The Donation Request Letter is an time-honored tradition. Who doesn't like free money, after all?
Snark aside (briefly), one is used to the idea when it comes to one's undergraduate school - after all, undergrad has historically been the stepping stone to a career, or a waypoint that helps open the door to further education (and, later, a career). One might certainly feel inclined to demonstrate gratitute towards one's alma mater in the form of financial gifts, in appreciation of the education and services received. However, given the difficulties that have been endemic to the legal market for some time now, along with misleading employment stats, skyrocketing tuition, and reduced applications, the Law School Donation Request Letter is another animal altogether. See, for example, a correspondent's letter from Valpo Law:
As a side note, some of our readership may not be aware that Valpo's former Dean, Jay Conison, a long-time proponent of law school, recently flew the coop to head that esteemed institution of Infilaw learning, Charlotte School of Law. There is no accounting for taste, I suppose.
However, all is not lost! The crisis in legal education is acknowledged. There has been a lot of "progress" towards "transform[ing]" legal education. The school is moving forward "bold[ly]." The faculty is "first-rate," and the legal writing and research program is one of the "nation's best." (Because we all know that everyone else's writing and research programs must suck.) The school's "reputation" is "intact." The almuni have "made their mark."
Well, I'm ready to donate $50, how about you? The claims in the letter and the data-driven results compiled by LST clearly match, right?
One has to ask what purpose the gifts actually serve. Upon reading the letter, it is not readily apparent how dollars contributed generate "transformation," improve faculty, or help in "vital" ways. It seems odd that the tuition garnered from 200-ish brand-spanking-new 1Ls each year, let alone current 2Ls and 3Ls, does not achieve these goals on their own. No, further appeals for gifts are necessary.
Because if you are willing to give $50 now, you might be willing to give $500 or $500,000 later. The psycology of this behavior is well understood. Given the number of grads going to BigLaw, however, that number doesn't seem to bode towards the high side anytime soon.
I suspect many such letters have gone to many alumni from law schools all across our great nation. As applications continue to slide as the truth continues to come out, watch these appeal become ever more fervent. The deficits have to be made up, somehow.
The new dean, Andrea Lyon (unlike Conison, the con artist) had a pretty good reputation as a capital defense lawyer. It is a lot of money, I am sure, but it's a shame to see her accept a deanship at a horrible law school like Valpo. In other words, it is a shame when good people sell their souls.
ReplyDeleteIf what you say of her career is true, at least when the dump folds she'll be one of the few people in legal academia who might be able to get a job in the real world.
DeleteIt appears that Dean Lyons is an alumna of a defunct law school--Antioch School of Law. So she's undoubtedly well-prepared to usher in the future of legal education at Valparaiso.
DeleteWhich five law schools have closed? (If only!) This cannot refer to ABA-accredited law skules.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny that every law skule, right down to Valparaiso, has a "first-rate" faculty and is "among the nation's best" in this or that? Of course, when all are first rate, none is first rate.
Old Guy
I always tell people that the public schools in my community are really good because every quarter more than half of the students make the honor roll.
DeleteI wondered this as well, Old Guy. Must be unaccredited schools, otherwise we would have heard about this claim.
DeleteAlso agree with 5:33 AM about good people selling their souls. Conison, I understand, and no one is surprised about the tack he is taking, really. Inflilaw says it all.
Lyon, not so much - maybe she really thinks she can make a positive change in how law schools deliver their product and on student outcomes? If so, she would certainly be the voice crying out in the wilderness, then, and the weight of decades of malfeasance is against her. Few skools will pay attention anyway, when there is so much sweet federal loan money to gorge on.
There is no way to improve student outcomes other than by drastically reducing the price and half of the schools (at a minimum) closing. No matter what anybody does the law schools cannot control the fact that there are twice as many graduates as there are jobs, and that most jobs don't pay enough to cover massive student loan debt, the salaries being a function of gross oversupply.
DeleteI recently looked at the web site of a Chicago firm I worked at in the mid 1980's. In my day they had an equal number of partners and associates. Some partners, obviously, brought in more business than others but on average each partner could keep him/herself and one associate busy. Now they have 37 partners and 9 associates; in the land of 2015 it takes 4 partners to keep 1 associate busy. That is the reality but the law schools, of which there are a lot more now, keep churning out graduates and how they deliver their product will change nothing.
One could ask "which part of way, way too many lawyers for the available paying work do the schools not understand?" But the fact is that they do understand. They understand very well. Problem is, while everyone working in law schools knows this no one is willing to be the one who falls on their sword to improve the situation. Then they'd have to face the same cold, cruel world their graduates have to face.
5 unaccredited California schools closed in 2012
Delete8:56 AM is absolutely correct. There are too many lawyers and the competition is unbelievable. Lawyers advertising on television can be one after another, even criminal and divorce law which is not as lucrative as personal injury. I just don't see many lawyers, especially new graduates, contributing to their alma mater. I think law schools should be giving money to their alumni as a token of their appreciation. After all, when you buy a new car you get a full tank of gas, a warranty and maybe free oil changes for a while. And most cars don't cost anywhere near as much as law school today.
DeleteA few weeks ago, I happened to drive along the coast of Alabama and Mississippi. All along the interstate highway were identical billboards advertising the services of a single lawyer. There must have been a dozen or more. I wondered how much they cost. They created an impression of desperation.
DeleteTricia, bless her, recently gave an interview at which she played a commercial that, as she freely admitted, plumbed the depths of tackiness. I thought that the thing was beneath her (it sounded like a spot for Big Bubba's Yoozd Karz)—until she said that she spent close to a quarter of a million dollars a year broadcasting the goddamn thing. And she has an established practice and close to thirty years' experience! She would not stoop to such undignified antics unless, indeed, she felt that she had to.
"Just hang out a shingle", we hear. When experienced lawyers are dropping a million dollars every four years on hucksterism just to chase up a few vulgar clients on contigency.
Old Guy
Gifts? Dude! Gifts are so yesteryear. Forgivable loans are now tout la rage. Dean Lyon needs to redraft the money beg.
ReplyDeleteIt is all just so completely destructive and sad.
ReplyDeleteThe scamming will not save these schools. The job market will never absorb the glut. Lives will be totally ruined and some will be lost. The government will eat the cost of the loans that cannot be repaid.
Please give us $50.00 so we can continue to destroy human lives.
Please give us $50.00 so we can manipulate an increasingly unsophisticated group of human beings, who will then live the prime of their lives in inescapable poverty with the added emotional bludgeoning and shame of realizing how badly they were used by people who looked upon them as prey.
"Enrollment has dropped at law schools across the nation. At Valparaiso Law, we see this as not a time to pull our head into a shell..."
ReplyDeleteIs this a turtle analogy? If so, it should read, "pull our head into OUR shell..." The phrase as it is written evokes the image of someone holding a shell (conch, maybe?) in front of them and using pulleys to slow put their head into any random shell.
But what would be wrong with imitating a turtle using a defensive strategy during these market conditions? Turtles live a very long time.
I can't help but think that if a dean of a T14 school had written this letter, they would have said "putting our head into the sand" as this would be a much more appropriate analogy. Ostriches put their heads into the sand, thinking that they're going to avoid danger when they are actually worse off, simultaneously being exposed and blind. Isn't this what law schools are doing?
You all should be as clever as the law schools and send THEM letters requesting donations to help with your student loan payments.
ReplyDeleteDamn, you are just so clever as usual.
DeleteThat's a great idea. Turn it around on them.
At the T14 law school I attended, I remember that on the very first day of orientation we were asked to provide the mailing addresses of our parents and any relatives we wished to include. Ostensibly, it was so that they could receive some sort of newsletter from the law school. But everyone knew the real reason -- they wanted to start hitting our families up for donations WHILE WE WERE STILL IN LAW SCHOOL. If my parents had had the disposable income to make a donation (which they didn't), then they would have given that money to me to help defray the cost of going to school. They certainly wouldn't have donated it to the school! How offensive that these schools can charge obscenely inflated tuition, and then have the audacity to ask parents and relatives to make donations on top of that. Their greed knows no bounds! The level of avarice at these places is off the charts!
ReplyDeleteAt many of the so-called T14, most of the students come from rich families. Daddy Warbucks can send a bag of money to the law skule while also paying all of Baby's bills (lavish lifestyle included).
DeleteWhen you started law school, you probably didn't know that the place would be overwhelmingly peopled with rich kids. Certainly I was unaware of that. But I found out fast. During the first week, I told one of the deans that I already felt alienated. And that was long before I saw every rich moron in the class get hired by a white-shoe firm while my senescent ass couldn't even get an interview anywhere.
Old Guy
"The crisis in legal education is acknowledged."
ReplyDeleteActually, that may not be accurate. Dean Lyons refers to it as a "purported crisis."
A few years ago I asked both my undergraduate and law school to remove me from their mailing list. I did this mostly to save trees, as I routinely tossed the missives unread. It had the ancillary benefit of stopping phone solicitations before I snapped at a hapless student.
ReplyDeleteI had to admire the skill with which that letter was written. It's a beautiful work of fiction.
ReplyDeleteValparaiso is being damn cheeky if they think any of its students give a damn about "first rate faculty" or "nation's best legal writing and research programs" (although both claims are probably laughable). By what right does an unranked toilet like this presume it should try and offer things like this which it has no business dabbling in anyhow? It should be concentrating on giving its students a sheepskin and the legal basics, as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
ReplyDeleteLet's see the quality of the writing that comes out of Valparaiso. Post a few haphazardly selected third-year papers here.
DeleteFor Christ's sake, the median LSAT score there is 143. Does anyone believe that these students can write worth a tinker's damn? Some of them may not even know the alphabet.
Old Guy
That letter was devoid of substance. Panhandling law schools. FU!
ReplyDeleteI want to shit in a bag and mail it back to my law school. It's exactly what they are doing to their students. Assholes making 300k a year are begging for $50. Take a fucking paycut and act like adults for once. Leadership is about shared sacrifice. Too bad the assholes running our legal system don't understand that. The chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court fucking complains judges here only make 150k a year and that they needs raises or qualified candidates won't want to become judges. Whores, all of em. FDR, Lincoln, and George Washington are great American leaders who sacrificed to help others. Rich boomers don't understand. Never will.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Not only do they want to maintain their pre-recession level incomes once you're in a recession [and the legal industry was and is - it shrinks every year], BUT THEY WANT A F'ING RAISE EVERY YEAR!
DeleteThe federal government - I should say, the Obama DOE, fake fucking liberal that he is- recently loosened the rules so that a bunch of schools who had greater than 40% default rates in a single year DID NOT LOSE FED FUNDING. And we're talking like the backwoods school of barbery and hairweaving. He's bending over for strip-mall, for-profit charletons.
This unlimited line of credit has precisely dick to do with the good of students or access to education.
It's just another BOOMER GRAVY TRAIN.
I swear to God, it's time to rip this country apart. We have literally been enslaved to the endless greed of the Boomer generation. While we cannot afford rent, food, to get married, have children, own cars we are forced to subsidize their pensions, healthcare, tenure, 401k performance in the stock market, housing prices through RMBS purchases that drove millions into homelessness with skyrocketing real estate prices...FUCKING. ENOUGH.
7:14 PM It's only going to get worse as they age. As of right now the oldest boomers are mid to late 60s. They aren't going to die anytime soon. They all vote and will continue to elect politicians that do whatever they want. My generation doesn't show up enough at the polls and our system is corrupted by money as it is. They will go kicking and screaming to their funerals and do whatever it takes to live off other people's backs until they die. Most selfish generation in American history. My plan is still to leave America long-term. Unless you are born into wealth of at least a million dollars, which is probably top 5/6% or have a unique talent, you are basically fucked. I am stuck in New England and waiting on graduate school acceptances so I never have to deal with the snow again. It's too much misery all at once to deal with. Get me the fuck out of here!
DeleteComplaining and bitching about everything including the snow isn't going to help you guys.
DeleteOh, but you're just so wrong at 7:02. Don't you know that snow is caused by the boomers, the most selfish generation in American history? They just sit by and let it snow while 12:23 waits for his grad school acceptances. Dumb ass actually thinks grad school is going to make him employable.
DeleteSo how does 12:23 know so much more than us? How did he figure out that boomers are evil, that they're depriving him of the success that he deserves? Well, damn it, he just feels it! His brain stem tells him everything he needs to know. He thinks his feelings control the world, because he belongs to the most selfish and self-centered generation in American history, except for the one that's coming next.
Other people should post their Law School Donation Request Letters (with personal information redacted of course). We could see the similarities in the genre. How do the schools justify themselves to their alumni? What Puffery do they used to panhandle? Do they all boast of essentially the same things? It would be interesting.
ReplyDelete"The crisis in legal education is acknowledged."
ReplyDeleteNo it's not. If it were, Valpo Law would have been boarded-up and padlocked long before it started welcoming incoming classes with a median LSAT score of 143.
Send these money grubbing aholes an envelope full of glitter or a wad of fake money. I'd really like to send a bunch of poop like one commenter suggested but it's illegal to send unmarked hazardous waste so the glitter or fake money will have to do. Maybe even include a note (e.g., Thanks for ruining my life, expletive expletive.) if every disgruntled grad did this, it would be hilarious.
ReplyDelete