Friday, April 13, 2018

Another Word of Warning from Someone Who Has Been Through the Gristmill

Look, I'm Just going to out-hustle my 100 other classmates at my 90th-ranked school, NBD.
 
 
Today we have a "guest post" that doesn't pull any punches.  OTLSS has laid this argument out on the line more than once concerning school rankings, but here is another poster from a year ago that puts it in no uncertain terms:
 
I go to a law school ranked 80-90 with about a 55% employment score. Do I think my quality of education is bad? No. However, I think the main difference between my school and a better school is the feel you have knowing that, out of any three students, one is going to get a good/decent job, one is getting a shitjob that won’t pay back their loans, and one isn’t get hired anywhere...everything matters because you know there’s way more falling bodies than trampolines to save them.
 
Also, remember that the employment score is likely bolstered by people who I call “immediate connectors.” These are people with serious connections that guarantee a job, not just the typical dude who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy he can send his resume to. These people bolster the employment score, but aren’t actually an indicator of the school’s ability to place its graduates. Just to toss some anecdotal examples out there, there’s a person in my class who transferred in from Charlotte School of Law. Her third time in the actual building, she went through OCIs and got swiped up by the biggest firm there. Come to find out, her dad is a bigshot partner there. The fix was in the whole time. Another person’s uncle is a damn US Senator and has a job locked up for that person in DC after law school. I can name at least 8 more in my 100ish-person law school class...I don’t blame these people for their connections (hell, I wish I had more), but you should understand what they mean. They’re sucking up a job that you honestly don’t have a chance of getting. It doesn’t matter how well you outline for Seagull Torts and write on for the International Dogbite Law Journal, the firm is looking to fill one spot and you aren’t beating out the partner’s kid. That’s less trampolines catching those falling bodies.
 
It’s frustrating especially because there are no solid criteria for what gets you a job, so you never get the feeling that you’re safe until your offer is in hand. The number one kid in the class is set, but I know the number five (with LR and a ton of mock trial stuff) kid is looking and can’t find shit. Number 3 kid is working as a state court clerk making as much as a dental hygienist but with much more debt. At the same time, there are some lower ranked kids with good job offers because they hustled their ass off...but it’s a rough correlation and a bunch of people who deserve it get left out in the cold.
 
What’s also shockingly noticeable are the people who are just refusing reality and are not hustling to get jobs even though it is 3L spring and that student loan hammer is just WAITING to crush them. I saw one dude in our class (probably in the top 10%, mind you) who said he put off looking for jobs pretty much all of January/February because he is the head of our school’s trial association and his time has been preoccupied organizing the school’s in-house trial competition...[y]ou see shit like that out of 3Ls all the time at this level and, honestly, the psychology is fascinating. Just straight-up denial of trying to find a job. You can tell they’ve never been put in that position before, where putting your head down and mumbling “I don’t know” isn’t an acceptable answer. These are people who have been smart and capable their entire lives and just aren’t computing that the transition from law school-to-work isn’t as smooth as the transition from undergrad-to-law school. There’s no magic standardized test score they can reach that will end with someone handing a job to them on a silver platter like there is with a really high LSAT score. It’s like someone put Valium in the water or something.
 
If this seems depressing, well, it is...[i]t seems crazy on most forums because all but a few 1Ls just can’t grasp it while their busting out all the cannons of construction for International Shoe. Realizing that you can do everything right and still lose is shocking to some people.  I’m a 3L and things “worked out” for me...[h]owever, I am aware that one misstep, one bad bounce and I’m back to being a falling body with no certain trampoline. So, would I recommend a school of this caliber to someone who isn’t an immediate connector (for those of you that are, it doesn’t matter which school so at least pick a cheap one in a nice location)? No. Absolutely not. It just isn’t worth it. But if someone insisted, I’d tell them to prepare for a fight.

We've said it before, and we will say it again - don't take our word for it, take it from someone who is unaffiliated with OTLSS.  You have nothing to lose, and perhaps your whole life to regain.

63 comments:

  1. Great post. Shows that most people should not even think about going to a low ranked law school.

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    1. NOBODY should go to an über-toilet.

      http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.ca/2017/05/the-seven-tiers-of-law-schools.html

      "TIER 6: The survival of these into 2017 offers an argument against the existence of a just god. Anyone who enrolls at one of these should not be allowed to roam the streets unsupervised."

      Delete
  2. We probably don't talk enough about the "automatics," people who could finish last and land a good job because of their ma or pa.

    Not just BigLaw, but numerous small law examples, students who were basically guaranteed a spot and to take over a 2-10 firm some day with a decent revenue stream and client connections built for them, not to mention all the firms in between and the judge's children who are gonna land somewhere. Big-name examples, but the Phil Corboy, Jr.'s, and Eugene Scalias of the world simply aren't going to wash out of law.

    Those people should really be excluded entirely from the job statistics as it's misleading to include them on the numerator or denominator. I don't have the statistics, but I would also guess overall that more of these folks overall - including the children of traffic court kings and ace prosecutors and 2nd-rate PI guys - wind up at 3rd-tier schools (particularly ones who need donations) than Cornell or UCLA.

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  3. This doofus is in law school NOW? I cannot at all fathom why anybody would have enrolled in the past 5 years. And really that should be the past 8 years, since the NYT article and Campos and these blogs all blew the law school scam story wide open.

    If morons are going to enter law school, and low ranked schools at that, then "give advice" not to go, what is the point? The intelligent people stopped going years ago. They already got the message.

    It's long been a case where anyone going is at least partially negligent and deserves some of what they get.

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  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  5. This is why Nando retired. And why I personally don't post much anymore. Not worth it:

    http://jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=157169

    The Scam was out in the open in 2007 with the WSJ article.

    At that time, using "He Who Shalt Not Be Named" as the baseline, I predicted that he was the first in what would soon become many, many more Lemmings with six-figure non-dischargeable student loan debt starting with a "3" or "2" as the first digit.

    Sure enough, just go check out nearly any school on LST. Full Sticker is for law school *alone* and does not include a likely $100,000 or thereabouts from undergrad.

    Anyway.. I have no idea why this person is complaining. He has a Million Dollar law degree and can do anything with it - at least according to the Academy.

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    1. The problem-ok, one of the many problems-is that there are way too many college graduates with what are essentially worthless bachelor's degrees. These grads, and there are thousands of them, can't find any job paying much more than minimum wage, often with zero benefits. So why not go to law school? Some lawyers are rich, maybe I'll be one of those. And if not, so what? The 250K from law school will just be added to the 100k from undergrad, which wasn't going to get paid back at $12.50/hour anyway. And, for three years at least, it sounds better to say "I'm in law school" than to say "I'm at Starbucks" or "I'm unemployed".
      And despite the NYT & WSJ articles, the mainstream press isn't helping:
      https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/04/11/single-mom-five-who-graduating-law-school-epic-photos-didnt-do-myself/508296002/
      Apparently, this story has gone "viral"....While I wish her well, what's her debt? Does she have a job lined up? None of this is discussed in any of the many articles about this, and absolutely none will track her progress through the bar exam and legal employment.
      It appears that Nando made the right decision to leave when he did. It's clear that there are literally thousands who don't care to know, or just don't care, and still attend law school.

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    2. That lady went to one of the worst of the über-toilets. She may well have overcome a lot to get her degree, but that doesn't mean that she'll have a career as a lawyer.

      Delete
    3. And yes, of course, it's the final story of this evening's ABC Nightly News, because, of course, it's a feel good story. Feel good about what, not sure, but after seeing this on TV tonight, it really seems almost hopeless to convince anyone of the risks of attending law school.
      It's well-known that all of the construction trades are hurting for skilled workers. If this woman had gotten training and become a licensed electrician, would her story have made the national news? No, no chance...being an electrician is an in-demand job that pays well, but where's the glamour? No "LA Electricians" for you, thanks. And that's the problem. A good job with good pay with little debt...never mind. Instead, get that 250K of debt and hope to find a job that pays 50k/year. But how can you put a price on the glamour?

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  6. "I’m a 3L and things “worked out” for me...[h]owever, I am aware that one misstep, one bad bounce and I’m back to being a falling body with no certain trampoline."

    The instability of lawyer jobs, at least the type of job that first years get, combined with "zero tolerance" for an imperfect career path is a big problem that prospective law students do not understand. Because law firms operate on an "up or out" "class year" hiring basis, it is very hard to hang on to full-time permanent work as a lawyer in the private legal sector for a career.

    Going outside the private sector may not be an option for most lawyers. The number of full-time permanent government and in house lawyer jobs is limited.

    So you really have a lot of lawyers who started in good jobs on the market and very few open jobs relative to the number of experienced job seekers. The selection that a prospective employer has of lawyers is huge - over 100 applicants to each posted open lawyer job. That is why any misstep decreases a lawyer's chances of continuing a career, especially a career in full-time permanent work. Putting it differently, most lawyers reach a point where they simply cannot get full-time permanent work as a lawyer. Because of the lawyer oversupply that point comes well before retirement age.

    So if your law firm gives associates and you two months to leave as part of its up or out policy, and you want to pass up that job with a 3 hour daily commute and look for longer than two months, good luck finding full-time permanent work as a lawyer that pays more than $60,000 a year.

    Two months is the normal and very generous severance period in big law. In small law, there may be no severance at all and no time to look.

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  7. Indeed, many students, however poorly they may do in law school, get jobs because of familial connections. At my law school (an élite one), many a dolt at the bottom of the class got a job for this reason at a big firm or in some other exalted institution, while unconnected Old Guy, with his top grades and much else to recommend him, could not find work at all.

    Of course, the beneficiaries of this patronage tend to regard themselves as worthy, not just lucky.

    It's surprising that someone whose father was a partner at a huge law firm could end up at the Charlotte School of Law. Couldn't Daddy's influence buy something better than that?

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  8. To be fair, there are some graduates who are gifted entrepreneurs, very talented at sales and marketing, who are able to bring in a lot of cases as solos or small firm practitioners, and get lots of referral fees or lucrative PI cases. The problem is that this covers only a small percentage of graduates. Also such people could likely make more in other fields (sales, banking etc).

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  9. To anyone considering law school, understand that this post from a year ago is not due to a temporary setback in the legal market. The law schools want you to believe that the legal market took a hit after the Great Recession and that 2015, no 2016, er 2017, make that 2018 will be the year that hiring picks up. In fact, law schools have been churning out an oversupply of grads for decades. Prior to the Great Recession, law schools published fictitious job placement stats, claiming 99% employment rates with average private practice salaries in the 6 figures. When the schools published these same fraudulent stats after the great recession, the law school scam bloggers questioned the dubious stats. That led the ABA to impose new rules that required law schools to publish truthful stats. Since law schools started reporting that many grads end up unemployed or in non-legal jobs, they have spun the pitiful data and have claimed year after year that a rebound in hiring is imminent. No rebound in hiring is coming, because there never was demand for many of the toilet law grads to begin with.

    Listen to Old Guy. He graduated from a top school decades ago and faced a dismal job market for lawyers. I graduated in the mid 2000s from a toilet law school with good grades and law review. Every legal employer rejected me. 2 of my friends on law review were also rejected by big law and many employers. They ended up joining solo practices for little money. One doesn’t even practice law anymore. Many of my friends that were not on law review just took non-legal jobs. I know three law grads that pursued MBAs and now work corporate jobs. One friend became a police officer and is told by prosecutors and defense attorneys they are very fortunate. My friend earns more money than a typical solo or prosecutor, has great benefits, and will receive a pension. One friend who never had a legal career, complains on Facebook that their massive student loan debt leaves them with little money to fill up their car with gas or to buy a new pair of shoes. Another friend tried the LLM route. They borrowed even more money but then bounced around temp jobs afterwards and settled for some type of JD advantage job. I was not even the only failed lawyer in my med school. There was a law grad in the class ahead of me.

    When you see failed lawyers with successful careers in business, law enforcement, and medicine, what does that tell you about the legal market? We probably are not even as smart as some of the other posters on this blog. There are posters who went to Ivy League schools for undergrad and law school who are struggling after exiting big law because of the up or out policies of law firms. Save yourself from wasting 3 years of your life and borrowing six figures in student loans. Most likely you’ll have to pursue a second career outside of law down the road.

    Before going to law school, take a look at the real GDP by industry data published by the BEA. Many industries, like finance, tech, and healthcare have had substantial growth in recent years. But the real GDP of the legal industry has declined substantially. Do you like your odds in a declining industry with an oversaturation of grads?

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    1. Thanks for your comments. I actually got my degree in law only a few years ago—from a top school, as you said, and also with top grades and law review, among other distinctions.

      Delete
    2. A part of the problem is that it is not clearly unlawful, at least under federal law, to apply experience limits to jobs in the US. The issue of whether jobs can be limited to recent college graduates is being litigated. In the meantime, employers are enforcing these limits with relative impunity.

      As an example, a 50 year old lawyer and double Harvard graduate washes out of law and decides he wants to reinvent himself in the hedge fund sphere. He applies to entry and junior level hedge fund jobs. The jobs all reject him because he is not a recent college grad.

      Applying the same concept to Old Guy, work experience before law school could similarly be used against him.

      When you look at the issue of experience limits on jobs, most lawyer jobs have these types of limits.

      Age discrimination - likely, yes, but under federal law is probably lawful.

      The legality of omnipresent experience limits in open lawyer jobs in a very oversaturated legal profession is another reason not to go to law school.

      Delete
  10. I went to an elite law school and an equally or more elite college in the 1970s. While there were law firms struggling even then, my law school class was relative to today much smaller and almost all found work in large or mid sized law firms or in federal clerkships for the minority who pursued them.

    Starting in the mid-90s, my own relatively small circle started to include graduates of Harvard, Yale and Stanford who were around my age, or a little older, who were suffering from extreme underemployment or unemployment. These people were not losers. They were former superstars. I knew many lawyers growing up, but had never heard of this phenomenon, even among the more mediocre lawyers, or I would not have gone to law school.

    Problem is that you fast forward to the time the class hit their early to mid 50s and there are relatively few people in six figure jobs. Most of those people are white males who made partner in larger or a few cases mid sized law firms and held on to those jobs.

    The women in that class are struggling after age 50 unless they had family money and/or married well. They are not welcome in high paying jobs and do not have six figure jobs. One woman who was a star, for example, with many offers of summer jobs, and from a successful family ended up moving from place to place after the loss of a spousal job and finally in low income housing away from where she lived, with no jobs for her apparently after about age 35. Women from that class mostly had to marry well to be affluent financially or inherit.

    The minorities in the class are mostly nowhere to be seen in the private sector by that point. A few lower court-type judges and a few minority males in their own smaller firms, but you wonder where all the minorities went.

    Fast forward to today, and there are increasing numbers of lawyers forced out of the profession because the work has dried up and they cannot get hired.

    The work drying up is the big problem. It does not exist.

    Many graduates I know with elite records who are now in their early to mid 50s are struggling and unemployed after a multiyear job search. They say they know few of their contemporaries in full-time permanent legal jobs.

    At the same time as my classmates are struggling, our city is paying the average city employee almost what a first year associate makes in big law, including benefits. My classmates and many of the people who graduated from our law school in the 1980s now have incomes of probably 40% of that amount on average, if that.

    I am not sure the Bureau of Labor Statistics is counting correctly when they keep increasing the number of lawyer jobs nationally. They are running a sampling analysis and their sampling is questionable, given how many lawyers I know who are unemployed or underemployed. The low unemployment rate BLS posts is even more questionable. It is out in left field, given the current legal job market.

    If these are the results for lawyers who start out very successful, what are the outcomes for those who cannot find good legal jobs in the first place?

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  11. As an aside from this, the lawyers we know by and large are facing huge trouble in retirement. They just do not have sufficient savings or income to live on after struggling in their careers.

    In our high cost area, the lawyers are going to have to pay for the public employees' sky high benefits in property taxes, rents and/ or income taxes. It is taking from people of modest incomes to support high incomes of public employees.

    Many lawyers are going to have to move far away to very low cost areas in their older years because they cannot afford to stay in their homes in high cost areas.

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  12. Prospective law students also need to realize that a lot of jobs they see posted on various websites like indeed, monster, glassdoor, symplicity, etc are not real.

    As in, the company or firm already has someone picked out for the job and they post it only to comply with EE hiring practices. These jobs do not actually exist.

    However, I think that all the information about the law school scam is out there, and has been out there for 10 years now. Anyone who goes to law school was not properly taught how to think critically about their own future and is basically financially illiterate. Part of that falls on the parents.

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    1. I've fallen into this trap more times than I care to admit-but for many, many legal jobs, this is exactly right-the job is already filled. It works like this: firm/company knows who it wants to hire, but the HR department imposes some sort of arbitrary number of applicants who must be interviewed. The interviews are polite, etc, as the interviewers are schooled about how they must behave. Then all applicants are rejected. It's gotten so bad at times that I've rec'd a text thanking and rejecting me as I leave the building from the interview. What a profession.

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    2. Wow...can't even get out the door without an auto-ding these days...

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  13. 40% of all lawyers in the USA are solos making a median of 37K a year with no insurance, pension or benefits.

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    1. Where does that figure come from. I am a solo and I never accurately report my income to anybody but the IRS....Any solo worth anything can get business making a decent living...there are tons of family law, personal injury and criminal cases out there. Not saying you will get rich, but 37K medium? that is barely the fee you make for a decent PI settlement.

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  14. I paid off my debt with OT from a factory job. I'm trying to get back into the dating world, so I signed up for eharmony. I've had some hits, but I'm at the point where I'm considering a strict "No Graduate Degrees" policy. 200k in debt, working 60 hrs per week, hoping to make partner in 5 years, is not the kind of wife I want.

    Does this make me a bastard? I'm not a catch myself, but I'm debt-free and I want to be a father.

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    1. You're not a bastard. What is your age and geographical region? Email me harley "dot" krinkley "at" aim "dot" com and I'll try to help.

      Delete
  15. Scamblogging has helped shine the light on the Law School Scam, and has made many aware that law school is overpriced and irrationally fixed on ranking and status, and no guarantee of success. The message is, generally said, that (1) the bottom 70% of law schools are complete wastes of time and money, regardless of how one ranks and should close; (2) being in the top 25% of one of the top 10 schools is merely the start point for the crap-shoot of getting a job (meaning one where they pay you); (3) you shouldn’t pay full sticker if you can manage to achieve no. 2; (4) many law school grads will never get a job–only a few; (5) law firm hiring is unfair and often subject to favoritism/nepotism; and (5) salaries aren’t what they used to be.

    This understandable and continuing focus on law school, has created an overly optimistic view of things. Scholastic over-achievers naturally picture themselves as the winner of this bleak game: “I’ll go to a top 3, get good grades/ make law review, interview real well and land that good (maybe not great) offer. Of course, I’m realistic and practical and modest, so if I fail to get the few $160K per year, I’m happy to settle for $125k per year. All right, even $95,000 is OK. Certainly, this kind of reduction will place me in the game.” And then there’s the stubborn prestige issue. Americans see lawyer status as class vindication, like an Englishman fancies himself a lord. So people buy lottery tickets.

    The focus of scamblogging is beginning to turn to long-term outcomes in law. And in this area, today’s truth about long-term employment as a lawyer makes the law school gamble look rosy. Put simply, regardless of where one attends law school today, regardless of how well one does there, and regardless of the cache/salary of the job you land, you simply will NOT HAVE a paying job for longer than 3–4 years. The up-or-out policy has long ago become start-and-out because there is absolutely no ‘up.’ The massive and continuing overproduction of lawyers means that hanging a shingle or starting a microfirm is no longer an option, and has not been for the past 15 years. These were options for earlier generations, but no longer. There is also a steady and irreversible decline in demand due to technology and the rise of non-lawyers performing routine tasks, so the idea of becoming a rainmaker at a firm is yesteryear. This is not a function of the Great Recession, but rather a result of decades of overproduction of lawyers (and continued overproduction of young lawyer underlings even in these troubled times).

    Established lawyers with paying cases and/or jobs today are the equivalent of very lucky survivors. They are beams of light that have traveled to us from a past that no longer exists today. Basing a future on that past is impossible. Not unlikely or reserved for the gunners; it is impossible. Today’s young lawyers at big- and midlaw with modestly or even massively respectably jobs have a shelf-life of 3–4 years. Gaining cases or employment in today’s world is the equivalent of a lightning strike, both in frequency and ability to predict.

    No one, and I mean no one, should be attending law school if employment (meaning getting paid by someone for more than) is their goal.

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    1. "Established lawyers... are beams of light that have traveled to us from a past that no longer exists today."

      Love this. The amateur astronomers will certainly appreciate the poetics of that statement.

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  16. "there’s a person in my class who transferred in from Charlotte School of Law. Her third time in the actual building, she went through OCIs and got swiped up by the biggest firm there. Come to find out, her dad is a bigshot partner there."

    Serious question - is nepotism really so prevalent at big law firms? It’s always been my understanding that white shoe firms have strict anti-nepotism policies which preclude the hiring of partners’ family members. Beyond that, these firms usually have stringent hiring requirements, which means you either have to attend an elite or near elite school or be in the top 10% at a lesser school. I just don’t see the hiring committee at Sullivan Cromwell offering a SA position to a bottom-halfer at Touro Law School because her father is a partner at the firm.

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    1. Can't speak for S&C, but during college worked as a messenger(yes, this was a while ago) for a large "white shoe" DC law firm. Got to know the summer associates pretty well-I was thinking of going to law school myself, and none of them talked me out of it, much to my regret-and they came in three categories:
      1. The plain and simple superstars-HYS, or at least top 10, great grades, usually plus law review. Most of the SAs fell into this category.
      2. People with pretty good credentials, not quite in the first group, though. Best example is the guy from UVA who had been a fighter pilot. There were not many of these.
      3. My favorite group; went to schools I never heard of, no law review, really seemed kinda lost among groups #1 & 2. Only a few of these and I came to find out all had a hook-all were either children of senior partners or were children of major clients(think major as in Walt Disney if he had any kids going to ls). Very few of these, but they were there, doing all the SA projects and activities. This was back in the day when the hot SAs were wooed, with boat trips and sporting events and concerts and catered lunches, unless lunch was at one of the chic restaurants in town. As far as I could tell, they did a little-but very little-actual legal work. It seemed mostly as if they were being courted.
      But...I was around long enough to see several of the classes of new associates. Virtually all came from group #1; not a single one from group #3. Having connections only went so far.

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    2. Where does this idea that highly connected people are stupid come from? Sounds like wishful thinking.

      Intelligence is made up of two things: genetics and environment. Wealthy people generally have both.

      People of the lower classes have to get extremely lucky for either, and rarely will have both so they need to overcome massive odds. While it does happen, it's simply unlikely, hence why successful people overwhelmingly are born of successful parents.

      Now in the example you refer to, transfers to a higher ranked school are overwhelmingly from people in the top 10% at a lower ranked school, so that combined with their now elite prestige is more than enough to meet those "stringent hiring requirements". The writer of the comment simply refuses to admit that he is not some special unique snowflake that others can not match.

      He's playing a prestige game with someone that has him beat on all accounts, and his whining is just sour grapes.

      Delete
    3. Yes, indeed, pedigree confers an immense advantage. Consider:

      J S Bach: Came from a long line of musicians. Had several children who also became musicians.
      Mozart: Father was Kapellmeister at Salzburg; took son's musical education in hand.
      Beethoven: Grandfather was Kapellmeister at Cologne. Father was a court singer; took son's musical education in hand.

      Examples could be multiplied.

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    4. I can give you one example of how family connections work.

      My brother-in-law interviewed at a huge Biglaw firm. My
      dad knew the founding partner pretty well and before the interview, called up the founding partner and informed him that a "certain person" would be interviewing, and not to give him uncritical consideration just because he was related to my dad.

      So he got the job. He might have gotten the job anyway, but I am preeeeety sure my dad's called helped.

      Delete
    5. Where did your brother go to law school and what was his rank? Also, your brother benefited from connections (which we all agree help), not nepotism.

      Delete
  17. Ok, totally off topic, but a familiar name

    http://www.9news.com/article/news/local/denver-professor-uber-driver-wouldnt-unlock-the-doors/73-540575851

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    1. ....that open road is really something

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  18. One of my colleagues who is senior partner had a very qualified child looking for work as a lawyer in a specialty area where the child had a few years of experience. The anti-nepotism policy of our law firm prevented the child from being hired in any experienced open position. The child spent a long time on job searches after losing one very elite associate job, and the anti-nepotism policy prevailed. Ultimately, the child found a job in a comparable firm and has moved several times since then without nepotism involved. The senior partner was distraught over the long, hard job search(es), but couldn't help at our firm.

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  19. Many lower-tier law schools have disgraced the profession and themselves by enrolling hordes of marginally qualified students, thus contributing to the attorney glut nationwide. But Charlotte Law School should be acquitted on that charge, at least this year.

    Charlotte did not enroll the marginally qualified, it enrolled the utterly unqualified. It did not contribute to the overproduction of attorneys in that zero alumni (0/11) from its final graduating class passed the bar.

    http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article209000844.html


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    1. What a fucking disgrace! And only 8 of the 73 who had taken the exam before passed this time.

      Trot out the excuses, of course. The graduates suffered a disadvantage because they had no law school or law library to support them while they prepared for the exam. (Never mind that I passed easily on the first try even though I was far from my law school and had access to no other.) There were no more professors or students to offer support. (Cry me a river.) And it won't be long before someone says, yet again, that the exam is unreasonably difficult.

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    2. What the fuck do law libraries and access to professors or students have to do with studying for the bar exam? You sign up for a bar review class and cram for two months, pretty much on your own. We know why all those Charlotte grads failed. They were low aptitude individuals who had no business attending (let alone graduating from) law school.

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    3. 7:39-exactly! Those comments-access to professors, etc-have an Alice in Wonderland quality, sounding "nice" while having no basis in reality, either now or years ago. Can anyone imagine visiting one of your law profs for advice regarding the Bar exam? S/he would have no idea who you were, and would no doubt seek a court order for stalking if you contacted them more than once.
      And everybody knows this, so the enablers/apologists aren't just in the Academy-they are in the legal community, too. These Charlotte alums are just too busy pushing nonsense to cover themselves.

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    4. Incidentally, I wonder how law professors would fare on the bar exam. Many of them have never taken it.

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    5. It is much easier to pass the bar if you are studying your BarBri manual in a law school library, as opposed to a regular old public library, a coffee shop, or at home. This is because law school libraries are likely to contain old hardback copies of law reviews that nobody has looked at in 30 years, or ever. The presence of these invaluable artifacts of law creates a study-friendly mood of lawiness, guaranteed to inspire a student to absorb the black letter legal principles that three years of law school somehow did not instill.

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    6. I didn't take a bar-review course; I prepared on my own, while living out of a suitcase and working full time in a location far from home (and far from the site of the bar exam).

      A typical law-review article is read by perhaps 3½ people. Just about the only ones who shake the dust off those volumes of law reviews in the library are editors charged with checking the citations in some hackademic scoundrel's tenure-oriented submission for publication.

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    7. I disagree to a degree old guy.... yes I use Lexis and Fast Case to research the law 95% of the time, but the nice thing about a Law Review Article, like Legal Encyclopedias available at the local law library, they help to summarize the law in particular areas of that law...would I rely on an authors opinion? No...but it is a good area to get the basics before doing your own legal search.

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  20. Nancy Leong says an Uber Driver tried to abduct her. ABA Journal

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  21. Hackademic scam-professor Nancy Leong claims to have been abducted by an Uber driver:

    http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_professor_says_uber_driver_tried_to_abduct_her_on_ride_to_the_airport

    Ah, the vicissitudes of the Open Road. Such a "joyful, liberated narrative" they offer in comparison to "dry judicial narratives".

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  22. According to Fox 31 Denver, she still hasn't filed a police report.

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    Replies
    1. Oh, she wouldn't do that. It would involve "bickering over whether a host of minutiae means that a police officer saw enough or heard enough or knew enough to establish 'reasonable suspicion.' The American dream has no time for such details; put another way, someone whose fate hangs on those details has no time to chase the American dream."

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    2. Leong reports Dybbuk to a state disciplinary committee over a blog comment and she doesn’t call the cops on a guy who tried to abduct her? Something about this story doesn’t add up.

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    3. Her "narrative" of abduction by a driver seems about as credible as her "narrative" of oppression by Dybbuk.

      Old Guy wouldn't put an apple into a basket that Leong was carrying.

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    4. Clearly, a public defender who is 1000 miles away from her physical presence is much more threatening and deserving of punishment than an Uber driver three feet away from her in the front seat of a car. The former deserves an ethics complaint, while the latter doesn't require a police report.

      LawPrawf Logic(tm).

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  23. She says that the driver caught up to his rolling car. Is this possible?

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  24. Über-toilet Albany Law School has awarded Alexander Hamilton an honorary degree.

    It seems unfair to foist one's "honorary" toilet-paper degree onto a person who, on account of death, cannot refuse it—and even openly scorn it. What next: an honorary JD for Blackstone from Cooley?

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    Replies
    1. ....now they can claim one of their graduates was secretary of Treasury....fantasic way to recruit the JD Advantage suckers...

      Delete
  25. I see Nancy ("she/her", as her Twitter bio states, happily appropriating a transgender thing) has jumped on the "gender" bandwagon in her scholarship. What happened to "commodization"?

    This woman literally grabs onto every hot issue and pretends that it's hers to "Leongsplain" to everybody. What next? Is she a secret Bitcoin expert? Will Nancy tell us she's actually Syrian? Or perhaps we'll get a tweet series on a fabricated sexual assault on her by Trump?

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    Replies
    1. "Leongsplain"...hilarious! 180.

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    2. Check out her new article denouncing gender-segregated sports as "problematic."

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    3. Typical law profe$$or: calling things "problematic" without proposing a solution.

      Delete
  26. Something to make your head explode this fine Friday: It's all scamming, all the time-It's the Bar Exam's Fault edition. Charlotte was a fine, fine law school. And the author is a "former N.C. Supreme Court Justice" so he obviously knows what he's talking about.

    http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article209319874.html

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    Replies
    1. He takes exception to the Knee-jerk conclusion that the school sucked....

      Delete
    2. Just another scamster blaming the bar exam and denying the students' and the school's lousiness.

      —— Two out of every three graduates of accredited law schools in this state [North Carolina], having invested huge amounts of time and money in their quest to become licensed attorneys, were deemed “unqualified” as a result of a two-day exam.

      So what? Maybe those graduates were indeed unqualified. Is there any evidence suggesting the opposite?

      —— These numbers reflect an alarming trend over the past several years of a staggering number of graduates failing the bar exam and thus, denied a law license. For those rejected it is a devastating blow — personally, professionally and financially.

      Precisely. That's much of the reason for the anti-scam movement. The law schools are not doing the job, so it falls to us.

      —— According to the legal profession, the problem is a declining number of applicants resulting in a lower academic quality of students who graduate but are unqualified to practice law. This theory is simply untenable and unsupportable to anyone looking at the backgrounds of the students admitted, graduated and sitting for the bar exam.

      No, it's amply supported by the facts. Entire schools, including Charlotte, have been drawing their classes primarily from the low 140s and even lower on the LSAT—the bottom quarter of those taking the test. Just a few years ago, people with such low scores probably wouldn't have been admitted to any law school. And many of these bottom-of-the-barrel law schools have, or until a couple of years ago had, some of the largest classes in legal academia. They shit out thousands upon thousands of lousy graduates every year.

      —— I’ve taught for almost 30 years as an adjunct professor at three area law schools, including the last 15 years at UNC School of Law. As a judge I interviewed countless students for job opportunities as research assistants for the court. I’m telling you, the law students of today are smarter, more disciplined and more talented than many who have gone before (including yours truly) but who passed the Bar and have engaged in long, productive careers as lawyers in our state.

      Indeed, "yours truly" doesn't appear to be particularly smart. First of all, his subjective and impression doesn't mean much. As a professor at another inferior law school, he may have an ulterior motive. Second, his experience as an adjunct professor (likely teaching seminars or other courses peopled with the more capable students) and an interviewer of people applying to work as research assistants for the court may have exposed him primarily to the better students. Third, the fourth-tier University of North Carolina, though still toilety, is leagues ahead of sixth-tier Charlotte.

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    3. Continued:

      —— Cynics would offer a second theory: that the phenomenon is driven more by the exam and how it's used than by the quality of the students. The 2008 economic crunch devastated the legal profession, ultimately resulting in too many lawyers chasing too few clients. And the best way to adjust the supply/demand issue is to tighten the admission requirements to the profession through tougher bar exam standards. Add to that an inclination by some in the legal profession against for-profit law schools like Charlotte and the cynic’s theory on why we have lower Bar passage rates gains traction.

      Is there any evidence suggesting that the exam has become more difficult or has otherwise been rigged to keep people out? Are the cynics interested in testing their "theory" or just in spouting trumped-up excuses for the law-school scam?

      —— Regardless of the theories offered for the cause of these abysmal passage rates, the use of a two-day test as the gateway hurdle for admission to the practice of law is outmoded and unfair. There are other approaches, such as the continuous testing medical students do.

      Ah, yes, the shopworn comparison to the medical profession. As if law students, often accepted on the strength of next to nothing (Indiana Tech even awarded a "scholarship" to someone who hadn't shown interest in applying for admission!), could be compared to medical students, chosen only after challenging courses, difficult examinations in numerous subjects, experience in medical settings, and so on. And a medical license requires not just "continuous testing" at the school's pleasure but standardized exams that, incidentally, are considerably more demanding than the two-day exam for lawyers.

      —— Three years of classroom lectures, exams, research papers, clinical experience and interaction with bright law professors, fellow students and members of the legal profession produces a comprehensive legal education.

      Yes, that's his very next sentence. He goes directly from the model used for physicians to a free-for-all determined by the law schools. And you know where he is headed:

      —— Graduates of our law schools — public, private or for-profit — are already intellectually qualified to become lawyers. They don’t need a one-shot exam to prove that. There doesn’t have to be a bar exam.

      Just trust the schools, he says. Give them sole authority over admission to the legal profession. When every last graduate of Charlotte or Elon or another toilet law school fails the bar exam, the scamster's solution is to insist on the quality of the students' "education" and demand that the bar exam be abolished.

      Delete
  27. This is the Old Guy blog. Right?

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  28. The author is talking out of his rear end. If a medical student does not pass the step 1 one test on the first try, he or she is unlikely to match to a residency, ever. It is not like the bar exam where someone who fails gets a second shot at the exam.

    Sure, doctors have step 2 and step 3 to pass and need to pass exams to recertify every 10 years. Those exams are in addition to step 1.

    Doctors take more one shot exams, not fewer, than lawyers do.

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