A piece of software called ChatGPT passed four out of four exams at the law school of the U of Minnesota. Most of the questions were multiple choice (a format that was not used at Old Guy's élite law school), but many required essays, and on some of the latter ChatGPT scored in the top half of the class.
The authors of the article cited above suggest that ChatGPT may be useful to practicing lawyers. Without wishing to boast, Old Guy admits that he has a reputation for writing excellent briefs (some lawyers call them the best in the jurisdiction), and he would never use a tool of this kind. It is evident from the article, and quite predictable, that the software just looked through material on the Internet and pieced it together into text, without understanding what was asked. Although the text was perfectly grammatical (which is more than can be said for that of many students), it gave no real analysis: it would often cite an authority on a point of law, but it would not analyze the applicability of the authority to the case or even offer clear conclusions or advice. (There appears to be a mode in which it gives definitive or at least assertive answers; that was disabled for the purposes of this experiment.) Old Guy will continue to write his briefs the old-fashioned way—by himself.
(It must be said that useful software packages known as expert systems have been around for many decades. An expert system asks questions of the user in an attempt to solve problems. These have been developed to assist physicians with obscure diagnoses. Conceivably they could help lawyers to explore options for litigation. Again, Old Guy relies on his own abilities. He can sometimes come up with a creative solution that would escape 99%+ of lawyers and that would probably elude software as well.)
The authors also suggest that students are likely to use tools such as ChatGPT, either to prepare for exams or to cheat on them. A student running short of time, for instance, could submit a question to ChatGPT rather than giving no answer at all. That would clearly constitute cheating (unless, improbably, the professor invited computer-generated answers). More profitably, the student might generate a first draft with ChatGPT, improve it, and submit the result as the student's own work. That too would be cheating. Or a student preparing for an exam could run sample questions through ChatGPT and rely on the output for guidance. That sounds like skating on thin ice. But ChatGPT can apparently outperform many toileteers already.
More interesting than the possibility of using software to generate briefs and such is the possibility of turning some legal work over to computers, thereby casting many lawyers out of a job. Software for writing wills has been around since the 1980s (taking the place of forms that used to be sold), and much other legal work is so formulaic that it may soon be automated. For clarity, Old Guy does not recommend that anyone produce a will with software or forms, although even a naïvely generated will may be better than none at all (yes, I said may!). But is the day far off when an expert system will be able to interview a testator and generate a respectable will—or a referral to a lawyer when the expert system cannot handle some difficulty (assets outside the country, complicated trusts, sophisticated estate planning)? Old Guy uses a template—his own—for the purpose, although it invariably requires alteration rather than mere filling in of blanks. Although Old Guy does not write many wills, he prides himself on producing superior ones. For uncomplicated situations, maybe the task could be automated.
Last month a company announced that its software was going to be used experimentally to defend a traffic ticket: it would listen in court and tell the accused (through an earphone) what to say, and the company would pay any fine. Perhaps some common defences could be handled effectively by software, and the options for some tickets are likely to be so limited that the approach might work some of the time. But effective computer-generated cross-examinations and closing arguments are probably a long way off.
Old Guy's work, in the main, is along the lines of briefs for court more than basic wills or defense to traffic tickets. He doesn't expect to be displaced by a computer. But some bottom-end legal work—filling out routine forms, calculating support in a divorce, document review, soon enough perhaps even traffic court—may soon be automated if it hasn't been already, and that will reliably reduce the number of openings for lawyers. Über-toilet law schools will suffer the most: after all, their graduates are the most likely to do bottom-end work as it is, and they cannot expect to migrate into something like appellate litigation that will be a human endeavor for some time to come.
Thanks, Old Guy. This is very worrisome. Professionals already have enough trouble reasoning and applying a new fact situation to existing law and precedent. I remember in grade school there was an assignment that students' graded. The correct answer was a half (1/2). I wrote down .5.
ReplyDeleteIt was initially marked wrong by a student who didn't know that .5=1/2, and couldn't see that the answer was the same.
I fear that this type of error in thinking will only become more prevalent.
And the potential impact of AI on the legal industry is all the more reason to choose a career that has less chance of being automated or outsourced, for example, an electrician or plumber or other skilled trade.
I've been advocating the skilled trades for decades. I should have gone into one myself.
DeleteYou are right to worry that lawyers will resort to this sort of software and pass its output off as legal work. I shudder to think of that.
It's been interesting how everyone long assumed that the sophisticated and mentally complex jobs are the ones that cannot be automated whereas the dirty and dangerous ones will be.
DeleteIn truth, it is just the opposite, except perhaps for production on a factory assembly line where the entire environment can be built for the machine. Everywhere else it is not the higher-order functions but the simplest things, the things we do instinctively like walking on two legs or using opposable thumbs that have actually proven the hardest for computers to replicate. Turns out there's an immensely complex process behind these actions going on in our brains, but it is one we're not even consciously aware of. That does indeed bode well for the skilled trades. It's also why stuff like true and fully self-driving cars have proven to be a lot farther off than everyone assumed. Turns out that stuff is a lot harder than getting a bot to spit out text on a screen that passes the Turing Test.
That said, in the original post's example I'm a little perplexed as to how the bot got a good grade despite the fact that it did not "analyze the applicability of the authority to the case or even offer clear conclusions or advice." That gives me more concern about how UMinn is actually testing than about the bot, because like Old Guy my law school exams were 100% essay and they certainly weren't interested in one's ability to memorize and regurgitate, but rather to issue spot and actually apply doctrine to the fact pattern. That's why the tests were all open book in my school; they didn't expect you to memorize the black-letter but to apply it. Law profs already only have to grade one exam per semester per student. Multiple choice? It it possible they're getting even lazier?
No software yet has passed the Turing test. That too is probably a very long way off. Software that can generate "Port Moresby" in response to "What is the capital of Papua New Guinea?" is nothing new, but software with which you could develop a friendship does not yet exist.
DeleteYou can read the article; see the link at the top. The software seems to have done best at simple problems. For example, in response to a question about an injury caused by an unsafe object on someone's land, the software came up with some boilerplate text about the obligation of an occupier of land to keep the land reasonably safe for people invited to be there. Searching for a few keywords may have been good enough. But it tended to flub more sophisticated questions.
I too was disappointend—though not a bit surprised—to learn of multiple-choice tests at the U of Minnesota. It's near the top of the fourth tier; we might have expected better. But maybe the third tier and the second tier are similarly sliding into a lack of standards.
Actually, both ChatGPT and a Google product have passed the Turing test, meaning they can fool panels of judges who couldn't reliably discern between the human and AI responses. If you google it you'll see the articles about it.
DeleteBut that doesn't say as much as one might think. Turing could not have predicted the emergence of the internet and Google; he would've assumed that a machine passing his test could make humans think it's human WITHOUT reliance on the ability to basically just run searches of all human knowledge in a millisecond and paraphrase what actual humans have written in response to similar questions.
To put it another way, it's an unfair fight. The chatbot is running searches on the internet and paraphrasing the results, but the judges have no way of rapidly checking to see how similar the answer being given is to what others say. That's why that guy who invented GPTZero is able to use his software to detect whether it is a real human response. So I guess the Turing test should be modified such that neither humans NOR other computers can discern the human from the AI responses in order to pass.
I'd bet that I could expose this software with a few well-chosen questions.
DeleteYou probably could, but I have to assume the testing protocol controls for this, like by making you do just casual conversation and slowing the responses down to a human typing speed. Otherwise you could just ask it trivia questions and you'd know the machine because its answers are too good, like more than a human could memorize.
DeleteIndeed, "How many possible bridge hands are there?" and "What are the ten largest lakes in Burkina Faso?" are questions that very few humans could correctly answer on the spot. In principle, software could be designed to play dumb by refraining from providing obscure information. That's actually part of the Turing test: the computer is supposed to pass for a human, which entails avoiding responses that a human would be unlikely to give.
DeleteRE: The skilled trades. The secondary educational system is oriented towards preparation for college. Nearly all courses are academic in nature. The only exposure to the skilled trades were a few 'shop' aka industrial arts classes, none of which I excelled in and and none of which I was encouraged to pursue as a career. Do these introductory shop classes adequately reveal a student's aptitude for a skilled trade? Would the solution be to revamp the educational system in the US to focus on intensive education in the skilled trades and make the casual academic courses secondary so that everyone graduating would be qualified to work in a skilled trade? I don't see how promoting skilled trades makes sense when the education for it doesn't exist.
ReplyDeleteOnly recently did I hear of anyone's being qualified for a skilled trade on the basis of high-school courses, and that was at a school that had that sort of training for auto mechanics. I don't know how that works. Qualification for a skilled trade ordinarily takes a few years of apprenticeship.
DeleteEast Bumblefuck High School, which Old Guy attended, did not have shop, though it did have home economics. It didn't have much of anything, to tell the truth. When Old Guy arrived at university, someone asked whether he had been on the debating team in high school. Old Guy had to ask what a debating team was: he had never heard of one.
There's no way in hell that Old Guy would have been encouraged to pursue anything non-academic as a career. But perhaps he should have.
I teach at a vocational high school. All the "majors" are 4 years and culminate in a state test that leads to some type of certification. I do know HVAC, Auto Mechanics, and Cosmetology can start working right away. There needs to be a lot more of this. The programs are difficult because the classes are in addition to the regular college prep program.
DeleteWhen I was in HS there was a nursing program where students got the LPN license. 30 or 40 years ago, vocational training was scrapped in favor of putting everyone on a college prep track all in the name of fairness and 'access to opportunity'. The message in schools today is that you're a loser if you don't go to college; even though about 40% of the adults that students interact with daily in a school setting have jobs that don't require higher education such as secretaries; school aides; cafeteria workers; custodians; bus drivers and monitors; school safety officers. Lacking knowledge, these kids borrow heavily for college, sometimes for-profit colleges that issue worthless degrees and nontransferable credits. Many drop out, but the debt remains. In many ways, the college scam rivals the law school scam.
Some of those adults with no degree, and possibly no high-school diploma, are baby boomers with pensions that your students will never get. The baby boomers pulled the ladder up behind themselves.
DeleteThe law-school scam is indeed part of the broader ejookayshunal scam.
The bitter truth is that it's become an education-industrial complex. It employs tens of thousands at taxpayer expense--just like the defense industry-and those people want to keep their cushy jobs. So it's no longer about learning or education or anything quaint like that. Instead, it's about getting them in and getting them out, keeping the seats filled, getting that federal guaranteed $$$. So everybody needs to go to college, regardless of interest or skill level; otherwise the money wouldn't keep flowing.
DeleteLawyers will even be more unemployed with this new technology. Already lawyers lost a lot of business to online services such as Legal Zoom but now with artificial technology that can pass the bar exam lawyers might become obsolete.
ReplyDeleteThis software does not work nearly well enough to put lawyers out of business. I tried it with a simple legal question, merely asking the state of the law on some ordinary issue—and the answer was totally wrong. Forget about entrusting clients' legal problems to this software.
DeleteBear in mind too that some of us lawyers do quite sophisticated work, such as appeals. Do you really expect computers to take over appellate advocacy any time soon?
The idea that some mysterious AI is going to replace all the lawyers is insane. I have court this afternoon, it's a theft case. The very notion that a robot will shave, brush its hair and teeth, put on a suit, drive to court. go through the metal detector, gossip with other lawyers while waiting in line to talk with the prosecutor. . .maybe in 500 year, or a thousand years, if we even still have a court system at that point. Not in anyone's lifetime, though, we can't even get a robot to drive to court, exit the car and walk into the courthouse yet. And before anyone says but that's just one part of how we practice law, in fact the Criminal Justice System is a pretty big, important part of how we practice law.
ReplyDeleteOld Guy may not turn many heads, but he probably looks better in a suit than most robots.
DeleteBut the aspect of presentation in court, though important, isn't central here. Would you trust a computer to work out your client's defense against that charge of theft? I hope to hell that your client wouldn't trust it.
It'll be the next incarnation of legal zoom or the self help form books that've been around since before the internet. The people who use them are either too broke for a lawyer, or so egotistical that they think they're better at it than one. Either way, they wouldn't have hired a lawyer even if such options did not exist and as such, the products aren't really in competition with lawyers, though they do also find a second use in assisting them.
DeleteOf course, there aren't enough of the kind of clients who WOULD hire lawyers to around, but that's a separate issue.
Old Guy would not use these products for assistance. The sorts of lawyers who would find this crap beneficial are probably the sorts that come out of the rectum of Cooley.
DeleteYes, some laypeople will resort to these devices, at their peril. I'd be more willing to listen to an unrepresented person acting alone than one who put some computer-generated garbage forward in court.
Y’all need to stop ripping on Cooley. I went back in the late 2000s. No one there thinks it’s Harvard, okay? But you get a top notch classroom focused education. I now make about 150,000 a year as a solo outside Detroit doing DUIs/wills/small commercial litigation. Anyone with grit can make a great life for theMselves from there. Also the student life is incredible, they make an effort for all the students to fell at home, social, and having a good time.
ReplyDeleteYou have to be a troll. And make 150k a year doing DUI/Wills/Litigation?. Dream on. More like 12k a year tops. There is no work out there for solos. Law has collapsed.
DeleteNo one thinks of Cooley as Harvard, we're told, yet the education at Cooley is top notch. I suppose that Harvard is a number of notches down. Has Cooley placed itself first, rather than second, in the notorious Cooley rankings?
DeleteAnd we're supposed to believe that this Cooleyite makes $150k per year off DUIs, wills, and small commercial litigation. Anyone who has big money to spend on any of those things will hardly turn to a solo Cooleyite.
And note the usual scamster-style reference to "grit", sometimes framed instead as "hustle". If you, dragging your toilet-paper diploma from Cooley, haven't springboarded yourself into $150k a year from writing wills, the fault is all your own: you just haven't used Cooley's top-notch offering to full advantage. You aren't willing to bend down and scoop up the gold that lies all around you.
Pffffffffffffft.
@12:07PM Right, troll, because 150k is so much money (lol). It is barely enough to buy an updated house in a Detroit suburb with schools your child won't be shot in.
Delete@OldGuy yes, the education is top notch. You are prepared for the bar and for practice. What is big money? I take scores of clients per year. It is not like they are all giving me five figures in fees, a lot do not even pay and I have to bring debt collectors in. Maybe you should stop judging potential clients and sign them on, or maybe you don't have the "hustle" to make it in this business.
Some of my classmates have made it, others have not. Just like any law school, including Harvard (your alma mater ;-)
Found the lawschool admin! What a joke-making 150k a year as a solo. Yep, you're really going to make that in todays hopelessly glutted LegalZoomed market. Try about 10k a year, if you're lucky. Law degrees are garbage.
Delete$150,000 sounds like it would probably be in the upper 95th percentile for Cooley grads. And they would probably be doing something other than being a lawyer. Indeed states that the average attorney salary in MI is around $82,000. Attorneys with over 10 years of experience still only average around $106k.
DeleteThere it is, the last refuge of the scoundrel, er scammer-you don't "hustle" enough-or "network" or whatever.
Delete@1:22 I don't know what hovel you live in, but 150k is not money to brag about. It is really not a "good" income for someone 35+. Anyone who goes to rotary, church, the bar events, and other networking locations will make 150k so long as they do not commit malpractice and are somewhat likable.
Delete@8:01 Not quite 95th percentile, probably 60th for mid-career but that is anecdotal. No one has stats on these questions.
@8:36 yes, many do not hustle or network enough. Clients will not magically appear in your office.
On the one hand, we're told that a bit of schmoozing at church will easily bring in an income of $150k per year. On the other, we're told that one must "hustle" for work.
DeleteAn annual income of $150k is well within the top decile in the US, yet we are expected to believe that "anyone" can get it by rubbing elbows at "networking locations". And that more than 90% of people in the US live in hovels.
Most Americans don’t have a three year professional degree. If you can’t make 150k w one, then law wasn’t for you. It’s not easy or low energy, but it’s not rocket science. Get out and hit the pavement to get clients.
DeleteWasn't it Cooley that compared itself to HLS?
ReplyDeleteOh, yes, indeed. For years, Cooley put out an annual publication entitled "Judging the Law Schools". In 2011, Cooley rated itself the second best law school in the US, after Harvard (at least it made that concession). Run a search for "Judging the Law Schools" and "Cooley" if you need a laugh.
DeleteHow did Cooley elevate itself to second place? By setting up a few dozen criteria, almost all of which were proxies for size: number of students, number of professors, area of campus, number of volumes in library, number of seats in library, and so on. With thousands of students back then (only a few hundred now), Cooley was by far the largest law school in the US in terms of enrollment, so of course it came out high on this "ranking". But is size a good measure of the quality of a law school? Yale is fairly small, yet very highly regarded; by contrast, the InfiLaw über-toilets each had thousands of students a decade ago, and now all three are gone, as is InfiLaw itself. Indeed, among academic institutions, the most selective are often small, precisely because there aren't many students of high quality to go around.
As I recall (and my memory may have faded), LSAT score and undergraduate GPA were the only criteria that were not linked to size. The other criteria were largely duplicative of one another; they served only to distract attention from the fact that Cooley was favoring size, practically its only distinguishing quality. Well, it has another distinguishing quality: the lowest LSAT score at the 25th percentile. But even Cooley might be ashamed to play that up into an advantage.
But Old Guy, they provide a top notch classroom focused education with all the while making an effort for the students to fell at home, social and having a good time.
Delete@9:14AM not really. Cooley made a ranking system to correct long-standing abuses of the USNews rankings, which are wholly inadequate. Some people complained about Cooley's spot in the ranking. But we were not ranked number one in them and it seemed more accurate overall.
DeleteHow, exactly, do they make the students "feel at home" and have "a good time"? But then again, maybe they are having too good a time, as their abysmal bar passage rate attests. The rate is so low that even that toothless tiger, the ABA, has informed Cooley that it's out of compliance and could be in big trouble(yeah, right).
DeleteYes, and in correcting those "abuses" Cooley decided that it was the #2 law school in the country-after HLS, but only by a tiny margin. So Cooley, to fight the USNWR rankings, created its own fake rankings. Yes, that sort of behavior is responsible and defensible-after all, what better way to fight a fake is to create your own fake?
DeleteAnd how does making Cooley #2 seem "more accurate overall"?
@8:41 They assist with phenomenal housing options, a close-knit campus, and amazing bar nights out with your classmates from orientation until graduation. Even the weekend and evening students join in on the fun :-). The rate of passage is not "low." A lot of people decide not to become attorneys and pursue other career paths, but they are grateful for the network and hard skills they leave Cooley with.
Delete@1:34 I really should not have to explain it to you. Go on Above the Law or any law related news outlet, law schools like Berkeley and Yale are leaving the USNews system in droves because of its abuses. No one provided a reasonable alternative aside from Cooley. There was nothing "fake" about it and the level of transparency was commendable. It lean towards bigger schools because schools are there to educate. Cooley has educated more URMs than the T14 in total, and it is committed to this progressive approach while also combining traditional standards of excelence.
According to information that Cooley itself has disclosed to the ABA, only 38% of Cooleyite toileteers who take a bar exam pass one within two years of graduation. That's one of the lowest rates among ABA-accredited law schools, if not the very lowest rate. So, yes, the rate is indeed low. Actually, that's an understatement. Cooley should have been shut down years ago.
DeleteOkay well a third become attorneys and practice. Giving them a means to make a good living. Not everyone was born with a silver spoon. Not everyone can go to Harvard. A “cooleyite” is in the same profession as you
DeleteNo, a third eventually pass a bar exam. That doesn't mean that they become lawyers and practice, still less that they have the means to make a good living. Even graduates of real law schools often find themselves unable to thrive as lawyers, and lots of people quit law after a few years.
DeleteThirty-eight percent is a frightfully bad rate, scarcely half of the rate of 75% that the ABA considers acceptable (and that Old Guy still rejects as far from adequate). Note that it excludes those who never bother to take a bar exam because they know damn well that they cannot pass it.
If Cooley has a magical recipe for making silk purses out of the sows' ears that it draws in from the low 140s and even lower on the LSAT, there is no evidence of it. Cooley charges a fortune for its bottom-of-the-barrel product. And even if somehow it stands head and shoulders above other law schools in the quality of its instruction, its students in the main are too unprepared to benefit.
I'm not going to answer your personal abuse, beyond saying that you don't know what you're talking about and that any further message containing personal abuse will be deleted.
There was no personal abuse directed at you or anyone else. All I did was say many who went to the T14 are there because of money and background. They cheat on the bar and get ahead that way. Judges, who usually went to the T14, look the other way for their alma maters.
DeleteI have said many times that I speak of élite schools because they are peopled with aristocrats. That doesn't mean that occasionally an Old Guy doesn't get in.
DeleteThis attempt to portray Cooley as a valiant defender of the downtrodden wore thin long ago. Cooley is just ripping inferior students off. Just about anyone who could get into a decent law school would turn Cooley down. Cooley exists not as an academy for people outside the hereditary aristocracy but as a vehicle for profiting at the expense of people so hopelessly unqualified for law school that they cannot even get into a dump like Vermont or New York Law School. And the high proportion of racialized lemmings at Cooley betokens not progressive politics but a blaxploitation scam.
Plenty of good lsat holders go to Cooley and then down top tier schools. Plenty.
DeleteThe cliche of Cooley providing opportunity is a cliche because it is based in truth.
Great, now you’re attacking black credentials.
Yeah, let's stick to the facts: Cooley is on ABA probation because of its lousy bar passage rate, and the current dean of Cooley threw previous Cooleyites under the bus-it was "old admissions standards" which led to the lousy bar passage rate-then basically saying- "we don't take those types anymore".
Deletehttps://www.abajournal.com/web/article/after-repeat-failures-to-meet-bar-pass-standard-aba-gives-law-school-an-extension
@10:39 A lot of people decide not to become attorneys and decline the bar exam? Seriously? Fourth tier students are obsessed with the bar exam and few have other career options that they can fall back on. A HLS grad can probably skip the bar and go into corporate management. Almost all 4th tier grads take the bar exam.
DeleteAnd 'hard skills'? What hard skills? You can do your own title search? You can help people, once they hear you are a lawyer or even a student, for free, who approach you to help them sue their neighbor or break a contract? Give me a break.
Don't race-bait me. Whether Black, white, or anything else, people are done a horrible disservice when they are led to believe that an über-toilet law school offers them a rare opportunity to get ahead in a racist society. Beware scamsters (Greek or otherwise) even when they bear gifts.
DeleteOlder Black people tend to have long memories. I encourage young Black people to ask their elders whether to trust white people who claim to dispense opportunity at a bottom-feeding law school that nonetheless charges Harvard's fees. Some Black elders may be taken in by the cultural belief that law paves a path to riches, but most will probably see right through this tacky, exploitative white-scamster-as-Harriet-Tubman shtick.
The "credentials" of Cooleyites speak for themselves. With the occasional exception of one or two law schools in US-occupied Puerto Rico where the students speak Spanish but still have to take the LSAT in English, Cooley routinely posts the lowest LSAT scores. Black people with good credentials will go to Harvard or Michigan, not to odious Cooley.
Unfortunately for the public, but very lucratively for the scamsters, the scam-enabling ABA will go on making excuses for abysmal Cooley every few years rather than yanking accreditation. This is one reason for which the ABA, controlled as it is by scamsters and their lackeys, should be stripped of its accrediting function.
Most bar failures is due to laziness. They had the potential and an awesome school and blew their shot.
DeleteYes, hard skills. Unlike Yale, they are taught in schools that produce real, on the ground litigators, schools like Cooley. Actually, go on top law school forum. HLS doesn’t open doors outside law. Those in banking or management are extreme outliers.
Got it, old guy. You don’t want more black attorneys, unless they shine your shoes while you both attend Harvard. I mean, who cares if black Detroit has an intact legal community right? It’s not as if most of your black classmates at HLS went into corporate law or DC based advocacy.
I've warned you about personal attacks. There won't be another warning.
DeleteAllowing über-toilets like Cooley to prey upon Black people is no way to increase the number or proportion of Black lawyers. Nor is admitting people who are unprepared for law school.
If Cooleyites make such great litigators, it's funny that Cooley never hires one to represent it in lawsuits.
“Never” is inaccurate. And so what if they don’t? The former President hired a Cooley alum to handle most of his legal work. There’s almost nothing off limits for a Cooley grad
DeleteIn fact, there's a very strong case for simply criminally prosecuting law school staff and admins etc, as they know that law degrees are hopeless yet still fraudulently sell these degrees. Time for a few jail sentences.
ReplyDeleteProsecute on what grounds, @3:26? For giving underrepresented populations and impoverished applicants a chance at the apple of white collar America? For a better life? Why pull up the ladder? I think you should be a little less histrionic, just because some Cooley grads make more money than you ;-)
ReplyDeleteIt must be nice for you in that Cooley admin office, with all that student loan cash rolling in from people destroying their futures. Making up fantasy tales of solos earning 150k etc etc. Sure beats working in the real world!
Delete@8:25 you sound paranoid. No admins are out there doing that. Do you really think no Cooley alums are satisfied with their professional outcome and alma mater? Cooley made me the man I am today and let’s me provide a lot for my family.
DeleteWell if you're so proud of Cooley and your solo practice, why not post your details here?
DeleteIt also allows you to write utter fiction about the school. Only 44% are in law jobs, and 25% are flat out unemployed after graduation. So one quarter of your fellow alums must not be networking or hustling or whatever. Plain and simple; it's a debt trap. And you, hopeless shill for Cooley-any facts, at all, about cheating on the bar?
Deletehttps://www.lawschooltransparency.com/schools/cooley/jobs
The quarter of Cooley's graduates who have no job at all ten months after graduation, and the quarter or more (not even counting "JD-advantage") who are working outside law (most of them at minimum wage or not much more), must be especially "grateful" to the scamsters who left them with a toilet-paper degree and a quarter of a million dollars in non-dischargeable debt.
DeleteMr Infinity returns!
DeleteYes, 5:44, let me dox myself.
DeleteYes, if you are unemployed in such a robust economy with single digit unemployment, that’s on you. Especially with a professional degree. You’re shilling on bar cheating is akin to “any proof Enron is committing fraud?” before the break of the scandal. These issues take awhile to percolate.
Most of my classmates are grateful, now that they’re more than a decade out. Those that aren’t weren’t ever going to make it professionally, no matter where they went to school. They’d be in debt either in student loans or another form of debt. Don’t pity them.
A total abrogation of any responsibility on the part of über-toilets like Cooley. And why not? They've already pocketed their ill-gotten gains; nothing else matters to them.
DeleteOne wonders why Cooley and similar über-toilets consistently draw in so many people who end up unemployed. Why does this problem disproportionately affect the über-toilets? Harvard and Yale don't have large numbers of unemployed graduates.
You simply don’t know if an entering law student will thrive or not until they take exams and the bar. A 138 lsat with a 2.0 gpa sometimes becomes a highly successful attorney, making more money than anyone here. A 180 lsat holder with a 4.0 gpa from Yale college sometimes flames out and can’t get through the bar, in part due to entitlement. Everyone deserves a shot. Cooley gives the general public that shot.
DeleteWhy are they unemployed? Combination of racial and socioeconomic discrimination on employers’ parts, many alums were non traditional students and 40+. The school is young, it doesn’t enjoy 100+ year old old boy networks to funnel alums into white shoe firms and clerkships. It’ll get there in time, it’ll take awhile with some growing pains.
Why do you think Cooley is trying to profit? It is a non profit law school, totally different from infilaw
First of all, measuring success in terms of money is questionable at best. By that standard, heirs to billions and major crooks might be the most successful people of all.
DeleteSecond, I doubt very much whether Cooleyites with a 138 make a fortune as lawyers, if they become lawyers at all (recall that Law School Transparency, before it sold out to the LSAC, identified 144 as the threshold of "extreme" risk of never passing a bar exam). Certainly I would never retain any knuckle-dragging lawyer with a 138.
To blame the unemployment of so many graduates on discrimination (race, age, class) is, once again, to let the scamsters off the hook. If it were true that a large portion of the class was slated for unemployment because of systemic discrimination, Cooley would have a responsibility to inform its applicants of that. In fact, far and away the most important cause of unemployment among Cooleyites is their general lousiness: with LSAT scores in the 140s and even the 130s, they have no business going anywhere near a law school.
We have discussed before the lack of meaningful difference between profit-seeking and non-profit-seeking law schools: the latter simply spend their ill-gotten gains on scam-professors, junkets, and the like.
Yeah, Cooley is 'non profit', tell that to the scamprofs and deans pulling down ginormous salaries all funded by student loan cash. Selling a worthless product while destroying young people's lives. People who work at law schools are vile.
DeleteHow would you know a knuckle draggers lsat score before retaining them?
DeleteCooley does inform its students of discrimination. It tells them to avoid big law and teaches a lot of EEOC/civil rights law. Change to the profession won’t happen overnight, when it does people will applaud Cooley as visionary
The name Cooley says it all. I would never employ a lawyer who had come out of Cooley. In any event, the sorts of abysmal LSAT scores that Cooleyites get manifest themselves as general stupidity and inability.
DeleteTelling Cooleyites to avoid big law? How ridiculous! Big Law wouldn't touch a Cooleyite with a bargepole. (Possible exception for the rare scion of rich people who somehow ends up at Cooley. This does happen now and then. After all, the son of a judge in Fort Wayne apparently couldn't get into anything better than Indiana Tech, even with Daddy's influence.)
Yes, many would not employ “cooleyites”, hence why so many are forced into successful solo careers (like myself). When your back is up against the wall you perform if you have the grit. Little you have said is contradictory to my views, except for the correlation between lsat scores and intelligence. There’s really no connection when most Yale and Chicago law students spend deep into five figures in test prep
DeleteYep, you can succeed as a solo if you have 'grit'. Yep, that completely makes up for the fact that nobody in the world will pay for legal services, and quibbles and moans about the slightest charge. And the fact that the scamprofs and deans wouldn't actually ever 'practice law' in a fit- because they know what an unprofitable hopeless pursuit it is. Much easier to scam law lemmings.
DeleteAnd our resident Cooleyite just wants everyone to ignore the facts-like 25% of the most recent class being completely unemployed 10 months after graduation or its abysmal bar passage rate.
Delete3:53, you just admitted that you were "forced" into solo practice. It is wonderful that you made a success story out of it, cheers to you. But your ability to make lemonade out of a lemon necessarily contains an admission that you had a lemon in the first place.
DeleteAlmost no one wants to go solo right out of school, apparently including yourself. If you are forced to do so and succeed, then you succeeded despite your school, not because of it. Take more credit for your own accomplishments. You should be bashing Cooley as hard as anyone if it forced you to go solo. Your success is your own grit and hard work. You deserve to keep that credit for yourself. Why does the school deserve any of it?
I think a student at Thomas Jefferson tried this and the case was thtown out by a judge. Unfortunately, these judges have a warm feeling fhe broken system that did well by them.
Delete12:18, actually it looks like that civil suit was not thrown out by a judge. Rather, it went to trial and the jury found for the school: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/business/dealbook/law-graduate-who-sued-her-school-loses-at-trial.html.
DeleteThat makes the case interesting. Usually these do get thrown out by judges because the employment claims, though misleading, are usually not outright false. This student alleged literal falsity and presumably got to a jury for that reason, but it illustrates that even when you do get that far, juries are not sympathetic, and they have plenty of leeway not to be, because even if the statistics actually are false she still had to show intent which the article says is what the jury was instructed to decide.
In other words, misleading employment stats aren't enough, and even false ones aren't enough unless you can prove the school intentionally misstated them to entice enrollment. Fraud's "scienter" requirement, essentially. Between the lines, she probably lost for the same reason that judges threw most of the other such cases out at earlier stages, i.e. that these are college-educated adults who should be expected to do their own due diligence and not rely on advertising to make massive life decisions.
The lesson here is that we cannot expect the courts to solve this problem. The solution must come from policymakers, and it probably starts with student loans. If civil suits fail like this, then criminal cases with a much higher burden of proof presumably have even less chance.