This has been a slow year here at OTLSS: there just haven't been very many developments to report in respect of the law-school scam. Still, we've had good news, most notably the imminent closure of the failed JD program at Golden Gate, which will mark the sixteenth closure of a law school since 2016 (when Indiana Tech, the first to close in the modern history of the law-school scam, announced that it would shut its doors at the end of the academic year without so much as a "teach-out" plan). Odious über-toilet Charleston has put in for "non-profit" status, a sign of its going tits up very soon.
Signs suggest that the law-school scam may have gained its second wind. A couple of upstart über-toilets appeared in 2022, though they gained only a risibly small number of students. Applications to law school seem to be on the rise again. On the other hand, more closures can be expected. We shall also continue to watch the various schools under a "Reliable Plan" by the ABA, with dispensations that prolong for years non-compliance with even the ABA's bottom-of-the-barrel standards.
We at OTLSS wish you a very happy and scam-free new year.
The economy is awful, and only getting worse. Nationwide it is extremely common for college graduates, with joke majors and grade-inflated transcripts to graduate, move back in with mom and dad, and start working menial, low-paying jobs that a person with a 10th grade education could get. So law school--with no pre-requisites, practically open admission at many schools, and generous student loans available with money for "living expenses", meaning literally money for whatever you want to spend it on becomes more and more attractive. Wouldn't you rather woo a partner at your school's "Barrister Ball" than work for a living? If you aren't serious about your studies, and many people aren't, this could be a three-year, all expenses paid vacation. That's what college is for many students, 4 years of living free and easy, no work, no boss, no onerous deadlines. . .why not tack on another 3Y at law school? For reasons I cannot comprehend, most working taxpayers haven't figured out the higher education scam yet. They work, and scrape, and struggle to get by, while college and law school students live large without having to lift a finger. Colleges get rich, law schools get rich, professors earn hundreds of thousands a year, and for some reason inflation keeps shooting up? There couldn't possibly be a connection between all this free money and the declining value of the dollar, could there?
ReplyDeleteÜber-toilet Ohio Northern is offering a two-week program on "advocacy" next summer—in Iceland. Is it taught in Icelandic, using Icelandic law? Certainly not: the setting just provides an excuse for a decadent trip funded typically through student loans. The same damn thing could be taught in Bumblefuck, Ohio, far less expensively—but then it wouldn't afford so many opportunities for leisure tricked out as "international experience", and profe$$ors wouldn't get to travel at someone else's expense.
DeleteExcellent point. I honestly wish there was a way to get this information across to most of the taxpayers in this country. If Joe and Jane six-pack who work at a local factory, and see 30-40 percent of the paychecks siphoned off for taxes and Social Security, were aware that their tax dollars were being used to pay for trips to Iceland in the summertime, by professors who work for law schools that literally should not exist, then things would change. I honestly think the US is turning into a Kleptocracy and now it's not just elected officials, but a whole host of academic types and others who are getting their nose in the trough as taxes rise ever higher and the National Debt grows. I believe this all drives inflation, so that not only are so many dollars taken out of each paycheck before the worker sees a penny, but the money in his depleted paycheck doesn't buy what it used to even six months ago. We are also creating a huge new class of deadbeats, con artists, and liars who happily borrow money they will never pay back, and pretend that lavish vacations are "trial advocacy programs."
DeleteThis is insane. To be fair, my TTT offered a similar waste of money, but in Ireland.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteMy TTT had a Summer in France program
DeleteSometimes these semesters abroad are 'taught' by a Supreme Court Justice. Not sure what makes a SCOTUS judge more able to implant the knowledge and ability to analyze the law into the feeble brains of toileteers.
DeleteIt's not just law schools that have these overseas scams.
Never has a citation to this Onion classic been more fitting:
Deletehttps://www.theonion.com/report-more-colleges-offering-dick-around-abroad-progr-1819571758
Judges are often treated as gods, when really they're just people who managed to get their asses onto the bench.
DeleteA rate of 2 law schools closing per year since 2016 is a pretty good statistic
ReplyDeleteBut let's look at OG's list from prior post. Of that 16, 5 are mergers or shrinkages (like cooley cutting campuses or penn state merging the two penn states) and two are schools that continued to operate without ABA accreditation.
DeleteThat brings it down to 9 true closures, and of those, 5 were for-profit. Charleston is now pretty clearly on the rocks, so if that closes there will be only ONE for-profit ABA law school left in the country: Western State.
My point is this: I think the for-profits have been low-hanging fruit or sacrificial lambs for regulators/accreditors. We've seen that all across the spectrum, not just law school but with lots of action against a variety of undergraduate for-profit diploma mills too.
They're running out of that low-hanging fruit. That's why I suspect the closure wave will slow down or stop.
It's natural for the most precarious to die in short order. And for-profit institutions are especially precarious.
DeleteI'm not going to make a prediction yet about the rate of closures in the coming years. It could be that the law-school scam, enabled by its bitch the ABA, will regroup and keep all but two or three toilets going. Or it could be that a number of precarious toilets will go tits up. I just don't know, and I'm reluctant to vaticinate about that.
To go from 52.4k entering law school in 2010 to 37.8k entering in 2023 is a pretty encouraging sign, albeit the number still needs to be cut by about 80% to make up for the oversupply.
ReplyDeleteThe oversupply of lawyers will harm the marginalized groups of law students that law schools are trying to attract with their so called "diversity and inclusion" sales pitch. These law schools claim they want to help students who are traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession. The disabled, LBGT, ethnic minorities, etch. If these groups were already underrepresented before the legal glut, they will have a much harder time getting their foot in the door upon graduating due to oversupply. When a person has $250,000 in nondischargeable student loans and no legal job, that is harming these groups. Diversity in Destitution
Delete"Diversity" at the toilets and über-toilets is a cynical trick for exploiting a gullible population under the signboard of progressive politics. Schools that never gave a tinker's damn about racialized groups suddenly frame themselves as centers of opportunity for these unloved populations. The only real "opportunity" is that of filling the scamsters' coffers in the name of "diversity".
DeleteMany racialized people are, like Old Guy, the first in their families to go into law. They are not likely to know that "opportunity" at the admissions office of some toilet law school does not translate into opportunity for employment in the legal realm. But they are as eligible as anyone else for student loans, and that's really what is behind the drive for "diversity", which manifests itself in such forms as attacks on standards of admission ("we can't keep a Black person out because of a 137 on the LSAT!").
Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes 'Whatever the case, I fear the Greeks even when they come bearing gifts'.
Well, we do have that SCOTUS case that just purported to abolish race based AA in all of higher ed. Now granted, there is the open debate about whether they can just use essays to recreate it, because most everyone in the affected groups can come up with something race-related that disadvantaged them if asked. But this was something so explicitly endorsed by the dissent that the majority openly snarked to them and said "dissenting opinions are not a good place to obtain legal advice." So I guess it'll remain to be seen what impact that has.
DeleteNotice how a lot of law schools website always promote how they have such a diverse incoming student body.They even break down the statistics how how many traditionally unrepresented students they have on their student bodies. The ABA should have a standard that shows how many of these different underrepresented groups got jobs 10 months after graduation. If a law school claims that 20 percent of their student body is traditionally unrepresented but only 1% of those traditionally unrepresented found employment, that statistic should be transparent. Admissions offices promote diversity but not career services.
DeleteRacial diversity in the incoming class, I'm sorry to say, is often a marker of a toilet. The toilets prey upon racialized people because they have to: their target group gets abysmal LSAT scores, and although white people in that range are likely to do something else, Black and other racialized people may well fall for admissions-office crapola about "opportunity". Unfortunately, people on the receiving end of racist discrimination are vulnerable to the seductive claim that La Toilette will open professional doors to them. Only too late do they find that they have a useless toilet-paper JD and hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-dischargeable debt bearing high interest.
DeleteBut ironically, OG, the same diversity that got them recruited can get them a job. I know someone who went to a complete toilet but got biglaw that way, and not just any biglaw but a real hugely famous white shoe type place. And kudos to her, she has tremendous humility and admits it openly. Says she doesn't pretend she's some awesome incredible brilliant genius or anything and openly admits that she would've gotten the gig in the absence of ticking every diversity box imaginable. But as she rightly pointed out, doesn't everyone use whatever they happen to have to get ahead? If your competition is using their parents' yacht club connections or whatever to get in the door, then why should anyone be denigrated for being a diversity hire?
DeleteBig Law doesn't very often delve into the über-toilets. Maybe that person had some sort of connection. Without that, I find it unlikely that a white-shoe firm would consider her.
DeleteMembership in an oppressed racial group is a far better basis for seeking an advantage than Mommy's or Daddy's yacht club. When that scandal about purchased admission to university broke out, the prosecutor contrasted the techniques used—bribery, fraud—with the allegedly legitimate one of donating big money to the university. That white woman who sued over "discrimination" because she didn't get into the U of Texas deployed to her advantage a long "legacy" of relatives who had attended—something that no Black person could claim, because it wasn't so very long ago that the U of Texas didn't admit Black people (the state even tried to set up a bullshit law school "for Negroes" as a bogus "separate but equal" ploy that the Supreme Court rejected). So we see special pleading on behalf of those who use money or others' achievements to get into university, alongside endless complaints about the use of racial disadvantage for the same end.
@10:03 But unless that diversity hire was hired completely as a token, which shouldn't be necessary where there are plenty of qualified 'attorneys of color' out there she is going to have to produce. And that means long hours whether she is a genius or not. And from what you are saying she is kind of mediocre. She might have been better off going to a federal agency.
DeleteThat's also true. Big Law cares about nothing but money. Anyone who doesn't bring in enough money for the partners' tastes will quickly be put out on her ass, with no hope of getting a comparable job.
Delete@8:56 they had some kind of special program, open only to diverse candidates, and I think that under it they had committed to hire 1 person from that school, which they do not normally interview at, and it was her that got it. Don't ask me how that deal got made, since I agree that they could probably find diverse people at the elite schools too, but that was apparently the deal.
DeleteWhen I said not a genius, I meant only that she is humble and very self-aware that she didn't get in on merit alone. She had a very high class rank and by all accounts she is a perfectly good associate and bills a ton. It's just that firms like this normally wouldn't even interview the #1 student in the class from that school.
Big Law is overhyped. People breathlessly babble about how it pays big money; I wholly disagree. A first-year earning 190,000 a year in a large law firm, who works 70 hours a week ends up making about $50 per hour, with no time-and-a-half overtime, pre-tax. Electricians and plumbers commonly charge $160 per hour, and there are solo operators who actually keep that money for themselves. In addition, while the big law associate toils for 50 per, a bored, vaguely competent DUI lawyer can easily earn $1,500 in ten minutes in a courtroom during a plea (the vast majority of DUI cases are resolved by pleas, often very brief ones). The DUI lawyer may earn an easy $1,500 by 9:15 a.m., relax, take a long lunch, and earn another grand from 1:00-1:15 that afternoon, and then be done for the day. In addition, the average tenure of a first-year associate in a large law firm is just 4Y. Two years and out is not uncommon at sweatshops like Cravath due to burnout from nonstop work seven days a week. The aforementioned DUI lawyer, some weeks he will put in 20 hours, total, while earning well over six figures a year (and paying taxes in the range of 8-10 percent of what he collects, if he collect a lot in cash and has a good accountant). Not 1/3 to the taxman before he sees a penny, like the biglaw associate.
DeleteBig Law may work out well for those few people who become partners. They will slog away for many years, having no real personal life, no vacations, focusing single-mindedly on money. Even if they make partner, they may be put out on their asses. Entire white-shoe firms with long histories have gone tits up in recent years.
DeleteRespectfully, very few first year associates become equity partners. I have heard 5%, but I have also heard less. A far, far more common outcome is that a crop of first years are hired, and 5Y later 80 percent of them are no longer at the firm. And, no, that does not mean the remaining 20 percent are on the partnership track, they're all just one negative Performance Review from unemployment. Again, the very idea that someone toiling for 50 or 60 bucks an hour, pre-tax, is making big bucks is utterly laughable, to me. I honestly don't understand why more lawyers and law students don't see big law for the sham that it really is, and pursue practice areas where you really can make great money without having to work 70 hours a week. A busy solo family law attorney can have, say 3-4 Settlement Conferences by Zoom in one afternoon, finalizing custody/child support/generally finalizing divorce cases, drinking coffee in front of her computer, at home, from 1-4 p.m. and earn over 5K in that afternoon. One does these wearing professional clothes from the waist up, pajama pants or sweats from the waist down. That works out well in terms of your dry cleaning bill. It happens every day, in all 50 states.
DeleteNot here to "breathlessly" praise BigLaw-it's a mindless and mercenary grind where about one out of 10 last long enough to make partner. But it is prestigious and it does pay.
DeleteBut don't where 10:57a practices, but what's described there isn't reality. As noted here previously, there are dozens and dozens of desperate solos chasing those DUIs, and clearly he hasn't been in docket lately. The chances of sitting for hours are very very good, even if it's just to enter a guilty plea. And if you enter a NG? Good luck getting a trial date; you'll sit all morning just to get the postponement. Nobody is making $1500 for 10 minutes work.
And the problem with hyping the trades is that the trades require actual work. Many go to law school because they don't know what else to do, have no chance of finding a job, and a three year paid vacation(via loans) beats working at The GAP. That's after goofing off for four-or more-years in college.
Wanna be a plumber? Well, you don't make $160/hr right out of the box. You need to train, then work through apprentice to journeyman to master; it's pretty much the same for electrician. So you spend years carrying the heavy equipment for the boss, paying your dues.
I'm not so sure about $5k in one afternoon. The best chance for that is in matters handled on contingency. Personal injury in particular is more a financing scheme than the practice of law.
Delete@10:16 they are always comparing law to plumbing on this site and I don't get it. Usually, a person is on the track to going into a trade when they are in high school. That is when they discover they have some aptitude and ability for it, probably know people in the field and are getting some vocational training with good results in school. It is unlikely that such a person would be considering plumbing vs. law. Also, that $160 figure would include covering overhead. BLS averages do not support the $160 figure as typical.
DeleteI'll readily acknowledge that Old Guy just wasn't going to go into plumbing or any other trade right out of high school. Old Guy was better suited for intellectual work. Plumbing is perfectly respectable, and usually more socially beneficial than law; but everybody would have said that Old Guy belonged in university, and of course that's exactly where Old Guy went.
DeleteBack then, in the 1980s, it was still widely understood that certain types of work required certain aptitudes, which might be cognitive, muscular, mechanical, artistic, whatever. Someone who couldn't draw worth a damn would be discouraged from becoming an architect. Someone who didn't know the multiplication table would be turned away from accounting. Someone who couldn't use simple tools would be told not to become a mechanic or a plumber. And, importantly, someone who just wasn't good at school would be advised against pursuing a whole range of occupations that called for thinking, reading, writing, logic, public speaking, mastery of a complex domain of knowledge, and similar intellectual skills. C students didn't usually go to university, still less to law school.
That began to change in the late 1980s, when good blue-collar work was drying up (a process that started around 1981) and everyone was being told to get a bachelor's degree. Nowadays law is a free-for-all. It was in 2009, as I recall, that scam-dean Frank Wu published in You Ass News a piece entitled "Why Law School Is for Everyone". Scamsters for many years have been commending LSAT scores deep in the 130s as "serviceable". The very suggestion that the legal "profession" requires anything more than a desire for "Esq." after one's name inspires hostility.
Plumbing is still acknowledged to require certain abilities, but law is "for everyone". People here are understandably annoyed at the degradation of law into something that any knuckle-dragging Cooleyite can supposedly do.
I think the poster on here is unrealistic about solo law work. The DUI market has collapsed-nobody is paying 1.5k for a plea. There is also very little money in family law etc. Most solos I know are going broke.
DeleteThere were a lot of options in 1980 that don't exist now. I know someone who got into computer troubleshooting and repair around that time. He took a 6 month certificate course at some matchbook technical institute. He is now retired and takes about two 3-4 week vacations a year to places like Hawaii and Arizona. He doesn't seem to be any kind of brain. His spelling is terrible and he said he never heard of the country singer Roy Clark and he is around 70 years old. Yet he made a good living for himself with a minimal amount spent on education.
DeleteBut the 80s were kind of a barnstorming era for computer work and it seemed like anyone with the motivation could jump into the field. Over time, employers started looking for more qualifications. Math degrees, computer science degrees, proven programming experience. I think it is almost impossible to enter any kind of computer field now without a math or computer science degree.
I want to tread very carefully here. No, the DUI market has not "collapsed". Yes, $1,500 for a first time DUI is very common, it's actually a low fee, the norm is $2,000 or more. No, solos are not all going out of business. Here is the thing: I am not saying come right out of law school and hang out a shingle and open a Criminal Defense Practice, if you try that you will probably fail quickly. It takes a lot of time and effort to get established in that practice area, and there is no guarantee of success. The only point I was trying to make is that Big Law does not necessarily equate big money, there are all kinds of lawyers--DUI lawyers, Divorce lawyers, Personal Injury lawyers etc. who make thousands of dollars with little time or effort. None of that changes the fact that we still have far too many lawyers chasing too few paying clients, and that the field of law is grossly oversaturated and has been for decades. I am just trying to say that, as I see it, a first year associate in a large law firm who makes around $50 per hour, pre tax, is not making much money, IMHO. Frankly, a 4th year associate toiling away for $100 per hour, pre tax, would still have to work 20-30 hours for what a traffic lawyer could earn in 2-3 (easy) hours or what a family law attorney handling a final divorce settlement conference remotely, from home, could earn in 90 minutes. Big law is a shell game where associates work very long hours, for very little money, but then convince themselves that their annual salary justifies it. If I wanted to work for $50 per hour, or even double that, I would not have gone to law school. Even a simple shoplifting case can easily net a good lawyer a $1,000 fee, and that case might, just possibly, take 3 hours to handle from initial consult, to opening a file, calling the prosecutor, and driving to court for your 10-minute plea and sentencing, or dismissal, or conditional dismissal for 20 hours of community service, etc. You can do one from 9:00-9:15 a.m., and another from 1:00-1:15 that afternoon, and then decide what to do with the $2,000 you've just put in your Operating Account. That's the kind of money that justifies a J.D., not toiling away for 60-70 hours a week for a few years until you finally get a negative Performance Review and are shown the door in a large law firm.
DeleteWhy do people want to be in BigLaw? Prestige, of course, but also-if you can stick it out-the money is insane. The neighbor's kid went to big name law school and got a job at biglaw in Chicago; she's a six year associate and is making $406K a year. So yeah, if you've got a ton of law school debt, biglaw makes sense. Yes, she represents many "evil" corporations, and has no personal life with depositions all
Deletearound the country...but she's got an exit plan. She's going to go in house, since she doesn't think she'll make partner. It will be a huge pay cut and she'll be crying all the way to the bank with here 250K in house GC money.
And her current firm loves the idea; it even calls associates/partners who lateral out "alumni" as they know if they stay on good terms, more business will be coming their way.
And Dilbert-where do you practice and when was the last time you were in docket? Our DWI docket took basically the whole day, and for the non-PD clients, there was a separate attorney for each. Nobody got out in 10 minutes. But things sound great in your jurisdiction, so please forward specifics.
Dilbert- you are totally delusional about solo practice. Nobody pays for pleas anymore- in fact, get ready to be haggled down even for doing a complicated contested criminal case. Criminal law work has collapsed, as has solo work. The number one goal of every solo practitioner I know is to just get a government job.
Delete29% of the students at Appalachian School of Law are receiving "more than full tuition," according to their 509. Old Guy, how long do you think they can keep doing that and remain in business? I know very little about Appalachian School of Law, but they don't have a parent university to turn to for funding, no?
ReplyDeleteThanks for reporting that. It hadn't come to my attention. Consider it to be a good sign that Appalachian is circling the drain—or perhaps I should say the toilet bowl.
DeleteAppalachian is a self-standing institution in a little village in the Cumberland Mountains. It has no parent university on which to rely for funding. See this article on its lack of viability:
https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2019/05/why-tiny-law-schools-cannot-surviveand.html
"More than full tuition" is a polite way to say "bribe". Nearly three students in ten are being paid to attend Appalachian. With long-standing financial problems and a dwindling student body already well below the level of sustainability (by Old Guy's estimate), Appalachian can ill afford to buy students off. Apparently it is doing so in the hope of elevating its sorry ass out of the 140s so as to avoid jeopardizing its ABA accreditation. That won't work.
I predict that Appalachian will be gone in a few years. It cannot merge with any other law school: the nearest one is hours away. It is a stinking über-toilet even when it bribes a third of the class outright. It seems to have no significant assets that it could sell without grave harm to its business. Efforts to sell the campus to regional colleges have failed. It's just another unneeded über-toilet that is financially unsustainable.
3:25 here. I think many law schools are putting on good fronts, but are in real financial trouble. Even if you trust their 509 info. (which I don't), you can tell that they're on the ropes. It's not over.
DeleteThose +100% bribes are really the most extreme form of it, but really this is a critique of the entire system of "merit aid." You'll notice that most of the really prestigious schools have no such concept as they have no need to buy better test scores, and so their aid is need-only.
DeleteThe really pernicious thing with any kind of merit aid is that if substantially all of a school's revenue comes from tuition, any merit aid awarded is really paid for by other students. So the students with the worse test scores and whatnot basically subsidize the education of those with the higher ones. Add to this the manner in which students from wealthier backgrounds tend to score better (or at least less badly in the case of these low-ranked schools) what you have with merit aid is quite literally often the poor subsidizing the rich.
That is very contrary to the stated aims of the various diversity angles these low-ranked schools tend to pitch. In other words, merit aid is hypocrisy. You can't simultaneously claim to serve the underserved and then charge them more than their better-advantaged counterparts. When that aid is over 100% and puts actual cash into student pockets, its even worse.
Yes, "merit aid" is a lie: the purpose is not to reward superior students but to buy those students' asses.
DeleteSay that La Toilette Skool o' Law draws the bulk of its class from the range 143–147 on the LSAT. Someone with a 148 gets a fat "merit" "scholarship", possibly in excess of tuition (which means that La Toilette not only gives the person free tuition but also pays the person cash). Is this because the person is of high calibre? Hell, no! That 148 is a horrible score. At a school that draws most students from the range 147–151, this person would be lucky to get a small discount. But at La Toilette that 148 elevates the class—and La Toilette itself. So La Toilette offers a little bribe, and the 148 has to decide whether to take it or go to some slightly less toilety bullshit law school at or near full fare.
As you said, the money from the bribe comes from those people for whom it's La Toilette or nothing—and who are too stupid to make the right choice. They pay full fare, and part of their money subsidizes some similar dolt who got a few more points on the LSAT.
The public fails to understand this because it confuses "merit aid" with endowed scholarships. The latter are funded to reward some particular student: the most promising in the class, as assessed by some committee; the student with the best grades; some high-performing student in financial need. The money is earmarked for the purpose; it can't be used for anything else, and it is paid out every year (if the scholarship is perpetually endowed). By contrast, "merit aid" is provided by the institution itself, out of revenue—for the institution's ends, which are likely to be nefarious (raising the institution's status by buying enough people with LSAT scores above the usual range).
You're also right about the LSAT. Scores are correlated pretty well with parental income. Old Guy used to teach people how to do better on the LSAT. Of course, Old Guy's instruction cost money, so people who couldn't afford it didn't get it. By no means did people get a higher score just by shelling out for Old Guy's help: they had to put in a lot of effort as well. But it was not unusual for people to get 25 or more extra points—a lot on a test that's only 61 points wide—after a few months with Old Guy. Would they have achieved the same gains on their own? I doubt it.
Exactly, OG! If tutoring works, then the fact that it works summarily proves that the test advantages people with money unless there is a free tutoring option that is just as available and works just as well.
DeleteHeck, even an IQ test - the quintessential attempt to administer a test of innate/unalterable intelligence, has tutors available so that parents can try and get their kids into gifted programs: https://www.the-test-tutor.com/collections/wisc-test-preparation
It's like a law of physics: If there's something of significant value put at stake by a test, then people with money WILL seek to use their money to create an advantage and businesses WILL arise to meet that demand.
That said, I do not think standardized tests should be abolished which is the route some schools have been going. Instead, I think there should should be scholarships to enable poor people to pay for the same private tutors the rich people use. We should be asking what the best score someone COULD achieve is, rather than trying to pretend it measures some kind of innate or unalterable quality.
I didn't know that people were boning up for IQ tests. The old propaganda maintained that IQ was constant, the same at age 5 as at age 95. That's nonsense: people can certainly learn to do better on IQ tests.
Delete"Gifted" implies innate ability. Why, then, are aristocratic parents pouring money into making their children "gifted"? Really, "gifted" is becoming an indicator of parental wealth.
Another trick of the wealthy is the use of "admissions consultants", who frequently charge five-figure fees. Students who get these costly services have a huge advantage over those who do not. Of course, only the very wealthy can afford to drop $30k on an admissions consultant.
Yup. It is nonsense. It is not possible to create an unteachable test, because that would essentially be the same as solving the nature/nurture debate. The only exception would be a test where there is absolutely NOTHING to gained or lost by scoring better or worse, like an anonymous research thing or something.
DeleteThe reality is that no matter what test you give, the result will be a mix of nature and nurture in varying proportions. I mean obviously there's only so much such advantages can do. You can't polish a turd, but you can certainly put a bow on one.
And yes, it is funny how better off kids are more often "gifted." Ironically, they're ALSO more likely to have aspects of the opposite, like ADHD diagnoses and IEPs with more (and more expensive) services on them. Plenty of richer parents bring their lawyers to IEP team meetings and such, because both gifted and special needs can be used to gain advantages. Gifted programs may help you get into better colleges or prep schools on "merit," but so can special needs because of the accommodations like extra time on tests and whatnot as well as the better fodder for essays about overcoming adversity. Both can be, and often are, used strategically.
When Old Guy was a mere slip of a boy, learning disabilities were heavily stigmatized. That was wrong. But now they're positively popular. Everyone seems to claim a learning disability or three—precisely because, as you said, that results in special dispensations while also providing cachet in the department of "diversity".
DeleteDilbert, if it's as easy to make $$$ at you say-$1500 for a 10 minute DUI, $5000 for three hours remote work-then the title of this blog ought to be "Go to Law School and Make Big Bucks with little or no work".
ReplyDeleteAgain, no idea where you practice, but respectfully what you describe is simply not realistic and doesn't happen in the real world. There are hordes of solo and small practitioners chasing those DUIs, and just about all would be ecstatic to clear 5K a week, let alone in one afternoon.
But if lawyers are really making that kind of money with that little work, you ought to be encouraging people to go to law school.
Yep, solo law has collapsed. Nobody will pay anything for DUI, and there are hordes of jobless lawyers clamoring for these jobs. Most solos I know are going broke or have just shut down. There is no work out there.
DeleteYeah. In my state, in many ways the only thing at stake in the criminal DUI matter if it's just a basic no-injury DUI and first offense is the issue of having a criminal record, because the license suspension (the most serious consequence for most first offenders, and let's face it the repeat ones usually don't have any money) is administrative and will happen regardless of the criminal matter's outcome.
DeleteYou can contest that admin suspension in an ALJ hearing, but the only way to win is mistake or the cop doesn't show up. The machine's calibration doesn't matter. Probable cause for the stop doesn't matter. The standard of proof is preponderance and there are no rules of evidence. The only relevant issues are whether you were given the proper implied consent warnings (if the issue is test refusal) or whether the result of the test actually was or wasn't .08+. Not whether that result is accurate, just whether that is in fact what the machine said or not.
As a practical matter, the cop actually doesn't show up to the admin hearings fairly often. Or if they do show up, they are under oath and you can get a transcript so there's always the outside chance they might say something useful for impeachment in the criminal case later. But in general, the only way to win the admin is a procedural screwup.
Still you can at least market this fact. There ain't no public defender in the admin hearing.
There are all kinds of reasons not to go to the Public Defender's office if you are charged with DUI, or anything else. They generally won't take your calls. If you are able to get through to them, try between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. and not from 11-1. They tend to show up for work late, leave early, and take a long lunch. If they do deign to take your calls--most of them won't--the abrupt conversation will be about how you are pleading guilty, no matter the facts or governing law, and not much else. Pretending that no one pays for a DUI lawyer is not helpful, pretending that solo practices have all collapsed is not helpful, getting in touch with the real world is a better approach. All of that said, I never said that doing criminal law for a living in the private sector is easy. Factually speaking, no matter how bad the job market is, some lawyers will succeed, and no matter how good the job market is, some lawyers will fail. It comes down to factors like talent/ability/marketing/luck. I would absolutely not want to be a new JD coming into this market, but when I did graduate, in the mid 90's in a state with a large population and only two law schools, finding a job was not difficult for me, or for anyone I graduated with who passed the Bar Exam on the first attempt and was serious about finding work as a lawyer. When the job market got awful, I opened a solo practice and have made it work.
DeleteDilbert, your posts make no sense at all.
DeleteFirst, you tell us all that it's 10 minutes work on the average DUI and you'll make an easy $1500 for that 10 minutes. And, of course, just give the DA a call and he'll help you with scheduling.
Next,, you tell us that it's an easy $5000 to make in an afternoon. But then you advise not to go to law school. Why? If there's so much easy money to be had, everybody ought to go to law school.
And yes, hard working people like you easily found jobs back in the day. Not like today's slackers.
Based on your description, you graduated from law school in Maryland. Even back in the halcyon 90s, the market for lawyers was poor-just like everywhere else.
And what's your beef with the PDs? Back when I was an ADA, between jail visits and family hand-holding, they were all working extra hours. But not in your jd, apparently.
Nothing you write has any basis in reality.
I said "Factually speaking, no matter how bad the job market is, some lawyers will succeed, and no matter how good the job market is, some lawyers will fail." You responded with "Dilbert, your posts make no sense at all." Are you saying that every single person who graduates from law school in 2023 will fail to secure good employment? Does that make sense? In addition, $1,500 is a low fee for a DUI. Thousands of private lawyers are handling those cases every morning, and every afternoon, of every business day in every state in the country. That was the case 10Y ago, that will be the case 10Y from now, unless self-driving cars really do become a thing. Saying private lawyers make money in traffic court is like saying the sky is blue, and the grass is green: it is a simple statement of fact. 10 minute pleas are the absolute norm in traffic court in the state where I practice, 1 minute dismissals are also quite common. Lastly, I never, ever said that any of this was "easy". Establishing yourself and building a successful practice, or even landing a job as an associate at a good law firm--these things are very difficult, and impossible for most current law school grads. But, for a few, they will happen.
DeleteWhat you've done is issue all sorts of sweeping generalizations, and then after you're called on it you add qualifier after qualifier.
DeleteFirst of all, where do you practice law-Mayberry RFD? While the dismissal may take one minute, you'll sit and sit and sit in docket. The same with the "10 minute pleas". And this is after "calling the prosecutor". Huh? Your prosecutor works around your schedule? That doesn't happen in the real world, either.
But enough-in what jurisdiction do you practice? Frankly, it sounds like Fantasyland, where the prosecutor is always available by phone to work around defense counsel's schedule, and money is hanging from trees so that 5K in Zoom calls in one afternoon is always available to "some" attorneys.
So please supply your jurisdiction; it sounds like legal Nirvana.
@dilbert I'm not so cynical as you about the public defenders. I have several friends who work there and they're some of the best lawyers I know. They spend SO MUCH in-court time and they get to know all the players so intimately that this is kinda the inevitable result.
DeleteIt is absolutely true, though, that they don't have much time for client calls. I attribute that more to their caseloads than to laziness, but my experience has been that they are mostly true believers who really do relish the David & Goliath battles. I've not known them to be at all shy about going to trial if the plea offer is bad and/or the facts good.
Also, let us not forget that anyone with a license can hang a shingle, but PD jobs tend to be very competitive because of how attractive they are to do-gooders, the opportunity for PSLF loan forgiveness, and because they have that classic government job stability and benefits. There are some excellent solos out there, and you're probably one of them, so this is NOT saying that solos are bad in ANY categorical way. What I am saying is that anyone with a law license can hang a shingle so it CAN BE hit or miss. Public defenders, OTOH, in most jurisdictions, have been through a pretty rigorous competition just to be sitting in the chair they occupy.
Now, at last, someone who understands the system responds with a rational description how it works. Back to reality! Yes, Public Defenders get more face-time with Judges and prosecutors than anyone else in the criminal justice system, so their intimate familiarity with all the players, the procedures, likes and dislikes of various Judges and prosecutors can make them very effective in the courtroom. They are very much a "known commodity". At the same time, they tend to have heavy caseloads and little time, which hurts them in terms of making and taking phone calls to clients, doing jail visits, etc. Good ones tend to leave after a few years, and become prosecutors, or private attorneys, or even judges--a transition from the PD's office to the State's Attorney's Office to the Bench is a common career path. And while 20-30 years ago jobs at the Public Defender's Office were easy to get, at least where I practice, today they are very competitive. As for "anyone can hang out a shingle" that is absolutely true, but most lawyers lack the business sense to keep a solo practice going for long enough to make it viable. I am 1) very organized and 2) very cost-conscious and that, plus some other things, makes it work for me. Now, if someone, somewhere, lives in jurisdiction where prosecutors don't take Defense Attorney's phone calls, and don't work with them to schedule trials, pleas, etc, that is literally insane to me. I honestly do not know how the criminal justice system would work without robust communication between prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges (with Judges that is typically through the Clerk's Office). The point I was originally trying to make is that pretending that an associate in a large law firm who might take home as little as $50 per hour is making big bucks--or even a 4th year associate taking home nearly 100 per hour, pre tax--while DUI lawyers are walking out of the courthouse at 9:30 a.m. having earned $1,500 or more so far that day, is nuts. In addition, pretending that due to the awful job market, every single law school graduate this year won't find a good job is nuts. 1) There are lots of ways to earn good money as a lawyer, most of which have nothing to do with BigLaw 2) some, clever, lucky, right place/right time folks will always find good jobs as lawyers, no matter how bad the job market is, just as some hapless souls will never manage to find and/or keep a good job in law, no matter how great the job market is. That is all I was trying to say, and I think it is rational and should not be controversial.
DeleteWithout wishing to join this particular mêlée, I'd like to point out that "good money" is not the only thing that some lawyers want. There are those (such as Old Guy) who would not be happy with a dumb-ass DUI practice even if it brought in heaps of money. And those who just want money would do better to look into something other than law, such as banking.
Delete8:24-"rational"? Here's how you described the PD in a previous post-basically calling them all lazy, stupid, essentially unethical-and prone to taking two hour lunches while coming in late and leaving early:
Delete"They generally won't take your calls. If you are able to get through to them, try between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. and not from 11-1. They tend to show up for work late, leave early, and take a long lunch. If they do deign to take your calls--most of them won't--the abrupt conversation will be about how you are pleading guilty, no matter the facts or governing law, and not much else."
But-egads!-you now admit that there may be some "good ones" who have actual courtroom/trial experience.
There's no reason to expect consistency in your posts, but you ought to give it a try.
And calling the prosecutor? There's no prosecutor anywhere is going to take your call in order to schedule around your schedule.
Enjoy your very lucrative practice in Fantasy Legal Land.
1) A prosecutor who refused to take phone calls from defense attorneys, to work out plea deals, schedule continuances, and generally do his job would be summarily fired. This is basic stuff. 2) Prosecutors are not just "government employees" who can stay in their job indefinitely regardless of their employment. The Chief State's Attorney, or District Attorney, etc., is an elected official. He regularly runs for office, and his chances of staying in office depend directly on the performance of his staff. Therefore, Prosecutors--unlike Public Defenders, or most government employees--are fired for poor performance all the time. 3) You want to pretend that successful lawyers don't exist. I must correct you. There are thousands of successful DUI lawyers throughout the country, perhaps tens of thousands of them. There are successful solos, and successful lawyers in small firms/mid sized firms/large law firms. 4) This blog is 100 percent correct in pointing out that while successful lawyers exist, and not in small numbers, factually the US produces far too many law school grads, which has grossly over-saturated the legal job market. I promise you, each and every year, a small percentage of law school grads will find success. That said, most will have great difficulty finding a job as a lawyer at all. Many never do. Of the cohort that does secure legal employment, most will only last a few years. The number that find true success in the legal profession is quite small, and percentage-wise gets smaller every year. I would say that, in retrospect, law school was a dubious bet when I enrolled, back in the early 90's. Ultimately, after some tough years, it paid off for me. Today, with very high tuition, situations like 10 law schools in one state (Pennsylvania) and a horrific job market, law school is a very bad bet. But please understand, even very bad bets occasionally pay off. If you put down a ton of money on Buster Douglas vs. Mike Tyson, you would be swimming in cash.
DeleteNot even the law-school scamsters deny that loads of graduates fail to join any bar or fail to thrive in law. Everyone also accepts that most students borrow six-figure sums, usually at high interest and without the possibility of having the loans discharged, in the hope of getting a degree that is at best a big if.
DeleteYes, law works out for some of us. It has finally worked out for Old Guy in the financial sense, but not really in any other. Old Guy is an unhappy but materially prosperous lawyer, after years of struggle that also included protracted periods without one cent of income. Old Guy excelled in law school, struggled for many years as an unwanted over-the-hill lawyer, and now makes a good deal more money than he needs. He is also looking into throwing it all away for something more fulfilling (almost certainly still in the legal realm, I'm afraid). Do you consider that a great outcome when Old Guy himself does not? What does it say about the prospects of some run-of-the-mill toileteer or über-toileteer?
Have to speak up here and say that public defenders are absolutely useless guilty-plea merchants. Many of them have likely never run a contest. I still disagree with dibert but have to make this point.
Delete9:04-It's clear you've never been in criminal court in a major city. The DA doesn't set continuances; the court does. And it's clear you've never worked in a DA's office; "summarily fired"...by whom? The DA? Nope. The relationship between ADAs and DC is at the point where everything is in writing-but again, that doesn't include continuances.
DeleteWhat's the point? Your posts speak for themselves. There's no criminal docket in any city run the way you describe.
This discussion is degenerating into personal comments. Please return to the topic.
DeleteYou want to learn what the legal description is of "puffery" versus misrepresenting material facts then read the various law schools' so called "strategic plans." More puffery than what you will hear from a used car salesman. They talk about their visions of a world class education and creating courses that align with the legal industry so students can find success upon graduation. But look at their dismal results. They never reached their stated goals. And the implicit stated goals is is for the vampire scam deans to suck the blood out of unwitting students and leave them to rot as they search for their next victim. A more sophisticated Ponzi Scheme than even Bernie Madoff could have imagined.
ReplyDeleteLet's get one thing straight: the world's finest courses wouldn't help to make silk purses out of the sows' ears that populate the toilet law schools. Even if—and it's a big if—were able and eager to create excellent courses aligned with the needs of the legal racket, toilets would not turn out great lawyers: their charges, in the main, are too lousy to profit from the finest offerings. A lot of these people struggle to write a respectable paragraph, even a coherent sentence. They're just not cut out for law, however fine the program at La Toilette.
DeleteWhat the sows ear admitting toilets should do, IMHO, is convert to training programs for those new "limited license legal technicians" that some states are creating. Some of these are now even allowed to appear in court in very limited simple matters like low-asset divorces and misdemeanor crimes and traffic tickets. Those don't need silk purse people and they definitely don't need to be learning ancient common law or arcane appeals court decisions.
DeleteI mean let's face it. The average La Toilette student has managed to finish a bachelors in something from somewhere. As sad as this may be, that already means that while they may be dolts relative to students at better schools, they are still a solid cut above the true average, even if that's only because the true average in the US is pretty much functionally illiterate.
A bachelor's degree nowadays doesn't mean much more than a high-school diploma, which is almost meaningless. It certainly doesn't guarantee literacy.
DeleteI don't mind creating paralegals or similar people who can operate within narrow bounds, dealing with low-grade criminal or quasi-criminal stuff, uncontested divorces, small claims of a fact-specific nature, routine applications for immigration, and similar things that aren't likely to need the skill of a (real) lawyer. It used to be that one had to go to a physician for almost everything short of applying an adhesive bandage, but now a lot of low-end medical work is done quite legally by nurses, pharmacists, physicians' assistants, and others. As long as there are clear limits ("sorry, I'm going to have to refer you to a lawyer now"), that division of work could lead to better service at a lower cost and also free up lawyers for things that really do require us.
When Old Guy mentioned he doesn't mind schools creating paralegals that is what the majority of ABA approved law schools are in essence creating..... glorified paralegals with $250,000 in student loans. They were better off going to an ABA approved paralegal program at the local community college and save on tuition.
DeleteExcept that most of them are not competent even as paralegals—and some, by attempting an exam often enough, will get full rights to practice law even though they don't know what the hell they're doing.
DeleteRE the "almost meaningless BA" as I said, "as sad as that may be." In other words, as watered-down as the modern BA often is, a TRULY average person still can't even finish that. So I maintain: The average la toilette grad is still a cut above, but only because the TRUE average among the entire population is really, shockingly, mind-bogglingly dumb. For example, the true average reading level in the USA is about 7th grade, according to the fleisch-kincaid studies. The average American cannot even read at a high school level. When the bar is that low, even toileteers sail right over it so there's gotta be some productive use society could put them to.
DeleteAnd by the way, a sidenote: I never really understood the old line-drawing at "uncontested" divorce. You can be super wealthy and work out the settlement around the conference table and so your "uncontested" divorce was still very complex in terms of what had to be negotiated to make it uncontested. And don't even get me started on QDROs.
Conversely, the most hotly-contested divorces I know are usually poor people. They usually don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, but they are very much "contested" because they are fighting tooth and nail about the one thing they do have to fight about: child custody. It's not a complex fight, but it's a whole lot of Jerry Springer type stuff. You know, everything is an emergency, restraining orders in both directions, everyone's calling CPS on each other, etc etc. And even if you do go all the way to trial on those, they're back and forth in and out of court until the youngest kid turns 18 because they're constantly claiming "changed circumstances" and petitioning for modifications to the custody order.
So, the more meaningful criteria to me for whether a limited license is appropriate for the case is the assets, not whether the divorce is "contested" or "uncontested." It's not meaningful competition for private practice, because these people are broke. Poor people fighting over custody are gonna do it pro per unless there's a more affordable option than lawyers.
On the subject of divorces, I've said for years that most of the bitching is not legal at all and that neither judges nor lawyers are well placed to deal with it: it should be referred to a social worker until a genuine legal issue arises, in which case it may be kicked over to the courthouse for that issue alone.
DeleteAgreed, OG@9:05. There oughta be like mandatory arbitration or something where the arbiter is a social worker rather than a judge.
DeleteLike with any other arbitration, if someone thinks the issue at hand is outside scope or a decision already issued exceeded that scope, they can file a motion to that effect. But otherwise, there are indeed a whole lot of matters where a social work background would be a heck of a lot more relevant than the background of a judge.
Law professors assume an aura of omniscience, and so do many judges. Well, whatever can be said about judges' knowledge of the law (and I have much to say on that subject), it must be admitted that very few of them can help feuding spouses to sort their shit out. A social worker would often be much more helpful.
Deletelol I'll betcha the judges would be happy to be rid of it too, no ego lost there. In my state and I suspect in others too, divorces are technically heard in big boy court (the court of general jurisdiction), but the court always makes a separate division for them and it is always the least-desirable assignment that gets handed to the least senior judges and/or pro tems. It's also something like 95% pro per these days, and as a result the court itself has had to make available self-help forms for pretty much every conceivable request. It's technically the same court in which murders and whatnot are heard, but in practice it feels a lot more like an administrative agency hearing or something. Heck at one point they converted some storage space into a courtroom for the family law division. It was like going to court in a large closet or something. You could tell how even the judges don't really think this stuff worth their time or expertise.
DeleteOld Guy @ 9:05 If one of the spouses just wants to end the marriage and reach a property settlement, why would you have courts remanding the matter to social workers to patch things up between them? When I was in law school we were shown a mediation between a divorcing couple. The husband was very verbally abusive towards the wife and mediator did nothing to restrain him. I didn't see anything in that case that a social worker could have accomplished.
DeleteWe could just end the stupidity known as no fault divorce. That's the cause of all of this bullshit in the family courts to begin with. With a fault divorce, then yes a lawyer should on hand since that is a material breach in a contract.
DeleteIn divorces, there's often a lot of petty bitching about time with children and allegations and cross-allegations of this and that. Judges aren't particularly well prepared to address that stuff. It might be better to shunt it off to a social worker until a real legal issue (rather than shit that is primarily emotional) arose.
DeleteThe mediator should certainly not allow either party (or both) to abuse the other. That's not conducive to mediation.
Also, it might be wise to get lawyers out of a lot of the emotional bitching in divorces. Really, we don't contribute much to resolving that. Sometimes we make things worse. We're no better prepared than judges to deal with it.
DeleteWell in my court, the court itself will often appoint a psychologist to do an "evaluation" at the court's own expense.
DeleteIn theory its just expert witness testimony, but in practice the shrink is meeting together and separately with each parent and the kids (no lawyers) and making a recommendation on the ultimate issues in the case, and the court gives it a LOT of weight. So much so that if you're trying to fight the custody evaluator, it feels a lot more like trying to set aside an arbitration award than just examining a witness, lol.
Feels like that's trying to get as close to what you suggest as they can, since obviously a court can't really forbid anyone from hiring/bringing a lawyer at their own expense.
My experience with social workers and mental health professionals who deal with child custody is that they are often nut-jobs themselves. Many of the females are biased against men when it comes to recommending custodial arrangements. I would never willingly assent to having some social worker or professional counselor have a say in a custody arrangement if I were in that situation.
ReplyDeleteAs a psychiatrist, I learned early in my career to avoid child custody situations as much as possible. Every time I have been dragged into a case as a material (unpaid) witness, one of the attorneys has tried to qualify me as an expert witness, without paying me for my time. Several times I've been summoned with less than 24-hours' notice to appear in court without regard to whether I could reschedule my clinical duties with such short notice. One time a judge called the hospital where I was working, said it was an emergency, and tried to swear me in on the spot to testify in a custody case. Another time on the day I was leaving for vacation I almost missed my flight because I was pulled into a deposition that went on way too long. The stupid bitch who was trying to modify her custody arrangement had lied to me about her drug use and had claimed she couldn't afford the normal screening labs (including a urine drug screen) and the attorneys acted like I was completely incompetent for not knowing about her methamphetamine use. I've sort-of deliberately attained a reputation for myself among the local divorce attorneys and the family court as being difficult and uncooperative as a witness. So, they never call anymore. Why anyone would want to do "family law" as a career escapes me.
Yup, 11:08. I represent docs in my practice and for the psychiatrists, I deal with these kinds of "let's use a subpoena to get a free expert" type situations ALL THE TIME. I usually end up having to just have them do exactly what you do: Educate them about the difference between a fact witness and an expert witness and eventually, the local bar figures out that this doc knows that difference and will be of limited usefulness.
DeleteFrankly, judges should take it upon themselves to care more about this issue. They're supposed to be the gatekeepers here, but they're so desperate to have someone with a background they don't have tell them what they should do (without paying for it) that they aren't fulfilling that duty. Even if a purely treating source WANTS to express an opinion about ultimate issues in a case like that, they frankly shouldn't IMHO. It doesn't meet Daubert. You usually only treated one parent or the other or the child and certainly not for the purpose of evaluating them forensically by the use of any kind of evidence based tool or technique. Most of the time, my psychiatrists weren't even doing therapy much less a forensic evaluation - it's mostly medication management.
Also, if there are substance abuse issues involved and they want to use your testimony AGAINST the patient, you can potentially play the 42 CFR Part 2 card to try and get out of it completely. Unlike HIPAA, Part 2 requires a hell of a lot more than just a subpoena and it literally creates an evidence-exclusionary rule of its very own. The hassles associated with getting the very special kind of court order needed for Part 2 are often enough to make them go away. Whether you are a "Part 2 program" is often ambiguous but I've never seen someone who claims to be one get pushed back on. Look it up if you've never heard of it. A lot of people haven't. It's a hell of a lot more restrictive than HIPAA but much less famous so a lot of people don't even think to raise it.