disputes, advance economic opportunity and participatory democracy and, above all else, to uphold justice. . . ."
b. "Second, you have learned how to make society work. We lawyers are inextricably woven into the fabric of America and serve by giving the pluralistic tapestry of our nation the strength and flexibility to survive and weather change and diversity. . . ."
c. "Third, you are now equipped to be the mentors and role models teaching upcoming generations - lawyers are the secular rabbis of our society."
9. "And remember how flexible your skills are. Your education enables you to work in countless private sector and public sector fields. All of you sitting here can be architects of bridges across divides, engineers of consensus from chaos, crusaders for the voiceless and disenfranchised."
10. "In addition there are fields in which the demand for legal services is expanding — demand for your services is up — areas where you can get in on the ground floor and build a career as an expert, such as alternative dispute resolution, compliance and risk management, financial regulation, health, communication and internet law, privacy and data security, to name a few."
11. "Hockey legend Wayne Gretsky famously advised to skate where the puck is going, not where it’s been. It is not easy, but look for jobs where they will be, not where they were."
Welcome to Scamster Hermeneutics 101. Let us begin by interpreting a statement from All Lard to the graduating class of Crooklyn Law Skule 'n' Tattoo Parlor: "What, indeed, is the worth of your legal education? What value will it have to justify the investment you and your families have made with your dollars, your efforts, and your time?"
ReplyDeleteWhy were these among his last words to the graduating lemm—er, students? Don't they all have glorious jobs that plainly justify the amounts that they poured into law school? Why does All Lard seem so eager to get them to believe that their degree from his toilet skule was worth while? Could it have anything to do with reputation? liabliity?
Old Guy
All Lard pwns you.
Delete"For the first time in the history of mankind, lawyers are the adventurers, the 21st century pioneers."
ReplyDeleteYeah, tell that to the Roanoke colonists, Allard. A similar fate awaits many who are wooed by your sugarplum-fairy deceptions.
The Donner Party comes to mind as well.
DeleteNot really. At least some members of the Donner party got to eat.
Deletedybbuk, did you mean to reference the end notes to particular points in the main post?
ReplyDeleteThe "end notes" are the Treasury of Idiotic Quotes, numbered for our convenience. The "main post" is (as it states) the introduction to that Treasury.
DeleteGreat stuff, dybbuk.
Yes, 2:18 is correct. However, I removed the dotted line between the intro and the numbered quotes to make the latter look less endnote-like.
DeleteAh, thanks both. My mistake.
DeleteSometimes one struggles to infer the intent and character of a speaker from his words and actions, but sometimes intent and bad character are unmistakable.
ReplyDeleteI will commit Nicholas Allard's name to memory. I will be sure to remember it for the rest of my life. I will remember Steve Diamond's name for the rest of my life too, and the names of some others as well.
Many Nazi party members are still being hunted down, rooted out and brought to justice decades after the fall of Nazi Germany. It helps if you remember their names.
Dean Allard should have saved everyone a lot of time and simply told those BLS grads to "Endeavor to Persevere."
ReplyDeleteMy rule of thumb is that if someone has to sell you on something, be suspicious. Anything that's worthwhile will have more takers than its proprietors can handle.
ReplyDeleteHe's obviously channeling famed poet Walt *hitman:
ReplyDeleteCOME, my pale-faced debtors,
Follow well in order, get your pleadings ready;
Have you your Westlaw? have you your sharp edged pens? Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, agents of powerful legal change
We, the youthful secular rabbis, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, master of liberty's semantics,
Plain I see you, western youths, form consensus from chaos, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Have the elder Boomers halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, over there in courtroom 403?
We take up the task eternal, drum major for the justice parade, Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a bridge of legal architecture,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, like motherfuckin' Wayne Gretzky, Pioneers! O pioneers
The scammer mentality has infected everything in this country. The American economy is now just a giant scam by the rich and powerful to exploit and hurt anyone they can extract capital from. If my generation had any balls, they would refuse collectively to pay their student loans and cause the whole "student loan" bullshit to collapse. I haven't paid a dime on my 110k in student loans and I'm going back for a Phd. I plan on leaving the USA and sticking the taxpayers with it. Fuck it.
ReplyDeleteIf you need a visa, that plan probably won't work. By the way, the U$A, unlike all other states, taxes non-resident citizens as well, so you would still be one of "the taxpayers" unless you succeeded in dispensing with US shitizenship.
DeleteOld Guy
I took immigration law but it was a couple of years ago and don't remember precisely what you would need to do. I have read about student loan fugitives, but my plan would be to dump my citizenship. I wouldn't be shocked if others are thinking the same.
DeleteI agree with you, and see only one cause for optimism.
DeleteBetween today and the end of your repayment period, the United States has to restructure her sovereign debt - i.e. repudiate some or all of it. There's zero way this country keeps going for another 20-25 years without dealing with her debts.
That's a paradigm shift.
For a long time now, we've screwed the poor by introducing a credit-for-basic-goods society [wages are way insufficient to house, clothe, feed, educate, medicate] in which the laws have been arranged so that the lender never has to take a loss.
That is going to change. Some debts need to be written off in their entirety - i.e. the lender needs to take a loss. Period.
Student loan debt is the easiest to deal with because the federal government doesn't have to go find even one new tax dollar or borrowed dollar to make it happen and individual adjudication is as easy as restoring bankruptcy. They'll never give it to us? We'll overrun their castle...
There are 75 million boomers in the country. There are 74 million millennials. Guess which population is shrinking by deaths? Tick, tock, we're a voting majority. But we need to get on the same page that student lending is evil, not capitalism, and should be done away with.
Possible but not that easy. (In particular, ordinarily you have to have the citizenship of some other state before the US will allow you to renounce its own.) And a few years Uncle Scam instituted a fee, roughly $500, for renouncing citizenship that in most cases was foisted upon people without their consent.
DeleteOld Guy
8:16 you are 100% correct. I am an elder millennial at 33 and am kind of shocked at how poorly the boomers have fucked up this country in the short time that they have had power. Really since 1992 when Clinton got elected until the present they have done absolutely nothing at all other than enrich themselves at the expense of others. What sucks is that the 2016 presidential election is probably going to be Clinton v. Bush again and another 8 years of ineptitude. In a historical context, we are the first generation of Americans to have a worse economic outlook than any generation long-term in our nation's history. The assholes running the country in the 1920s like Harding, Coolidge and Hoover were awful, and the Great Depression occurred as a result of the obsession with libertarian economic ideology. WW2 pulled us out because of the massive gov't spending along with the fact that the rest of the industrialized economies got blown up by bombs. What scares the shit out of me is what happens long-term for us who have student loan debt? Our politicians are all old farts who went to college in the 1960/70s when it was cheap because the generation preceding them were responsible and looked out for the next generation. You know, like storming the beaches of Normandy and island-hopping to defeat fascist Japan. I guess demographically the boomers are doomed finally, but it's a pathetic, sad legacy that they have left behind.
DeleteNo, the millennials are emphatically not the first generation to have a worse outlook than its predecessors. That dubious honor belongs to my generation, Generation X.
DeleteThe millennials too are being screwed, but at least they're getting jobs, thanks to their boomer parents (who wouldn't touch Generation X with a bargepole).
Old Guy
@ Old Guy, that's true. We're working on Lost Decade #2, by my count.
DeleteI got hit with three busts in a row. The DotCom bust/9-11 coming out of high school (I worked); the Housing bust coming out of college (worked the whole time), and the Legal bust coming out of law school (which is both related to the broader economy's troubles, but suffering from its own unique problems).
And you know what? The kids coming up now will have it even worse.
Forget income inequality, let's talk about who owns the means of ownership (capital). All essential goods and services are suffering from monopoly/cartelized pricing. When someone prints money for you, lets you borrow at 0%, writes laws in your favor, it turns out you can buy a hell of a lot of stuff (including market power) and become an oligarch via an ologopolized 'market.'
Educational costs, rent, medical costs, the LIBOR, and the Candy Crush IPO...it's all price-fixed, baby. Have you ever tried to figure out what a prescription drug costs cash? Ha ha!
When the consumer starts to go bust from the low wages, price-gouging and subprime credit he never really wanted but had to take to get by, then it's time to remove bankruptcy protection!
This country is sick. Her mainstream Republicans are particularly heinous, and her Democrats do not understand that means have to actually achieve the goals they are supposed to achieve.
All this goodness while there's a race to the bottom in wages courtesy of the worst job market since the Great Depression.
It's not getting any better. I never, ever thought I would grow up and pine for somewhere with better opportunity, somewhere more free than the United States to immigrate to, but I do now.
Old Guy and 3:01 I stand corrected, Gen X is the first to be worse off. I am definitely thinking about leaving the USA because long-term, unless I married a rich woman, I'm screwed. My ancestors came here from Italy with nothing about 100 years ago. I'm dreaming about heading back possibly. It remains to be seen what happens for all of us in this failed society.
DeleteAustralia, Canada, and New Zealand are among the few states that are encouraging the immigration of skilled workers.
DeleteI just wish that I had a job at a Soviet tractor factory.
Old Guy
If you want a job at a soviet tractor factory, stay home, get a job with Caterpillar. This country is in an unmistakeable decline.
DeleteIt is high time to put the pessimism to rest, boys. There are lemmings, chumps, and plain old misguided souls to rescue from the clutches of the schemers. It is pessimism alone that stops us from completing this task. (Yes, the deserve to be rescued even if they are chumps. Especially the attractive blond ones.)
ReplyDeleteSmoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast. (I'm binge-watching Red Dwarf this weekend).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXYfnWRp1Q0
Ace Rimmer "surfing" an alligator out of the plane and having it bite the Nazi on the head is the coolest thing I've seen for a long time. Thanks for sharing!
DeleteIt's worth noting that Allard stole the "drum major for justice" line from Martin Luther King, Jr. -- a truly great person who changed this nation for the better.....without ever attending law school.
ReplyDeleteThere are few acts more despicable than plagiarizing Dr. King.
DeleteWhile MLK did much good, he big time plagiarist himself, unfortunately.
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._authorship_issues
"As Clayborne Carson, director of the King Papers Project at Stanford University, has written, "instances of textual appropriation can be seen in his earliest extant writings as well as his dissertation. The pattern is also noticeable in his speeches and sermons throughout his career."
Uhh, wasn't Dr. King found to have plagiarized others himself?
Deletehttp://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/11/us/boston-u-panel-finds-plagiarism-by-dr-king.html
I made the original comment at 4:42. While it's true that part of MLK's dissertation was plagiarized (which I don't think detracts from his accomplishments or moral authority, it just shows he was a flawed human being like all of us) let's not miss the bigger point. Allard is basically calling for these Brooklyn Law grads to go forth into the world and be modern-day MLKs.....which is absurd. With a six-figure loan hanging over your head, and a JD from a terrible school, it's hard to be a drum major for justice. These Brooklyn Law grads are more likely to be begging for change on a street corner than changing the world from their corner office.
DeleteI actually read MLK's doctorial thesis he wrote while at Boston University and it was a decent piece of theological scholarship. It's ironic that a scumbag is plagiarizing one of his most famous quotes to screw over people, rather than help them.
Delete1. Nando likes to use adjectives like exhilarating and fabulous to describe law schools. Usually in sentences like "Brooklyn Law School is the 83rd most fabulous and exhilarating law school in the nation, an 'honour' it shares with three other toilets." I'm not sure this connotation was what Allard was going for though.
ReplyDelete2. Twenty-first century adventurers? Really? From reading what lawyers write on blogs I was thinking more like 21st century sweatshop workers; clicking away documents in windowless basements, doing odd jobs for established attorneys for minimum wage, suffering frequent bouts of unemployment. I wonder if Dean Allard has anything to say about those more apt comparisons between 19th century occupations and what lawyers do in the current day.
3. If you want to be a guardian of our Republic it helps to be employed by it. But with cutbacks in hiring from the government public defender, prosecutor, and other jobs are hard to come by and often go to the connected and grads of the T14.
4. What about some more realistic occupations; stocking shelves, pouring lattes, reviewing documents, collecting unemployment. Also I don't think it is wise to borrow prestige from Abraham Lincoln. He's going to want it back, with interest (interest by the way is that financial thing that will ruin your life if you have a degree from Brooklyn)
Your law degree need not collect dust. You can also burn it, like here --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Qe_ZgvIVc
5. The Walls of the Citadels of the Prestige of the Law are looking worse for wear. We have witnessed the fall of Dewey & LeBoeuf, the firing of the associates at Latham and Watkins, the paring down of billable hours everywhere, the freeze in associate compensation, and even the abandonment of standards at law schools, and the beginning of the law bot revolution. How is this all supposed to *Help* the law grad I don't know, but Allard seems to be telling the truth here kinda.
6. If you wanted to work in the law field you should have studied information technology. Then you would be qualified for jobs in machine learning (http://www.poweredbyross.com/) or e-discovery (http://jddisadvantaged.blogspot.com/2014/10/relativity-ediscovery-consultant-urgent.html)
7. I wonder how much of this praise will remain true in Dean Allard's mind 9 months from now. Or will the students all of a sudden be dimwitted, lazy, and entitled for wanting a job that will pay their student loans.
8. What, *Indeed*, is the worth of legal education? What value will it have to justify the investment you and your families have made with your dollars, your efforts, and your time?
a. First by learning the language of obfuscation, the language lawyers speak, you learned how to be useless at non-law jobs. Every grad has this 'advantage'. Unfortunately most of you will have to try to seek non-law jobs so this might skill be painful for you.
b. Second you have learned that society doesn't work for you. Shitting you out with no practical training onto an uncaring job market. You will learn to adapt, taking any job, leaving the law degree of the resume, coping with the indifference and incompetence of the career services office.
c. Third you are now strapped with at least one-hundred thousand dollars in non-dischargable debt. The law student is the indentured servant of our society.
9. Then why all the jobs that say No JD Need Apply. Also if you are thinking of what to do with your life, the suggestions of being Architects of Bridges (over water), or Engineers (of Computers or Cars) are good choices.
10. What fields would these be? and do their job ads also say No JD need Apply when you look at them?
11. Wayne Gretsky is right. Skate to where the puck is going. Don't listen to this serial prestige thief. Don't go to law school.
You give Allard far too much credit. He doesn't sound "naturally gifted," merely desperate.
ReplyDeletePossibly, but for a buffoon he has a pretty impressive resume. I am wondering whether his flair for over-the-top flattery had some small contributing role in his success. Maybe, maybe not.
Delete"[Y]our law degree is not meant to be a mere slip of processed parchment collecting dust with other bric-a-brac and tchotchkes."
ReplyDeleteThe word other makes it clear that that law degree is bric-Ã -brac and a tchotchke.
By the way, the diploma (the word that All Lard should have used) almost certainly isn't made of parchment anyway. I'm willing to bet that Crooklyn uses paper.
Old Guy
In the linked article Admiral Allard said:
ReplyDelete"It is a shameful canard that student loans and indebtedness are the cause of high tuition. They are not. They are the symptom, not the cause. Tuitions at law schools are soaring, as the American Bar Association and other observers point out, because of the way in which law schools spend money in pursuit of outdated, flawed rankings rather than investing in students, education, professional training and scholarship."
He's partly right, pursuing rankings is a big cause of tuition inflation. Otherwise though he is very wrong. A lot of money being spent on "students, education, professional training and scholarship" is actually wasted money.
And of course student loans are actually the cause of all this waste. Improper lending is what enables it in the first place. Throw money at colleges, they are going to spend as much as they possibly can, even if much of it is wasted. That's what they do.
The only way they will become more efficient is when lending is limited. Surely he must realize this? Probably he does, but he's implying there's no need to limit loans. Colleges will limit spending voluntarily. Particularly his college of course...
No. The US News and World Report rankings were first published in 1995. They didn't become a mainstay until later than 1995. Tuition inflation began a lot earlier than that.
DeleteIt's simple. It's greed, and the student lending facility to back it up. GREED. Get it?
That quotation reminds me of Cervantes's famous comment about a pot and a kettle. Allard complains that "law schools spend money in pursuit of outdated, flawed rankings" without pointing out that his own toilet of a law skule does precisely that.
DeleteThe universal availability of student loans amounts to a blank check for law schools. Unsurprisingly, scamsters like All Lard have taken full advantage.
Old Guy
They are spending too much on scholarship (if one may call it that). Law faculty get summer research money which is only dreamed about in other colleges and faculties, and have an enviable (leisurely?) teaching load, usually no more than 2/2. Then the faculty spend money on vanity projects like baseball arbitration. Cut all the fluff out and have the law faculty teach 3/3, then the schools will require about half the faculty they have now. Tuition then can be significantly reduced.
DeleteAccording to Wikipedia (yes, I know), US News & World Reports has been ranking law schools since 1987, not 1995.
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_United_States
The initial grad school rankings were just opinion polls conducted of deans. The US News, formula-based ranking of all ABA law schools was first published in 1992 per this law review article. (pg. 10).
DeleteAs the article points out, it took several years for the rankings to become important.
http://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/research-%28lsac-resources%29/gr-07-02.pdf
Tuition inflation well predates the existence and rise of the rankings. The greed existed long before the rankings.
If you're looking for market-dynamic-culprit(s) in the last two decades, the rankings (which are participated in voluntarily by giving US News data) hardly rank:
1) 1998 is when federal student loans became non-dischargeable in bankruptcy; until '98 after a waiting period (I believe it was 7 years at its height, but I'm going off memory), they could be fully discharged.
2) Alternative repayment programs to avoid calling defaults, "defaults" under Bill Clinton.
3) 2007, the creation of uncapped GradPLUS Loans.
Greed.
These people would rape an infant if it got them paid all while lecturing you on their special worth to society.
Wait...did I say "would?"
What happened to Wexler? Is she still on the payroll? She used to be chauffeured around in a company car and pulled in over $500,000 a year. She used to wax poetics about how the Crooklyn degree was magical, yet her own daughter wouldn't touch the turd with a 10 foot pole and wound up at Cornell, where she used the connections of her royal heinous to launch a biglaw career.
ReplyDelete...and Wexler's daughter is likely one of the people who could've wound up well off regardless of going to a trash heap, since her daddy is a name partner at his firm. Pity the poor schucks who can't get their wedding announcements in the New York Times.
DeleteLaw is political, especially Biglaw. I realized after many years that a lot of firms, top local ones, and Biglaw and their satellite offices, are political. That is, family connections getting business. Sure, other people from top schools can make it to Biglaw. The question is: Can they stay? Personally, I know several people from my TTT that in no way shape or form had the grades, journals, or honors (or intelligence, frankly..) to deserve Biglaw. Yet, they remain to this day after many, many years. They are simply a cost of doing - of getting - that business the firm wants.
DeleteThe bottom line is that this is really how the world works. The other grads from top schools with good grades, etc. get bounced after "X" years if they can't manage to develop a book of business of their own while the connected people simply start out with their books plus a lot of other edges.
If someone flat out told you that you had a 95% chance of just being grist for the mill - that the Plan was always to simply use you and the above were your true odds of success - would you take that bet?
But like I said, the above is really how the world works. Most people are grist for the mill and were always intended to be so. If the truth were known, people wouldn't jump through the hoops and do the work needed from them to benefit others in the overclass.
Allard is making a hard run to join the esteemed ranks of Hobbs, Mitchell, and Diamond.
ReplyDeletehttp://campus.lawdragon.com/2014/12/07/bar-exam-draws-scrutiny-after-scores-drop-most-in-almost-40-years/
“The reason this matters is because we need lawyers,” Allard said in an interview. “We need more new, energetic, motivated lawyers and here’s why: Look at the mess we’re in, from Ferguson to immigration issues that rip us asunder to gun issues to Ebola.”
Yes, the same tired old chanson about issues that allegedly require the attention of lawyers, without one peep about paying those lawyers.
DeleteOld Guy