Bucking the trend of closures since the second half of 2016, Delaware's Wilmington University opened an über-toilet law school last autumn. Despite forecasting an inaugural class of 65 students, the über-toilet got only 20. Indiana Tech did about the same: actual enrollment was less than one-third of the pie-in-the-sky prediction.
Phillip Closius, dean of this dump, risibly explained the shortfall: "I just over-estimated it.… I had no experience dealing with a school that was new and seeking accreditation. We didn’t get in front of enough people to produce those numbers." Indeed, he evidently had "no experience"—and didn't bother to glance at the histories of similar failed ventures, such as Indiana Tech.
Although we at OTLSS have not found any information about the LSAT scores of the twenty fools who signed up at this dive, Harvard need not quake in its boots at the thought of sharp competition from Delaware. One hundred three people applied, and Closius claims that twice as many were needed for a class of 65. The claim seems questionable: had there been twice as many similarly situated applicants, we should have expected enrollment around 40. Perhaps he meant that the hypothetical second slate of 103 applicants would have been much poorer and much more likely to matriculate. Or perhaps he just can't do arithmetic.
And now it's time for the obligatory announcement that Wilmington is a Different Type of Law School™. Closius again: "There was no reason to open up a new law school that’s doing exactly the same thing as 190 other law schools." Quite so. What, then, sets Wilmington apart from the pack?
Wilmington Law aims to distinguish itself with relatively low tuition — the current cost is $24,000 a year — and a focus on preparing students for the bar exam. Class assessments are designed to mimic the format of the attorney licensing exam, Closius said. The school will also emphasize hands-on learning through externships, he added.
Let's work through this item by item.
A law school can be expensive despite "relatively low tuition", thanks in large part to the cost of living and other expenses. It can also fail. Indiana Tech did, right after giving the entire student body ZERO tuition; Golden Gate is closing now after doing the same for all full-time students. Law schools with an unbroken heritage going back to the nineteenth century, such as the notorious Valpo, have gone tits up. Why should Wilmington be viable? Where exactly is it getting the money to operate with a faculty of 7 and a student body of 20? That's not even half a million dollars of revenue, far too little for operating expenses.
We hear, however, that the new über-toilet Jacksonville University College of Law doubled its entering class to 27 students last year after drawing only 14 upon opening in 2022. That's still too few students for sustainability, by Old Guy's estimates. And infusions of cash into a law school can quickly sink a parent university: Indiana Tech, once again, provides a fine example, and even the U of Minnesota is hurting from the millions of dollars' worth of subsidies needed to keep its upper-fourth-tier law school afloat.
The "focus on preparing students for the bar exam" tells us two things: 1) Wilmington, like many other über-toilets, will be a glorified bar-review course; 2) already Closius & Co. know damn well that their charges will struggle to pass a bar exam, because they're admitting students of low calibre.
And "hands-on learning through externships"? Ho-hum. Other law schools say exactly the same thing, without yielding results to match the rhetoric. Emphasizing "externships" as a vehicle for "hands-on learning" amounts to an abrogation of the duty to teach. And who the hell in Wilmington is going to offer "externships" to a couple of dozen über-toileteers?
In sum, Wilmington is indeed doing what 190 other law schools are doing—or perhaps I should say 160 or so, to exclude the élite and near-élite schools.
Admit it Closius: 1) you don't know what the hell you're doing; 2) there just isn't any practical or innovative way to make minimally competent lawyers of the lousy human material that your unneeded shit pit of a law school attracts. Unlike you, Old Guy has actually considered what would be needed to run a law school for Wilmingtonian über-toileteers: maybe a dozen years or so of demanding full-time instruction, starting with remedial training in reading, writing, and logic long before introducing anything to do with law. Some of your so-called students might complete the program, but it would be painful for all—and Old Guy isn't volunteering to teach it.
Wilmington has sunk tens of millions of dollars into buildings that seem to excite Closius more than his shitty students and shitty law school. Indiana Tech and Thomas Jefferson are but two über-toilet law schools that pissed money away in precisely the same manner, only to have to vacate the new facilities almost as soon as they had moved in.
Prediction: This pig of a law school will fail to thrive. Old Guy doesn't expect it to survive four years.
Other news:
High Point University — a private, Christian university in North Carolina — is moving ahead with plans to launch a new law school next August. Applications for the coming school year will be available in September, according to its website.
Just what we need: a god-bothering private joke of a university with a new über-toilet of its own, in a state that lost a horrible law school (Charlotte) just a few years ago and still has far more law schools than it needs. Expect an update from OTLSS as information comes to light.
Wilmington business school itself doesn't even have AASCB accreditation which is the gold standard of accreditation for business school. It has a crappy accreditation instead as per Wikipedia. Do you think they will get ABA accreditation!!??
ReplyDelete"The College of Business, accredited by the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education,[14] offers 10 undergraduate, 4 graduate, and 1 doctoral program in fields like business administration, accounting, finance, economics, marketing, and analytics. Certificate programs, as well as six concentrations, are also offered.[15] The College of Business maintains an active chapter of the Sigma Beta Delta international honor society for students in business, management, and administration programs. "
The ABA hands accreditation out like breath mints. Expect it to give this trash heap its rubber stamp of approval.
DeleteThink about it, Harvard Business School has accreditation from the AACSB International. We all know the reputation of it's law school. So the ABA will give Wilmington accreditation but the AACSB won't give Wilmington Business School accreditation. Guess the AACSB has a higher standard than the ABA. At the rate things are going the for-profit University of Phoenix will one day open a law school and get ABA accreditation.
DeleteLong ago colleges and universities saw law schools as cash cows. Unlike, say, a medical school, or dental school, or even a computer science program, law schools don't require labs or specialized equipment. You literally just need a building with some lecture halls, a law library, some professors and staff, and that's it. Established universities would set up law schools relatively quickly and cheaply, and they would swiftly start to generate money for the rest of the university. Today, though. . .I honestly don't understand why anyone would set up a new law school. At the risk of repeating myself, there are currently 10 law school in Pennsylvania, 8 in Virginia, 6 in tiny DC. . .and there are similar situations in other states. . . I find the very idea that the US needs even one new law school right now, anywhere, for any reason at all, to be laughable. It sounds like this one is DOA, which is a good thing. A starting class of 20 people means that perhaps 12-15 would stick around for 3Y and graduate, that is unsustainable.
ReplyDeleteLaw schools could be a lot cheaper than they are. As you said, they need a library, some professors, and a few boxes of chalk. Items 1 and 3 are as they are, but item 2 has ballooned into an enormous expense, thanks to fancy salaries and feather-light workloads (teaching three courses in two semesters is usual now, and it doesn't account for sabbaticals).
DeleteProfessors of medicine often teach while also maintaining a full practice of treating patients. Professors of law sit on their asses, justifying their parasitic existence through their "research", which consists of unread (f)articles in dusty law reviews.
The US needs about 170 FEWER law schools. Any special pleading for whatsoever location should be rejected out of hand. We would certainly not put 10 in Pennsylvania or 6 in DC if we were starting from scratch, but that's how things are now, and there's no point in whining about not having the same overabundance in some such lamentable place as Louisiana (which probably has an excuse—civil law—to have one law school) or Idaho.
Good point about the probability that that inaugural class of 20 will shrink in the next couple of years. Some will fail out; some will give up; some will transfer to something better—and even fucking Cooley is better.
But what about all the indigent defendants Old Guy? What about all the whales that need saving at the hands of a skilled Toileteer? What about all the international crises that need the deft skills and sartorial brilliance of a Cooley Grad? If we shut down 170 law skools, where will Maddie and Conner go after they graduate Middling State U?
DeleteWhy, what was I thinking? Of course we just have to have countless thousands of knuckle-dragging Cooleyites to exhibit hip-hop-tinged Global Leadership to the indigent baby whales while rubbing elbows with athletes and diplomats.
DeleteThe sartorial point reminds me of Indiana Tech's attempt to collect used suits for its Global Leaders to wear as they ascended to geopolitical supremacy.
"The sartorial point reminds me of Indiana Tech's attempt to collect used suits for its Global Leaders to wear as they ascended to geopolitical supremacy."
DeleteGTFO Old Guy! No way that happened. I would have died of laughter in 2013 and would not be here today pondering that statement.
No, seriously, did they really collect used suits? That might have been the one thing Indiana Tech taught them. "Better get used to eating cat food, popov Vodka, and getting your suits from Goodwill."
Oh, yes, it's true! Our own dear Dybbuk told the story:
Deletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2014/09/indiana-tech-fort-waynes-finest.html
But the most important lesson in becoming a leader, acknowledged across every culture and all historical epochs, is this: Dress for Success. Here too, Indiana Tech law students have the upper-hand. The second issue of the twice-a-year Indiana Tech Law School newspaper states that the school has launched a new inititative called “Law Suits” to offer its students donated used professional attire to boost the students’ wardrobes:
"If you or someone you know has professional clothing or accessories that may be useful to one of our law students, you are encouraged to send your items to the Student Bar Association c/o Indiana Tech Law School, 1600 E. Washington Blvd., Ford Wayne, IN."
So if you encounter somebody striding down the boulevards of Fort Wayne in second-hand sartorial splendor, I suggest you take note: that person may be an Indiana Tech law student on his or her way to the summit of global power.
lol at the saving baby whales and such, or more realistically, indigent people with divorces and evictions and that sort of thing. It's a great illustration of the difference between NEED and DEMAND.
DeleteYou may well "need" a service, but "demand" from an economics perspective is demand among people who can pay, either directly or via some third-party payment source like what the system has to spend on public defenders. If the *demand* isn't there, then it really doesn't matter how much *need* there may be - it will not be a viable practice area.
That's why I say. In law, there actually is no shortage of need for all the lawyers we produce. There is no shortage of broke unrepresented people in the middle of a divorce or child custody dispute or eviction. What there is, however, is a drastic shortage of *demand* and the supply we we produce is vastly disproportionate to that demand. And it is, after all, the law of supply and demand. Not the law of supply and need.
Owing mainly to the increasing unaffordability of legal services, more and more people in divorce proceedings and the like are acting without representation. This creates an extra burden for the courts.
DeleteI've heard of colleges with on-campus food shelves. Thank goodness for the generosity of higher ed.
DeleteAs far as I know, there is only one example of a law school founded within living memory that is anything other than a toilet: UC Irvine.
ReplyDeleteIrvine was founded in 2007, which is super recent for a school to actually get the kind of students it does. But it came out the gate with the backing of both the UC brand and Chemerinsky's celebrity status (some controversies about his involvement aside), and with enough major donations to make it so that the inaugural class had automatic full-rides, with automatic half-rides to the next class and one-third rides to the class after that.
Today, its median LSAT is 167, and it doesn't look like they're buying those scores because after those first 3 classes mentioned above, the aid is need-based only except for actual donor-funded/endowed scholarships. I don't know how well their graduates fair, but a 167 LSAT is no slouch of a score.
So there is a roadmap, IMHO: Celebrity profs, highly desirable location, major elite undergrad brand affiliation, enough resources to buy the first few classes, and a commitment to cease that inherently unsustainable practice without compromising admission standards within a few years. Any stew without all of these ingredients is going to turn into diarrhea if it survives at all, and that's exactly where this Wilmington endeavor is clearly headed.
Irvine, as you said, benefited from very special circumstances. I'd add one to your list, while admitting that it is probably minor: being founded just before the law-school scam blew up. Probably Irvine would still have worked out if it had been founded during the era of Indiana Tech, Charlotte, and Valpo, but that's not certain.
DeleteActually, Irvine didn't work out. After pretending—*YAWN*—to be a Different Kind of Law School, it promptly declared that its objective was to vault itself into the top 20 on the "rankings" of You Ass News, right off the bat. It hasn't been in the top 20 yet.
The most promising place for another Irvine is Princeton—and it lacks a key factor, namely the highly desirable location. Maybe Princeton could take a leaf from Cooley's book and open a branch in Florida for the types of people who are ass enough to want to live there. But I shouldn't give the scamsters any ideas…
Well, they didn't make it into the 20s. But they did make it into the 30s, and their selectivity is higher than what you'd expect from other schools in that range.
DeleteAnd agree with you on princeton. Lord knows there's enough people who already just assume it has a law school and rate it highly if asked. And, they are far more prestigious than the UC name, so that might even be prestigious enough to overcome the location issue.
Certainly not Florida for a location though! I think the Irvine model requires a location that is desirable in a prestige sense, not just an "it has beaches" sense. Irvine qualifies. Its in Orange freaking County. But Florida is not nearly so elite. If beaches are all you have then all you get is beach bums.
I'm just judging them by their own standard. They promised the top 20; they never made it. And "30s" would have been too infra dig.
DeleteSomeone urged me to apply to Princeton's law school. I was too late, though, by some 150 years. (It did have a law school for a short time in the nineteenth century.)
Orange County, too, is overrated, in Old Guy's opinion. But Florida is indeed worse.
What Princeton lacks is the ability to throttle the taxpayers of New Jersey, Florida or wherever to subsidize the thing and allow them to charge in-state tuition to undercut other toilets on price. One recurring theme in the scam has been desperate efforts by "indies" to be absorbed by state universities. It worked for Franklin Pierce and John Marshall/Chicago but for Vermont LS not so much.
DeleteAnd given California's gargantuan population it can, perhaps, justify six state law schools while Illinois certainly cannot justify four nor Ohio five.
Vermont Law School has indeed tried without success to fob itself off onto the U of Vermont. Even if the latter were interested in absorbing an über-toilet, which does not appear to be the case, location would pose an important obstacle: Vermont Law School is located in South Royalton, literally a crossroads—an unincorporated community with a gas station on one side of the road and the über-toilet on the other. It is on the other side of the state from Burlington, where the university is.
DeleteMaybe setting up shop in the middle of nowhere—South Royalton is a half-hour's drive from the nearest grocery store, in New Hampshire—seemed clever and cool to hippies in the 1970s, but now it must seem like a grievous error. Anyway, Vermont Law School is stuck with that decision. Let's just hope that before long it will dry up and blow away.
Just a few years ago, California had 64 law schools, many of which were state-accredited or even unaccredited (such as the notorious "Larry's Law School", one office over a defunct Mexican restaurant in some strip mall). I doubt whether it needs six state-run law schools, but anyway I agree with you that Illinois and Ohio have far too many.
DeleteTexas A&M probably should qualify as well. I know they technically bought out Texas Wesleyan University Law, but TWU grads don't get updated TA&M degrees and they completely cleared house with admin, staff, and professors. School has gone from unranked >150 to within the T30 in a dozen years.
DeleteThey did it with a similar roadmap to yours. Texas is one of the few booming legal markets in the US, so attractive location. They've got the brand recognition and support of the largest college in the nation. Their alumni base is incredibly loyal, and trust me all those TA&M businessmen are secretly thrilled they no longer need to hire UT/TT/SMU grads as their lawyers. They're still doing incredibly numbers-focused admissions, bucking the trend of inclusion and holistic evaluation in favor of the data realities that higher LSAT and GPA applicants end up having more successful and lucrative careers in the law jobs that matter.
They do still lag behind their immediate peers in BL job rate, but that gap has been continually narrowing and I see no signs of it slowing. The most promising indicator of their success is that SMU, their closest rival, has massively upped their financial aid offers in the past two years. They saw themselves get beat in the rankings and that the quantitatively superior students who want to be in DFW were going to TA&M instead, and realized they needed to adapt to the market.
So again. To work you need the resources of a major university system, national brand recognition, a growing legal market in your location, and to not admit unqualified rubes who, upon graduation, immediately cause your school to have a poor reputation among firms in your area.
@5:01 none of that would matter for Princeton. They're so prestigious that if they opened a law school, it'd probably rank right near the top 14 the first year it got ranked at all.
DeleteThat said, yes the whole "affiliation" thing is a popular tactic for crappy law schools. But it doesn't always work out; that depends a lot on how real the affiliation is and whether the place you're affiliating with has much of a reputation of its own.
Take Cooley. Awhile back they became nominally part of western michigan university. But in reality, that wasn't an acquisition or anything. Cooley was still a separate company with its own board just as before. It was quite literally just a license to use WMU's name and logo and WMU pulled out of even that arrangement a few years later. No more real of an "affiliation" than the kind of deal they'd make with the T-shirt printing company, and just as easy to unwind.
Pretty sad when WMU, not exactly a world-renowned school to begin with, pulls out of a logo and licensing deal because its tarnishing your already-near-nonexistent brand recognition.
I remember when Cooley became affiliated with WMU and the law school in their literature they mailed me was advertising that you can pay for a new diploma that has the WMU name on it. My original worthless diploma that I received in the 90's is in my bedroom closet so I figured I am not going to waste anymore money giving to Cooley for a revised diploma.
DeleteIt's all about prestige, and Princeton has more than just about anywhere else. So 11:54 is correct; they could open a School of Phrenology and it would have an acceptance rate of 5%.
Deletelol 11:08. Never heard of a school literally changing old printed diplomas and it only shows me their knowledge of how bad the cooley name was/is!
DeleteWonder if the reverse is true. Like when the affiliation dissolved and you had gotten one of these reprints, would some goons show up at your house to take it back? Hilarious.
Wasn't it Loyola in Los Angeles that changed everyone's GRADES upward, including those of people who graduated many years earlier? It even put an asterisk next to an old A+ as some sort of mark of distinction.
Delete@ 8:46. I knew a toileteer type of lawyer who displayed J.D. diplomas from U of Bridgeport and Quinnipiac in his office so apparently Quinnipiac did it at least for recent pre-transfer of the school graduates.
DeleteFlorida A&M law dean resigned because of the collapsing Bar exam passage rate.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, Wilmington may well be lamenting their decision. They hired a guy who apparently was dean at a couple of also-ran law schools(Baltimore and Toledo), and no doubt that experience was a selling point. So now he's hired-and presto! he admits he really doesn't understand the nuts and bolts of running a law school.
ReplyDeleteJust wait until Wilmington get the final bill for this year's miniscule class; they are going to be awash in red ink.
He is 72 so his potential tenure will be short, even if it works out. How many 80 year old deans are out there (professors, there are many, however)? Look at his published articles. It’s all sports “law.”
ReplyDeleteChrist. And that "specialty" in sports "law" may have been instrumental in getting him the job, even though, as someone pointed out above, he obviously doesn't know what the hell he's doing. "Come to Wilmington, where our dean can show you how to build a career hobnobbing with athletes!"
DeleteIndiana Tech exemplifies the folly of an über-toilet's squandering its resources on fluff. Indiana Tech arrogantly proclaimed that it would "rank" third out of Indiana's five law schools (four before Indiana Tech) as soon as it opened. In other words, without any history whatsoever, it was already superior to two established schools. Also before opening, it assembled a collection of art and even hired a curator. Then it had the students spend their first six weeks collectively writing some dumb "oath of professionalism", which they recited at a ceremony at which some local yahoo gave them each a pin. Then came four certificates in "Global Leadership", and a whole slate of bullshit electives of the Dougie Fresh "Law & Hip-Hop" variety. All the while, bar review was the mainstay of every semester. And when Indiana Tech finally managed to shit out a graduating class, only one graduate passed a bar exam (later two others brought successful appeals against their failing scores).
Can people who overwhelmingly fail the bar exam even with all that support afford the luxury of "sports law" and similar tripe?
Just because Indiana Tech law school went kaput doesn't mean they've completely given up:
Deletehttps://www.indianatech.edu/news/indiana-tech-akron-school-of-law-announce-new-33-j-d-program/
Good god! Aren't they still smarting from flushing $40M down that über-toilet?
DeleteAnd OG, it's not as if these two schools are geographically close; it's a 212 mile drive between the two-a 3+hour drive. If it's going to do this, IT ought to take the advice given above and pick a beach location...a mere 3+ hour plane ride away.
DeleteYes, Akron is most of the way across Ohio. Why the hell didn't they try a partnership with one of the three surviving law schools in Indiana (down from five, when Indiana Tech and Valpo were still around)? Or maybe hit Yale up for interest.
DeleteLaw school has become such a joke that you can go on Survivor during your 3L year. Amazing he can go to Fiji between classes and a summer associate job.
Deletehttps://wegotthiscovered.com/tv/who-is-charlie-davis-from-survivor-46/
Well, in fairness that would be entirely up to the law firm he was a summer associate at, not the school. The show may be premiering now, but according to Wikipedia the filming dates were June 1-26, 2023. He is graduating in May of this year so this would've been his 2L summer.
DeleteSo, school was not in session and he only needed one month. Whether to give him that one month without jeopardizing his offer would have presumably been entirely up to whatever firm he was summering at; the school would've had nothing to do with it. Clearly, they thought it cool enough to let him do it.
Summer associate gigs are mostly dinner parties and whatnot anyway. They don't start slave-driving you until you actually start as an associate, and they probably thought it'd be such a cool thing to have on the bio page that they saw more to gain from letting him do it than not. Besides, he's on law review at BC (and was Harvard for undergrad) and while BC doesn't place everyone in biglaw, BC is good enough that at least the law review kids likely have multiple big firms competing for them and so if one firm didn't let him take the month, at least one of his other offers would have.
Basically, they let him cut his summer associate program short by one month. That is the firm's business decision to make.
No one is disagreeing with your points. But a serious industry like mega fund PE like KKR or hedge fund like citadel would tolerate that during MBA summer. Law is such a joke. And BC Law has published articles about him on Survivor on their website, guess they have little else to brag about.
DeleteI had a colleague go to BC after serving as our groups paralegal. In a good economy it will still be less than half in big law, and a number of law review folk don’t get offers for various No one is disagreeing with your points. But a serious industry like mega fund PE like KKR or hedge fund like citadel would tolerate that during MBA summer. Law is such a joke. And BC Law has published articles about him on Survivor on their website.
I had a colleague go to BC. In a good economy it will still be less than half in big law, and a number of law review folk don’t receive offers for various reasons. Also keep in mind that Boston only has 3 (arguably 4) corporate firms that have scale and a wide variety of practices. Most big law offices there are satellites and take nyc overflow. Not a good scene.
Massachusetts State government is loaded with BC law grads. I think most go there or fed.
DeleteBC has always been a school for rich kids who couldn’t get into the T14, they have uncles and sailing friends get them big law offers. Otherwise it’s a dumpster fire. Being a Harvard grad and not being able to get a good non law job or a t14 offer is really pathetic.
DeleteState government jobs skew towards older attorneys due to low attrition. When they entered government, there were more jobs available and BU and (to a much lesser extent) Northeastern were not players in the MA market. BC students do not go "fed" in anything like noticeable numbers. Not many will even clerk for a federal district judge, appellate almost entirely off the table except 1-2 per class.
DeleteBC is not a good law school, at all.
When I had dealings with MA state government, it seemed as if almost every lawyer was from BC. BC is notorious for hiring its own and it tries to be self-perpetuating that way. I once applied for a position with a state commission. I had directly related experience but the job went to a BC grad without any experience because the Director was a BC grad.
DeleteThis is less and less true as Boston and MA diversify. One of the most good ole boy states is finally catching up and it will it Lily White BC HARD
DeleteYeah, for law school in MA, the Harvard kids don't stay in Boston so that really just leaves BC and BU because the rest are toilets. Occasionally Suffolk makes it into the mix if you're well-connected enough to overcome its toiletude, but for the most part it's BC and BU competing for the good Boston jobs.
DeleteBU tends to beat BC in the rankings lately, but BC tends to get more respect locally due to having the better undergrad, having a football team, etc. Lots more school spirit and alumni loyalty there, as others have mentioned.
This may be slightly off-topic, but is more of a comment about The Law School Scam generally than about the particular issue sub judice. Much has been made of grades, and the vast importance of them in law school. In practical terms, at most law schools one must be in the top 10 percent of the class to participate in On Campus Interviews, to make the Law Review (more or less, some people "write on" instead of "grading on", but being on the LR with mediocre grades won't get you many interviews), and to have a shot at a job with a large law firm, which may pay from 190K-220K per year plus bonus, for a first year associate. At very grade-conscious law firms, like Cravath and Skadden, one must be in the top 5 percent of the class to have a shot at getting a job. Here is the thing: if you went to Nursing School for two years and graduated dead-last in your class, you would have multiple job offers, with reasonable to good salaries, and cash signing bonuses. It is not uncommon for hospitals to pay for further education for Nurses, who then end up making over six figures. May commercial truck drivers earn over six figures a year, and I would absolutely love to watch someone ask a trucker for his GPA/Class Rank in Trucking School. That would be hilarious. I bet they all get jobs. The same can be said of pilots, of grads of military academies, and so on. In fact, the student who graduates last in his class from The Naval Academy is affectionately referred to as "The Anchor" and some poor performing students may aim for this distinction--if you're going to do something, good or bad, go all the way when you do it, that kind of mentality. President Biden's law school grades/class rank are derided to this day, which strikes me as ludicrous. Why doesn't anyone think this through, and say, well, at a host of schools, trade schools, military academies, and other programs, you can literally graduate last in the class and still have multiple job offers, but at Law School if you don't graduate at the very top of your class, you may have difficulty finding a job at al. .. isn't that more of an indictment of the law school itself, and of its program, than it is of its students? Shouldn't a JD have intrinsic value, in and of itself, that helps its holders find gainful employment regardless of their class rank? If it doesn't, than perhaps the very idea of attending law school in the first place might not make sense. . . and the very existence of most US law schools doesn't make sense either. Chancy job outcomes for 90 percent of the class should indicate that the entire venture is probably a big waste of time and money.
ReplyDeleteLegal recruiters want to stay in business:
Delete"When attorneys complain to me about regretting going to a school or about being attorneys in general, I like to remind them of the following positive things about practicing law. The reality is that no other profession offers so many potential benefits as the law does"
Top 20 Reasons Why There Is No Better Profession Than Practicing Law:
https://www.bcgsearch.com/article/900046288/Top-20-Reasons-Why-There-Is-No-Better-Profession-Than-Practicing-Law/?utm_source=WNW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=t_14650--dt_20240214-cid_34031-Did_102239-ad_Seeker.BCG.Legal.FirstStep-logid_Mailchimp&fow=7469a286259799e5b37e5db9296f00b3
100%.
DeleteSadly, there is a constant supply of new lemmings. Lemmings won't listen to reason. That's why they're lemmings. Then 4 years later, they're bitter, unemployed and unemployable with a useless piece of paper and $150K of non-dischargeable debt.
You kind of have to appreciate the game played by law schools though. They really extract every bit of $$$ from the suckers. It's legalized fraud.
Dilbert - your post is valid, except for comparing the 200 ABA law schools to the 4 US military academies, notwithstanding that the military academies themselves are overrated, but leave that aside, there is no comparison between admission chances to a US military academy and an ABA law school. But you aren't posting anything original from what has been posted in practically every thread since this blog's inception.
DeleteLaw schools (at least the ones where there's any hope at all) basically just run a tournament for big firms so that they can sit back and hire whomever wins, with "winning" defined by the firms on a sliding scale in which class rank to win decreases as prestige of the school rises, and tweaked with handicaps for various preferences/connections.
DeleteThat's why they make sure all 1Ls take the exact same courses and its why those courses are blind graded and rigidly curved (and its why the 2L and 3L years are almost entirely electives and don't matter, because by then the offers have been made or not made).
It's also why admission to the law schools themselves is so focused on LSAT scores, and the LSAT of course is also curved - a 170 isn't a good score because it's a 170; it's a good score because its the 98th percentile.
Law school is not designed to, and does not, care about how well you do. It only cares about how much better (or worse) you did than your classmates and everything about it is designed to be this kind of pure tournament. They aren't there to teach the students. They're referees in a contest and their main function is to dutifully report back to biglaw regarding who won that contest.
2:43 pm. And character, wit, personality, and integrity matter not.
DeleteI hope Wilmington Law closes just like Indiana Tech, but they may be able to take a punch or two much better. Indiana Tech's main university only had about 10k total students, while Wilmington University has 20k students. Indiana Tech had much less money and needed the law school to succeed quickly. Wilmington may be able to stumble around a little longer until it finds enough lemmings, err I mean students. But already screwing up the 1L class by 2/3 is a hilarious start to show! I guarantee there was some powerpoint for 65 students and admin figured "we'll set a low number so we can brag about hitting our goal and all the prospective students we rejected". Oops.
ReplyDeleteI don't blame any non-law employer for placing no value on a JD. A JD is a signal that a 20-something could not find another way to spend three years than listening to useless lectures on the 14th Amendment and rules of evidence. Absolutely none of that is of any assistance to a business. To the extent they took corporations and M&A and other "transactional law" courses, lawyers would learn more reading a handful of online articles about LLCs than caselaw surrounding Revlon. HR tossing attorney resumes in the trash is a wise policy.
ReplyDeleteI have no opinion about non-trial lawyers, but being a trial lawyer myself, I am tired of all of the BS. You spend half your time arguing over petty discovery disputes. And I can not stand, for the most part, women trial lawyers who attempt to outman the male trial lawyers...being married to a female trial lawyer must be like being married to Satan. And it is not so much that lawyers are corrupt as it is they are deceitful. Why do insurance company lawyers always use the same doctors for their defense examinations? And Plaintiff lawyers use the same doctors for referrals? Experts spouting junk science are always for hire and who knows whether a Judge will keep a junk expert out using the Daubert standards. Good luck getting a reversal on appeal when a biased, ahole and often incompetent judge screws your clients. Nobody gives a damn about truth or justice. Its who plays the game better. I could go on and on, but Law a great profession? Potentially lucrative but it wears you down year after year...seeing the worst humanity has to offer. Think Trump's attorneys. Giullano, Eastman, very successful lawyers who in the end proved they were Sociopaths. In my opinion Sociopaths are 20% of the legal profession, and oftentimes they are the best trial lawyers because they have no ethics. So yea, go to law school and deal with the worst of humanity for the one life you have to live. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteIt's a rare pleasure to encounter a lawyer who is competent and honest. Usually one of the two traits is absent—very often both.
DeleteAnd don't get me started on judges.
I just tell people to stay the hell away from the courthouse if they possibly can.
On an aside as to the dumbing down of education, to earning a BA degree in the United States traditionally required proficiency in a modern language, i.e. a few progressive courses in a language usually a European language. Not necessarily producing proficiency, but something. I am seeing some universities offering an option of a 'world language' OR 'world culture studies' by taking the second a student can circumvent the onerous language requirement.
DeleteThe PhD used to require a reading knowledge of one or more languages of importance in the field in question—often French, German, or Russian. "Reading knowledge" meant that one could come up with some sort of translation of a page of text after a couple of hours with a dictionary. The idea was that one needed to be able to read scholarly literature in one's field. Today, however, many PhD programs no longer require even that laughably weak knowledge of a language.
DeleteA couple of years ago, Princeton abolished the requirement of Latin or Greek for the bachelor's degree in classics; now not even a single semester of either language need be taken. That sounds rather like dispensing with arithmetic as a requirement for the major in physics.
The treacherous pirate Campos settled his lawsuit with Colorado. I think he "scamblogged" to feel morally superior to his worthless colleagues and didn't really care what happened to anybody else.
ReplyDeleteThe law school scam is a long way from dying in attracting misguided students:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=425827
This is either a. a joke or b. this guy is so rich it doesn't make any difference. And these posts are always amusing; nobody ever writes "I've always dreamed of being a physician and I'm willing to take all those hard math and science classes to get there."
DeleteEverybody wants to be a lawer...and the Scam is happy to accomodate as long as you have the $$$.
"I currently live in a HCOL area. Annual expenses are $140k. My spouse stays home with kids (2 & 4). I have a stable income of $400k. Potential to grow to ~$600k in future years.
DeleteI just turned 40, and we just reached a NW of $2M. $500k in taxable, $500k home equity, and $1M in retirement accounts. I max out all my available retirement accounts, totaling $106k of tax-advantaged savings this year.
Although I’m fortunate to have a stable and lucrative career that I enjoy, I don’t find it intellectually challenging, and I’ve always dreamed of attending law school."
The poster did get some good advice:
"Don't do it. Wife and I are both lawyers. Please trust me."
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=425827&sid=da55d05767aba6148f210e3fb7f6ea4c&start=50
Well I hope that dude gets disabused of the notion that a JD would give any kind of ROI, especially if he's already making 400k. But if he wants to do it for personal enrichment, and is in a position to pay for it out of pocket no debt, and his family is OK with him eating into their nest egg to fork over those payments, then more power to him I guess? (Shrug).
DeleteIntellectually challenging? Law? Are you kidding?
DeleteWhen Old Guy spoke of retiring early, a physician of his acquaintance urged him not to do so, saying that he needed his work for intellectual stimulation. But already he doesn't get intellectual stimulation from it.
Law CAN BE intellectually challenging, OG. Just not the vast majority of it.
DeleteBut, I guess that if you're just independently wealthy, nothing stops you from getting a JD and a license and hanging a shingle to take only appellate work or something. Not enough of that would come in to sustain you of course, but if you don't need it for that purpose then I guess it doesn't matter. Ironically, appellate work is probably the one thing that law school actually DOES teach you to do.
9:18 sounds like someone pulling a joke. A $400k job with a potential of $600k that isn't challenging? But they enjoy? Doesn't exist. Easy jobs don't pay $400k. And they want to give it up for a law career? That kind of person doesn't exist. Notice they don't say what kind of job it is. It sounds like some of the people who call into the huckster Dave Ramsay. They have multi-six figure jobs but can't get out of debt so they have to call Ramsay for a solution. Or the one making $50,000 a year with a 10 minute commute and a job they like asking the wise guru Ramsay if they should take a job paying $55,000 with a 150 mile a day commute that they know they will hate. No one ever making minimum wage or unemployed ever calls Ramsay nor could Ramsay help them.
DeleteAnd as far as wanting intellectual challenge from work. Work is the last thing you want challenge from unless the reward is great and necessary. Challenge = Problems = Stress. Challenge should come from your hobbies, not your work.
6:28 here with an update. I went to the blog site thread and read all of the posts. Stipulating that the poster is not an elaborate troll, it appears that the poster is most likely an airline pilot probably military trained. Upper tier pilot salaries can reach the $400k level so the salary is possible. I think he age was presumed to be around 40. The job gives him the freedom to work as few hours that he wishes, apparently without repercussions and can cut his hours back to part time weekends and dedicate the rest of the week to law school. He posted the original post and received mostly advice not to go to law school with a few deluded types here and there telling him to go for it. It is very important for him, maybe even more important than the intellectual stimulation, to replace his $400-$600k salary with an even higher salary which he thinks a legal career will easily deliver. A few posters astutely pointed out that this was least realistic aspect of the scheme. He responded with one response several days later still defending his idea to go to law school. I am just wondering if he is so hell bent on cutting back on the airline job and has this all mapped out why is he looking for affirmation on a blog?
DeleteAlso, if he is tired of being a pilot maybe he can become a plumber.
The public gets the impression that lawyers are all swimming in money. A handful have very high incomes, notably some partners in white-shoe law firms. Most do not. The notion that one can go straight out of law school into $400k or more is laughable—especially if the "law school" in question is a toilet.
DeleteA link to this blog was posted in that thread. LOL. As the saying goes: "You can lead a horse to water, but ... ."
ReplyDeleteIs there a profession other than law where if you post about possibly joining it, practitioners warn you about divorce, alcoholism, and suicide? Shouldn’t that be enough of a warning sign for Mr. Pilot? They don’t say these things if you talk about dentistry….
ReplyDeleteUndergrad colleges also are as responsible for the law school scam as well as the law schools themselves. Especially undergraduate colleges that have useless majors like political science, sociology, psychology, or history. They act as feeders to law schools just like some brokerage firms were feeders to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme. The professors at the undergrad colleges promise their students they can get into law school with their worthless degree. After the student graduates las school having obtained another worthless degree and ineffective law school career services. The undergrad colleges don't feel the wrath of the unemployed alumni because the it is now the law school's career services responsibility.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. I have long said that law school's apparent practicality, lack of prerequisites, and availability of loans that pay not just tuition but all costs of living as well, works hand-in-hand with impractical undergraduate majors.
DeleteThere's really nothing else like it. No other professional license I know of that requires no particular preparation to get in, nothing to finish other than racking up a certain number of credits and passing a test, and which will keep you fed and housed in a cool city for the entire three years (with no homework to boot, since your entire grade for each class is a single blind-graded, curved test). And the icing on the cake is that your parents think it'll be guaranteed riches so it'll keep them off your case too.
But, its a siren song. And I don't even mean cuz of the debt. It's downright criminal that the taxpayers get bilked for this kind of dough, but for the student you can just put it all on income based repayment. No, the worst thing is the pigeonholing. It honestly wouldn't be so bad if nonlegal employers loved the degree and shared the schools' belief in its supposed flexibility, but they don't. At best, they see it as irrelevant and at worst as an actual minus because a lawyer looking for a nonlegal job is either a failure or a saboteur looking for things to sue about, or both.
So its basically a three-year all-expenses-loaned break from the real world, but when the legal job market doesn't work out (and it won't for most) the real and most substantial price you pay is being pigeonholed for life. "Lawyer" will define every aspect of who you are from then on, and it will be incredibly difficult to shed that identity once it has been assumed. That, by far, is to me the worst aspect of the scam: It probably won't work out and when it doesn't, your resume basically screams "don't hire me for anything else."
Crediting this. I have an Ivy League BA and a T13 JD, practiced big law for a couple years. I would take the opportunities I had out of college over the money and time I spent in law school any day. They evaporated, I cannot even get screener interviews. Also, to be frank, my classmates in college were far more impressive than in law school, even at one considered "impressive."
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