Seton Hall Law Prof. Paula Franzese advises law students to "[e]mbrace a Forrest Gump-like view of the world and the people in it."

To Seton Hall Law Professor Paula Franzese, of BarBri and "Loving the Law Day" fame, goes the distinction of being the first law professor to write a book recommending that law students and lawyers imitate fictional movie character Forrest Gump. See Franzese, Paula (2014-03-20). A Short and Happy Guide to Being a Law Student (Short and Happy Series) (pp. 78-79). West Academic Publishing. Kindle Edition. ("Embrace a Forrest Gump-like view of the world and the people in it. Do not overcomplicate things. Be guileless and refuse to dwell on the negative. Stay positive as you focus on the good. When the cynics say, "Well, that’s just stupid," smile and reply, "Stupid is as stupid does"").

Forrest Gump, for those who have not seen the hit movie, is a fictional mentally-deficient platitude-spouting innocent, a person who would be an unwitting menace to self and everybody around him but for a lifelong streak of improbable good fortune somehow generated by his simple and trusting good nature.

In Franzese's view, the Gumpish lemmings who fill today's non-elite law schools are similarly destined to be "instruments for greatness." They need only be reminded, via strategically-placed notes bearing words of inspiration, of the existence of their protective lucky star. See Short & Happy at pp. 84 ("Surround yourself with messages of hope to remind you of the mightiness of your mission and the multi-dimensional magnitude of your abilities. There is a star you are under, and you are precisely where you are meant to be. Keep words of inspiration in places where you can see them regularly").

Franzese's book purports to have structure. It is divided into 8 sections, which are in turn divided into 63 chapters (each bearing a smiley-face-with-clock-hands illustration, identical to the one on the cover), which in turn are sectioned into multiple half-page to two-page-long subchapters, each of which provides some tidbit of advice or inspiration. In fact, the identical smileys are a truer guide to the book’s organization and content than the section or chapter titles. The entire book consists of bromides and banalities and anecdotes drawn from motivational literature and Franzese's own life of pampered ease, which are presented over and over and over again, in only slightly reworded form. 

For instance, Part 1 is entitled "You are Going to Be a Lawyer. Be Excited and Feel Proud." Chapter 1 is entitled "Dreams Brought You here. You are Now Making Them Come True." The subchapter headings of Chapter 1 include the following: "The world is yours."; "Your degree will equip you to use the rule of law to advance the cause of progress."; "You will teach others that kindness comes from strength."; "The most significant lawyers and law students value the gentler virtues. They know that wisdom and compassion are indivisible."; "You will teach others that kindness comes from strength."; "As a lawyer, you are uniquely trained to ordain positive outcomes and alter the course of history for the better."; "The law is a noble profession."; "A good lawyer defies the push of the crowds and takes a stand for decency." and "You will lead with both your mind and your heart."

Somewhat similarly, Chapter 3 is entitled "The Majesty of the Law and Your Place in It: Ten Reasons to Be Really Happy About Becoming a Lawyer." The subchapter headings present the ten reasons. Among them are "REASON ONE: Law school will teach you a method of analysis and hone your powers of discernment so that you can and will become a ninja for the good."; "REASON TWO: The law is a magnificent career path. It will allow you to do well and, most essentially, to find meaning in the work you do."; "REASON SEVEN: You will help the clients and constituencies that you serve be governed by what inspires them, rather than what makes them small."; "REASON NINE: You will resolve to love the law and to treat it as if you love it. You will promise yourself that you will persist in loving it, no matter the disappointments and occasional disenchantments."; and "REASON TEN: You will change your life by speaking only good things about it and others."

Isn’t this stuff already beginning to sound tedious, repetitious, and even dehumanizing-- reminiscent  perhaps of a vain and untrustworthy boss who expects enthusiastic appreciation plus sky-high morale from his staff of exploited drones? Well settle in, reader (or shall I say, "ninja for the good"), because as noted the book goes on like this for 63 chapters, the only consolation being that the chapters seem to get shorter in length as the book progresses. To me, the movie analogy suggested by Franzese's book is not "Forrest Gump," but rather, "The Blob." Reading this book is like being engulfed and smothered by a relentlessly expanding mass of sweetly-scented toxicity. 

The most insidious thing about this book is not the recycling of cheery platitudes and cutesy phrases. Rather, it is Franzese's repeated injunctions to be "be grateful," "be thankful" and "be glad" and to "refuse to heed the cynical and the jaded," even if you have to "fake it until you make it" because "gratitude is the way to joy." 

All this gratitude and thankfulness, along with the pre-making fakery, has a deeply practical purpose in Franzese-world, where rhetoric and attitude alchemize into material success. Consider the following quotes:

*  "Your experiences in law school, at work, in love and in life will match your level of rhetoric about your experiences in law school, in love and in life.  The world rises (or falls) to meet your level of expectation. Every day, state emphatically that you love the law, law school, your job and the people in your life. Fake it until you make it.  Sure enough and soon enough, reasons to be right about your declaration will start showing up." Id. at pp. 161

* "[E]ven if you have to fake it for now, you should begin to enthusiastically declare your passion and admiration for everything about the legal education that you are (or are about to) receive and the job that you have (or will have). . . In school and at work, relentlessly say thank you to everyone who is a part of your path." Id. at pp. 79

*  "You are learning to harness the power of your mind to think about and talk about everything that is good, honorable and right with the world and your place in it. As a lawyer, you will have the stature to teach others to do the same. Your life will move in the direction of your predominant thoughts." Id. at pp. 18

*  "The faultfinders seem so prevalent because they are so noisy.  Move away from that cacophony of grievance and lead the team of cheerleaders for the good." Id. at pp. 149

Franzese is too gracious to spell out the implications of her positive thinking philosophy, but I think they are clear enough. Consider all the young persons whose lives have been severely damaged, if not ruined, by law school debt and legal market saturation. Their failure is not the fault of the aforesaid structural problems in legal education. Their failure cannot even be attributed to their own recklessness in enrolling in the first place. No, their failure must be due to their unwillingness to think happy and thankful thoughts.

Franzese’s eloquence has the profound moral force of a sated glutton kindly advising a starving person to celebrate, in word and thought, the glutton’s self-satisfied joy at her recently-devoured feast. For the starving person’s own good, mind you, because through a "persistent attitude of great gratitude," his or her life will inevitably move in the direction of a delicious meal. 

Chapter 61 of A Short and Happy Guide to Being a Law Student is entitled "The Pony" and is a recitation of the old story or joke about the kid who plays delightedly in a room filled with a horse manure in the belief that with all that manure around there must be a pony in the vicinity. (Does Franzese think this chestnut is unfamiliar to anybody?) I first heard this joke when I was about six years old, and even then had a sarcastic laugh at the delusional logic of the shit-covered optimist. But Franzese admires the child's "great sincerity and strength of purpose" and wants you too to believe that the ponies of joy are sure to arrive, perhaps with the very next turn of the law school scammy-go-round. See Id. at pp. 270 ("Do you see the analogy to your present circumstances? Amidst the volumes that you must shovel and store and sanitize, there are ponies. I promise you that. There will be joys and privileges in your life’s chosen work that will astound and delight you").  

The number of law school applicants has risen slightly this year, following five consecutive years of steep decline. So there may be a base level number of persons per year willing to disregard all caution and gamble six figures of nondischargeable borrowed money on the value of a JD degree. In other words, to spend a small fortune to buy a pile of manure because the manure peddler has provided earnestly-expressed but non-legally-enforceable assurances that there will be ponies too. To those contemplating law school attendance this fall, I can only quote the wisdom of Forrest Gump and Prof. Paula Franzese: "Stupid is as stupid does."  

Does Seton Hall Law Prof. Michael Simkovic believe that scamblog literature is a cunning ruse by highly-paid lawyers to reduce competition and increase wages in their field?

If Seton Hall Law Professor Michael Simkovic’s purportedly objective research is to be believed, law school is a tremendous investment, with minimal downside risk. [1], [2] True, many journalists and critics are in the grip of a non-econometric-based delusion that enormous educational debts and horrendous ten-month-after-graduation job placement outcomes indicate some sort of problem. But do not be surprised, in the long-run, to find these same financially insecure recent law grads flinging gobs of excess cash off their spare luxury yachts.

According to Simkovic’s research, a JD degree holder's mean lifetime earning premium is approximately one million dollars, and his or her mean annual earning premium is $57,200. [3] Even at the bottom quartile of outcomes, the fourth-tier of law grads as it were, "the value of a law degree exceeds typical net-tuition costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars." [4] These premiums do not turn on whether or not the law degree holder practices law. [5]  Not only that, but the value of a JD degree is virtually recession-proof. [6] In light of Simkovic's findings, "versatile" seems too weak a descriptor for a Juris Doctor degree. A JD is positively magical.

So, you know, if someone ever gives you the choice between a couple of hundred thousand dollars in cash and non-tuition-discounted enrollment at a lower-tier law school, by all means choose the latter. The laughter and looks of disbelief that follow will actually be meant as expressions of admiration for your econometrically-informed wisdom. 

Now, it is a fact that Simkovic has a cushy gig as a lawprof at a non-elite law school, a position that can only be maintained by a constant infusion of students willing to borrow enormous sums of money to pursue a JD degree. It is also the case that Simkovic’s ongoing research has been funded via six-figure grants from two affluent law-school controlled nonprofit organizations-- the Access Group (a former student loan originator that has funded over $18 billion worth of educational loans, and that now funds research and symposia into, inter alia, the "value of legal education") and the Law School Admissions Council (which administers the LSAT, but also exists to "provide services" for the law school community, and which is the source of grants to organizations that tout law school to high school children as the best way to achieve idealistic goals, such as saving the dolphins).

However, Simkovic has contended that his findings are not influenced by his economic self-interest, and I accept that this is so– at least on a conscious level. But does Simkovic courteously extend to critics the same presumption of non-bias that he generously grants to himself? Well, no, he does not. In fact, Simkovic accuses scambloggers of having a devious economic motivation in warning young people about the risks of law school. In a footnote included in one of his law review articles, Simkovic states:

"The "scamblog" literature, in which ostensibly disgruntled lawyers. . . advise others not to follow in their career footsteps, may reflect efforts by the shrewdest and most highly paid skilled workers to reduce competition and increase wages in their own fields." [7]

Let’s think for a moment about this comment. Simkovic seems to be asserting that scamblog literature is some kind of ruse de guerre. We lawyers and law grads who have posted and commented at dissident blogs such as Inside the Law School Scam, Outside the Law School Scam, Third Tier Reality, and Law School Truth Center are so Machiavellian that we have merely created an elaborate pretense that the legal job market is swamped, that wages are stagnant, that our enormously expensive legal education was a bitter farce, and that our profession is frequently highly stressful and disillusioning. The warnings of the scambloggers, then, are a kind of reverse Potemkin Village, a shrewd attempt to persuade others not to horn in our million dollar JD bonanzas.

But would lawyers really devote many uncompensated hours to publicizing a nonexistent scam in order to "reduce competition and increase wages in [our] own field"? The problem with this novel conspiracy theory is that a kid's decision to attend law school, or even the decision of a whole bunch of kids to attend law school, will have only the most attenuated and indirect impact on the competition and wages of established lawyers. Certainly, any hypothetical several-years-down-the-road competition from prospective One-Ls is remote.

On the flip side, however, there are a group of people with an immediate and overwhelming vested interest in scam denial-- that is to say, in promoting law school enrollment and minimizing the risks. These people are called law professors, law deans, and law school administrators, including the million dollar scholar himself, Michael Simkovic. Their enormous salaries, light workloads, and perks galore all rest on the increasingly shaky platform of a kid's decision to go into debt to obtain a JD. 

Again, no accusations of deceit here, or even conscious bias. But bias created by self-interest can be unconscious, even automatic. In Mark Twain's folksy rendering, "You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is." (For "'pinions," feel free to substitute: "econometrics"). That is why the few honorable critics from within the system get so much well-deserved attention and respect--they are making statements against their own interest, which the law has long recognized as particularly credible.

Therefore, perhaps Simkovic's footnote should read instead:

"The law school promotional literature, in which ostensibly neutral law professors advise others to enroll in law school, may reflect efforts by the shrewdest and most highly paid academics to keep their gravy train rolling."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
notes:

[1] See Simkovic, Michael and McIntyre, Frank, The Economic Value of a Law Degree (April 13, 2013). HLS Program on the Legal Profession Research Paper No. 2013-6. Available at SSRN:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2250585
(last revised November 26, 2014), p. 16-17

Please note: The ssrn web address above is to a non-final version of Simkovic & McIntryre’s paper, as are my citations to this article, unless otherwise noted. The final version of The Economic Value of a Law Degree was published in the Journal of Legal Studies, and is not available online unless you are willing to shell out $14 at the JSTOR site. See Michael Simkovic & Frank McIntyre, The Economic Value of a Law Degree, 43 J. Legal Stud. 249 (2014). However, Simkovic describes the revisions that appear in the final version in this blog post at TaxProf blog:

"Simkovic & McIntyre: The Economic Value of a Law Degree: $1 Million" (November 1, 2014)

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/11/simkovic-mcintyre.html

[2] See TaxProf Blog, "McIntyre & Simkovic: Lifetime Value of Law Degree Drops Only $30k For Those Who Graduate Into a Poor Economy" (March 10, 2015) (quoting Simkovic's description of the "key takeaways" of his new research paper "Timing Law School"):

"The best time to go to law school is the earliest point possible after which you make the decision that you’d eventually like to go. By waiting, you’re spending more of your limited working life working for lower wages, and you aren’t changing your chances of graduating into a more favorable economy."

[3] See Simkovic & McIntyre, The Economic Value of a Law Degree (April 13, 2013), p. 41 ("Rounding to the nearest $10,000, we find that the mean value of a law degree is $990,000. . . These figures are in present value as of the start of law school, and are pre-tax and pre-tuition. In other words, these figures reflect the maximum that a combination of the government and the student should be willing to pay in direct costs, such as tuition, for a law degree").

See also TaxProf Blog, "Simkovic & McIntyre: The Economic Value of a Law Degree: $1 Million" (November 1, 2014) (quoting Simkovic describing final revisions to his paper): ("These changes increase the annual earnings premium a little bit. It's about $57,000 per year on average, now, as opposed to around $53,000 before.")

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/11/simkovic-mcintyre.html

[4]  See Simkovic & McIntyre, The Economic Value of a Law Degree (April 13, 2013), p. 41 ("These results suggest that even at the 25th percentile, the value of a law degree exceeds typical net-tuition costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars").

[5] See Simkovic & McIntyre, The Economic Value of a Law Degree (April 13, 2013), p. 8 ("The economic value of a law degree turns not on whether law graduates practice law, but rather on how much more readily they find work with the law degree than they would have without, and how much more they earn with the law degree than they would have without").

[6] See TaxProf Blog, "McIntyre & Simkovic: Lifetime Value of Law Degree Drops Only $30k For Those Who Graduate Into a Poor Economy" (March 10, 2015) (quoting Simkovic's description of the "key takeaways" of his new research paper entitled "Timing Law School"): ("The luck of timing (graduating into a good or bad economy) matters for the first few years, but in the long run, doesn’t make much of a difference").

[7] Michael Simkovic, Risk-Based Student Loans, 70 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 527, 602 n.186 (2013). Available here:
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4313&context=wlulr

Apparently Not an April Fool's Joke

Reported by ZeroHedge, from a WSJ article apparently behind the pay wall:

In an opinion filed Thursday, Judge Carla Craig of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., said bar-exam loan debt is “a product of an arm’s-length agreement on commercial terms” and doesn’t fall into the category of student loans that stick with a borrower who files for bankruptcy.

The decision, which is the most thorough recent ruling on the matter, contradicts the widely accepted notion that student loan-related debt can be canceled in bankruptcy only under rare cases of extreme financial hardship.

In her 20-page ruling, Judge Craig said bar-study loans were akin to commercial or consumer loans and weren’t an “educational benefit,” like a scholarship or stipend, and thus could be erased in a bankruptcy case.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear a case that could have made it easier to get rid of student loan debt. The White House, however, said last year that it would examine whether it should be easier for student loans to be canceled by bankruptcy, opening the door for student debt made by private lenders to be treated on par with credit-card debt and mortgages.

“We’re starting to chip away at the absolute immunity of student loans from bankruptcy,” said Austin Smith, Ms. Campbell’s lawyer.

A Citibank lawyer declined to comment on the ruling or to say whether the bank plans to appeal.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/what-consequences-judge-rules-student-loans-broke-lawyers-can-be-cancelled

An interesting development for interesting times, to say the least.  While I am a general fan of ZeroHedge and use their data and arguments at times, they are also well-known for their caveat-emptor view of the world. Read the comments at your own risk, although there is some interesting side discussion about wage pressure on STEM fields and H-1B Visas and other items if you work your way through.

More importantly, this is an initial shift away from "everything is a school educational purpose so it's non-dischargeable so pay your debts deadbeat slacker people born after 1970" rhetoric that we tend to see.  The TJSL's of the world may be able to escape allegations of fraud, but even they can't escape market forces, and this is just one small additional piece of evidence to that fact.

While ZeroHedge doesn't have much time for individual plights, they do attack the systemic issues head-on, especially where a Canadian educator "comes clean":

I teach mostly bored youth who find themselves doing something they neither value nor desire—and, in some cases, are simply not equipped for—in order to achieve an outcome they are repeatedly warned is essential to their survival. What a dreadful trap...[b]ut don’t worry—you won’t go bust because of this failure, not in the modern university. So long as your class is popular and fun, you’ll be favoured by the administration and probably receive a teaching award. This, even though your students will leave your class in worse condition than they entered it, because you will have pandered to their basest inclinations while leaving their real intellectual and moral needs unmet.

There is no clearer example of administrators’ contempt for faculty. But there is also no clearer example of their contempt for students.

"A system that piles debt on students in exchange for a marginal or even zero-return on their investment is morally and financially bankrupt," concludes ZeroHedge.  Well said, given the skyrocketing inflation in tuition, of which law schools are major offenders.  We of the scamblog camp have often warned about cynicism on the part of law school ScamDeans and LawProfs, and their view of students as so much student-loan-conduit cattle.  Sadly, the attitude has become infectious.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-31/higher-education-morally-financially-bankrupt


As discussed previously, some law schools are beginning to face facts, albeit slowly.  Let's see where it all goes. 

Is "Thinking Like a Lawyer" Worth It?

One of the main benefits of law school is learning how to "think like a lawyer". The benefit of learning this magical thinking is ostensibly worth the $120,000-$180,000 spent by law grads over three years. Professors claim that their hide the ball, hazing methods instill this important skill in the heads of all 1L's. But what does "thinking like a lawyer really entail? And more importantly: is learning "how to think like a lawyer" worth the money?

It is worth explaining exactly what "thinking like a lawyer" means. An article by our friends at Above the Law does a good job of introducing the concept. The ATL article points to an article by Lisa Mazzie at Marquette that gives the following examples of "thinking like a lawyer":

• Make “distinctions that do not make a difference to most people”
• See “ambiguity where others see things as crystal clear”
• Look at “issues from all sides” without stating your own position
• Artfully manipulate facts to “persuasively argue any point”
• Are “far more adept at analysis than decision”

As I've alluded to in the past, I now work in a non-law job that I am very happy doing. Part of my job is ensuring regulatory compliance of the products we create. I have the misfortune of dealing with clients' in-house and outside counsel from time to time. Let me break down what I see from lawyers, dealing with them as an outside observer. Many attorneys bring up points that are de minimis or outright wrongheaded. They look for exotic or uncommon ways to interpret regulations whose plain meaning is apparent to everyone else. This is usually done in service of risk minimization. The problem is that any business employing people who have even a modicum of common sense take potential lawsuits into account and evaluate the risks before acting. My company already has a process to consider and quantify potential risks and then choose a course of action based on deep analysis. The lawyers then jump in at the 11^th hour to gum up the works with inane nonsense. In one of the most galling examples, we have a client whose in-house counsel is so "careful" that he has caused them to miss an important regulatory deadline three years running.

One of the glaring drawbacks to "thinking like a lawyer" is that most lawyers have no sense of how their opinions affect the business at hand. In another case, we had a client whose lawyer must have gone to a CLE. She then sent a note to our client team and asked us to add language in their product disclosures addressing an issue that literally no one else in the last twenty years has thought fit to address. When asked by the client team why the lawyer felt the disclosure should be added, she said that if an extremely unlikely and remote chain of events occurred, she wanted to be sure that client would be protected. I guess a lawyer is supposed to think of all the possible risks. But, the great lawyers have the ability to consider all of the factors in a situation; the average lawyer thinks of each matter as being in a vacuum and does not have any qualms in giving directly contradictory advice about the next matter presented. Temperance and awareness are not taught in law schools. Additionally, there is no incentive to think practically and effectively when coming up with unlikely scenarios adds an extra $500 per hour to the clients' bill for the month.

"Thinking like a lawyer" is a concept that has some utility to the stereotypical law student. The stereotypical law student is a liberal arts graduate who goes to law school because she doesn't know what else to do. A person who makes the decision to go to law school without having a clear and articulable goal of what he wants to accomplish is going to benefit from learning some critical thinking skills. However, law schools, like most of what they do, only give law students partial training. Law students are taught to question everything and look at an issue from all sides (these points are debatable). But, law schools do not teach students to apply these skills practically. When students get out into the job market, the billable hour system encourages attorneys to continue thinking inefficiently and impractically. New lawyers do eventually need to develop the ability to apply practicality to fact patterns. But just like with learning how to actually practice law, law schools leave these tasks to employers. 

Learning how to "think like a lawyer" is not worth it. The current price of law school is a high price to pay to learn how to think critically. Undergraduates without any idea of what the next step in their lives will be are better served by entering the job market and maturing a bit. The law schools' value proposition is falling apart when even the slightest scrutiny is applied. We have seen that law schools are trying to integrate "practice readiness" into curriculums; these are half measures that do not address the base issue. Law school is a trade school with an elite veneer draped over it. Schools need to get over their intellectual pretensions and confront reality. But we all know that professors and administrators will hang on to the status quo until it's too late. All we need to do is get some popcorn ready and watch the spectacle unfold.

Note: edited for grammar and clarity 

Alaburda v. TJLS and the Grand Pyrrhic Victory

Today, jurors in San Diego decided by a 9-3 vote that Thomas Jefferson Law School did not commit fraudulent misrepresentations in its graduate employment statistics to Anna Alaburda several years ago.  While many, I am sure, will take such a verdict, particularly in the context of other dismissals, as a resounding victory for law schools, the following passage seems instructive about why this particular verdict went the way it did:

Juror Wade DeMond, who works on regulatory affairs in the pharmaceutical industry, said he questioned how Thomas Jefferson collected employment data after Alaburda's time but that it made a good-faith effort in her case.

"The jury instructions, the questions we were asked, were very specific and they were time-bound: Did Thomas Jefferson falsely represent employment data for the U.S. News & World Report editions that she reviewed? So that means the whole thing gets narrowed down to the 2004 and the 2005 editions," he told reporters.

The narrowness of this case aside, the verdict should not come as a surprise to anyone who's observed the legal news over the last few years.  Contrary to for-profit shitholes, the public at large has built-in defense mechanisms to protect non-profit higher education, to assault lawyers but not the institutions ruined by them, and to cast the harshest possible light on the personal responsibilities of abstract others who suffer only in news articles.  The lawsuits hit many observers like ipecac, causing them to vomit forth all sorts of inanity that ignored the basics of consumer fraud and demanded that prospective students know the impossible and assume that a law school would defraud them with duplicitous stats.  Courts, mostly of the state variety, had similar nausea. As a result, a whole generation of Americans lawyers was simultaneously highly sophisticated and inherently, unreasonably stupid.

But at the end of the day, consider where we were prior to the litigation compared to now.  The New York Times' marquee article on the so-called "scam" didn't hit until 2011.   LawProf's first post didn't hit until August of that year.  While there was a solid trend of "scamblogging" prior to that, the denial on the institutional side was significantly stronger.  In five years, applications and bar exam scores have plummeted and the institutional position has changed radically.  While the courts have been hostile to claims of shenanigans, the market doesn't lie.  That many of the students who applied in droves in 2010 would not be caught dead applying to law school in 2016 is a sign of progress - and not for the law schools.  Awareness about the true state of the job market has spread, and I would it to you that the lawsuits have been an instrumental part of that process.

While the law schools, like many large institutional actors, figured out how to comply with the letter of the law without regard to the spirit, they are unable to counter the truth.  And from a combination of books, blogs and websites, and - yes - these lawsuits, the truth is now more well-known than ever.  These institutions can claim that the Frank McIntyres of the world are experts and that law degrees are worth a gazillion dollars, but the buyers - sophisticated consumers, right? - seemingly aren't taking the bait like they used to.

So law schools generally might win the courtroom war, but their whole defense is a gigantic Pyrrhic victory.  They have lost so much over the last several years that these legal victories have to ring hollow as the market obviously agrees with the spiritual substance of the lawsuits, even if the suits themselves don't yield the Anna Alaburdas of the world a dime.  Law schools can win lawsuits, but they cannot change their recent graduates' dissatisfaction with the "value" received.

Of course, there still are true believers.

"This is not, you know, Trump University," [TJLS lawyer Michael] Sullivan said. "It is so not that. It is such a really excellent law school."

Emphasis added.  Ten years ago, people honestly believed such a statement and took their 150 LSATs to pay tens of thousands in tuition in the hopes of making six figures.  Does anyone outside of TJLS, its paid lackeys, and truly delusion 0Ls honestly think so now? 

For the bottom half of the class, often the only differences between Trump U. and TJLS is that the TJLS student has no sympathy, three wasted years, and six figures of debt.  Considering that the public at large is understanding that in ways they once did not, the law schools have clearly lost.

Bar Pass Standards and the Wiggle Room Problem

The ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has proposed changing the bar passage standard used to evaluate law schools for accreditation purposes.

Under the proposal (PDF), a law school would have to show that at least 75 percent of its graduates who took a bar exam within two years of their graduation passed.

The proposal, if adopted, would eliminate altogether the first-time bar passage test contained in the current standard (PDF), which a law school can meet by showing that its first-time bar passage rate is no more than 15 points below the average first-time bar passage rate for ABA-approved schools in states where its graduates took the exam.

On one hand, this removes something of a loophole - if enough law students in a state sucked, all of the crappy law schools that produced the suckage would still be easily in compliance because they were all clustered within 15 points of the average that they collectively jacked up.  It became a true feat to one of the few schools to land in hot water for having low bar passage rates.

While the new standard is somewhat admirable in that they're holding law schools to an absolute standard rather than one that allows them all to sink simultaneously without penalty, the standard still fails completely to  help students and ensure that American law schools are actually viable, worthwhile institutions.

First, the measure is phrased not on a per-test basis, but on a per-student basis.  In other words, a student who fails three bar exams in a row and passes on the fourth try counts as one plus and no negatives at the end of a two-year period.  The rationale for this is explained in the proposal:

While first-time pass rate is important for consumers and is (and should continue to be) disclosed under Standard 509, the Committee believes that, for the purposes of accreditation, an ultimate pass rate is the more appropriate measure of whether a school is operating a sound program of legal education [so if they have to take a year and a half to teach themselves everything, the school is doing well?  -ed], and it is not subject to the idiosyncrasies [? - ed] that can be found with a reliance on the pass rate of first-time takers. 
...
It should be understood that the proposal makes no attempt to place a limit on the number of times that an individual may sit for a bar exam. 

In other words, the ABA may soon not care if a law school's entire graduating class fails the bar on the first try for accreditation purposes.

You're basically going to see schools like the Infilaw units put students on one of two tracks:  1) those who they think can pass a bar, which will mean pushing them to take the bar four times after which the student becomes persona non grata; and 2) students who they're going to pay to hold on taking a bar exam for at least two years.

Because that's the other problem with the standard:  it's expressly limited to students who "choose" to take a bar exam.  Just as evaluating a school only by its graduates who volunteer to submit employment information is a terrible way to evaluate the job market, only counting those who choose to take a bar exam is a poor metric of how the school at large is functioning.  It rests on the exploitable assumption that most law students will take a bar exam, that there is an unknowable minority who went to law school with no intention of being lawyers who will not take a bar exam, and that law schools will act in good faith to not disturb the balance.

The problem is that, behaviorally, we know law schools do act to manipulate post-graduation statistics to their advantage.  And yet, when these standards get drafted, inevitably the law schools are allowed to whittle the edges based on "unfair" arguments and mythological ideas about law school to preserve avenues for manipulation.  All regulatory efforts like this is accomplish to allow creative types to find new ways to lie.

Thinking about it further, why do we use the bar exam at all?  The problem, it seems, is that there's no truly standardized test in law school.  It's an odd realization given the strong emphasis on the LSAT as a uniform pre-law comparison metric, the standardization of 1L curriculum and ubiquity of GPA in determining job fortunes, and the ever-standardization of the bar exam.

I'm normally not an advocate for adding standardized tests to an educational system, but given the realities of legal education, it would seem ideal to have some sort of standardized test taken during the 3L year.  Require every would-be graduate to take it, give them some carrot to ensure effort, and require that the school achieve above a certain result in the aggregate.  In the alternative, give some sort of uniform test after year one to ensure that "contracts" at Cooley is the same as "contracts" at Columbia.  In the former, students would gain a pre-bar evaluation of their study needs; in the latter, BigLaw employers would have a cross-school metric to use when reviewing candidates.

Of course, there's a strong institutional resistance to any such moves, not only because legal educators are intentionally stodgy and reluctant to believe in any alternative that might disrupt the status quo, but also because at least 175 presently accredited schools benefit handsomely by institutionalized wiggle room.

After all, regulatory capture is all about finding a way to comply with the letter of regulations before they even exist, spirit of the regulations be damned.  While on the surface, this new regulation has some positive changes, it unfortunately builds in evasion tactics to ensure that all but the most piddling law schools are going to be in compliance for a long time to come, regardless of what warm bodies are still enrolling with those succulent tuition checks.

The Burden of Student Loans Comes Full-Circle

One item that is oft-repeated on the scamblogs is the burden of student loan debt, and how it can be  life-altering.  With all the emphasis on million-dollar degrees and sophisticated consumers, many within and without the establishment place the blame on the student marks themselves, rather than asking why tuition costs have grown so high, or why graduates struggle to find meaningful opportunities to service that debt.

 

That would require sober introspection and analysis, however, something that few who benefit directly from the receipt of student loan dollars are willing to engage in.  A new data point, however, is the increasing costs that non-lawyers are also dealing with:

When Samuel Smith graduated with a master's in engineering from Cornell, he thought the $190,000 in debt he incurred would pay off. But it took him a while to land job at a software firm in Austin, Texas. And now, after paying $1,750 a month in loan payments, rent and food, he says he doesn't have much left over.

He doesn't own a TV and says "it'd be nice to go out for drinks once in a while."

 

http://www.npr.org/2016/03/01/468272843/strategies-for-when-youre-starting-out-saddled-with-student-debt

 

Wait, someone who graduated with an oh-so-vaunted STEM degree is struggling to pay their student loan debt?  Wasn't it just a few years ago that detractors were saying, "well, you liberal artist law students deserve what you got, because you didn't get a REAL DEGREE!!!"  As readers of the blog know, as an ex-STEMer myself, I certainly heard all about how great tech was decades ago, though the dollars were not materializing for me fully, either, at the time. 

 

Samuel Smith appears to be paying his debt down aggressively, though, so maybe if he went on the thirty-year repayment plan and ate a ton of interest, he would have more money to drink with, I hear some say.  Well, how about another engineer:

 

Greg Deckard and his wife are trying to do all that. They live in Mobile, Ala. And he recently went back to school to get a software engineering degree. But now they owe $126,000 in student loans on top of a mortgage and day care for two kids.

 

"If I go with a 20- to 25-year plan, then I'm in my 60s when I finish paying. I'm 42 and I have very little saved for retirement," he says, let alone for his kids' college education.

 

Hello, fellow non-trad Gen-X student!  You're coming in loud and clear with the family obligations, mortgage obligations, and student loan debt.  I hear some say "well, you should have just been working harder this whole time.  You were greedy for going back to school to try to improve yourself, so what did you expect?  Start boot-strapping!"  But I fully appreciate the quandary that you and many like you find yourself in.

 

Not to leave out our fellow liberal artists, however:

 

[IBR-type programs] would benefit Rosette Cirillo, an inner-city teacher in Chelsea, Mass., who is the first in her family to go to college. She jokes about the $120,000 in college and grad school debt: "Oh, it's my tax on trying to become part of the middle class."

 

Every joke indeed has a kernel of truth within it.

 

In sum, did you notice the numbers?  While the article states the average debt has "only" grown to $35,000.00, the issue is that more and more students are graduating with six-figure debt, even in the "sure-fire winner" category.  It appears lawyers are not alone anymore, and we in the scam movement have always said that law school is the canary in the coal mine.

 

Not to be outdone, Northwestern University has hit upon a novel concept:

 

Starting next fall, freshmen who ordinarily would have to take out loans will instead receive a combination of grants and scholarships, along with earnings from work-study and summer jobs, to cover their expenses. Current undergraduate students who already have $20,000 or more in loans will have that debt capped starting next fall, and receive a scholarship instead of having to borrow more, according to spokesman Alan Cubbage...

 

"We know that the fear of loans chases people away," Northwestern President Morton Schapiro said in an interview about the new policy. "It might attract some students who might otherwise not go here, but I think it's more about treating the students who come here better. We have a very successful capital campaign, we have a large endowment. We have the resources. The question is do we have the will — and we do."

 

Charge.  Students.  Less. 

Brilliant!  That thing that "couldn't be done!"  If only the law school cartel had "the will" previously to "treat students better."  Then perhaps there would have been no need for Law School Transparency or the scamblogs, or thousands upon thousands of debt-riddled lawyers.  I wonder how the Pritzker School of Law is taking the development... 

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-northwestern-university-loans-financial-aid-20160303-story.html

 

In any event, friends, while the rest of the academic world is apparently waking up to the consequences of high tuition, know exactly how and why you are going to school, be it law school or any other endeavor.  Do your research.  Ask hard questions.  Don't be a lemming.