Graduate kept from becoming a lawyer because of enormous student loans

Readers of this site know well that debt for law school ruins many lives. But how many of us know that student loans can keep a person from becoming a lawyer at all?

Fifty-nine-year-old Cynthia Marie Rodgers got a JD from toilet law school Capital last May but was kept out of the bar for reasons of character and fitness. A panel of the Supreme Court of Ohio reached this conclusion for two reasons. The more colorful reason, which is also the first one cited, is her history of commencing dozens of lawsuits, many of them apparently frivolous if not vexatious, without knowing what she was doing. She committed the most rudimentary procedural errors and appears to have been pretty consistently unsuccessful. She seemed not to regret what the court found to be abuses of the legal system.

But the court invoked another reason: "Outstanding Debts" (pages 7–9). Allow me to quote the court (pages 8–9):

The applicant and her husband have amassed almost $900,000 in student loan debt. Although the applicant expressed that she does not have any idea how much she has borrowed, it appears that her share of this amount is about $340,000. The applicant testified that she and her husband consolidated their loans and that they are on a "percentage of income" plan, "so we'll just always pay a percentage of our income for the rest of our lives." The applicant explained the percentage of income plan as a 25 year plan, and after 25 years any remaining amount is forgiven, although it may become taxable income.

The applicant did not know what the percentage of her income was that she would be required to pay under the percentage of income plan, but "right now it's zero because of my income being so low. Once your income hits $20,000 then payments start kicking in." The applicant stated that her husband is not paying any money on the loan now either because he is "semi-retired" and "filing for disability." The applicant had no idea how much she borrowed to attend law school, or the total amount of her student loan debt. She stated that she is disabled … and is not able to work a forty-hour week. The applicant stated that "if they are willing to have me on that payment plan, then if I win the lottery then they get it. Once I became disabled * * * I knew there was no way for twenty years that I would ever be able to pay all that back." The applicant indicated that if she becomes a lawyer she intends to work part-time for legal aid.

Further (page 11):

She has openly neglected financial responsibilities, and knowingly incurred a substantial amount of student loan debt that she admits will probably never be repaid.…

The conduct described above represents an ongoing lack of integrity, abuse of process and neglect of financial responsibility.

Ms. Rodgers is eligible to try again in 2024, when she will be 64 years old. Evidently the public will be stung for about a million dollars for the sake of university education that Ms. Rodgers and her husband seem unlikely ever to use. Insouciant even of the amount of her debt or of the monthly payments, and reportedly marked with bad credit for unpaid debts that ended up being written off, she was nonetheless allowed to rack up more than a third of a million dollars in student loans.

At least the court has declined to admit to the legal profession someone so unconcerned about laws, obligations, and the interests of others. And it has labeled the accumulation of unpayable debt, including student loans, as "neglect of financial responsibility" sufficient to keep one out of the bar. How many more people with mountains of student loans will find themselves excluded from the legal profession for similar reasons?

Blaxploitation: Tuskegee University hosts law-school fair

Tuskegee University, a historically Black university located in rural Alabama, is hosting its third law-school fair later this month. Ninety law schools, nearly half of those accredited by the ABA, will send representatives to meet prospective students.

The list features mostly toilets and über-toilets. Not a single school in Tier 0, 1, or 2 will be present: no Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Columbia, NYU, or Stanford. The only representatives of Tier 3 will be Michigan, Northwestern, and Penn; even Duke and Virginia, the only two law schools in the entire South that are worth attending, will not be there. Various trap schools and crap schools from Tier 4 plan to attend. The rest of the group will be from Tiers 5 and 6, both near (Faulkner, Samford, Elon) and far (Texas Southern, the two John Marshalls, UMass Dartmouth). Oddly enough, Cooley is not on the list, despite incessantly trumpeting its racial diversity.

Since only three of the ninety schools are worth attending even in principle (and it must be said that one of them, Northwestern, is sliding towards Tier 4), this fair does a disservice to its largely Black target audience. It frames the other 87 schools as respectable establishments that hold out promise to Black people, when in fact they are very poor choices for anyone without money, connections, or both—which includes the bulk of the Black people to whom Tuskegee is marketing the law-school scam.

Disingenously, "Dr. Tammy Laughlin, assistant professor of political science, noted that the annual fair has become an integral part of efforts to support Tuskegee students’ admission to a wide variety of state, regional and Ivy League law schools"—when the only Ivy League institution attending this event is Penn, not exactly what comes to mind when people think of the Ivy League. (Since the Ivy League is an athletic conference of undergraduate institutions, "Ivy League law schools" is not a meaningful category anyway.) This fair drives Tuskegee students into life-destroying indebtedness for the sake of a decidedly inferior law degree that will serve them poorly when they look for work.

Booker T. Washington, the first president of what was to become Tuskegee University, is widely remembered as an Uncle Tom for his role in the contemptible Atlanta Compromise. Against the advice of many other Black leaders of his day, he advocated that Black people submit to Jim Crow—"the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly"—and gradually convince their white "friends" of their worth through the excellence of their industrial and agricultural labor. However well meant, this law-school fair continues Washington's shabby legacy of subjugating Black people to white interests—in this case, those of the mostly white law-school scamsters who would fatten themselves by saddling Black people with impossible debt and false hopes of advancement through the overcrowded and declining legal profession.

"Punitive Standards"

I had to read this two or three times to make sure I was getting this correct:

In what is being described as a “stunning” decision, a bankruptcy judge has ruled that a 2004 graduate of Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School may erase more than $220,000 in student loan debt.

The law grad, 46-year-old Kevin Jared Rosenberg, represented himself. His annual income is less than $38,000, and his monthly income after expenses runs at a deficit of about $1,500, according to the Jan. 7 opinion by Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Cecelia Morris of the Southern District of New York.

I was going to go into a long quip-filled tirade about how "I felt a great disturbance in the Scam, as if millions of bootstrapping-Boomers cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced," but considering the Chief Judge is a Boomer herself, maybe I'll just keep quiet on that part and move on...

Wow, do I feel for Rosenberg, and I wish him well.  Looking at his statistics - 2004 graduate, 46 years old - I'm seeing some real kinship there in similar numbers.  Another nontrad who was lured by the pipe dreams of the law school cartel.  Another nontrad for whom the the law school dream fell squarely flat, to say nothing of the K-JD variety.

Morris said she was applying the so-called Brunner test for discharge of student debt as it was originally intended. Since the test was created in a 1987 decision, cases interpreting it have set out “punitive standards” and “retributive dicta,” she said. Those harsh cases “have become a quasi-standard of mythic proportions, so much so that most people (bankruptcy professionals, as well as lay individuals) believe it impossible to discharge student loans,” she said.

“This court will not participate in perpetuating these myths.”

Amazing.  It's almost as if the ridiculous and completely unsustainable costs of undergrad and graduate school are finally applying enough pressure to the system that rational people can see the gross disparity between the treatment of student debt and literally all other kinds of debt.  When people can't buy homes, pay their bills, buy things, or start families, all for having the temerity of wanting to improve themselves and their standing, it's a real drag on the economy, man.  Why it took 40+ years to recognize this out is beyond me, but that gush of sweet, sweet federal loan money was probably too distracting for self-interested parties.    

Granted, there will be loan sharks and other holier-than-thou haters that will go into apoplexy over this development.  The case is on appeal, so no doubt the full force of these parties will be brought to bear against this decision standing.  Last thing anyone deserves is an actual jubilee, especially one of those lawyer-types.  You know they all drive solid-gold Bentleys and have seven vacation homes anyway.  Speaking of which, I need to sue somebody, get one of those lawyers on the phone...

Here's hoping this not only opens the door to reasonableness for many, many victims of the scam, but also is a small beginning in the entire financial rethinking of how education is handled in this country.  Wouldn't that be horrible.      

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law-grad-wins-discharge-of-his-student-debt-in-opinion-criticizing-punitive-standards?utm_source=salesforce_157309&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly_email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=salesforce_157309&sc_sid=04723111&utm_campaign=&promo=&utm_content=&additional4=&additional5=&sfmc_j=157309&sfmc_s=81419318&sfmc_l=1527&sfmc_jb=353&sfmc_mid=100027443&sfmc_u=5415587

The fake-lawyer scam

You could gain admission to Stanford, pay a fortune, graduate with a degree in law, pass the bar exam, pay for a license, and try to find a job.

Or you could just lie.

Robert Sinclair Argyle of West Bountiful, Utah, reportedly favored the latter approach. He managed to get a job at a law firm on the strength of false claims to hold a JD from Stanford and a license to practice in both Utah and California. He was caught and fired soon enough, but right away he landed a job paying a cool $175k plus benefits. There he "worked for a short time and was terminated when a background investigation revealed the defendant lacked verifiable legal education and law experience". Now he and his wife face multiple criminal charges related to these and other incidents.

But suppose that instead you went to now-defunct Valpo, and even graduated, but kept failing the bar exam. Should that be an obstacle to your legal career?

Why, not if you are Kelcie Miller. She lied her way into a job as a lawyer at the public defender's office in Madison County, Illinois; she even produced a forged document to substantiate her bogus license. Only when a court reporter checked the spelling of her name, and a judge tried to look it up in the directory, was she exposed. On Friday she pleaded guilty to a single count of false impersonation of an attorney. Sentence: 30 months' probation, plus restitution of $40,232 (apparently for salary fraudulently obtained). She happens to have a few more charges related to passing bad checks. In the meantime, the real lawyers of the public defender's office have had to review the cases on which Miller had illegally acted.

Miller was lucky to get off so lightly. I'm surprised that she didn't spend time in jail for that.

Suppose, however, that you had never gone beyond community college but really wanted to be a lawyer. You could, of course, go for a bachelor's degree and then a law degree, pay for both, pass the bar exam, and try to find work.

But Kimberly Kitchen had a better plan: lying through her ass. She held herself out as having graduated at the top of the class from Duquesne's law school and then having taught law at Columbia. She passed a number of forged documents to lend color to her false claim to being a lawyer. She practiced law for ten years, even becoming partner of a firm and head of the county's bar association, before being caught. She was convicted of various charges and sentenced to jail.

Kitchen's lawyer called her "incredibly competent" and presented a number of clients who testified to their satisfaction with her services. Plainly Kitchen was not competent, incredibly or otherwise, to practice law. The satisfaction of the clients has nothing to do with that. Indeed, it is astounding that a (presumably) licensed lawyer could call a fraud like her competent, thereby degrading the whole legal profession.

Well, Ms. Incredibly Competent appealed against the sentence on the grounds that she had been "a good fake lawyer" and that no fraud occurred, since no one suffered any damage. How her counsel could seriously present that argument is beyond me. Can anyone suppose that her clients and the firm, never mind the legal profession and even Duquesne, lost nothing? The losses go well beyond the obvious ones, such as fees paid. At one firm where I worked, when I found out that a lawyer who had left almost a year earlier had mishandled two matters in the same way, I called for every one of his files and reviewed them all myself. That took a great deal of time (and, yes, I found other errors of the same sort that I had to correct). What if I had found out that a non-lawyer had had carriage of matters for years? Someone would have had to examine all of those matters. And what if serious errors had come to light? The firm would have been fully liable for any losses. As the court pointed out here, the insurer would not have covered them.

About twenty years ago, there was a spate of exposés of "degrees" from diploma mills. Loads of people in exalted positions turned out to have bought a "degree" in this way. On top of that, many people—including the dean of admissions at MIT, who had the unmitigated gall to lecture the public on the importance of honesty and integrity—turned out to have fabricated degrees outright. Yet scamsters are still getting away with this sort of fraud. As long as the sham of credentialism lasts, Old Guy can only recommend verifying credentials aggressively.

In the news: a possible Navajo law school; $111 million of alleged contributions from law schools

A NAVAJO LAW SCHOOL?

Diné College, of the Navajo Nation, is considering the establishment of a law school. "In a press release, the tribal college stated that discussion about developing such a program occurred during a symposium on Dec. 12 and Dec. 13, where participants talked about accreditation, core courses and specializations, judicial advocates, traditional Navajo law and names for the law school."

One critical question seems to have been left out of that symposium: money. How much would it cost to set up a law school at Diné College? Where would the money be found? How much would the students pay? Would the school generate sufficient revenue? Exciting though the planning of curricula and the selection of a name may be, these practical questions must be answered first.

I'll surprise everyone by saying that this is one case in which a new law school is justified in principle. The Navajo Nation legitimately needs the educational and other institutions that will support genuine sovereignty. And no existing law school can properly teach Navajo law, despite the pretensions of narcissistic law professors who think that they know everything. Nonetheless, it is not enough to say "We should have a law school", as college president Charles "Monty" Roessel did in a press release. Many localities from southernmost Texas to northern New England, from remote Appalachia to rural Idaho, are saying the same thing. Unless the proposed law school would be viable, it should not be established.


"LAW SCHOOLS GIVE BACK TO THE TUNE OF $111 MILLION"

A ridiculous advertisement masquerading as journalism asserts that despite law schools' "bad rap", "it would be hard to argue that they are not assets to their communities". Why? Because the Association of American Law Schools (Ass'oALS), whose name says it all, claims that "the total value of the students’ time" spent on "the delivery of legal services through clinics, other experiential courses and pro bono activities of graduating law students" during their last year at some 105 law schools "is estimated to be in excess of $111.5 million". On the basis of that allegation, the "article" concludes that "[l]aw schools give back" to their communities.

There are several problems with this piece of nonsense. An obvious one is the questionable claim that the students' time is given by the law schools. There might be some justification for that at those schools, most of them über-toilets, that require their students to perform unpaid work and even charge them hefty tuition for the privilege. Even so, the credit that Ass'oALS gives to law schools (surprise!) appears to be misplaced.

The valuation of the allegedly donated time is, quite frankly, idiotic. Our own Dybbuk demolished last year's similar claim that the "legal services" in question were worth $81.8 million. Three years ago, I similarly put paid to a ridiculous claim from tiny über-toilet U Mass Dartmouth that its students' so-called pro bono work since 2010 was worth $4.5 million.

Über-toilet update, Part II: Status of some of the worst law schools in 2019

The annual 509 reports that the ABA requires of law schools that have received its rubber stamp of approval are now in. Our friends at Law School Transparency have already summarized the new data. Here are a few highlights:

Golden Gate has seen its first-year enrollment collapse in a single year from 237 to 127, while the LSAT scores remain at exactly the same dismal levels. What exactly is going on at Golden Gate? Is the über-toilet collapsing?

Cooley has seen a similarly sharp decline, from 541 to 292. But Cooley kicked its LSAT scores up a hair. It is still the worst ABA-accredited law school when measured by LSAT scores. Cooley did recently announce the closure of one campus, but that announcement came after the start of the semester and thus should not have affected enrollment. So why did enrollment fall? In part because of Cooley's wholly inadequate efforts to raise its LSAT scores. But something else must be going on. In any case, enrollment is now so low as to threaten the sustainability of the über-toilet-in-chief. As I have estimated before, 75 new students per year is about the lowest level of enrollment that an ABA-accredited law school can sustain. Cooley's 292 new students were spread over five campuses. That's not even 60 per campus on average. Small wonder that Cooley is closing another campus. Perhaps the whole goddamn chain will vanish in the coming years, thereby making the world a better place.

Also declining in enrollment was Vermont Law School, from 194 to 151. At the same time, Vermont's LSAT scores slipped a couple of points to a level that leaves Vermont among the ten worst schools by LSAT score at the 25th percentile. That's a steep fall for a school that only ten years ago was almost halfway respectable. Vermont Law School is in deep financial trouble, and challenging Cooley for the bottom rank is no way to save the institution.

But the most dramatic decline of all occurred at Western State University, from 162 to 23. Hell, even Indiana Tech had more than 23 students in its inaugural class. What sort of law school can be run with so few students? It can hardly offer very many electives. Then again, similarly placed Indiana Tech offered "Hip-Hop and the American Constitution", plus four specialties (among them "Global Leadership"). But we know what happened to Indiana Tech, and it isn't hard to see where Western State University is going.

Appalachian, one of the best candidates for imminent closure, saw enrollment rise from 50 to 61—still too low for sustainability, especially in light of Appalachian's financial distress. LSAT scores went up slightly, and tuition went up 12%. More than 30% of last year's graduates were unemployed ten months out. Expect the Grim Reaper to harvest an über-toilet in Grundy, Virginia, within the next two years.

Florida Coastal is now all that is left of the InfiLaw scam-chain. Enrollment went up by almost half, from 60 to 87. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has kept track of this über-toilet, LSAT scores fell considerably, from 147/150/153 to 146/147/151. I expect Florida Coastal to announce its closure in a year or two, thereby bringing InfiLaw to a well-deserved death.

If you have read the previous article, you know that La Verne and Thomas Jefferson are both switching to California state accreditation—the former by choice, the latter not. But we may as well give these two über-toilets one last glance. Unemployment in last year's graduating class was 39.6% at La Verne and 50.7% at Thomas Jefferson.

New England School of Law | Boston nearly doubled, from 181 students to 351. It also raised its LSAT scores by a couple of points. Results on the bar exams, however, remain execrable, and more than a quarter of the last graduating class was unemployed ten months out.

A disturbing trend of 2019 is the widespread adoption of the GRE as an alternative to the LSAT for the purpose of admission. Old Guy disapproves. The LSAT is better suited to law school. More importantly, however, a single test affords a good and consistent standard for comparison. I recommend that the ABA put the kibosh on this GRE business by requiring the LSAT at all law schools.

Hasenpfeffer Incorporated, meet slave-raping president: Thomas Jefferson and La Verne go down on the same day

November 21, 2019, was an eventful day in the law-school scam, especially in southern California. Thomas Jefferson Law Skule lost its appeal against the ABA's decision to revoke its accreditation. That's the end of the line for Thomas Jefferson.

Old Guy must admit that Thomas Jefferson may not actually die. Earlier this year it obtained state accreditation from California, apparently in hope of living on in some much-reduced form after the ABA finally gave its jive ass the boot. But law skules not accredited by the ABA are ineligible for the student-loan scam, and Thomas Jefferson can hardly thrive as a state-accredited unter-über-toilet.

On the same day, the University of La Verne College of Law became the first law skule to abandon ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation. Reportedly the board was concerned about "sustainability" in light of the ABA's adoption last year of so-called standards related to the bar exam. Lenny and Squiggy could not be reached for comment.

In the past three years or so, eleven ABA-accredited law schools have gone tits up (if we count two campuses of the Cooley franchise as law schools):

Cooley (one campus)
Mitchell (merged with Hamline—call it a dignified death)
Indiana Tech
Whittier
Charlotte
Savannah
Valpo
Arizona Summit
Cooley (another campus)
Thomas Jefferson
La Verne

This occasion calls for one of Old Guy's commemorative songs:

We're gonna dump 'em…

Give us bar exams, we'll fake 'em;
Read ABA's rules, we'll break 'em.
We're gonna dump our toilet schools
(Dumping 'em our way).
Nothing's gonna save our ass, now,
Though the state gives us a pass, now,
We're gonna dump our toilet schools
(Dumping 'em our way).
There is no scam we won't try;
Never heard the word integrity.
This time we're dead in our tracks
(Dumping 'em our way).
Since we can't go on probation,
We'll take state accreditation
For our two overpriced cesspools.
And we'll dump 'em our way,
Yes, our way:
Dumping our toilet schools.
And we'll dump 'em our way,
Yes, our way:
Dumping our toilet schools
For goddamn fools.