Tuesday, March 19, 2019

JD-Disadvantage, Part X - The Truth Comes Full Circle

I've been writing about the illusion of "JD-Advantage" in particular for some time now.  The reasons why are essentially two-fold: (1) JD-Advantage is indeed farcical and plain-old bunk at an objective level, and (2) I have first-hand experience in the same, so that makes me somewhat of a subject-matter expert.  I've included a handy summary of posts on the subject over the years at the bottom should anyone need a cure for insomnia or delusions of grandeur, either one.

As we all know, a data set of one is not a data set.  So before everyone starts chiming in saying "but your experience is relative and not representative, because you are just one person, and forget about your dumb posts, anyway," here is some additional information in support of the Truth(tm):

There are a number of problems with the JD Advantage category as defined.  One is (or perhaps two are) its breadth and pliability.  They almost certainly cause some outcomes to be reported as JD Advantage that it would make no sense ex ante to attend law school to obtain (because there are much cheaper and easier ways to achieve the same result), and thus should not be considered placement successes (in my terminology, Law Jobs).  Worse, the definitional flexibility may inspire some administrators to stretch the category beyond any reasonable scope, rationalizing some “demonstrable advantage in either obtaining or performing the duties of the position,” in order to report an outcome they can claim as successful, especially in hard times. 

Bam. Yessir, and a voice from the academy, no less.  But wait, there's more:

For example, is paralegal or law clerk (not for a judge, but as an unlicensed assistant for other lawyers) a JD Advantage position?  To be clear, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with these jobs; they are valuable, honest work, and skilled besides.  But you sure wouldn’t plan to spend 3 years and $150,000 in law school in order to get these jobs—in fact, you can get a paralegal certification in one year at many inexpensive community colleges, and you don’t even need that to get an entry-level job as a paralegal.  And yet the ABA’s 2019 Employment Protocols for the Class of 2019 provide that both paralegal and law clerk are presumed to be JD Advantage placements by dint of job title alone.  (See here at pp. 26, 67.)  In the same publication, the ABA says legal secretaries are presumed to hold a “Professional” rather than a JD Advantage position (here at p. 68), though (in my experience, at least) their work in many if not most cases is as highly skilled and law-related as paralegal work, especially at smaller firms. 

Ah, the good ol' ABA, looking out for the little person.  Anyway:

(more below the fold):



The JD Advantage category was instituted in reporting outcomes for the Class of 2001.  But the number of such placements takes a giant leap—in fact, roughly doubles—after 2009, when Bar Passage Required jobs suddenly plummet into short supply.  As Bar Passage Required jobs become more available (not because they increase in number, but because the number of graduates seeking them starts falling faster than the number of Law Jobs is falling), the number of JD Advantage placements begins to fall again...In other words, the easier it is for new graduates to find a Bar Passage Required job, the less likely those graduates are to take a JD Advantage job; and a lot more JD Advantage job-holders than conventional Bar Passage Required job-holders are looking for a different (and presumably more directly law-related) job just 10 months after graduating.

Add up all these categories of new graduates—(i) the people who took a JD Advantage position that is not a Law Job; (ii) the people who took a JD Advantage position that might (or might not) be a Law Job but don’t like it, and want to trade it for something more law-related; (iii) the people who can’t get a Law Job because they haven’t passed the bar or performed poorly enough in law school that legal employers prefer other candidates; and (iv) the people who don’t want a Law Job because they don’t want to do what law school most directly prepared them for.  When you add them all up, I would guess (and, to be fair, it is only a guess) that it amounts to over half the holders of JD Advantage placements, quite possibly well over half.  If that’s right, then excluding JD Advantage placements from Law Jobs (the placements that “count”) undercounts Law Jobs less than including them would overcount Law Jobs.

Well, this sounds like a happy, satisfied crowd to me, basking in the glow of the advantage the JD confers.  In other words, they GTFO as soon as they can in many instances.  To continue:

Some law schools claim to be revising their JD curricula in the belief that they should prepare many or most students for a wide range of generally law-related careers with a three-year postgraduate degree. Most of these are probably on the wrong track.  While thoughtfully constructed one-year postgraduate degrees concentrating in law-related careers or disciplines may prove to be a valuable addition to some law-school curricula, overwhelmingly students seek JDs to become lawyers, and that does not appear likely to change anytime soon.  Accordingly, most JD programs should concentrate on preparing students for the world of law practice in all of its many forms rather than for imaginary hybrid vocations their administrators hypothesize may be lurking just over the horizon.

I love this phrase - "imaginary hybrid vocations" that "administrators hypothesize may be lurking..." Not only is it the Truth(tm), but wow, sign me up, right?  Who doesn't want to spend three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in law school for these stellar outcomes.













41 comments:

  1. Presently, about 40% of all law school graduates aren't working as lawyers. The cartel would like to say it's because of all the "opportunities" that a J.D. bestows, but we know it's really due to the rampant overproduction of this degree for the last several decades.

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    1. I'm one of those law-school graduates who are not working as lawyers. Indeed, I haven't worked at all in months. I really don't know what to do now.

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    2. I was unemployed for six months. Your situation sounds worse. I don't know if you know about this blog. Maybe it will cheer you up.

      http://lawyersandliquor.com/

      Delete
    3. Old Guy, if you're in a major metro area, you should just do document review. Yes there is a stigma attached to it and it isn't a good career by any means, but it's pretty solid money and as long as you keep options open it's better than not getting that income coming in.

      I've done quite a bit of it myself. I've met some extremely intelligent and accomplished people on it, and that's one of the biggest drivers home of how glutted the field is. These people are entirely too intelligent, and honestly I and most others are too, to be stuck in such a horrific predicament. I've read online how dumb the workers are and how awful the conditions are, but perhaps because I still behave professionally and have a good attitude, I don't actually have to ever work at those horrible places. I did once, and I'd agree the people are losers, but they are so because they run around always mocking everyone else while being in the same situation themselves. A good doc review outfit is still not going to be anywhere close to a good career, but it will be a pleasant enough work environment while you are on projects. The problem is not being on those projects consistently.

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  2. Other good points from that article:

    —— Almost no one would plan to go to law school if they knew in advance they wouldn’t like legal practice, and learning that has come at a cost (economically and otherwise) grossly disproportionate to its value. As I once analogized in this space, you wouldn’t have bought that used car had you known it was going to break down soon after leaving the lot, and the fact that you can now sell it for scrap would never have been a selling point ex ante.

    I like the analogy of an unusable JD to a broken-down jalopy good for nothing but scrap.

    —— There are also persistent suggestions that the future of the profession lies predominantly in merely law-related work rather than in conventional law practice.
    ……………
    Coming from law-school administrators, the argument that the future of the profession lies in work not requiring a law license is a bit curious. After all, the one thing that a JD can get you that almost no other endeavor can is the right to sit for the examination leading to a law license. If you don’t need a law license to do the things that many or most law-school graduates are now being told in some quarters they should do or should expect to do someday, why would you squander all that time, money, and forgone income to get one?

    Indeed. Law-school scamsters have been touting the supposed advantages of working otherwise than as a lawyer. Even if we omit the ludicrous extremes (such as the inclusion of Dutch princess on a scam-professor's list of Forty Trillion Things That You Can Do with a Law Degree), we still hear piles of suggestions to find something "creative" to do after graduation. That might be appropriate if the degree were a general-purpose one, such as a bachelor's degree. But it is absurd in light of the (allegedly) professional nature of the JD, whose very raison d'être is to enable the recipient to become licensed as a lawyer.

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    1. To me an unusable JD is more like a bad tattoo.

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    2. It would be easier to be creative and find yourself without crippling daily capitalizing debt ticking against you.

      If law admins want to advance that line of thinking, they need to make law school free.

      Delete
  3. I’m extremely sick right now, and my son has a respiratory infection. I haven’t billed in three days because of this, as I’m physically unable to do so.

    I make one of those mythical high law salaries, but I’m terrified that this infraction can lead to me losing my job and then I won’t be able to get another one because I will not be able to explain why I haven’t closed the three year mark where I am in interviews.

    My friend is a teacher. He got pneumonia. He took a month off (paid) from work without consequence. He makes 60k less than me a year, but when you factor in his pension, total job security, and work schedule, we know who won here.

    And I am considered one of the “winners” in law. Yeah.

    My other friend inherited a few slum buildings in Baltimore. His mom was always resentful that I became a lawyer and he is just chilling collecting rent from the buildings. He sent me a note today “I hope you are working, it doesn’t matter if you are sick, your employer isn’t going to care mr. big shot lawyer lol.”

    Yeah. Go to law schools suckers

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    1. I'm sorry that you're ill. I wish you and your son a speedy recovery.

      You probably won't be fired for a three-day illness, but your concern is realistic. A lawyer whom I know was fired as a partner after convalescing for a couple of months. It was all about money.

      Not all of us can live as rentiers from inherited buildings, and even getting a job as a teacher is more difficult than it sounds (lots of applicants for few openings in many places). But, as we have said over and over again, that's no reason to gamble on a legal career. The chance of success is poor, and even the outcome of a "winner" like 6:20 can be inferior.

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    2. Even the Occ Outlook Handbook mentions how fierce the competition for legal jobs are. The scam apologists also echo those facts. However, one of the concepts of professional higher education is that exchange for the money, the time and the work, that there is a reasonable expectation of entry into the profession. That no longer exists. But the idea of a degree is to focus on a field and reduce competition, not increase it.

      The old routes were to enter private practice through a firm or if less ambitious take the security of government - federal, state or local.

      Both private practice and govt has dried up and become scarce. Government jobs are sought for their own sake, for the high pay, excellent benefits and fixed hours.

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    3. Teaching keeps coming up as the major viable alternative to law. It is presented almost as if that one arrives to the law school graduation reckoning day with two choices: become a lawyer or a teacher.

      I can see why some would see law studies as a natural complement for public school teaching. Being a lawyer is often social in nature. Many lawyers study liberal arts subjects undergrad, which has little direct use outside teaching. School districts want smart teachers and lawyers are presumably smart.

      However, the public school teaching positions that are in demand are not really the ones with liberal arts backgrounds, such as English and Social Studies. Plus, although law is often social, but not always, I really do not see that much similarity between the legal profession and the teaching profession. Finally, as Old Guy pointed out there are a lot of other hurdles, such as certification, and perhaps having an education degree that must be addressed.

      Nevertheless, many districts will pay a premium for a Master's, and if all the other qualifications could be met, the JD could come in handy for that.

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  4. Last week was Match Week for M4 med students. 94% of U.S. med students matched into residency. That number is consistent with past years. There are far more residency positions than U.S. M4 students. But a small percentage of students fail to match either because they were attempting to match into a highly competitive specialty like neurosurgery or they employed a poor application strategy (i.e. they only applied to top programs like Mass Gen and Stanford). All of the students who matched will now practice medicine starting in June or July. Not only will they receive a salary, they will also receive health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, 401k, and other perks such as free food when on call. How many law grads will have similar benefits a couple months after they graduate? None of the med students who matched have to settle for “MD advantage” jobs. The AMA and U.S. medical schools are not trying to rake in more student loan tuition dollars by increasing enrollment beyond the number of residency positions, and telling the unlucky unemployed, “you can do anything with an MD! Nursing is a MD advantage job. Become a secretary to a physician group.” The conduct of the law school cartel is absolutely disgraceful.

    Another disgraceful part of the scam here is that while law schools promote these terrible JD advantage jobs, they also harm their students chances of obtaining one of these jobs because of the strict grade curves. Why would a business hire a law grad with a sub 3.0 GPA compared to a new college grad with a high GPA thanks to grade inflation? The strict grade curve eliminates conditional scholarships so the school makes more money, appeases big law by identifying a small percentage of the class to hire, and makes the other students even less employable for the scraps. When I went to med school, I had a scholarship with no strings attached. There was no curve and the classes were pass fail. My classmates and I were not competing for the lucky top job while the rest fought for a “MD advantage” job. In fact, a med student can pretty much choose whatever specialty they want. Surgery, internal medicine, psychiatry, family medicine, pediatrics, neurology, anesthesiology, and radiology are open to almost any U.S. med student who wants it. More competitive specialties like ortho or neuro surg require a lot of research experience and other work to match. But in law, the pigs have oversaturated the market such that most law grads do not have a lot of options.

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    1. What's interesting is that there actually are good "MD-advantage" jobs, although they're not called that. Plenty of highly paid jobs in medical research, administration of health care, policy, and other fields related to medicine will favor someone with an MD.

      Meanwhile, a part-time clerk in the mail room of some collapsing law firm has a "JD-advantage" job, according to law-school scamsters.

      Medicine is a real profession. Law should not be mentioned in the same breath.

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    2. Medicine is being annihalted. In 20 years, it will be as bad a law, possibly worse because it takes more time and money to become a doctor.

      This may sound counter intuitive because shit hasn’t hit the fan, but it’s slowly happening.

      Before this country collapses, it will be the provinance of rentiers and coastal govenremnt workers.

      Trading time for money in any other capacity will not be an option.

      That’s why immigration is so important and it’s being shoved down are throats. A foreigner can come here, work hard off the books in the case of blue collar work, work hard in the case of white collar work (H1B1), and send the money back home to India or Mexico and build a life.

      Being native born here and trying to build a life is precarious proposition.

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    3. Comparing medicine to law is apples and oranges. Completely different fields. Just because somebody is intelligent enough to be a doctor does not mean that they would be happy being a doctor. I liked science, but I never had any interest in detail learning about all of the various parts of anatomy, of dissecting a corpse, or anything else mandatory to succeed in that field.

      So Doctors have a good income...big deal. It takes a certain type of person who would enjoy that work and I am guessing most who are drawn to law would have little interest in practicing medicine. I personally would not want to spend my one life being a physician. In the end, I think that field would drive me nuts. The boringness of a general practice, treating fungus, infections and colds, the intensity of surgery, etc. Not for me. Not for many.

      I may be rare on these boards, but I actually enjoy reading case law. When I was younger, I enthusiastically kept up with all of the latest opinions coming down the track and enjoyed the reasoning the judges used in supporting their opinions. I have had to spend a fair amount of my time reading clinical studies in medicine to understand issues in my cases, and it was always with great effort to do so. You guys talk about law review articles? Try reading a few clinical studies start to finish...pure torture. And I also, at least when younger, was passionate about practicing law. I would never have been passionate about practicing medicine. I probably would have burned out before my student loans were paid off.

      So the point is that this constant comparing of one profession to another is ridiculous. If somebody wants to be a doctor, they generally have to commit themselves to excelling in Organic Chemistry, etc., then going to med school and memorizing a huge amount of information. Far as I know, it is far more likely for a doctor to drop out of practicing medicine than for a lawyer to voluntarily drop out of practicing law.

      If I were smart enough, I probably would have preferred being a theoretical physicist. But God did not endow me with the mathematical aptitude to handle that field. I’m pretty sure I could have been a doctor, but I can’t remember ever regretting not trying for medical school. I have taken far too many depositions of doctors, know far too many of them to think that they have a higher quality of life than the rest of us.

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  5. Thanks for keeping the awareness going Duped. I would probably be touted as a success by my Toilet because I am now working in-house as a patent attorney.

    But I will never get back those three years where I could have been working as an engineer for $100K/year, the law school tuition of $100,000, and the two years I spent after law school desperately trying to get a job and resorting to selling my plasma for money.

    ENGINEERS, DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL! It is almost never worth it. Even if you buck the odds and get Biglaw, the chances of you making up the lost income is small to non-existent.

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  6. One thing that bothers me is that people say, well, until the internet really matured and scamblogs came along, law school applicants and students had no way of knowing they were being scammed into getting a worthless degree. That simply is not true. When I was in law school, I worked in a low-paying government internship for the Attorney General's office full time in the summer between my second and third year of law school and part time in my third year. At the time, they were starting to phase out paid internships, because students were perfectly willing to work full time, 40 hours per week, for free. I realized then, over 25 years ago, that something smelled very fishy and law school was not all it was cracked up to be. Now I hear that law students are literally competing, hard, with each other to get unpaid internships in government agencies, law firms, etc. Anyone stupid enough to work full time for free, in an economy where the unemployment rate is below 4 percent, has no business even being in law school, and should absolutely expect to be unemployed after they graduate. I have zero sympathy for gullible and foolish people who value their own work at zero dollars, zero cents per hour for 40 or more hours a week. They know, or reasonably should know, that they are being scammed by law schools promising high paying jobs for graduates that do not exist.

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    1. I agree wholeheartedly, but the real crime is that these kids are taking out upwards of 200K in taxpayer guaranteed student loans for the privilege of working for nothing!

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  7. 9:11 AM, you are of course correct. But is this really the fault of law schools or more the fault of the people at these agencies and firms who take advantage of desperate students. What kind of people would say to themselves, gee there are lots of people looking for these jobs, lets demand they work for nothing. Only the scum of the earth would do that. And that speaks far more about how loathsome so many lawyers are rather than how law schools are worthless. Which brings me back to my original premise, if you want to avoid law as a profession and avoid law school, maybe the best reason for doing so is because there are so many scummy people working in this field. You have one life to live, why live it working in a profession where you cannot avoid these people. The guy who accuses me of being an ellipse troll is just an example of the type of people you have to deal with. God forbid your first job out of law school is having somebody like that as your boss. And these people are highly prevalent in the litigation field where they learn to be soulless at a very young age.

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    1. Another point about the article. Will law firms even hire JDs for paralegal positions? And is it even harder for male JD graduates? I think there is a bias against hiring men for assistant level positions, i.e. paralegal, clerk, administrative assistant.

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    2. It’s not “scummy” per se, its that success is defined by seeing other people fail. The whole profession is built on the premise of punishment not reward. From entry level to career end, it’s how it works.

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  8. "As we all know, a data set of one is not a data set." With this quote in mind, I want to share how things work in my office (state agency). We have 22 full time positions - and none of the positions require a JD. However, when we post a job, every position, with the exception of auditor and clerical staff, lists a JD as a preferred qualification. Over 50% of our current staff are JDs. While we don't make big money (starting salary 65-70K), we have good benefits, job protection, a great work/life balance and interesting work (securities regulation). The same is true for other similar agencies in my state (insurance, real estate, civil rights, etc.). A JD can be useful outside of the legal community.

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    1. My wife is a public school teacher and makes 110k a year with half the year off and iron clan job security and a pension.

      You are doing better than many lawyers, but making 70k as a lawyer is not smart when you can make close to double that teaching.

      Apples to apples comparison.

      Queue the trolls that it’s impossible to get a teaching job. Yeah, I know, I bet 4:21s agency gets 200 CVs when a job posting becomes available. On an apples to apples basis though, teaching is better. Law is never the answer.

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    2. 4:21s job probably comes with a pension as well as well as decent time off benefits and job security.

      I guess the answer is that everyone in the United States should work in the public sector.

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    3. 8:33 - I said our starting salary is 65-70. We do have a great pension and we just posted a position and had to extend it to get over 20 apps. I make quite a bit more than your wife earns as a teacher. I prefer what I do.

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    4. If jobs such as 9:56s are so plentiful around the US and begging for any attorney to apply, then why is there a problem at all? Why isn't the word getting out on these jobs? I once applied with both my state's insurance examiners division and bank examiners and was scoffed at. I did get an interview with insurance, heard nothing from bank.

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    5. The fact that BoCo's office has a 22 openings total for "JD-preferred" folks at respectable rates is indeed good news.

      The larger issue comes when you scale up - 35,000 applicants for 20,000 jobs, not counting experienced people already in the market looking for work. This conservatively leaves at least half of that 35k out in the cold, each year, and the numbers accumulate quickly.

      Again, we never say there are "no jobs"...the issue is that jobs like BoCo's are difficult to come by and are not terribly numerous. But the student loans companies could care less, to say anything of the law school cartel. Go "network."

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    6. The total compensation for experienced teachers in the New York metropolitan area has got to far exceed the total compensation for experienced lawyers. Teachers max out in salary between 15 to 20 years of service, depending on the local pay scale. Add to that generous pensions that are state tax free in NY and retiree medical benefits, and the experienced teachers have a pay package of at least $160,000 a year after 15 or 20 years of service. The package is probably closer to $170,000 with the tax free retiree medical and state tax free pensions - those costs are not booked by the municipality as employee compensation costs.

      How many lawyers over the age of 40 do you know who have a secure till retirement $170,000 a year job after practicing several years?

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    7. @7:18,

      And they will be exempt from all societal changes going forward, eg automation, outsourcing,etc.

      They don’t just beat lawyers, but most private sector professionals.

      There was a very narrow time frame where the private sector outperformed the public, namely between 1945 and the end of the Clinton Presidency. It’s over now. You work essential services for the public sector where the rich people live or you suffer. It’s that simple.

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    8. To 12:02: Good analysis. I never thought about the relative superiority of public sector work in terms of historical eras, but you seemed to hit it on the head. My grandfather worked for the fire department during the Great Depression. Consequently, his family was not particularly affected by it and rather lived in comparative luxury. A nice apartment in the city and a car, still rather rare in the 30s. When I was in college in the early 80s the Reagan self-responsibility propaganda was starting to take root. I met with my college career counselor who asked me what I was planning to do as a career. I think he was expecting me to say I wanted to make a killing on Wall Street, because when I said I might like a government job he went cold. He said, what kind of an answer is that, there are all different kinds of government functions, you need to get focused.

      The cut off point you give is interesting. Clinton's presidency ended with the Dot Com bust, after a decade of (illusory) prosperity. Bush II inherited it, and then got 9-11, and we are still dealing with the effects of that. W. Bush tried a final revival of the self-responsibility lie of Reagan by trying, deceptively, to abolish Social Security, but it was spotted and squashed down. By this time, enough people had been shafted to know that you really can't expect to get rich, or even secure, just because you want to and you do need structured systems to get by.

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  9. I was thinking about how, in the past, I had seen job postings for a Paralegal position with the qualification that the job was not open for JD's. The posting would even explicitly say: "No JD's" and that said, I found this job posting today on Craigslist and it has me scratching my head. It seems the employer is open to hiring a JD, but one without a license. In other words, passing the Bar Exam is going to far. I also just want to add this general observation of mine regarding the scamblogs. Really, if it was just a matter of a career in law not working out and moving on with life then all could say: "Fair enough and good luck." However, the debt is the big problem which makes or can make the pursuit of a law degree a ruinous, lifetime indebted financial disaster. Tucker Carlson recently described Universities and Colleges, in so many words, as gated enclaves of wealth amidst outlying near poverty in whatever towns they are situated. Maybe that's a bit extreme but he was saying that the wealth is coming from student lending and the students are carrying the debt in this era of so much inordinate prosperity for Academia as a result of very powerful lobbying efforts and so on. But am I boring everybody? We have known about all of this for many years by now.... haven't we? So what else is new? Carlson suggests making the Schools co sign a student loan. Ha Ha. Like that would ever happen. Trump vows to fix student debt. Oh yeah? I'll believe that when I see it. But Re the head scratching job posting here: https://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/lgl/d/new-york-city-data-breach-non-attorneys/6853607527.html

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    1. It included newly admitted attorneys also.

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    2. All Trump or anyone else in a position to do something needs to do is require that applicants for student loans meet normal underwriting standards for unsecured consumer credit. That would end at least 98% of student lending.

      Academics, faced with the prospect of having to find "jobs" and do "work" would slash prices in a desperate bid to keep their institutions afloat and their sinecures safe, even at drastically reduced salaries.

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    3. Scam-professors in legal hackademia have long sought to justify their fancy salaries by comparison with those of lawyers in white-shoe law firms, where they themselves could allegedly work.

      Bullshit. No white-shoe law firm is interested in any scamster's goddamn law-review articles on the Open Road or hip-hop. Hardly any law professor could get a job at a white-shoe law firm, or for that matter at any law firm. Hell, many of them are not even licensed to practice law. In addition, the ten-hour "full-time" week typical in legal hackademia is practically unknown elsewhere.

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  10. That is a temporary position offering JD's $22.00 per hour to work in New York. $22.00 an hour, pre-tax, in New York is like maybe 10 bucks an hour in low cost parts of the U.S. That temporary ad, alone, should tell people that going to law school is a BAD IDEA. $22.00 per hour in New York City. . .

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  11. Why is Belly of the Beast still on the links section? Harper lost his mind ages ago, all he writes about is his Trump-Russia conspiracy junk.

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    1. That has been brought up in the past. If there was any doubt that the man needs to get help and some kind of hobby his latest missive eliminates it. His long-anticipated Mueller report found no evidence of collusion but now he says the report doesn't matter. He couldn't even get the disgraced, fake news jockey Dan Rather to post it this time. He lists all the convictions and agreements to cooperate but seems not to get that the cooperation led to no evidence of collusion. And convictions? Whitewater resulted in quite a few, including a governor who resigned and went to prison, but no evidence of criminality by the Clintons was found. Mr. Harper fuels the fires of those who talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome. He hurts his own cause.

      And OBTW, if anyone who reads this blog knows Harper and thinks he might be ready for a hobby make sure it isn't building models of black helicopters.

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    2. You must have hit a nerve, 7:02. Harper's latest is now on the Dan Rather website. Funny thing is, it looks as if it was done on a circa 1972 typewriter.

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    3. And, "The Story is far from over..." apparently.

      It's just sad.

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    4. Mr. Harper was apparently a partner at Kirkland & Ellis at one point, quite an accomplishment. He reminds me of a semi-pro bono client I had. An absolutely brilliant man who could tell you the exact date in 1958 when something kind of went snap in the back of his brain leaving him essentially non-functional in life, even though he could read my Latin diploma on the wall.

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  12. It’s a miracle Harper is still alive. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago. Why he chooses to spend the time he has left tilting at Trumpian windmills is beyond me. Maybe his crazed obsession with Russian conspiracies is what keeps him going. Still, seems kind of sad to me.

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