Butthurt LawProfs

As the facade continues to crumble on the Law School brand, I find it quite comical how various LawProfs have become increasingly bitter, snippy, and downright angry about people questioning the value of a law degree.

To a certain extent, it is understandable.  No group likes to have another group trash them wholesale for who they are.  Lawyers understand this more than most - who hasn't been (not-so-jokingly) reviled as a "shark", a "bottom-feeder", an "obstructionist", or a generalized "a-hole"?   I'm used to people acting that way towards me, once they find out I am a lawyer.  It's not pleasant, but I know that many people have had bad experiences with lawyers, whether deserved or undeserved.  I get that.  Sometimes I counter the argument by saying that lawyers have the unique (and sometime unpleasant) task of being an advocate for one side, and in any conflict is is natural to feel some vitriol towards the side that you perceive to be impeding your progress.  But that's the way it goes.  I don't feel the need to defend myself to the millions of people who think lawyers are "bad people" - it isn't worth the effort, there is a lot of grey between the extremes of black and white, and few minds will be changed in any event.

Not so with LawProfs.  I would have said this was due to the fact that they are concerned about their pocketbook, and to a certain extent I'm sure they are.  However, when you look at LawProf CVs (and trust me, reading one after the other makes for a natural substitute for caster oil, in case you ever need to purge), one thing is clear - these are not exactly rags-to-riches people.  They largely come from big-name schools.  Have big-name pedigrees.  Have done some big-name stuff.  Stuff that the vast majority never even come close to touching or having access to.

In essence, they largely come from money and influence.  How could it be otherwise?  Who can afford to do what they have done?  How else could they garner the plumb assignments they have had prior to becoming a professor?  Bootstrapping and sacrifice?  Don't make me laugh.

As such, this is not really about LawProfs losing their livelihood.  While that might sting a bit, they have other resources to fall back on by virtue of the segment of society they come from.

This is really about pride.  And pride goeth before a fall, as some ancient wisdom has said.

LawProfs did what they did because the like the position in society they occupy.  They enjoy being looked up to and respected.  They enjoy hearing themselves talk (clearly).  They want to be revered by their peers and colleagues, so they hob-nob at high-dollar colloquia and write love-letters (i.e. legal scholarship) to each other in order to garner influence.  They wanted to be admired by legions of law students who were eager to join the "majesty" of the profession they claim to occupy.  And let's be honest: the job was a sweet deal - in comparison, you have to lay a lot of bricks and hang a lot of drywall in order to make $200k a year, and the hours aren't nearly as good.

But, as the tarnish has spread and lives have been reduced to debt-serfdom, the LawProfs just aren't getting that ego-stroke they way they were accustomed to.  Deans and administrators are talking more and more about "little-people" stuff, like budgets and increased work loads.  People are demanding more accountability and work product that justifies their role, not just their pet project of the semester.  And that causes the LawProfs to have a sad.  Even from LawProfs who are in no danger of losing their jobs due to the size of the foundation that supports the school or parent university (i.e. status and preftige).

Why did this happen?  Is it solely because times are tough for "lazy", "bitter", "entitled" graduates, and students need a convenient scapegoat for their "failure"?  If only it were that simple - at least that would imply that things are actually better for everyone, student and LawProf alike.  Student frustration over having to "settle" for their second or third choices would actually be a welcome outcome, as opposed to current joblessness and crushing debt for thousands upon thousands.

No, I would argue that the ire towards LawProfs comes from the fact that for decades, they Just Didn't Care.  Period.  And why should they, when they were in no danger of facing the kind of circumstances their students faced?  I'm sure there is a LawProf or two out there who tried to help their students, put in a word for them where they could, so let good karma fall where it will.  But as a profession, they were too busy being complicit in the scam, looking the other way, pretending that thousands of lives weren't being destroyed while they wrote yet another "Law and _____" article or attended another circle-jerk symposium for $100-200k a year and a six-hour-a-week teaching load.

One thing is for certain.  As the situation continues to sour, and as fewer and fewer law students attend, watch the Pride sail into the stratosphere as LawProfs are increasingly required to do what most people do for their livelihood - work.  Inside the bubble, no less.  And instead of regarding their own contributions to the situation with sober judgment (with rare exception), these butthurt LawProfs are blame-shifting and looking in all the wrong places for respect and sympathy.  They did everything right...!  Didn't they...?

Nope, there's no Sympathy for the Devil here.  In short, welcome to how the other-half live.  Enjoy your stay.

Another Review of "One Millimeter Morning", Law Professor's (Secret) "Memoirs"

Selections of a Law Professor's (Secret) "Memoirs"

Recently, a post here "reviewed" (exposed) the "memoirs" (juvenile ramblings) of a "law professor" (non-practicing attorney) who "teaches" (pontificates in front of 22-year old student debtors, without so much as a lesson plan, a whole six hours a week).  I too wish to do this, because the sheer arrogance of it was begging to be held up to further ridicule in the form of parody. So I took another look at a "professor's" book.  This Professor of Flaw wrote something which he calls his "memoirs", though that is really a French word for what we might better call a "diary" (a child's journal of self-absorption). Let's not get hung up on the difference between an autobiography of someone not old enough to write one, or "memoirs" of someone who has not been accomplished or famous enough to write one, or a diary of someone who didn't actually keep a daily record of their life. I don't know what to call it; some guy wrote a bunch of stuff about his life, and thinks the world must know about it. I agree, though not for the same reason. Here are my favorite passages from the "memoir", "One Millimeter Morning", that I thought I would share with you. Remember, this guy is paid well to teach "future lawyers" who may "one day be on the highest court in the land":

Real numbers applied to the bait and switch of law school conditional "scholarships" **UPDATED**

One of the dirty not-so-secrets of the law school business model is the conditional scholarship game.  Every year, "desirable" applicants (relative to the law school they are applying to, for example, a student with a 160 is desirable enough for a lower-tier school to shell out serious bucks, while such a student would be looked at as a federal loan trophy at a different school) are given incentives to attend a certain law school.

Students with above median LSAT/GPA for the law school are often given conditional "scholarships" in return for their attendance (as opposed to "guaranteed" or scholarships requiring only good standing), that is to say that if they maintain a certain GPA or class rank percentage (which are essentially the same thing, depending on where the school sets their curve), they get to keep their scholarship. For example, as a naive 0L, two schools offered me scholarships: one said I had to retain a 3.0, one said that I had to be in the top-third of my class.  I thought it would be easier to maintain a 3.0, so that factored into my decision to attend that law school, even though only about a third of students at that law school are given 3.0's or above.

Capitalism to the Rescue?

"Student Loans Are Broken: This Company Just Raised $100 Million to Fix Them,"  by J. J. Colao (Forbes)

Money Quote: "'The federal government is pricing loans as a one-size-fits-all-solution,' explains [David] Klein, 33. 'They're not pricing loans appropriately for the most creditworthy.' This means that an MBA student at Harvard often pays the same rate as a student at a much less selective program, even though their earning potential and employment prospects differ dramatically."

The article discusses CommonBond, a student lending company that just raised $100M. It plans on offering student loans below what the federal government is charging by cherry-picking good students from great degree programs which presumably have a lower default rate. What do you think? Should the government get out of student lending and/or guaranteeing entirely? Would the market do a better job of not creating education bubbles? Will this just leave the bad risks on government's shoulders? Would this create social problems? Is this the future?

*****

Indiana Tech Law Prof. Adam Lamparello writes snotty poor-little-me memoir about his disillusionment with practicing law, hookers, cocaine, his church, his frat, his girlfriends, and his alleged eating disorder.

I hesitated before writing a post about Indiana Tech Law Professor Adam Lamparello's confessional memoir, Ten Mile Morning: My Journey Through Anorexia Nervosa. In the book, Lamparello describes the serious eating disorder he developed in his early 30s, a few years after his beautiful married lover, "Amy," told him that he needed to lose weight, a blow to his ego that he recalled in anger. ("Maybe she was acting out of concern. Maybe I was way too sensitive. It doesn’t matter. It was wrong. Let me take care of myself. I’m not going to criticize you for fucking around on your husband, so let’s leave our little weaknesses out of the conversation" [1]).

I like criticizing arrogant big-shots. I do not like criticizing people who are vulnerable, or who at least perceive themselves that way. I appreciate that Prof. Lamparello has struggled with low self-esteem, and it is refreshing that there are law professors out there who are not vying for mayor of Ego City. But I am afraid that overall I found his memoir to be an exercise in self-indulgence, as well as an admission to some remarkably disgraceful and callous behavior. He rationalizes this behavior with psychobabble about having failed to assert his "authentic self," as opposed to his inauthentic people-pleasing persona, and frequently references his low self-esteem. In fact, some passages make me wonder whether he truly does have low self-esteem--or whether, perhaps, he is an exhibitionist and a manipulator.

Consider the following passages, all describing his life during the period after he graduated from law school at Ohio State-- when he was either working in Big Law or, later, going to school at NYU for his LLM.

1. "Some of the best times were when I would start partying on a Friday afternoon and go all the way through Sunday — strip clubs, hookers, anything I wanted. See, the thing I liked about the hookers and the strip joints is that, especially with the hookers, I had some type of control over another person." [2]

2. [upon finding out that his married lover Amy was pregnant by her husband]: "Now, this hit me like a bolt of electricity from the electric chair. . . . If I thought my life was out of control and full of disappointment before, this was definitely superior to anything I’d ever experienced . My first feelings were anger, betrayal, and downright disgust. I wanted to scream, jump out of the car, and never see her again. How could this bitch do this to me? I mean, one day she’s on top of me and the next day he’s on top of her." [3]

3. "I never let anyone — especially Amy — know how I was feeling. I was very good at hiding my emotional turmoil and, by all outside appearances, appearing perfectly normal. I was a master of lies and deception. It was very easy for me to convince people that I was "ok" on the outside. However, I could not hide the truth. I could support and love her, but she lied. She betrayed me. She was disloyal. I hated her."  [4]

4. "Meaningless pleasures can no longer serve as the band-aid for the pain that we feel when nothingness pays a visit to our life and makes its permanent residence in our hearts. I remember that night. I was drinking a lot of beer, but I couldn’t get drunk. I was snorting a lot of coke, but it didn’t have the same effect and, whatever effect it did have, it made me feel more depressed than ever. And when my hooker came, it wasn’t a pleasurable experience. I felt very scared on that night. I hated my reality with a passion, and my coping mechanisms — the drugs, the alcohol, and the hookers — weren’t taking the pain away anymore. . . . I needed more of something. So I did something I had never done. I wrote a poem." [5]

5. "For me, being a lawyer was such a terrible experience that I was unable to fake it anymore. I got fired from my first job. I got a second job and got fired from that one, too. I went to a third law firm and, after a few months, simply walked away. It was over. I was just as disillusioned with the law as I was with Catholicism." [6]

6. "I also did something else — for myself and own well-being. Since my passion was to someday become a law professor, I decided to send my resume to every law school that was hiring and looking for candidates for the fall of 2007. Well, I got so many rejection letters that I felt academically raped (I say this in a half-joking way)." [7]

The Future is Energy Shots. Lots of Energy Shots.

Hello everyone! This is my first post in about two months. Sorry to abandon you. I'll try to get back to regular news updates again now that my kids are back in school. For the past month, I've been making sure my kids were prepared for their fall placement exams in math (which they aced.) My personal belief is that many young people are effectively funneled into law school because way, way back at some point the ball was dropped on math and their career options were cut off as a result. As insightfully stated by Adam B., making a difference with the law school is a long-term game. So, if you know any young people thinking about law as a career, gently point them to a scam blog and offer to help tutor them in math instead. :)

Here's some stories you might have missed:

Online LLMs and the ABA Law Deans' Listserv

Online LL.M.'s: A New Way to Rob Peter to Pay Paul?

Money Quote: "Purdom says that what was once a group of 14 or 15 “misfit schools” and “weirdos” looking to start or expand online LL.M. programs as part of the Working Group for Distance Learning two years ago, now has “200 schools on the listserv and coming to the various meetings in one capacity or another,” including “a lot of mainstream schools.”

The First Rule of Deans' Listserv...
Money Quote: "If law school deans want to have a secret forum to communicate with each other, they have to follow some ground rules, says the American Bar Association."

Fewer Law School Applicants Due To Lack of Jobs, High Tuition
Money Quote: “Today is probably a really good time to go to law school because the class sizes are so much smaller that you’re going to be competing with so many fewer graduates when you do graduate 3 or 4 years from now..."