Transparency, the Bane of All Existence

 

 

Turning back to Florida Coastal and its ongoing legal troubles:

 

Florida Coastal School of Law has asked a federal judge to halt new disclosures the American Bar Association has required the troubled school to make to its students, arguing the requirements will undermine its efforts to improve.

 

What odious requirements, pray tell, would FCSL plead to be delivered from?  Why is "improvement" hinged on the actions of others? 

 

Florida Coastal has requested that the following actions be postponed for 30 days following a ruling on its motion for a preliminary injunction.

• Disclose to all admitted students that the school has been found out of compliance with the accreditation standards and it required to take remedial action. The two-page public notice must also be posted to Florida Coastal’s website.
• Inform each student of the school’s first-time bar pass rates in Florida and Georgia—broken down by class quartiles—as well as which quartile the student falls into based on their most recent grades.
• Appoint a fact finder to visit and examine, among other things, admissions policies, attrition rates, bar exam results, student loan default rates and the school’s finances.

Sometimes, the truth hurts.  What is the rationale to let form supersede substance for another blessed thirty days?

 

Specifically, the school asserts that the public notice of noncompliance will scare off potential students.

 

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!  Nothing like getting down to brass tacks.  Nowhere to be found are outdated notions of "pursuing liberty" and "defending justice," no sir.  For God's sake, don't cut off that taxpayer money stream from students for whom we have successfully pulled wool over their collective eyes.  We worked hard for that, you know.  Always Be Closing.

 

However, I do have to give some credence to this particular argument from FCSL:

 

By contrast, the ABA days earlier found Western Michigan University Cooley Law School to be back in compliance after boosting its admissions requirements just three months prior, which Florida Coastal called “blatantly inconsistent.” (Cooley has also sued the ABA for what it alleges are unfair accreditation policies.)

 

“The ABA has not given a reasonable explanation, or any explanation, for the disparity in the treatment of the two law schools,” according to Florida Coastal’s motion.

 

Right you are.  Unfortunately, the ABA has been asleep at the wheel for some time now given decades of regulatory capture.  Now that they have been shamed into doing something, enforcement is proceeding in a haphazard, herky-jerky manner, allowing easy criticism and rebuttal by these oh-so-noble institutions of higher learning.  Consistent, steady application of rules would have been preferable and might have lead to less damage overall, as the data would have spoken for itself, but hey, better late than never, or something.  Sadly, the current take-home message vis-à-vis Cooley is "just put up a throwaway legal defense, make the ABA spend some of their declining budget, and you will get a concession."  Lovely.

 

Oh well.  In any event, grab some popcorn and some schadenfreude and enjoy the show, as all of this was long overdue.   

ABA revokes Arizona Summit's accreditation

Has the ABA finally gotten off its aristocratic ass and taken action against a law school? It has decided to withdraw accreditation from Arizona Summit for "continuing non-compliance with Standards 301(a), 309(b), and 501(b) and Interpretations 501-1 and 501-2".

Über-toilet Arizona Summit may appeal from this decision as late as July 9, 2018. Arizona Summit retains its accreditation only long enough to have any appeal considered.

Arizona Summit is one of private firm InfiLaw's chain of über-toilets. Another one, Charlotte School of Law, closed down last August, without even the courtesy of notice to its students and others. Now that Arizona Summit is going tits up, only Florida Coastal remains—and it too faces challenges from the ABA, plummeting enrollment, imminent departure from its building, and major financial problems. After ripping off thousands of students per year for so long, the scamsters of InfiLaw may have to find another racket.

The ABA requires a law school that loses accreditation to prepare a "teach-out plan" so that current students can complete their degrees. Arizona Summit intends to bring an appeal but is also preparing the required teach-out plan even though the appeal suspends its obligation to do so. Perhaps the scamsters of Arizona Summit are simply getting a head start on something that they consider inevitable. I have doubts, though, about the acceptability of any plan that they prepare. As far as I know, not a single law school has produced and implemented a teach-out plan: Indiana Tech, Whittier, and Charlotte have simply shut their doors, and Savannah seems to suggest nothing other than transferring to its sister campus hours away in Atlanta (for anyone stupid enough to double down on an institution that has screwed its students over).

If you're at a sixth-tier toilet law school, get out while the going is good. Even those in the fifth tier or the fourth tier should reconsider not only their choice of law school but also their plans to enter the scam-ridden profession of law.

Some Debt is Good, More Debt is Even Better

STEP ONE: We find an expensive degree, a surefire flop. STEP TWO: I raise a million bucks. Lots of naïve millennials out there. STEP THREE: You go back to work on the books, two of them - one for the government, one for us. You can do it, Bloom; you're a wizard!...

 

 

What should be done about escalating law school tuition costs, or higher education costs in general?  Well, students should just keep paying, ad nauseam:

 

In this symposium essay, I argue that for IDR [Income-Driven Repayment] to meet its goal of providing affordable higher education to everyone, the federal government needs to raise the individual borrowing limits on Direct Loans and issue substantially more debt than it does today. This perhaps counterintuitive proposal — help students by increasing debt — follows from the observation that an IDR student loan is conceptually not at all like traditional debt and is more akin to a tax instrument.

If a borrower promises only to pay a percentage of income, the nominal amount of the debt is not as crucial. [emphasis added]. Furthermore, if a student cannot cover net tuition with federal student loans, the student may be forced to use private loans or to work excessively, which can lead to worse outcomes.

Oh, it's counterintuitive, all right. Let's see, we charge a high price tag for a service to start out with and get paid up-front. Through a complicated series of negotiated agreements, different people will pay different amounts for the same service. On top of it, they will pay those negotiated amounts over time for decades, because the negotiated price is still a fat sum of money for 90% of John and Jane Q. Public. But it won't be so bad, because the alternatives are worse, you see. And by no means can costs be reduced, as that would deny access to others. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.


Boy, this sounds familiar - but since it has worked so well for the health-care industry, I'm sure it will work just as much or more for the education industry. What's a few extra billion among (taxpayer) friends, when the current system has produced $1.5 Trillion worth of debt over the decades and keeps growing? Well, it's not "as crucial," apparently, because at the national level it is all monopoly money anyway, or something.

Unemployed Northeastern's comment sums it up well, a portion of which is reproduced here:

Except that those forgiven balances is treated as realized income. Whoops. Let's not forget about that in our discussion of affordability. The WSJ actually had an article this very weekend on a mid-30s dentist who is holding more than a million in federal student loans (private dental schools can sticker at nearly $150k with living expenses, and the interest builds quickly while in residency and such). He's on IBR (duh), even with a $225k/year income. Per the paper’s calculations, by the time loan forgiveness comes around, his balance will be a bit north of $2 million and his realized income hit in the ballpark of $700,000. So when he is in his mid 50s, with house payments and kids' college bills, he's going to owe the IRS nearly 3/4 of a million dollars. But yeah, sure, "income-based payments mean no one has to care how much they borrow" is a serious argument we should take seriously.


Incidentally Georgetown Law stickers at $85,500 in total annual cost of attendance and 44% of students pay sticker (per their 2017 Form 509). Toss in tuition increases, interest, and bar expenses, and we're easily talking $280k or more by the time one passes the bar exam, exclusive of undergrad debt. Playing around with a PAYE repayment calculator, even if we presume such a Georgetown Law grad makes $150k/year on average for his or her career, with such a debtload on PAYE they would make $254k in payments over 20 years and have a forgiven balance of $361,390. Combined with that $150k income of theirs, that $361,390 in realized income will give them an additional tax bill of about $125,000, or MORE THAN IT WOULD HAVE COST TO PAY STICKER FOR A LAW DEGREE FROM GEORGETOWN TEN YEARS AGO. (2007-2008 tuition was $39,390). So that "not crucial" nominal debt can and will actually cost current GULC students the equivalent of a second, slightly used law degree from GULC.

 But again, let's not ask hard questions. Those open-road narratives can't come cheap, you know. Now, get back to paying your monthly higher-education tax in exchange for your bar license...

ABA Membership in Decline - "No One Saw It Coming" Edition

The ungrateful wretches refuse to join us!  Exterminate!  Exterminate!

 

 

For some reason, the ABA is experiencing a decline in membership and that is hurting operational funds:

 

Forty years ago, 50 percent of the lawyers in the United States were members of the ABA. The ABA currently has a 22 percent market share.

 

Speaking at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, [ABA Executive Director] Rives said the ABA’s membership currently stands at 412,499 members, 70 percent of whom are lawyers. Another 26 percent are students and 4 percent including paralegals and international lawyers—are associates.

 

What is the near-term solution?

 

In the current version of the new membership model, there is a focus on bundling benefits and significantly simplifying ABA dues categories. Rives noted there are currently 157 dues categories at the ABA, depending on the types of work members do, their length of service and other considerations.

 

The model would reduce the dues categories down to three. Bundled benefits would include two sections, access to a CLE library and access to content that will be organized behind a member-only paywall.

 

Rives said the changes, which will require an investment in products and resources, are necessary in order for the ABA to remain a robust professional association and maintain its status as the voice of the legal profession.

 

Sounds good, simplification could indeed lead to cost-savings.  But this addresses the "how," not the "why."  The question remains - why do new lawyers not join the ABA? 

 

 

Wait, OTLSS has a couple of ideas.  Could it be due to:

 

*  The "ethics" opinion that opened the door to overseas Legal Process Outsourcing?

 

*  The Failure to effectively accredit and regulate law schools?

 

*  Sucker-punching the small-firm and/or solo practitioner?

 

*  Protecting LawPrawf tenure?

 

*  Making it easier for less-capable students to enter the Law School Gristmill?

 

*  Failure to audit and gaming of employment results?

 

More below the fold:

JD Advantage, Part IX : Bulls**t Jobs Edition

Remember when how late last year, that new era of JD Advantage Jobs had finally arrived?  You know, the time the flood-gates had finally opened and thousands upon thousands of JD grads were snapped up by private industry, once and for all silencing all critics of the Law School Cartel?  It was all over the newspapers.

 

Wait, no one has seen that or experienced this?  Oh.  Maybe because the story never happened:

 

For ’17, there were 2,227 fewer graduates than in 2016, a decline of 6.1 percent. Three employment statuses accounted for nearly 90 percent of the difference between the two classes: Employed JD Advantage (51.2%) (!), Unemployed – Seeking (23.7%), and Employed – Professional Position (13.4%). This pretty much tells you what you need to know about this year’s employment report.

 

This year’s employment report showcased many of the similar trends from last year: Good outcomes substituting for worse ones. It differs in that JD advantage jobs took a big hit while bar-passage-required jobs grew slightly. What’s interesting here is that overall, law-firm jobs fell nonetheless. Somewhere in the employment type outcomes are compositional changes where grads found law jobs and not JD advantage jobs.

 

Yep.  "Employed - JD Advantage" was down 22.1%, "Employed - Professional Position" was down 21.5%, and "Employed - Non-Professional Opinion" was down 7.8%.  A lot of people apparently didn't get the Cartel memo, or just because a bunch of people get together and say "x is the case" doesn't necessarily mean that it is so.  Unfortunately, it appears actual law jobs took a small hit, also, for what it is worth.

 

So, what is going on, especially as regards JD-Advantage jobs that apparently everyone says that so many people want to hire...?  I'm increasingly a fan of the current theory advocated by Anthropology Professor David Graber:

 

Are you a telemarketer? Compliance officer? Middle manager? Corporate lawyer? Do you feel like you contribute nothing concrete or meaningful, day in and day out, as you toil away at a job you believe is essentially pointless?

 

Then you’re in a ‘bulls**t job,’ according to one professor – who’s just written a new book about the millions of people whose jobs could ‘vanish in a puff of smoke’ with no real consequences for the world...

Rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the "service" sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources and public relations,’ he writes in a 2013 essay which laid the foundation for the book.

The story of one miserable corporate lawyer came from one of Graeber’s own former schoolmates. He got in touch with a friend he hadn’t seen since the age of 12, and was ‘amazed to discover that in the interim, he had become first a poet, then the front man in an indie rock band,’ he wrote.

 

‘I’d heard some of his songs on the radio having no idea the singer was someone I actually knew. He was obviously brilliant, innovative, and his work had unquestionably brightened and improved the lives of people all over the world.  Yet, after a couple of unsuccessful albums, he’d lost his contract, and plagued with debts and a newborn daughter, ended up, as he put it, “taking the default choice of so many directionless folk: law school.”

 

‘Now he’s a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist.’

Whoops.  Compliance officer?  Middle Manager?  Banking?  All solidly "JD-Advantage".  And all solidly what the market is increasingly not looking for.  And some would say their job is pointless and soon to be automated, anyway.

 

But ignore all that.  The Law School Cartel has analyzed the situation and says that JD-Advantage jobs, let alone JD-required jobs sought after by "directionless folk," are in demand and on the rise.  Because the Cartel has your best interests at heart.

 

 

University of Minnesota heavily subsidizes law school

Often we at Outside the Law School Scam discuss the über-toilets, those laughable schools that make the generality look good. And the generality is poor indeed: a clear majority of law schools—107, to be exact—draw at least a quarter of their entering students from the bottom half on the LSAT.

But not all is well even in such pseudo-exalted circles as the upper fourth tier. The University of Minnesota has been subsidizing its law school to the tune of $39.9M for the past five years. That's $8M per year. And it's already planning to kick in $12M two years from now. That's almost $22k for each student in the law school.

The U of Minnesota's law school has heavily reduced its faculty and staff, yet it goes on sponging off the university "to the point where it's too painful for other elements of the university to continue to bear", according to regent David McMillan.

Financial considerations are forcing a discussion of the classic toilet strategy of increasing enrollment by lowering standards. "We need to go out and earn these ['more marginal'] students to balance our budget", insists regent Darrin Rosha. Others, however, fear "a drop in the school's ranking, further reducing applications".

Of course, "the school's ranking" refers to the one published for profit by defunct magazine US News and World Report. Falling a notch or two according to the silly criteria of You Ass News is universally viewed as a calamity. By Old Guy's superior ranking, however, the U of Minnesota is unlikely to move in the coming years: it will remain a fourth-tier institution even if it becomes considerably more or less selective. And its fourth-tier status makes it a poor choice for all but the wealthy and the well-connected.

But note the usual scamsters' infatuation with prestige: "ranking" relative to other law schools trumps other considerations. Marginal students, we are told, should be kept out not because they are marginal, not for their own sake, but because they would harm "the reputation of the school", suggests provost Karen Hanson. Apparently the school's narrow interests, and by extension those of its faculty, push everything else out of the frame.

Why exactly should the university, using money from other students and the public, go on lavishly subsidizing a law school that puts its overpaid faculty and administrators first? Shut the school down and apply the savings to some public purpose.

Cooley: Non-Profit or Inflilaw Contender?

Continuing on the heels of the prior discussion on Cooley:

 

Cooley may be, by some measurements, the worst law school in America. And its standing has not been enhanced by a flood of publicity about the quality of the legal work of its best known and, increasingly, most notorious alum: Michael D. Cohen, class of 1991, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and the target of a federal criminal investigation in New York that has clearly rattled Trump."

 

The school accepts almost anyone who can pay the $51,000 annual tuition bill—more than 85 percent of its applicants were admitted last year. Fewer than half of its graduates manage to pass a bar exam on their first try; among all law school graduates in the country, about 75 percent pass on their first attempt. The 46-year-old school has had to go to court over the past year to fight for its accreditation from the American Bar Association, which found that the school was out of compliance on basic admission standards for a time. Last year, the National Advisory Council for Law School Transparency gave Cooley a ranking no school wants: It was No. 1 on the group’s list of “the 10 least selective law schools in the country.

 

Well, nothing says "inspiring" like being one of the least selective law schools in the country.  While scamblogs have a long history of mocking Cooley and it's exploits, it's interesting to see a third-party come in hard and strong against this fine institution of higher learning.

 

Oh yeah, what about that bit about Cooley and non-compliant admission standards?  Did Cooley change its practices in light of the ABA's findings?  Ha, ha - no, it filed suit against the ABA:

 

Thus, on November 13, 2017, the ABA Council notified Cooley that the school was out of compliance with Standard 501(b) and Interpretation 501-1.  The Council was affirming a decision of the Accreditation Committee made in September 2017 which Cooley had appealed.  The school was ordered to submit a report by February 1, 2018 with additional details.   The next day, Cooley sued the ABA, seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the ABA from posting the letter of noncompliance on its website.   Cooley’s injunction request was denied, but Cooley continued to pursue the lawsuit against the ABA, disputing the ABA’s findings of non-compliance with the Admissions Standards, and the ABA’s denial of their request to open a new location. 

 

The ABA filed two summary judgment motions, most recently on March 2, 2018, defending their actions and arguing that the lawsuit was without merit...So how does the ABA explain its about- face on Cooley?  The Council doesn’t provide much of an explanation. Here is what the ABA’s letter announcing the decision says:

 

Following consideration of the record in the matter, the Committee concluded that the further report and concrete steps taken by the Law School with respect to its admissions policy and practices demonstrated the Law School’s compliance with Standard 501(b) and Interpretation 501-1.

 

The “further report” refers to the February 1, 2018 submission to the Council.  But it is hard to believe that report could have caused the Council to change its mind, given that Cooley provided very extensive data to the Council just a few months ago, which the Council found singularly unpersuasive. 

 

Because nothing says "non-profit" like filing a lawsuit in response to the data-driven truth from an accrediting agency, and wringing a settlement out of them by making it too much trouble to hold the school accountable.  Other law schools, while not liking or necessarily agreeing with the ABA's similar findings of non-compliance, at least are willing to acknowledge the concerns and take a minimum of token steps to make changes.  Not Cooley - you mess with that income stream, the gloves come off.  Because...think of the children!

 

Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. 

 

 UPDATE:  Thanks to LSTC's coverage, it appears that Florida Costal has also filed suit against the ABA for the same reasons, i.e. having the temerity to enforce regulations. 

 

“I’ve been working with the ABA for 40 years. At one time, the ABA helped schools deal with issues. The helping part has disappeared,” he said.  “The ABA has shifted to an antagonistic model,” DeVito said.  “The best way to protect our students and alumni is to file suit,” he said.

 

Again...think of the children!  What happened to those halcyon scamming days when the ABA would "help schools deal with issues" by quietly looking the other way...?