NEWS ON SEVERAL ÜBER-TOILETS
The disclosures that the ABA requires from law schools under its so-called Standard 509 are due by December 15. Usually the ABA publishes the reports on a Web site, but this year it still has not done so; one must hunt up the reports on the law schools' own Web sites.
Old Guy can't be bothered, but he has checked a few, for your information.
Appalachian School of Law has long been a target of derision here at OTLSS. This year only 51 new students enrolled, a number well below the figure of 75 that Old Guy has estimated as the minimum for a law school's long-term sustainability. Such low enrollment is bad news for this particular über-toilet, which has been in dire financial straits for several years.
Another piece of bad news for Appalachian School of Law is its graduates' abysmal performance on the bar exams. Of the 53 graduates from 2021 or prior years who took a bar exam for the first time, only 18 passed. That's 34%, far below the level of 75% that the ABA has nominally required since 2019 (the rule says that "[a]t least 75 percent of a law school's graduates who sat for a bar examination must have passed a bar examination administered within two years of their graduation"). I say "nominally" because in practice the ABA readily excuses non-compliance; its rule contains more holes than a wheel of Gruyère. It is true that the data show only the number of graduates who passed on the first attempt, so these data do not prove that Appalachian School of Law is out of compliance; however, it would take a hell of a lot to catch up, and the über-toilet has little control over its graduates' preparation for the exam or even their willingness to take a bar exam again.
At the odious Western State College of Law, which in recent years has changed hands among a wacky church and a couple of private entities supposedly in the field of education), only 55% of this year's candidates passed a bar exam for the first time. First-year enrolment soared from 23 last year to 128 this year, Old Guy is sorry to report.
Über-toilet Charleston enrolled 223 new students, which is 223 more than it deserves. The bar-passage rate was 59%, again well below the ABA's threshold.
Ohio Northern, another über-toilet that seems too small to be sustainable, has not yet published its 509 report. Its bar-passage rate was 71%, still below the threshold.
Cooley this year had 191 new students and a 38% rate of bar passage. See below for more on this poster child of über-toilets.
FOUR MORE SCHOOLS OUT OF COMPLIANCE
Last month the ABA issued new notices of non-compliance with the standard of bar passage to four law schools: Ave Maria, District of Columbia, Hofstra, and Vermont. All four have been called before a meeting to be held in May 2023 so that they can try to prove that they are in compliance with the standard. That is likely to be difficult, in light of this year's new data:
Ave Maria, 63%
District of Columbia, 33%
Hofstra, (no data since 2020)
Vermont, (no data since 2021)
Vermont Law School doubled down this year and turned itself into Vermont Law and Graduate School, the "Graduate School" part apparently referring to a whole slate of new degrees of questionable value marketed to people who don't have a background in law. Perhaps that was done in contemplation of losing accreditation, because the "graduate school" could go on operating anyway, although I fail to understand what would attract anyone to the little unincorporated crossroads of South Royalton, Vermont.
In August 2022, two Puerto Rican law schools each got a three-year extension of the time to achieve compliance, however remote the possibility may seem. Cooley got the same in May, and we can see how very little progress Cooley is making towards its fulfilling its purported plan to reach the 75% mark (which is disgracefully low, but that's another issue).
Old Guy is going to bet that the ABA will rubber-stamp a similar extension for the four über-toilets newly notified of their non-compliance (as if they hadn't long been aware of it) and that it will also find some cockamamie excuse to grant additional indulgences once the extension lapses for those four and the others. In the meantime, Old Guy will say yet again that nobody at all should attend any of these so-called law schools, or indeed any other law school in the US but perhaps as many as thirteen (Harvard, Yale, a few others) that in theory may be worth attending under certain conditions.
Far from advancing towards the 75% mark in the implementation of its "Reliable Plan", Cooley continues to show retrogression: its levels for the previous three years were 66%, 62%, and 60%, and now it is down to 38%. See this:
ReplyDeletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2022/06/namby-pamby-aba-gives-dispensation-to.html
Why does anyone take the ABA seriously?
And how could I forget to check on Golden Gate? Recall its new ruse of offering three years of free tuition to all full-time students and half of the part-time students:
ReplyDeletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2022/09/golden-gate-is-new-indiana-tech.html
Well, this year's first-year enrollment was only 31, possibly the lowest of any ABA-accredited law school. And bar passage was at 35%. No doubt the über-toilet will say that three or four years from now its bought-off class will show a better rate of success at the bar exams, and use that as an excuse to maintain accreditation all along—and for years more, under a "Reliable Plan" for improvement, if the predicted success does not come to pass.
On the other hand, operating an über-toilet cannot be cheap when no one is paying a cent other than some of the part-time students. Golden Gate did add one of those ubiquitous bullshit master's degrees in law and also a "Bachelor of Arts in Law", whatever that means; but the revenues from those can hardly sustain the whole scam-operation. Let's hope that the parent institution will tire of shelling out for this hopeless über-toilet and give it instead a final flush.
O Great oracle old guy, what do you see for the future of California Western School of Law in San Diego? When I was applying for law school they sent me literature with a picture of a girl in a bikini.
ReplyDeleteRather than waxing Delphic with my vaticination, I shall give it to you straight: California Western School of Law is an über-toilet that nobody, whether dressed in a bikini or not, should attend under any circumstances. This year only 64% of graduates from the past two years who took a bar exam for the first time passed it. Consider how bad it is when more than one graduate in three cannot pass a bar exam on the first try. (A few may pass one eventually, but I wouldn't wait for that with bated breath.)
DeleteTuition for that dreadful outcome is $58,200 a year. The median LSAT score is just over the 50th percentile. About a seventh of the graduates are unemployed ten months out, and about a quarter are in "JD-advantage" or similar questionable positions.
Let me put it to you more simply: do you really want to attend a law school that sells itself to you by resorting to sex? Sounds less like a law school than a brothel. (They may also be making undue assumptions about the sexual orientations of prospective applicants.)
It's important to keep this blog going Old Guy. I was on a sports-related forum and a discussion started about the pros and cons of going to law school and becoming a lawyer.
ReplyDeleteThere is still a lot of ignorance out there and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of lemmings. I fought the good fight, but ultimately my voice got drowned out by the Boomers, trolls and those affected by Dunning-Kruger.
Please keep pushing the truth.
Thanks very much for trying. Boomer blowhards and others with more hot air than brains will easily drown out the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, but someone out there may listen to you and learn the truth that is so rarely heard.
DeleteMerry Christmas to all and to all here's an embezzlement scandal at Seton Hall SOL:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reuters.com/legal/government/seton-hall-is-latest-us-law-school-face-embezzlement-scandal-2022-12-22/
Thank you very much, and merry Christmas to you and everyone else here. Shittin' Hole, as the article mentions, is not the only law skule that has been ripped off from the inside.
DeleteI graduated Cooley in the late 90's and despite passing the bar exam the first attempt never found a legal job and never made a single dollar practicing law. Closest I got to a "law degree advantaged job" was selling cars at a dealership for a year. Only filling out one page sales contracts. So it's irrelevant if you pass or fail the bar exam at a low ranked law school when in both cases you are still unemployed. Back in the 90's there were no law school blogs to waen us about the poor investment decisions.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry that that happened to you, but I'm not surprised. Cooley is a terrible choice, and it's a hell of a lot worse today than it was when you went there.
DeleteI will vouch for your experience as well. I graduated from a 4th tier school in the Northeast in the early 90s and had the same results and outcomes. The only indicator as to law school cause and effect at that time was USNWR, which did not seem to get much attention when I started in the late 80s, but was becoming more noticed when I completed the program. However, I while attending the school, I always had a gnawing discomfort attending such a low ranked school. In fact, I considered quitting after the first year which I regret not doing. I get frequent requests from the school to make donations, but it is never explained as to why I should donate to an institution that never resulted in a a career and was probably more of an impediment.
DeleteI told my élite school long ago that I have explicitly provided in my will that it get nothing from me. That, with a little accompanying profanity, seems to have ended the attempts to hit me up for money.
Delete10:53-well, the schools have short memories, I guess. When I was in law school, I was told in a face to face meeting with the "placement" dean that I was not allowed to apply for jobs listed/interviewing at the law school due to my mediocre/poor grades. Yet today, and regularly over the years, I get solicitations to donate to the law school. Then, as now, I'm nothing but a dollar sign to them.
DeleteWith top-notch grades, I was certainly allowed to apply for jobs through on-campus interviews. But I didn't get any interviews, on account of my age, and the "placement" office didn't give a good goddamn.
DeleteEvery little dolt at the bottom of the class got to apply, too—and got a fistful of offers. That's how it goes at an élite law school.
This is 10:53. I did have one on campus interview with the tax department of Price Waterhouse. It didn't go anywhere. I probably wouldn't have been able to handle it anyway. I was surprised to get that interview because the number of firms recruiting on campus were sparse. I remember one New York firm on the board that I was thinking of interviewing for, but they pulled out after few days.
DeleteThe only thing that kept me from becoming an "indentured servant" to student loans attending Cooley in the late 90's was the fact my parents paid all the expenses: tuition, apartment rent, food, etch. I graduated debt free. I was the first in my family to even graduate from college so there was nobody to explain to me and warn me the risks that I was taking. I knew I wasn't going to go to Harvard and this never will become a US Supreme Court Judge. But you figured a law school getting the ABA seal of approval and spending all that money you will eventually find satisfying legal work. Reality hit me like a ton of bricks right after graduation. Sent out hundreds of resumes with no replies. And my parents and siblings never even have attended college, there is no professional connections to assist you. When law schools tell you "network" it is just a worn out adage and quite lame how they preach it. You can't network if you are the only one in the family with even a college degree. So it's interesting my classmates who got only vocational education like plumbing and opened up a business are way ahead of myself. Plus they never lost the opportunity cost of time spent in law school and money wasted there. I took law school off my resume when applying for jobs.
DeleteDuring law school, I was surprised that most other students knew a great deal about law firms. (When I started law school, I couldn't name a single law firm anywhere in the world.) Several classmates told me that of course I was never going to be considered for a job at my age and that they had assumed that I had gone to law school for reasons other than work. It was then that I realized that some of us start out with a hell of a lot less information than others.
DeleteIn the case of 9:28, that information included the fact that one would struggle indeed to find legal work with a degree from Cooley, notwithstanding the ABA's seal of approval. And the advice to "network" is predicated on the assumption that one has a useful network in the first place. I was 25 or so when I first met a lawyer; I simply didn't have a relevant network beyond the law school itself, and nobody at the law school was helping me.
I just wanted to make a clarification when I mentioned my "classmates" that got vocational degrees got way ahead of me in life after I graduated Cooley and moved back to my hometown in New York. I meant to say high school classmates that got vocational degrees and started their own businesses are doing much better and didn't incur expenses and time wasted on a useless law degree. And as far as law school career services and their alumni network.....why would an alumnus care about helping a total stranger just because they graduated the same law school? Alumni network is overrated. And career services are a known joke anyhow.
DeleteOG, I'm curious, how old were you when you graduated LS?
DeleteOld Man, so much for all that lip service that your law school claims to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity. And also the claim they don't discriminate. Every law school makes that diversity statement and non-discrimination statement. Age discrimination is one area they all claim they don't tolerate. But that is exactly what they are doing to you. Discriminating against you based on your age. Not even offering to help you network. Proof all the law school websites bragging about their commitment to diversity is a scam to cast a wider net ensnaring a larger catch of potential students.
DeleteI was well into my forties when I graduated from law school.
DeleteAge-based discrimination in the legal profession is an open secret; it just wasn't open to Old Guy, who wouldn't have gone into law if he had known about it. To people who encouraged me to take up medicine instead, I said that I was too old. It turns out that I got that wrong…
You were definitely too old for medicine then, though many bottom tier DO schools have opened, which would have been doable. The time and pain involved, for only a 1.5 decades of work max, not to mention the higher tutition feeds, would not be worth it. I am not much younger than you when you went to school, and there's no way I could do it now--more tired, more wise.
DeleteNo, he wasn't. Two siblings went to med school with classmates in their 40s. And while it's a massive expense, after residency primary care docs are earning 200K/yr upon completion of residency. A lot of work to get there? Yes; but unlike law, there's a guaranteed job waiting.
DeleteJust to add to what 8:23 said, for readers who are contemplating law school vs med school, the commenter is exactly right. I had a classmate in his early 40s. There were multiple people who took a non-traditional route and were older. I was in my 30s at the time. When I applied for medical school, I got interviews at some of the top schools despite my age. When I was in residency, I met a medical student in his mid to late 40s. Keep in mind, this was a student at a very elite college and med school. This person later went into ortho which is one of the most competitive specialties. I was able to go into a competitive specialty despite applying in my late 30s. Med schools and residencies do not discriminate based on age.
DeleteAnd 8:23 is also correct about the job market. Every one of my classmates matched into residency. Well over 90% of U.S. medical school graduates match into residency. The reason U.S. medical students usually don’t match into residency is they apply for a competitive specialty like neuro surgery, derm, or ortho, or they apply to too few residencies. Multiple classmates took a gap year to get involved in research in competitive specialties like ortho or neuro surgery. They graduated the year after me and all matched into those competitive specialties. Now that law schools are required to publish real job statistics, we see that law schools come nowhere close to putting over 90% of grads into legal jobs. In fact, I have mentioned this before, there are Caribbean med schools that put a higher percentage of grads into residency than low tier law schools are capable of placing into legal jobs.
Everything about law school is a scam. When I applied to law school in the early 2000s, law school’s published and touted at applicant events that 99% of grads had jobs with average salaries of 100k. The debt load was bad back then, nowhere like now. At one event, after the career services dean bragged about their fictitious stats, a student asked how they could pay back $150k in student loans when they were interested in public service law. The dean actually said, “just take a private practice job first. Graduates are averaging $100k in private practice. Then when you pay off your loans pursue a public interest law job.” Of course that was a total lie. My best friend from high school, a graduate of a non-elite law school like me who has been a career solo crim law attorney summed up the true stats best - “It was more like 50 and 50. 50% of grads obtained legal jobs making $50k.” Let me tell how how that person is doing after years of solo crim law for those who think you just got to “hustle.” They are miserable. And they wish they could find a way out. When I was applying to med schools, there was no salary job placement sales pitch. They entire interview day was about the educational benefits of the school and associated teaching hospital, such as, look at our fancy multi million dollar sim center, etc.
When I graduated a second tier law school unemployed in the mid 2000s with good grades and law review after getting rejected by Big Law, Big Fed, local prosecutors, s—- law, local government, and the public defender, my law school still published the same garbage stats. The school bragged 90%+ of the class had jobs with an average salary of $100k. Looking back it is hilarious. I once went to a legal job fair. I approached a big law firm. Given that I was from a second tier toilet, they flat out refused to even accept my resume. They wouldn’t even give me the courtesy of taking my resume and throwing it in the trash. Now I get emails all the time for physician openings. You might be thinking, what is a physician doing commenting in the middle of the day and not working. I worked Christmas and New Years. Now I finally have some time off. I comment here when I have some free time so others won’t make the same mistake. When you put yourself deep in debt for a worthless degree with limited opportunities, it is really hard to overcome a life mistake like that.
9:04 here: OG, you were the victim of age discrimination, plain and simple. Me? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, I was just dumb. There were no attorneys in my immediate or extended families, and before law school, I had never met a lawyer. I had no idea how things worked, how important 1L grades were(treated 1L like UG, part 2, with all the requisite partying and lack of studying), no idea what "networking" was, and as the placement office made clear, me and my type were persona non grata; that office worked hard for the top 10%/Law Review folks, but wouldn't even review my resume. I was lost. The only saving grace is that I went to State U, which was so cheap in those days that between living at home and working my part-time(non-legal) jobs, I could pay my way. No opportunity cost/time wasted for me as I had a liberal arts BA, couldn't type, and had zero marketable skills.
ReplyDeleteMy only defense is that this was pre-internet days, when the seal of approval from the ABA was all I needed; besides it was set in concrete Conventional Wisdom that all lawyers were rich.
For you: the discrimination you faced is inexplicable and inexcusable. Me: Inexperienced and a dope.
And I'm still getting the mail and phone requests for money.
OK, well if you are in a state like California that has over a dozen law schools, you should already know that the job market is going be absolutely glutted and unless you are at the state's top school, and get top grades, you are wasting your time. I have a hard time being sympathetic with people who fail to use reason/logic/common sense and make terrible decisions with terrible outcomes. I live in a state that has a grand total of two law schools, despite not being that small and having a large population. When I attended, back in the early 1990's, one of the law schools was head and shoulders above the other. You could basically go to the good law school or the crummy low-ranked one. Literally every sing person I knew who graduated from the state' s top law school in the mid 90's, passed the bar, and did a serious job search found work within months of graduation without difficulty. I did not know one solitary person, including folks at the very bottom of the class, who could not find work before or shortly after being sworn in. Of course, in those days paid work for law students was the rule--even prosecutor's offices paid law students to work there--and it was very, very difficult to get into the state's top school. The students were much more serious than today's students, and I did not know a single person who was there for a three-year vacation from reality, all expenses paid with student loans--something that is the absolute norm today. I know it's common for older people to rant about how the young'uns are foolish, lazy, etc., and back in their day things were different, but in my case this is literally true. Most of the people I went to law school with would never have set foot on a law school campus in today's world. They were much to smart to get suckered into deep debt and unemployment.
ReplyDeleteI attended a 2nd tier(trap) NYC Law School in the late 80's but dropped out after 1L. Things were different (sort of) in that most people(but not all) who graduated got jobs. A few top students got biglaw; a lot became ADA's; and the rest went to small firms. I realized the bi-modal salary structure and with my grades I missed biglaw by a lot. The starting salaries for ADA's and small firms were less than I was making as a waiter. A sharp-minded friend I respected told me he wasn't worried about getting a job at graduation; he was worried about 7 years down the road and told me about a friend whose firm didn't have room for him and the guy couldn't find any legal job. Another friend in college tried to warn me against LS as his brother was a lawyer and was bombarded with resumes daily. I also had run out of money and would have to borrow for tuition and living expenses for the next 2 years. I could see my future: working really hard for little money; job insecurity; and debt- so I bailed. People talk about the 80's and 90's as some kind of golden age for attorneys- but even then it wasn't great.
DeleteI wound up as a public school teacher a few years later and saw a former LS classmate dropping off his resume to the English Dept. chair looking for a job. I also looked up two good friends I had from LS but had lost contact with over the years. They were both bright, hardworking liberal-arts majors from good colleges. One practiced briefly in NJ before going into fundraising for nonprofits. The other went from the DA's office to small law firm then solo doing DUI's and Legal Aid. I found out I made more money than each of them.
A golden age for lawyers the 1980s were not, but indeed they were much better than today—and, as you said, they were far from glorious.
Delete9:04 back, one last time. Regarding the '80s-I too went to a law school in a state with two law schools, and attended the "better"-a truly relative term-school. I can't give any good excuses for my goofing off or my naivete regarding what lawyers did, what they got paid, etc etc
DeleteThat said, fully one-third of my graduating class back in the mid-80s did not have jobs at graduation. Again, it was cheap-really cheap-to attend, but for many of us it was three years wasted. And this was back in the day when the top students at my school were able to get jobs in BigLaw.
And even back then, society at large recognized what was going on, even if I and so many others didn't pay attention. On the popular sitcom "Cheers" one of the bar regulars was the owner's attorney-and his gardener- one episode ended in court, with Sam-the owner-telling Tim-the attorney/gardener-the the hedges needed trimming.
Even though nearly everything posted here is true, it reads as sour grapes to an aspiring 1L who can be talked out of law school. You entered law school in your 40s, of course you were never going to be hired. You could have googled this or looked at firm bios of associates and drawn your own conclusions. Ditto for going to Cooley, which has always been viewed as a dumpster fire. Over 80% of your message to 0Ls is "Old people and Cooley alums do not get big law." All of you could have gotten into sales or marketing or entry-level management or the majority of jobs normal, non-JD holders get. And before you say you would be viewed as overqualified, McDonalds U. would have given you a better career than you have had and they would have taken you in.
DeleteMe? I got a front-office role in the private sector that I could not have gotten without going to law school to develop my resume. Maybe a masters or MBA would have been easier, either way I have no debt and make six figures with responsibilities I like and upward mobility. I went to a non-T13, First Tier school. Saying these outcomes never happen or are so rare as to be negligible is simply wrong, and 0Ls will know you are wrong. For all of your time and effort here, you could be much more effective.
P.S. Getting political/bringing in social issues that do not matter only turns off 0Ls from your advice.
It's always puzzling when a hugely successful person like you, with the archetypal "JD Advantage" job so treasured by law school placement officers everywhere, can take time from their "front-office role" and stop by to lecture everyone. And it's clear you're a devoted fan, what with your "P.S." and all. Thanks so much for your success, insight, and just all around wisdom. I know that I for one look forward to law school placement office employees posting here.
DeleteBut let's keep it simple: you have no idea-none-what "0Ls" think-or don't think, for that matter. And you clearly miss the entire point of this blog, which is to lay out, in stark terms, what the market for attorneys is really like, how crushing the debt can be, and what life is like after three years wasted.
I am sure that old guy's response will be more on point, but it is not just Cooley that does not lead to 'big law' but the entire 4th tier. And not just big law but any law. According to old guy the 2nd and 3rd tiers are equally as useless. That seems that it might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the 4th tier alone comprises about 50 schools that are not delivering a useful product.
DeleteAs for your experiences, in order to have been admitted to a 1st tier school, your undergraduate credentials must have been impressive. You said yourself that you might have achieved the same success by pursuing an easier path than law school. I would say that that is correct and perhaps your Bachelor's alone would have been sufficient to achieve at least some degree of success. You do not explain beyond resume padding, how your JD was so essential to getting and succeeding in this 'front office' position that you have. I am not sure exactly what a front office position is, but I assume it is superior to a back or rear office position.
January 3 3:26 here
Delete@ January 5 8:15AM
Unlike desirable roles in the legal profession (e.g. big law), front office roles in the business sector tend to require fewer hours as you go up the totem pole. And almost none outside of management consulting and IB have hours comparable to V50 law firms. It takes about five minutes to catch up on this blog and respond. I don't even need a secretary to block that time out.
Never said I was hugely successful, I am lucky to have gotten past my resume's Mark of Cain (a JD).
Outside the Law School Scam is the only active scam blog left. It has an increased responsibility to be 100% accurate, on-point, and relentless against the scam in all the forms it takes. It is the only resource left outside of cached archives of defunct websites.
You are case in point as to what I am referring to by being inaccurate and then ignored by 0Ls. Here you are, attacking an internet stranger, saying he has no idea what 0Ls think, "none." You accuse an internet stranger of being a law school placement office employee like a paranoid person. 0Ls will tune that out and think you are a loser who could not hack it in the profession and in the game of life, whether that is fair or not. They will read stories of Harvard alums who cannot get a big law job and (rightfully) perceive that poster to be an outlier. They will read remarks about how bikini-clad advertising at a San Diego school may be assuming the wrong sexual orientation and roll their eyes, people do not come here to read about trans debates and social justice issues or Republican tax cut proposals.
This blog should be focused on two situations:
1. The 0L with a good undergraduate credential and work experience for whom big law is a professional step down (because it is for anyone who has been in finance or consulting or FAANG level tech), and
2. The 0L with a bad LSAT (under 174) who has no business in law, who is looking at predatory institutions (everything outside the T13, and the T13 without a full-ride).
Both groups are entering a profession with crummy responsibilities and high debt loads. 99/100 entering law students should avoid it.
@January 5 11:43AM
I am slightly exaggerating when I say the entire second, third, and fourth tiers are useless. Anybody who comes out of them with a respectable legal career trajectory was qualified for a first tier school and recklessly rolled the dice.
Whether my undergraduate credentials were "impressive" is an interesting question. I have a humanities 3.5 from a non-flagship state school. Law school admissions standards have declined precipitously the last 30 years as any older professor will state in private. Due to the rankings game, law schools just want the highest GPA and LSATs they can find, whether that is from Podunk U or Dartmouth does not matter.
A front office position in a business generates revenue. It can be management, sales, investment advisory etc. Back office (and middle office) are support functions such as in-house counsel, HR, tech support, risk management, accounting.
The JD was largely resume padding, but it tangentially is related to my current role (I am in an investment role at a fund that focuses on public equities and distressed assets). An MBA would be an easier path here, a masters in finance too, a candidate with a few financial modeling courses who can network has a better shot than most T13 JD holders with 2-4 years at a big law firm. Law does not open doors outside of the legal profession.
Paranoid, indeed; you lengthy and fully uniformed post is risible. How would you, who has never had a law job, know what 0Ls find credible? Quick answer: you don't. Simply put, you have no idea, as it's been since your law school days that you've had contact with anyone in law school. There's nothing inaccurate about the post you attack(yes, attacking an "internet stranger"); it simply reflects the temerity of-egads!-disagreeing with you.
DeleteBy your own admission, you've never worked a law job, used the JD for "padding", judge others mightily("loser")...and all these opinions because you "work in the front office" of an unnamed company in an unnamed line of business.
Clearly, this background gives you sparkling insight into the mindset of prospective law students. So start your own blog, as you definitely think you can do a better job than just about everybody else.
January 6 5:24pm here
DeleteI work in real estate in an acquisitions capacity, specifically to obtain existing rental apartment complexes to rehab into mixed-use retail/luxury condos in gentrifying neighborhoods. Much of what we do is in Brooklyn, DC, and increasingly Atlanta and Los Angeles. I use Excel and Argus extensively, I occasionally serve as owner-rep on construction projects. About 75% of my comp is in equity and carried interest. Let me tell you my company, alma mater, graduation year, and social security number while I’m at it, to establish credibility.
I did not go to law school too long ago, at least way more recently than “Old Guy” did. 0Ls, by definition, never had a law job. It does not require a savant empath to figure out what they want (prestige, money, maybe some hedonistic activity in their off time, law schools claim to provide all three). Thank you for telling me I don’t know anyone in law school at this moment in time, whether family or friends. It is also amusing to think their goals in going to law school are much different than someone in the 70s or 80s. It is all the same.
I did not call Old Guy a “loser”, I simply stated how 0Ls will likely perceive him. He went to Harvard and couldn’t get a big law job. We can attribute that to age discrimination, luck of the draw etc but it doesn’t matter to a 22-year old with an admissions letter in front of him. He’ll Google harvards big law placement rate and draw his own conclusions.
There is no reason for me to start my own blog when this one is adequate and improvable. I am providing constructive criticism.
With this five minute detour, let me go back to eviction notices our outside counsel prepared for a new acquisition.
Robot lawyer to defend client in court
ReplyDeletehttps://nypost.com/2023/01/05/robot-lawyer-powered-by-ai-will-help-fight-speeding-ticket-as-it-takes-first-case-in-court/
Old guy, would you rather be represented by a robot lawyer, or a Cooley/other 4th tier graduate?
Let me put it like this: I'd rather commit harakiri than hire an über-toileteer as counsel.
DeleteLook at what I found on Reddit that was posted 10 years ago. Quite telling:
ReplyDelete" I'm a 2012 graduate from a strong regional school (strong in the region, top 50 overall). I graduated in the top 5% of my class, was on law review, externed for a federal district court judge, worked as a law clerk throughout law school, and participated in clinic.
It's every bit as much of a scam as you have heard. I have no job and no prospects. The last job I interviewed for would have consisted of nothing but running the tires off my car handling court calls for residential foreclosures. That job went to an attorney with 22 years of experience.
I've been killing myself doing the networking thing. I go to every bar association event I can, I've gone to observe trials and motion practice, and I'll be done with my CLE for this year and next in early January. The people in the alumni network don't respond to emails, and most practitioners I've encountered have given up talking to new graduates. None of it is doing any good. I've sent out hundreds of resumes, each one carefully tailored and researched. There just aren't any jobs out there. "
Remember, not all law students are sincere and genuine people. I personally know a guy who coasted through 4Y of college, all funded by student loans. He then moved back in with his parents and worked various low paid jobs for a year, and decided that he didn't like "work". . .so he took a 3Y all-expenses paid vacation in sunny Florida! He called it "law school" but freely admitted he chose Florida because he likes warm sunny beaches and girls in bikinis. He didn't even sit for the Bar the summer after he graduated. . .why bother! He's now unemployed, and will never repay his student loans, but for 7Y--4Y college, 3Y law school--he had a Great Time, and didn't have to pay for any of it! Lots of students working at the local Wal Mart with their Bachelor's in "Philosophy" or "Film" get tired of living at home with Mom and Dad, and worrying about their student loans from college, so they head off to law school, where they not only won't be required to repay their loans while attending, but will in fact take out lots of new loans while living large for 3Y. Some even go for an MBA after that for more years of living large without having to work for a livng. . .
DeleteWe have never maintained that toileteers are innocent victims. Indeed, there are plenty of moochers among them who just go for the borrowed money that they'll never repay. The law-school scamsters aren't the only ones who are in on the scam.
DeleteMake sure you elect Crackpot Politician A, with promises of blanket student loan forgiveness but no plan to require lending standards for student loans......
DeleteI don't blame the students necessarily. If you tell someone that you'll give them a loan that is limitless (thanks to gradPLUS) and tell them that (thanks to IBR) they don't have to pay it back except in the (unlikely) event that they can afford to do so, can you really blame them for taking advantage of that? A business certainly would take advantage of huge forgivable loans, as they did with PPP and such.
DeleteSo why should an individual care about the morality of it? Economics 101: People respond to incentives, and if what you incentivize them to do is to take a 3 year vacation from the real world, then you can't really blame them for taking the government up on its offer. Heck, the government even benefits in one sense: They're not in the labor force when they're in school full-time so they cannot be counted as "unemployed," which enables politicians to paint a rosier economic picture. Social security disability often serves the same purpose for former factory workers who have been made obsolete.
Borrowing money you do not intend to pay back is inherently dishonest. If one of the first major decisions you make in your adult life, from 18-24 years old, is to steal a few hundred thousand dollars, you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of dishonesty. I would never retain a lawyer who was so profoundly dishonest that he stole a few hundred thousand dollars to relax in school while everyone else was working for a living. If you default on your student loans, you will default on other loans and obligations in life, be more inclined to cheat on your spouse, buy cars that end up being repossessed, homes that are eventually foreclosed on, and so forth. The person I know who spent 7 years living on student loans has since bounced from job to job to unemployment, and is now a compulsive liar with a very tenuous grip on reality. Nothing makes you grow up more than working hard to pay off your own debts, and eventually succeeding and being free of them.
ReplyDeleteDishonesty seems to be what the US is all about.
DeleteA really important issue is how the law school scam keeps going. At first, I blamed the schools, the scamdeans and the scamprofs (and I still then they are culpable). Then I blamed the idiotic loan schemes. But really finally after many years, after more accurate stats were shown, you have to blame the lemmings. They really are deluded. One thing I've always noticed when I gatecrash a law school chatboard, is how the smarter students are prepared to listen about the scam, but the lower ones really block it all out, and think they are special.
ReplyDeleteThe loans system is simply a dangerous feeding of an irrational cognitive bias built into many people, who are too thick for maths/science/tech and too dumb to work with their hands: the law lemmings.
That's one reason for which those that you daintily call "the lower ones" (whom I would probably call "the dolts") should be kept twenty leagues from any law school.
DeleteIt wasn't so very long ago that people were routinely discouraged from hopeless pursuits. To this very day Old Guy would be drawn aside and told a few home truths if he proposed to become a quarterback or a concertmeister, at least after everyone stopped laughing. Not so with law: everyone is encouraged to go into it, regardless of deficiencies in such areas as literacy and intelligence. And Uncle $cam will underwrite the whole ill-fated venture.
There are several things driving the scam. The US, unlike other nations 1) encourages just about everyone to go to college. This leads to unintelligent, unmotivated people getting worthless college degrees in majors like "Philosophy" and "Sociology". They usually come out deeply in debt, move back in with their parents, and end up working very low wage jobs. 2) We, culturally, portray college as a four year long party, with emphasis on alcohol, sex, college football, basketball etc. Finally, 3) We portray just about all lawyers as being beautiful, wealthy successful people with amazing careers, driving luxury cars and living like kings and 4) We tell college and law school students you don't have to pay for any of this, just sign some loan documents and have a blast. All of these factors have led to a grossly over-saturated job market for lawyers, a steadily declining Bar Pass rate, and a host of other problems that keep growing and getting worse.
ReplyDelete