The dean admits that greater expansion might well push his über-toilet into "accepting students that may struggle to pass the bar exam". Indeed, already the LSAT score at the 25th percentile is a horrible 146, and the admission of 15 more students, to say nothing of a greater number, would likely send that score tumbling. It is difficult to imagine where the U of North Dakota could find even 15 more students per year without dipping at least a few points on the LSAT, and probably quite a few.
The dean's statement amounts to a shameful admission that the law school as it stands hovers just above the threshold for students of truly horrible calibre—those who would struggle to pass any bar exam. It is a predatory institution that puts its existence, and the advancement of its faculty, ahead of the needs and interests of its students.
There simply is no need for a law school in North Dakota, especially one that draws its so-called students principally from the marginal group that will struggle with any bar exam if it does manage to graduate. Rather than coming up with a few million dollars and thinking of admitting even worse trash, the dean should have the honesty to concede that his über-toilet should be wound up as soon as possible.
How is any law school going to attract more students when law school applications are on a downward slide? They are lucky if they can keep 85 new students enrolling let alone get 100 students to enroll
ReplyDeleteEspecially a law school in North Dakota, not exactly a location of choice. One might not be surprised if a Pepperdine increased its enrollment, but an über-toilet in Grand Forks, North Dakota, would not lure many people by location alone.
DeleteAttracting students should be easy enough, using the method that occurred to the dean: simply lower standards by admitting people with scarcely a prayer of passing a bar exam (or even graduating). It's wholly unethical, but when has that ever stopped a law-school scamster?
Sorry to report this, but per LSAC, applications to law school are up 25%.
Deletehttps://report.lsac.org/VolumeSummary.aspx
why is it up? looks like after a long-term decrease.
Delete2021 was the recent high point: 71k applicants, with a downward trend the next two years, with 2024 being an up trend: 64, 779 applicants.
Deletehttps://report.lsac.org/View.aspx?Report=AdmissionTrendsApplicantsAdmitApps
No idea why it's up after two down years, and as of 11/18/24, applications for 2025 were running 25% ahead of 2024. If that holds up, so much for a long term decrease.
So the Dean is talking about "accepting students that may struggle to pass the bar exam". Where is the ABA on this? Why aren't they regulating this? Why on earth would a law school be allowed to enroll students, who then get "student loans" guaranteed by the federal government, who may very well never even get a license to practice law in the first place, because they cannot pass the Bar Exam? I don't give a hoot about law school grades, journal, all of that, but I would be very reluctant to hire or rely upon a lawyer who failed the Bar Exam, on their first attempt, no matter the excuses. If after 4Y of college, and 3Y of law school, and a Bar Exam Prep Course, you still fail.. .then maybe you shouldn't be a lawyer.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting question: should the public get to know how many attempts at the bar exam a lawyer has made? I'm not sure that I would reject a lawyer just for having failed the exam on the first try, although I would reject one for failing it again. But the public doesn't usually get to know this information. Perhaps it should be made public. (Old Guy passed on the first and only try, without taking any sort of bar-prep course.)
DeleteThe ABA’s rules for accreditation do prohibit the admission of students with little hope of joining the bar, but they are observed largely in the breach.
In my state, it used to be 3 strikes and you're out. If person failed the Bar Exam 3 times, he or she had to write our highest state court, explain why they failed it 3 times, and request permission to be allowed to sit for the exam again. If permission was granted, and they failed it a 4th time, that was the end of their attempt to become a lawyer in this state. But, then, Of Course, some people decided that this was discriminatory, because black applicants kept failing the exam again and again, so they did away with that. It was a typical example of The Bigotry of Low Expectations: people who pretend to care about minorities lower the standard across the board because they think that blacks are less capable than their white counterparts, when it comes to passing a rigorous exam. Now you can take the exam as often as you like, though since it is only offered twice a year, repeatedly failing it would really make the odds of becoming a practicing lawyer difficult.
DeleteThere is no doubt that Black people in the US have been treated like dirt for centuries and that unacceptable inequalities persist. But the lowering of standards is no way to rectify the crime of racial oppression.
DeleteIn pharmacy, failure of the licensing exam more than three times requires the person to take more classes at a pharmacy school, about a semester's worth.
DeleteEventually someone might barely pass the exam after enough attempts but be a shitty pharmacist or lawyer. The exam represents the minimum, not real qualification. How happy would you be with a lawyer who had just scraped by after numerous attempts? Would you expect good work or marginal work?
DeleteNow, as to me saying that I have no use for a lawyer who fails the Bar Exam once, that may sound harsh, but in my state people who fail the exam on their first attempt usually fail it the second time as well. So, they get into a cycle where they won't get sworn in with the rest of their class. . .look, there are some positive things about the awful job market for lawyer. When I first started practicing in 1995, there was room for mediocre lawyers. Now, that isn't the case. I know lots of second-rate lawyers who have been summarily fired (from government jobs, no less) who have been suspended, and disbarred. A tight job market means there is no room for second-raters. Even getting a job at the Public Defender's Office in my area is like trying to walk through a thick, rein-forced concrete wall. You can smash yourself up trying but you aren't getting in.
ReplyDeleteI don't criticize you for rejecting a lawyer who has failed the bar exam even once. I might overlook one failure but not two or three.
DeleteFailing even once, whatever the reason, can set a person back greatly. It may mean the loss of a good job. Those who fail several times are unlikely to have real careers in law even if they do eventually pass the exam.
What do you think is the minimum LSAT score that someone who insists on attending Law School should get. I believe that the bare minimum is a 160. Anyone who gets below a 160 should absolutely have no business attending law school and chose to pursue another career.
ReplyDeleteYou would have to check old messages, but I recall stating years ago that 160 was a reasonable minimum, and that the minimum should be pushed up to 162, then 164, over time.
DeleteThere are only 41 law schools where the LSAT score at the 25th percentile is 160 or higher. Even most of those do draw much of their class from the group down below 160. This little observation shows that a meaningful standard would see the prompt deaths of most law schools.
...And its even worse, because I don't know how much they've had to give out in "scholarships" (really just straight tuition discounts) to get even the pathetic medians they have now.
ReplyDeleteIf they need not just 15 students, but 15 students who will pay full boat, god knows how low it'll have to go. As Roger Ebert once said of a movie he really hated: "This doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."
Six law schools, including North Dakota, had an LSAT score of 146 at the 25th percentile; only three law schools (Ohio Northern, Appalachian, Southern University) had lower scores. Whatever scores significantly higher than 146 North Dakota managed to get, it must have shelled out for them.
DeleteOld Guy, what I’m having trouble understanding is given the “peer-reviewed” publication by law prof Simkovic that a law degree is worth a cool million dollars (not the cost of obtaining one, but the purported economic return), why doesn’t U of North Dakota simply hold a fundraiser and ask their millionaire alums to chip in some money to make up the $2 million shortfall?
ReplyDeleteWhat do I know, I’m a meager 2nd tier law graduate who got good grades and was an editor on law review but was rejected by big law, big fed, s—-t law, prosecutor offices, public defender offices, local government, and judicial clerkships and graduated with no job. I ended up going to medical school and now I am in academic medicine. Funny how law profs like Simkovic claim they need a relaxed schedule of teaching a couple classes a week and avoiding any type of real work so they can publish papers. A couple weeks ago when I taught at the med school, I got a few hours off in the morning and then had to return to the hospital afterward. If I want to submit something for publication, I have to do it after work hours. Academic medicine seems to do just fine teaching and publishing while taking care of patients. If I told my department chair that I would no longer do clinical work so I could teach a couple classes at the medical school and publish some papers, I would be out of the job.
I always laughed when Simkovic argued his paper must be valid because it was “peer-reviewed.” He takes advantage of lawyers not being familiar with the publication of articles. Years ago a journal published a peer reviewed article finding evidence people have the power of ESP. And the New England Journal of Medicine once published an article claiming screening mammograms do not reduce breast cancer mortality. Welch HG, Prorok PC, O'Malley AJ, Kramer BS. Breast-Cancer Tumor Size, Overdiagnosis, and Mammography Screening Effectiveness. N Engl J Med. 2016;375(15):1438-1447. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1600249.
Good question. Just $2 million? Isn't North Dakota teeming with rich alumni who can make that up out of pocket change?
DeleteThere is simply no comparison between law and medicine. Professors of medicine, as you point out, do serious clinical work while also teaching—and they real stuff, not the counterpart of "Law and Popular Culture". Many professors of law, by contrast, are not lawyers at all, and nearly every one of them disdains practice (and pronounces the very word with palpable contempt).
Old Guy would probably go into medicine, but at his age it makes more sense to last out the horror that is law. He expects to retire in a few years.
And, yes, peer-reviewed bullshit is still bullshit. Hardly anything in law journals is "reviewed" by anyone but a few law students. But would you value crap about Narratives of the Open Road just because some goddamn law professors had reviewed it?
Honestly, there is so much wrong with legal education in the United States that it is a travesty. Putting 11 law schools in Florida, 10 in Texas (soon to be 11) 10 in Pennsylvania--that's just brick stupid. The fact that law schools do not teach their students how to practice law is shocking, aggressive stupidity. The way that law students literally fetishize grades and Journal, is again, one of the dumbest things I have seen in my entire life. As Old Guy found out, you can do really well, top 10 percent, blah-blah and still have nothing to show for it. When I was in law school, over 30Y ago, we painstakingly hand wrote essays in "blue books" with lined paper that are commonly used in Elementary School. The very idea that some professors who has never set foot in a courtroom in his life--and some professors did not even sit for the Bar Exam, and never got a law license, this was the best law school in the state where I lived, ranked, around top 25%--the idea that those. . .folks. . .reading a bunch of hastily scribbled essays in Blue Books that belonged in a third grade classroom, being used to teach penmanship/cursive handwriting, and saying "Well, this is a cute essay, he gets an A, but this one is ugly, C, maybe a C+" the idea that this nonsense is supposed to be the be-all end-all for one's future career is, again, insane. The vaunted Law Review--it's a student journal. It is not a peer-reviewed publication like the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It is the law school equivalent of a high school newspaper. If an lawyer cited a Law Review article in oral argument with me, I would tear that lawyer apart, on the spot, in front of the Judge, for pretending that something written/edited by a second year law student had any merit or reliability whatsoever. The lawyer would be better off citing a fortune from a Chinese cookie.
ReplyDeleteYes, there are far too many law schools. The District of Columbia alone has 6, of which one (Georgetown) is a trap school and the rest are very much to be avoided. Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Virginia have 9 each: keep Harvard and Chicago, dump the other 34.
DeleteWhen I say that a law school's flagship journal, its Law Review, is little different than a than a High School newspaper, I am 100% serious. It is a student written publication, or, in the alternative, students select articles for publication, and extensively edit/format/re-write and cite check them. A lawyer who moved into teaching (something which is common given the horrible job market for JD's) could very easily set up a High School Newspaper to run just like a Law School Law Review. He could limit (or strongly encourage) participation in the school newspaper to kids ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class, and us a book of citation similar to the Blue Book--I think well run school newspapers already use a uniform system of citation called the MLA Format. You could encourage teachers to submit articles for publication, and have the Editorial Board review them, select the best to publish, and re-write them etc. And honestly, to me, writing for such an academically-oriented high school newspaper would be no more, or less, impressive than the law review. Either way you have law students--adults in a Trade School--focused on polishing an apple for the teacher, like a 14 year old high school freshman--instead of learning their trade. I might have used my law school Blue Books once in 30Y of practicing law, all that academic minutiae was meaningless (and I have been published twice in legal journals written, and formatted, and edited by attorneys, unlike student journals). Most of what I learned, and was taught to do, in law school, is utterly useless in the practice of law, it was just a big, expensive waste of time. A big, foolish hoop to jump through to obtain a Law License.
ReplyDeleteBeyond the low quality of these student-managed bullshit publications is the uselessness of the bulk of their content. Rarely will you see an article of any use whatsoever to bench or bar, but you will find countless "articles" full of asinine speculation about culture (especially popular culture—the more vulgar, the better) and other stuff having little to do with the practice of law. Zionist propaganda is also commonly featured.
DeleteMy main reason for seldom citing a law journal is that rarely is anything relevant to my practice published there.
Thank you. I am glad that others agree with me about the low value of law school journals that are student publications. Again, to me, getting good grades and writing for a student newspaper is a great idea if you're in high school. I did those things when I was a teen. But Law School is a Trade School. If you're enrolled in law school, then, for your own sake, please get practical work experience with lawyers working in the public or private sector. Learn your trade. Learn what lawyers actually do, and how to do it well. If a candidate interviewed with me, for a job at my law firm, and they started babbling about their grades/academic honors, I would terminate the interview. If, on the other hand, a candidate said "I worked for Law Firm X in Y practice area, and went to court to help the lawyers, here is a Motion I drafted for them, and here are references, the name of the Managing Partner, he can tell you about the quality of my work product", then that candidate would get the job. The lawyers I work with, and see in court, feel the same way. They want to know what you can do in the courtroom, and in the office, not what you did in a classroom. Law school, and its professors, Deans, Career Services People, get it precisely backward, and the students end up polishing an apple for the teacher instead of learning how to practice law.
DeleteWell, Old Guy couldn't get a job anywhere, or even an interview, so that method of yours wouldn't have worked. Old Guy was an editor of the flagship law journal, and maybe that helped him to get a federal clerkship. But he said as an editor that the journal was worthless and should be shut down.
DeleteI was researching loss of US citizenship as a personal project and I found a few useful articles. Usually from the 'better' law schools. Of course, this was maybe 2 or 3 articles out of the perhaps hundred of thousands law review articles that have been published. I would use them to gain perspective on an issue but would be averse to citing one, since they have virtually no precedential or even persuasive value. Overall, the sum total repository of law review publications is a massive monument to wasted effort.
DeleteIndeed, law reviews are mostly full of pretentious garbage. They have zero precedential and little persuasive value. Even most of their content is of no use to legal professionals. Who wants a self-indulgent article (farticle) by Nancy Leung on low-grade movies that she happens to like?
DeleteThe most realistic way to lose US citizenship is to renounce it. You will almost certainly need citizenship in another country first. Even with that, it is difficult to get the required appointment: I know people who have traveled across the ocean to do it. There is also a charge of several thousand dollars.
Renouncing it at a consulate is definitely one way. I was also interested in the other ways it can happen that could trap the unawares such as acquiring citizenship in another country and being elected to office or appointed to a policy level position in a government. I read one case of a woman who married a Mexican citizen was considered to have lost her American citizenship. I can't remember if she renounced it or it was through her actions. Then Mexico decreed her Mexican citizenship to be invalid and she became stateless. American is one of the relatively few countries where someone can potentially make themselves stateless. Most home countries will always take someone back. One partial term US Senator from Massachusetts Scott Brown proposed legislation that would strip citizenship from natural born citizens who never left the US in their lives if they engaged in what he considered terrorist activities. I could have been participating in a chat room. This would have been ostensibly unconstitutional and I lost whatever respect I had for this empty suit mediocrity.
DeleteI enjoy writing law review articles but my field cites them a lot since no one knows anything about Indian Law/ Tribal Law. Judges often cite them to figure out what is going on here.
DeleteLoss of US citizenship is far from the topic. Briefly, however, working at the policy level as a citizen of another state is not a reliable way to lose US citizenship. That possibility, available on paper, is selectively applied.
DeleteStripping people of citizenship for their political activity or presumed political views is very typical of the US nowadays. It doesn't surprise me at all to hear such things proposed. Even as a teenager, I knew that the US's propaganda about "freedom" was a lie.
Scholarship on real legal issues can be helpful. Most hackademic scribbling, however, doesn't discuss such things. Instead of analyses of novel legal problems, we get "Narratives of the Open Road".
DeleteIronic that law schools teach about the precontractual concept of puffery as related to the purchase of a product or service yet law schools are the epitomy of puffery .
ReplyDeleteWow, I was reading this blog and ITLSS back in 2010 or so (when i was doing research on whether i should do tax law, which an informed decision was made not to go). 15 years later and late-stage capitalism has gotten worse, and I'm surprised this blog is still active. The grift of these toilets hasn't ended.
ReplyDeleteLate-stage capitalism will grow more and more decadent until it collapses. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
DeleteInteresting reel from a doctor. Apparently they don't have an easy ride either.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/reel/1096457958693136/?mibextid=euiIfKPR21o5GuOb
I don't imagine that any line of work is an easy ride, with the notable exception of law professor.
DeleteI am sorry to be a Grinch, but I wanted to point out another big problem that I have with US law schools. These law schools, and the endless TV shows/movies/novels about law and lawyers focus, very much, on Big Law, on large prestigious law firms. Potential law students watch sill TV shows like "Suits" and honestly believe that most lawyers work in big, powerful law firms, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (or millions) driving luxury cars, etc. Now, I went to the best law school in my state, I believe at the time I attended is was ranked top 1/3, perhaps close to top 1/4 of law schools. At this well known, respected law school, 9/10 students would never get so much as an interview for a summer job with a large law firm in their lives. Big Law was only interested in the top 10 percent of the class (top 5 percent for very grade-conscious law firms like Cravath). People would honestly expect that attending law school would get them a job at such a firm, only to find out that 9/10 of them were completely out of the running once first semester exam grades dropped. Big Law is a Big Lie for the overwhelming majority of law students. I look at these stupid videos on YouTube, and they endlessly promote Law School as a ticket to riches and a life of luxury, having no idea that for 9/10 law students it's just a dream.
ReplyDeleteOld Guy doesn't know what is on television, but indeed the popular culture promotes two false beliefs about lawyers: that we are rich and that we are smart. A few lawyers fall into one of those categories; not many fall into both. But law is full of dolts, and most lawyers are not rolling in money. Years ago we published an article showing that the janitor and the switchboard operator at courthouses in Massachusetts had higher salaries than the lawyers employed there by the state. There are abundant reports of lawyers who moonlight just to make ends meet.
DeleteYou may have attended a trap school—one that is facially prestigious but offers poor prospects after graduation. It is true that Big Law will not consider people outside the top of the class at a school like yours, or anyone at all from a typical über-toilet. Even at an élite law school, up at the top of the class, I could not get an interview, on account of my age.
While we're on the subject, I should mention that films and such give the false impression that lawyers spend most of our time in court. Many lawyers almost never go to court, because their practice does not involve litigation: they write wills or draft contracts or do other work outside the courtroom. But those who do practice litigation still spend relatively little time in court, and unglamorous work such as motions and housekeeping tasks is much more common than trials and appeals. Films focus on trials because they make for better cinema than scenes of a lawyer’s sitting alone at a desk or waiting in court to request an adjournment.
Just how hard is to get into the top ten percent of the class at a good law school? Very, very hard. I went to school with some very smart, hard-working people who never got there. One of my fellow classmates graduated first in his class from a prestigious private high school, then double-majored in German and Japanese at Princeton. He ended up in the top 25 percent, as I recall, and his career was pretty awful post-graduation. Another guy I knew graduated second in his class from college--again, top 25 percent, and then he failed the bar exam, and that was pretty much it for him. I did know one guy at the top of his class, but he honestly didn't seem any smarter than anyone else. He claimed he just has a knack for exam-writing, maybe he was right.
ReplyDeleteObviously only 10% of the class makes the top 10%. Your point, I believe, is that one cannot expect to make the top 10% just because one did well at a previous degree. At a decent law school, most students did well previously.
DeleteIt is wrong to maintain, as some do, that grades in law school are arbitrary. But those who bank on coming in at the top of the class may be in for an unpleasant surprise.
What I am a trying to say that is that the fact that 9/10 law students at most law schools will never, ever have a shot at Big Law is not well known outside of law school. Law schools lie, or shade the truth. In the marketing material and promotional websites, the trumpet the fact that "some of our graduates go on to very high paying jobs in large, prestigious law firms" and it usually is not until the mark has plopped down tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, books, and living expenses and spent a few months on campus that he learns that "some of our graduates get these amazing jobs" actually means that 9/10 of our graduates will never even get an interview for one of these positions. Law schools, with their admissions materials, professors lying to applicants and potential applicants, Career Services Offices misleading students, they intentionally mislead, exaggerate, and generally scam people into spending three years of their lives, and 150K in tuition (or more) selling a dream. When the hapless unemployed graduates sue their law schools afterwards, something that has happened more than once, the courts say that people attending law schools should have been aware of the scam before the they signed on the dotted line and put down their first semester's tuition deposit. If I sold hi-definition Flat Screen TV's, and 9/10 of them didn't work, but I said "well, 10 percent of these TV's are amazing" I would be in violation of the Implied Warranty of Merchantability and probably guilty of Fraud. When you sell a degree that may work out really well for 10 percent of your students, and may not work out at all for 90 percent of them, isn't that more or less the same thing, or at least analogous? BTW, people really do attend Law School because they like the TV show Suits, or the movie Legally Blonde, etc. . .people really are that stupid, and that gullible, sadly.
DeleteI'm familiar with the litigation over alleged fraud in the marketing of über-toilets. A significant difficulty for the complainants is their insistence that they are intelligent, capable people with real potential as lawyers. If they are that great, why can they not look after themselves? There is ample literature on the law-school scam. In reality, these people are aware of it. They post shit on Web sites: "Should I go to Cooley or Appalachian?" They hear over and over again that über-toilets are a bad idea. Still they go—and then bitch when, predictably, they get a bad result.
DeleteMy position: if they're so much in need of guidance that they cannot make a decision for which they should be held responsible, they are not ready for law school or the legal profession.
Law schools certainly do deceive the public, but there comes a point at which people who go to law school should be expected to take responsibility for their decision. I have never blamed anyone for my bad outcome.
DeleteThe real solution lies in taking the decision out of the hands of toilet-level applicants by excluding them—denying them admission and denying them access to student loans. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen soon.
I don't think comparing a law school or any school to a manufactured product is a good comparison. In the case of the defective product it is the product itself that is the problem. With the case of a school is is not necessarily the school that is the problem, although it may be a factor, but the primary problem is with the user of the product, i.e. the student. In other words, if a law student at an upper tier law school were to attend an uber toilet then the uber toilet would probably deliver sufficient services to enable that student to pass a bar exam. The fact that the uber toilet has a negative brand image is non-justiciable. So the TV comparison is more as if someone buys a TV which is in perfect working order but cannot figure out how to operate it, even though 97% of purchasers are able to do so and then claim the product is defective.
DeleteSometime, the fault lies not in the stars but with ourselves.
Wow, you and I agree 100%. The unlimited, unfettered access to Student Loans is the real thing driving this problem. I actually got what I consider to be a good outcome from law school, but it still frustrates me that after holding several jobs, and doing well, I worked for 7Y as a prosecutor, for example, handled a fair number of Jury Trials, got promotions and praise--in the end, the only way to really make my degree pay off was to open a solo practice. While that worked out, it cost me a lot of start-up money, time, and aggravation, and there were moments in the first few months where I thought my practice would fail. It really frustrates me that someone can become a Nurse, an Accountant, an airplane pilot, all kinds of careers, and have little difficulty finding and keeping well paying jobs for 30-40 years or more, while many lawyers struggle so badly to find work at all. 4Y college, 3Y law school, 2-day Bar Exam, and I run into unemployed, and severely underemployed, lawyers all the time. Thank you for providing me with a forum to air my grievances with the 2024 US legal profession, and I apologize for run-on posts or rants. Oh, and have a happy new year!
DeleteGood point, 10:53. A manufactured product is what it is for everyone; law school depends very much on the student.
DeleteYou Ass News does a real disservice by promoting its "rankings", when really only 13 or so law schools are worth attending even in principle and thus are the only ones that can reasonably be ranked. The ranking of run and all suggests incorrectly that they all deserve to be ranked. Old Guy’s ranking sorts 13 schools into three categories; the rest have three categories to themselves, but the advice is clear: do not attend any of these.
Anyone who scores below the 50th percentile, which is about 151, on the LSAT should not be eligible for federally guaranteed student loans, in Old Guy’s respectful submission. Keeping such people out of law school would eliminate the complaints about being cheated by scamsters at über-toilets.
Old Guy, too, struggled through periods of unemployment, despite finishing at the top of the class of an élite law school. If anyone has cause for complaint, it is we, not über-toilet trash that never should have set foot in a law school or been allowed to do so.
DeleteLet that be a warning to any prospective law student who is past 29, has sub-élite familial socioeconomic status, or Intends to attend a non-élite law school.
You're welcome to post at OTLSS. All the best for a happy new year!
While there is no question that law schools published knowingly false information in the past, they've gotten better at being ambiguous, falling back on the old "you can do anything with a law degree" nonsense.
ReplyDeleteBut it's also worth noting that when it comes to lousy law schools and the people who apply/attend those schools, more often than not it's impossible to dissuade them from making the disastrous decision to attend. Once upon time I viewed myself as a sort of Avenging Angel, doing all I could to inform the gullible of the massive pitfalls awaiting them at their chosen TTTT; massive debt, extremely poor job prospects, three years wasted, etc etc.
And guess what: the advice wasn't appreciated. More often than not I was told that I was just "bitter" and they had things figured out. They were going to get top grades, make law review, get a federal clerkship(even if said law school rarely, if ever, sent grads to federal clerkships).
So now when contemporaries tell me that Junior wants to go to law school, I just nod and smile and say nothing other than "good luck".
My point: there's a hardcore group of people, of various motivations, who are hell bent on attending law school, any law school-look at all the people attending the un-accredited law schools in California(and then promptly flunking the bar). It's gotten to the point where telling someone not to attend law school has the same effect as cursing the darkness.
There was a time when there were numerous law school scam blogs; no more. This is it. And why is it important? Because it informs the general public of the massive waste of taxpayer dollars in funding these scam schools.
Don't forget the desperation that many uber toileteers are in. Many are in low paying dead end jobs or have oppressive bosses. They are looking for any way out of their situation and a TTTT affords the illusion of an opportunity. Some uber toileteers just dream about having a solo practice.
DeleteThat's why I say that the choice should not be presented to these toilet-level applicants: they should be rejected, or at least denied student loans.
DeleteI have given the example before of my proposing to become a professional football player or concert violinist. Everybody would discourage me, and rightly. Yet people who just aren't cut out for anything academic are still encouraged to go into law, a greatly oversupplied field with poor potential even for capable lawyers (never mind toileteers).
People who want to get out of dreadful jobs may need counseling about their options. They should not go carelessly into law when they are not fit for it.
DeleteSolo practice is not an easy thing to do. It certainly requires independence, not something commonly found among toileteers. It sounds more glamorous than it is.
It is pretty ridiculous. If you want to attend music school-or be a football player-you need to participate in a tryout, and do well enough to meet the basic standard.
DeleteMedical, dental, pharmacy schools require that each applicant have taken several challenging science classes. You can't attend without these classes.
Law school? The only requirement-and the law schools are furiously working to find a way to get around this-is that the applicant have a pulse.
One may have to try out just to join a local chorus or a football team in the community. Less is needed to get into law school!
DeleteOld Guy, you speak of people who aren't cut out for anything academic are still encouraged to go into law, the same thing can be said about college in the US. I graduated high school a year early, partly because I was enrolled in a local university and taking night classes there as a sophomore, I was 15 years old at the time, if memory serves. I was very focused on academics, and it showed in my performance in high school, college, SAT, LSAT, etc. I knew, with certainty, that I wanted to become an attorney, like my father, when I was 12 years old, and I worked and studied relentlessly to get into a very good law school. Summer school, night school, tutors, prep courses, and yet more. I was disgusted by my fellow students in high school and college, most of them were absolute slackers. It was not until I began classes at the best law school in the state that I was surrounded by very smart people who studied as hard as I did, or even, in many cases, who studied even harder. I honestly believe that most US college students have no business being on campus, at all. Many of them can't read very well, write, or do basic arithmetic. They don't have any interest in learning, but hey, Pledge Week is coming up, and their college football team has a big game this weekend, party on. . .
DeleteIn no other country, including Canada, are universities linked so closely, if at all, to sports teams. In the US, often the academic aspect is little more than window dressing for a veneer of respectability. It's an example of the shabbiness of so-called higher education in the US today.
DeleteI fully agree that most people at universities have no business being there. Even the élite law schools have plenty of people who can't write worth a tinker's damn.
How about law schools that advertise that they abide by the NALP employment outreach surveys protocols. That is just window dressing and a big lie. NALP says this about graduates that reported themselves unemployed or underemployed in the surveys:
ReplyDelete" It is highly recommended that while following up, CSOs offer assistance to and have ongoing communication with those who are either unemployed and seeking or underemployed. "
The truth is once the student has negatively impacted the law school's employment at the 10 months mark, that student will never be surveyed again so the law school will not expend resources and time for that graduate.
And if the former student calls for help, the law school will probably do practically nothing. After all, the law school has all of the money that will ever get from its hapless graduate; it will drop that graduate like a hot potato.
DeleteThere is no incentive to help the hapless graduate that already negatively impacted the law school's employment rate after the 10 months survey deadline is reached. That graduate is now forever untethered from the law school and the career services office will have to gear up to help the next batch of graduates obtain employment. And only the top 10% of the graduates will be assisted
DeleteOne thing to keep in mind; people like to say that folks who go to toilet law schools have bad outcomes; the more accurate thing to say is that people who go to law school, period, tend to have bad outcomes. I personally know a guy who graduated high in his class from Georgetown; he barely managed to scrape his way into a position as an Assistant Public Defender in one of the most violent cities in the country. He flat-out told me that for people who didn't get good grades "There's no hope for them". He earns less than most public-school teachers and is insulted and degraded every single day. UVA, allegedly a top-ten law school, is so dishonest that it used to provide bogus, temporary, low-paying school-funded "jobs" to 15 percent or more of each year's graduating class. That way they could boast of nearly 100% employment, because they were employing the grads who couldn't find jobs themselves! If a practicing lawyer tried something that dishonest and was caught, he or she would be summarily disbarred.
ReplyDeleteLaw school is the province of the rich. Most other people should stay away.
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