Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Nancy Leong: Entitlement, Privilege, and Power

I have spent a lot of time in academia.  Now that I think about it, I have spent the majority of my adult life there, mostly as a bored liberal artist.  It is important to understand the world of academia (and how a young professor may choose to gun for tenure) if one wants to understand Leong’s targeting of dybbuk, which seems to be an unending mission for her.  Recently, she teamed up with Brian Leiter, and yesterday the duo got the ABA Journal to write an article that regurgitated Leong’s accusations without any verification.

In the world of legal academia, Nancy Leong’s race and gender provide positive attributes that help to separate her from the horde of straight white male professors with elite backgrounds teaching Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Contracts, etc.  I do not fault her for focusing some of her scholarship on issues relating to her identity or experiences.  I have used this strategy myself on a few occasions.  For example, when applying for certain types of positions or assignment panels, I focus on my work with gay organizations, where I have defended gay men targeted by unfair police tactics.  These experiences distinguish me from the majority of the other candidates, and it makes me seem more “diverse” in certain contexts where that is a plus factor.  Yes, there are plenty of times when I keep my sexuality a secret until I feel out a person or an organization.  But I admit that in certain circumstances, I can use my sexuality to make myself a more memorable candidate rather than if I were perceived as just another white dude.

To ignore the advantages that Ms. Leong’s sex (and race?) may bestow upon her in the world of academia — which is obsessed with keeping up the appearance of diversity, even if many good-old-boys clubs still run things at the top — is to ignore reality.  I know that my thoughts will piss off a few of the classic boomer liberals who still feel enormous white guilt, which prevents them from fully engaging in these discussions, but this is my opinion based on almost a decade in academia, including two years of teaching English/Creative writing at a “Top 15” university.  I taught in an undergraduate liberal arts program where the department chairs made no secret of looking for a “black woman” (!) to “round out” the tenured faculty in their department (I was shocked at the brazenness of this diversity-hunting, but I also admired that they just came out and said it).

Let us be clear about the sequence of events with Nancy Leong and dybbuk.  Dybbuk wrote a post about her over a year ago and made a few other references to her in comments.  He revived his criticisms a year later, which included some parodies (which Leong/Leiter have characterized as epic plays).  In the meantime, dybbuk lambasted plenty of other law professors, mostly white men.  During the relevant 14-month period, dybbuk left a few comments on message boards where he made jokes about Leong, mostly commenting on her attractiveness.  He never contacted Leong directly, and he probably never thought that she would read most of what he wrote.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion about whether a man is ever allowed to make a joke about a woman’s appearance and/or whether such a comment is now banned speech.  And people (like me) are entitled to their opinion that the academic elites need to grow some skin, even when jokes/comments target non-white women, evil gays, or anyone else.  (Those same elites often feel more than comfortable with a double standard where they can casually call straight white guys racists).

At the same time, I believe that people have the right to stand up for themselves and to draw attention to off-color humor.  That said, I am a staunch believer that whenever a minority group polices political correctness, they wear out the public and turn themselves into a joke.  For example, I am particularly weary about gay groups that want to ride the current political/judicial victories in order to start assuming the role in public discourse of a gay Sharpton/Jackson.  These tactics minimize the real harms of discrimination by turning everything into a game of You Can’t Say That on Television. 

As a member of a minority group who faces a lot more hatred than a female law professor in the top 1%, I have doubts about whether Leong actually was offended by anything dybbuk said.  Also, I believe that Leong fibbed when she pretended to fear for her safety, something she reported to the IL bar and the ABA Journal, because dybbuk never called, texted, or emailed her, and they have never met.  According to MapQuest, dybbuk resides over 1000 miles away from Leong's Colorado base.  Interestingly, despite her "fears" about safety, Leong tried to call dybbuk at work and emailed him a terse ultimatum saying that he must contact her by a particular deadline or face retribution.

Within all of this distracting puffery, Leong mostly repeated three “sexist” comments by dybbuk that focused on her physical attractiveness (the word “comely” came up the most).  She discussed these comments in the bar complaint and on some of her five extremely long blog posts — which are perfect examples of a professor saying in 15,000 words what a normal person could say in 500.  Naturally, she also cherry-picked comments by anonymous trolls, many of them now deleted, and implicitly connected them to dybbuk, I guess under the theory of guilt by association.  Recently, she suggested that dybbuk is responsible for comments on this blog and that his failure to delete a troll’s comment might be harassment!

Frankly, I think that she incorporated comments by anonymous trolls because dybbuk’s actual comments did not have enough objectionable material.

All of this nonsense distracts from the biting criticism of Leong's CV and law review article.  In a truly ironic twist, this well-paid female law professor has tried to use identity politics, i.e. pretending to be the victim of the big bad white guy picking on the self-identified non-white female, to intimidate her critic and to distract from his legitimate criticism of her law review article.  Also, her actions serve as a warning shot toward anyone else who may dare to cross her.

See the reversal?  She is a representative of the powers that be (a one-percenter law school professor) using every available tactic at her disposal to distract from two facts: 1) law schools scam students and 2) she wrote a terrible law review article.  When a random blogger criticized her writing, she spent an inordinate amount of time trolling the internet for any reason to try to threaten this person into complying with her demands.  When she could not engage the debate about her work on the merits of her own writing — admittedly, a losing battle — she attacked him based on random comments that he could not have reasonably anticipated that she would read.  She used her privilege to attack him: her privilege of class/status/position (in an attempt to intimidate), her privilege of sex and apparently race (to threaten him with accusations of sexism and a failed accusation of racism), and her privilege of academia (to try to portray her obsession as part of some sort of honorable battle for political correctness).

The bottom line of all of this is simple: Leong thought that she had a good shot of embarrassing dybbuk and getting him fired by filing a bar complaint that constructively “outed” him to the bar and possibly to his employer.  In many ways, the battle lines that she has drawn highlight one of the central dichotomies underlying the law school scam: the wealthy vs. the work-a-day-schlubs, the underemployed, and the unemployed.  A one-percenter wants to get a public defender fired because he criticized her law review article and hurt her feelings.

I believe that Leong started this whole battle because she thought that she could get some unflattering material about her removed from the internet.  Instead, she now has provoked a huge amount of negative material about herself and her writing.  And she has escalated the stakes in the battle between law schools and scambloggers by aiming at the career and livelihood of a vocal critic.

I am not an advocate for returning Leong’s attacks on her level of needless escalation.  Our blog serves the public by unmasking the utter bullshit spewed by the law school industrial complex, and we should continue to fight with facts.  Leong has chosen to escalate this battle…and escalation she may eventually get.  Bar complaints run both ways, and at least one dean has already been disbarred for his deceptiveness.  Misrepresentations in bar complaints can lead to lawsuits for defamation of character and abuse of process (I have seen cases where a cop has sued successfully a person who filed a formal complaint based on false facts).  And I am sure that eventually someone will contact her employers about her misrepresentations and her weird obsessive behavior (phone calls, emails with deadlines, bar complaints, five or six blog posts, and a lot of comments on message boards).  She has opened this door, and I predict that other people now will walk through it and meet her on the other side.


The Leong Situation should demonstrate to all of us the power that our highly trafficked blog now has.  Some lawprofs now fear that their name will appear on the top pages of Google because of a highly trafficked blog article.  We should assume that anything that we say, even in a casual comment, will be read by the subject of the post or comment.  And we should take the high road by continuing to report accurate facts and expressing worthwhile opinions about the state of the law school industry and the law profession today.



77 comments:

  1. I believe that bar complaints are absolutely privileged, so there is no suit for defamation there, and besides it is unlikely any bar could care less about Dybbuk exercising his First Amendment rights. How could he possibly be sanctioned for doing so. And Leong has avoided "outing" dybbuk probably because she would be worried about a claim for defamation against her and her employer. So all we really have is a young girl who has done nothing with her life but excel in school, be pretty around campus and write a few mediocre legal articles. I don't see her as a one percenter trying to take on the common man. Dybbuk is far more accomplished than she is. I see her as young, immature and petulant, much like Leiter . . except he is older. She'll grow up eventually . . she will get over that pompous attitude she now has when it finally dawns on her that she is a nobody.

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    1. He is more legally accomplished, but she makes more money and has more "clout" in our prestige-drive profession.

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    2. We really don't know that. If Dybbuk mixes a private practice with being a PD, he could be making far more money than she is. I know we talk about these Professors like they get outstanding salaries . . . and for their workload they do. But they still only make a fee hundred K at best per year for the most part. Many in private practice make more than that.

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    3. AdamB writing from a phone: she makes a lot more than dybbuk (his salary is public record).

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    4. I'd be the last person to support Nancy Leong's bogus claims of harassment, but can we give the part about being "pretty" a rest? It's based on very flimsy evidence, and it just inflames what have become very public proceedings. It also detracts from the real issue. The real issue is Nancy Leong's enthusiastic participation in a huge scam against naïve and vulnerable students.

      Nancy Leong used debt-funded tuition money to write at least one atrocious article, and others that have little or no value to the students who paid for them. She also wrote a number of dishonest blog articles to draw attention to herself and her self-centered career. In those articles, she initiated a number of lies about the one person who ever challenged her, simply because he threatened her ego and her debt-funded brand as a "scholar." Those lies were taken seriously, far too seriously, by people who should have known better, simply because of her ridiculous privilege as a "professor."

      This is an ugly, stinking situation. Some guys think they're being nice, or fair, or "gallant" by calling her pretty. But she despises it, and it's her favorite pretext for hating men. From now on, when you read the name "Nancy Leong," you might try visualizing a pig's snout. Or considering how this incident has developed, you might try visualizing her as one of a pack of wolves licking their lips and baring their teeth.

      Nancy Leong has proven herself a deceptive and dangerous person. There's nothing the least bit attractive about her.

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    5. Also, because Nancy Leong is deceptive and dangerous, DO NOT APPROACH HER OR CONFRONT HER, anytime or anywhere. Think of her like the bears at Yellowstone. When you try to feed them, they start noticing that you'd make a much bigger meal than whatever you're offering them.

      Use your constitutional rights of free expression, privacy and anonymity to talk about her in the third person, far away from any venue controlled by her and her cronies. She wants to draw you out. She wants to destroy your privacy. She wants to engage you and then claim harassment, like she did with dybbuk. Don't let it happen.

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  2. Leiter is the king of misrepresentation. Leong is doing a great job of it herself.

    These people should not be teaching people how to be lawyers.

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  3. Actually, the likely kiss of death for Leong’s efforts to move to a better law school is that she is now associated with Brian Leiter.

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    1. I'd wager that Chicago is not too happy with the kind of "Human Values" they're getting for Leiter's grossly inflated salary.

      And no school wants to get stuck with another Leiter.

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    2. It's wonderfully ironic that Brian Leiter, in trying to destroy Paul Campos, did wonders for his career. He turned Campos into a leading public intellectual, of the kind that Leiter can only dream of being.

      And in trying to help Sevel, and later Simkovic, Leiter proved he has no ability to help anyone.

      Delete
  4. Well said, Adam B.

    At the same time I am reminded, still to this day, of a woman I knew in undergrad who tended towards hypochondria. At first, we and many others were sympathetic to her health issues. After a while, however, I and others began to notice that she was actually *excited* by the new "diagnoses" that came her way - that she was, perversely, actually "happy" about the prospect of the potential health difficulties she was facing and all the subsequent attention it heaped upon her. As some of these potential health threats evaporated over time, you could almost see the disappointment in her face.

    What galled me was that there were "real" people suffering "real" health concerns, conditions and treatments that no one wanted or would wish on anyone, yet my "friend" was upset that, in effect, none of it was happening to her - at least, not in any real, tangible sense. She was sad at the loss of attention and sympathy, and so had to gin up more fabricated conditions and ailments in order to feel important and valuable and to garner the sympathy and attention she so desired. Needless to say, it all backfired over time, and people grew tired of her crying Wolf.

    This personal anecdoete comes to mind, for some reason. Not sure why. Oh well.

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  5. I graduated from law school in the mid '80s and I am shocked at the puerile behavior being displayed by today's generation of law professors. It appears these professors (e.g., Leiter, Leong, etc.) have nothing better to do than to troll scamblogs and attempt to out people in an attempt to intimidate them into silence. In the case of Leong, she has elevated the stakes by going after a critic's livelihood while she is ensconced by the protective walls of "academia."

    I briefly served as a commissioner on a board and have been involved in numerous ethics complaints (investigation stages mostly). I am not sure about Illinois but I can tell you in most jurisdictions, this complaint won't even get assigned an investigator. Leong uses the pretext of being fearful for her safety. If this was the case, she could have contacted the local police and attempted to obtain a restraining order. Based on these facts, the police would have laughed her out of the station.

    Dybbuk, I would be happy to volunteer my time and assist you in any way possible against the frivolous complaint that was filed against you. If the complaint is dismissed, you may have grounds to pursue Leong through the courts for wasting your time and money in defending the complaint.

    I wonder what ethics "gurus" Leong consulted with who allegedly gave her the go ahead to file the complaint. I would not be surprised if the ethics "maven" is a law professor who is disconnected from the realities of these proceedings.

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    1. Leong is always fearful for her safety. The Dec. 19 post on her blog is about fearing for her safety on the UCLA campus.

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    2. Just wondering, as you indicate you are experienced in these things and are not disconnected from the realities of these proceedings -- how many lawsuits have you seen where someone has successfully sued someone else for filing a frivolous bar complaint? Frivolous bar complaints are filed quite often, so this would be a lucrative practice area if such lawsuits are routinely viable.

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  6. It's astonishing that the careers of these pigs are built on nothing more than verbal diahrea and getting a few fairly random As at Harvard, Yale or Stanford. The contribute nothing to society and except for a very tiny minority, they have little to no positive impact upon the world. On the downside, they help destroy the financial future of tens of thousands every year and are lavishly paid for it.

    Nancy, take a word of advice. Don't model yourself after Brian Leiter, but take a hint from someone like Michelle Alexander, someone who recently wrote about the new Jim Crow of mass incarceration. Ms. Alexander is a real scholar, a serious person who is having a real impact.

    The sort of verbosity you see in law review articles does not fly in the world of work and writing actual persuasive documents. The partners I know would fire their asses within a New York minute of looking at their first brief.

    Law Profe$$ors, here's another word of advice from someone who actually writes for a living and makes a pretty good living at it. Less is more. Most of you have absolutely nothing original to say.

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  7. Requoting the most-excellent Tricia Dennis:


    tdennis239December 23, 2013 at 10:03 AM

    Wait a minute. Am I to understand that this woman filed a bar complaint for what you said on JD Underground? Really? I read what she says you said, on JDU, and I have to admit that as a woman, I'm not too fond of the sexual characterization (if you indeed wrote that). But, Jesus Wept, Ms. Leong! If you can't stand the heat, get out of the f------ kitchen! (Whoops, she's going to complain to my Board about me!). I'm a woman. I've practiced law for 27, long years. Trust me. I've heard worse. Much worse. From judges, even. And professors (my God, you have no idea what it use to be like). And you know what? I dealt with it . . . by ignoring it and got on with winning my case, or deposing my witness, or negotiating my settlement; because, you know . . . I'm a grown-up. Ms. Leong, if you want to whine about something, try coming out here in the real world and try to make a living while battling tort-reform, massive lawyer-overproduction, and ever-rising overhead. If I may speak as one of the old-guard women lawyers, I didn't battle sexism in its most blatant and insidious forms so someone like you, who directly benefitted from those battles could use charges of "sexism" like a cudgel to shut up critics who find your law review articles the worse sort of pablum.

    By the way, Ms. Leong, if you took time from your oh so busy schedule, your oh so critical work of advancing the profession, to read my little, insignificant comment and if I have hurt your feelings and you wish to lodge a complaint against me (apparently, your retaliatory method of choice), you may send it to the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility.

    Tricia Dennis
    Chattanooga, TN

    http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/12/comments-and-corrections-additional.html

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  8. What I think the issue we're facing now is the "Scam Blog" movement for years has been nothing more than a bunch of sour unemployed legal grads on the internet posting their hatred for law schools, law professors, and the legal field in general. As the scam blog movement grew, it became a victim of its own success. People started to notice it.

    Once the scam blog movement started to gain some acceptance, people like dybbuk and nando failed to shift tactics to become more "mainstream" in their criticisms. People are willing to look at facts and figures and can understand that law school is a bad bet. People don't want to see pictures of feces and toilets and see female professors demeaned based on their looks. Those tactics were fine when you were a small time voice in the wilderness. Nobody noticed or cared. Nobody was there to call nando or dybbuk out on their over-the-top tactics.

    Now that the more "mainstream" parts of the legal world, and the professors themselves, are starting to notice the scamblogs, those wishing to fight back have plenty of means of distracting and discrediting the scambloggers because the scambloggers haven't changed tactics.

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    1. "People don't want to see pictures of feces and toilets and see female professors demeaned based on their looks"

      Nando is crude of course, but he does have a certain demographic audience . . generally the young, disenfranchised and angry. Dybbuk NEVER demeaned Leong based on her looks. If anything, what he said about her was a compliment. They both got attention however, and that is good. Any publicity is better than no publicity.

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    2. People don't want to read stories about babies being eaten either. Nobody would ever take something like that seriously.

      -J. Swift.

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  9. "There are over 6,000 tenured and tenure-track law professors in the United States," Leong writes in the complaint, filed with the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission. "Many of them have less practice experience than I do. Most of them have weaker publishing records than I do. Most of them have weaker teaching evaluations than I do. Almost all of them have been members of the legal academy longer than I have. Almost all of them have more power and prominence than I do. In light of these facts, it is difficult to think of a reasonable explanation for [dybbuk's] obsessive attention to an untenured professor."
    http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/blogging_law_prof_files_ethics_complaint_against_pd_after_concluding_he_was
    Leong is an embarrassment to the legal profession, to law profs who actually conduct rigorous research on relevant issues and to the DU Law School in particular. It is well known that DU has a poor history when it comes to bar passage in Colorado. DU students continue to struggle (well under 50%) getting full time, long term, legal employment following graduation. The school can use some help when it comes to preparing its students for the actual practice of law. If, as Leong points out in her complaint, “many [law profs] have less practice experience than [she does],” law schools, particularly lower tier schools like DU, are in trouble. She should try working for a living and leave those who legitimately criticize her “scholarship” alone. The only person who appears obsessed is Leong. I fully support people like dybbuk and AdamB who continue to point out people like Leong who “publish” worthless articles financed by the non-dischargeable debt of students.

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    1. She's lying as usual. If we correct for quality, no one has a weaker publishing record than her. That "Open Road" article was awful. It was juvenile, self-indulgent, pointless, and horribly written. She would have a much better reputation if she had never published anything.

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    2. Nancy Leong likes to brag about all the articles she's written. But when one person in ten million actually reads one of her articles, that's obsessive, that's harassment, and she fears for her safety once again.

      That's the best evidence yet that law school publishing is a scam.

      Delete
    3. "Many of them have less practice experience than I do."

      Nancy Leong held two summer SA positions and a one-year "fellowship," which she considers practice experience. So I ask: what would it take to have less experience than that? Do any law professors actually have less experience than that?

      If her statement is correct, then we have an insider blowing the lid off the law school scam. If her statement isn't correct, then she's lying to the authorities to try to get some sympathy, with her goal being to get rid of dybbuk. Either way, I think we should pay attention here.

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  10. Leong's level of response to this situation shows that the law schools are starting to take the scamblogs seriously. Very seriously. This is about more than hurt feelings. Millions are at stake (the chance to receive 200k per year for the next 30 or 40 years in exchange for almost no work), and the law schools are adopting the failed counterinsurgency tactic of taking out a few vocal leaders without addressing the underlying circumstances which caused the unrest in the first place. At this point, the scamblog movement is like a hydra: if you cut off one head, several more will grow in its place.

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    1. I don't think this is really a result of Leong being concerned about the scamblogs affecting her livelihood. Or even being offended at whatever Dybbuk and some posters have said about her. This is probably just a cynical attempt to increase her fame and draw attention to herself.

      And the thing is she can actually write decent scholarship if she wants. She's written some good papers I think on qualified immunity for law officers, implied consent and the second amendment.

      Delete
  11. Leongs complaining about her "safety" is such a girly thing to do, which shows just how juvenile she is. We all know "girls' who like to complain that certain guys "scare" them, usually guys who they have broken up with so naturally the big bad guy is a threat. It is a disgrace that a girl like this is actually teaching law to other students. She instead should be going to frat parties with all of her girly friends.

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    1. Lol!

      That was brutal..

      The word that best fits when women describe men they don't care for - and they love this word - is "creep" or "creepy".

      In other words, any nice, normal, decent guy. Genuine Thugs and Bad Boys, on the other hand, usually start their motors running. Nice Guys are booooring.

      Delete
  12. Leong is still heavily in debt from buying all her "prestige," so she really can't pay enough money to compensate for her intentional lies about dybbuk. But the ABA Journal has negligently repeated those lies. Now dybbuk can sue the ABA for millions.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. If someone is heavily in debt and making bank teaching, why not live out of your car?

      I mean, that's a quick way to pay it off.

      That's the "tough it out" style of advice that academics and older attorneys who have made it (Boomers, cough!) just love to sprinkle over younger people, like fucking candy.

      Just do it.

      Don't complain. You aren't "entitled", etc.

      Delete
  13. ah, you naysayers, Leong's article was cited yet again! This time in the Oxford Dictionary...under the definition of the word "sophomoric."

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    Replies
    1. I believe that's what's known as an "extensional" definition.

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  14. If an anonymous lawyer had insulted a high school female teacher on the internet, the ABA would not move a finger. But powerful law professors are so isolated in their ivory tower that they believe that they cannot be challenged. Brian Leiter and Nancy Leong do not mind manipulating the laws and the system to serve their own interests.

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  15. Nancy Leong is a master manipulator with a big ego. Boycott her classes.

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    Replies
    1. Well, her manipulation is rather transparent by now, nothing masterful about it. It's basic middle school stuff.

      I do agree with the boycott part, though. Boycott her classes. Boycott Denver U. Boycott UCLA Law School. And most of all, boycott the student debt complex.

      Delete
  16. Leiter is the biggest bully on the internet. What gives him the authority to speak for Leong?

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    1. Yeah, someone should file a complaint against Leiter for harassment.

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    2. But Leiter doesn't practice law, so discipline by the bar means nothing to him.

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    3. I wonder if Leiter's ever been disciplined at a bar? More likely he was just tossed out.

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    4. "...if Leiter's ever been disciplined at a bar? "

      What is that, some kind of BDSM joke?

      ;-)

      Delete
  17. It is delicious irony that someone who represents the "little guy" every day in court in the capacity of an attorney is being attacked by someone who embodies all the traits of someone who, perhaps not hailing from privilege, now embodies it.

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    1. Great point. She's twisting and abusing concepts from criminal law to protect her social privilege and her somewhat overextended financial interests.

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    2. She does hail from privilege. Her damned wedding was reported in The New York Times.

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    3. don't you pay to have your wedding reported there? Isn't that for the egotists and the Narcissists among us?

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    4. Although Nancy Leong's wedding was somewhat "commodified," complete with a paid announcement in the New York Times, I prefer to see it as a genuine moment for her. For one bright day in her unhappy life, she was able to put aside the narcissistic demands, the reflexive condemnation, the destructive impulses barely kept under control, the endless spinning of the world around her words, her desires, and her career...and simply be a human being trying to love someone else.

      I see that as hopeful and admirable, and wish her the very best in her private life.

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    5. My wedding was published in the NYT. My wife and I are lifelong NYT readers and fans. You don't pay. You submit a huge amount of detail, they fact check your backgrounds, and select which profiles they're going to publish.

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    6. So the New York Times found her wedding highly important...that's impressive, and could be a sign of privilege.

      Delete
  18. Here's the thing. We have the truth on our side. At its core, the truth is this: A law degree costs 150K or more (often paid for in non-dischargeable debt) and half of all law school graduates can't find meaningful legal employment. And this has been going on for years. Leong can't defend that. Leiter can't defend that. I say, the more exposure, the better. Leong's ill-advised bar complaint has already led to an ABA Journal article. The article is biased in Leong's favor, but look at the comments to that article - most are highly critical of Leong. We are holding the winning hand. Lay down the cards and let the sun shine in.

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    1. "A law degree costs 150K or more (often paid for in non-dischargeable debt) and half of all law school graduates can't find meaningful legal employment.".....and more than half of that half who do find meaningful employment won't be able to retain such meaningful employment for more than a few years because in part law firms are pyramid schemes, and because in part there is a huge glut of experienced lawyers.

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    2. That ABA Journal article looked like it received a rough balance of positive and negative comments, but that was in a stridently pro-scam publication that attracts lots of nuts and trollprofs. Even more telling, there weren't many comments at all. No one cares about that shit. It looks like Nancy Leong's grand production--with her as the star, of course--won't make it past the first weekend.

      Delete
    3. The ABA journal has been editing out a lot of comments critical of Leong and of the author for not knowing the history of Leiter, Diamond, Filler and the little pack of toadies that follow him, or noticing the strong evidence that Leiter was heavily involved in getting Leong to file the complaint.

      Leiter's posts and comments increasingly 'brag-hint' that he was the instigator of Leong's complaint, something anyone covering this issue should be aware of, as well as the history of behaviour by Leiter, Diamond, etc. After all, if cyber-stalking is a bar worth complaint, that accusation should be levelled at Leiter, Diamond and the rest of Leiter's toadies.

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    4. Nancy is on dangerous ground. She trusts Brian Leiter. She thinks that he has her best interests at heart when she sought his advice (or more likely he contacted her - am I right, Nancy?) And this senior superprofessor gave her all this advice and information about dybbuk and how to leverage the situation in her favor.

      And she didn't even see once that Brian was using her a a tool to get at Campos, dybbuk, and to settle his own petty little need for revenge.

      Nancy, Brian is a pump-and-dump professor. He'll move on to the next pawn as soon as you've outlived your usefulness. And I think you've already realized that you're not useful to him anymore, or you've at least realized that he's using you for his own purposes. That's why you accepted Campos's apology and said you want to move on. Leiter is the only one pushing this issue anymore.

      Delete
    5. Anonymous at 5:58 has pretty well summed it up. Nancy Leong needs to think about the future employment prospects of two other of Leiter's well known toadies, Dan Filler and Steve Diamond.

      In Filler's case he is a prof at the brand new Earle Mack School of law - now suddenly the Drexel University School of Law (Earle (who) Mack) decided it might tarnish the brand - or maybe "MacK" is his nephew or something. In any event, Filler seems to have passed Leiter identity information for Dybbuk, BLRT, MacK and others and Leiter - used it, and publicly gloated about being given the confidential information. As a result, some 60+ co-bloggers at the Faculty lounge were furious, e-mailing all sorts of people to say "wasn't me." Filler now has a huge problem - anytime he looks for a job, the crap Leiter pulled with his help will come up - and some of those attacked by Leiter are powerful and well connected. Meanwhile Drexel looks like sooner or later it will close, and Filler is far away from being eligible for Social Security.

      Diamond has Filler's problem in spades. He did not just enable Leiter - he joined in. Again he has made some really unfortunate enemies - and he too is at a law school, Santa Clara, that is losing altitude.

      Leong ought to wonder - Leiter has done nothing but damage to his little group of hangers-on. What lunacy led her to put her professional fate in his hands? Has she any idea how much worse it is to be associated with Leiter than a little criticism from Dybbuk?

      Delete
  19. This is Nancy Leong, referring to law professors: "Many of them have less practice experience than I do."

    That's both hilarious and pathetic. Nancy Leong's cv indicates that she was a summer associate in 2005 and 2006, and then a "fellow" at a lobbying group in 2007-2008. All on an academic calendar, of course. Nothing else she's ever done comes close to being practice experience.

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  20. @ Adam B.
    Your final observation about reader comments is key. It's important to represent ourselves well as a whole, and the quality of comments following articles says a lot. The comments on Campos' blog were oftentimes revolting. Thanks to the moderators here for promoting intelligent discourse.

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  21. Leong is trying to become the academic version of Kim Kardashian. She wants to ride undeserved fame to a tenured position at a "top law school", where she can peddle her cynical exploitation of racial identity and substandard scholarly output.

    The worst thing to do to people like her and Leiter is to ignore them. They capitalize on negative attention. In some ways, we may be better off declaring a date after which nothing they do is acknowledged. They will shrivel from the lack of attention.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good comment. Let me clarify that ignoring them would be the worst thing for them, and therefore the best thing for us to be doing

      Delete
    2. AdamB: I agree with not giving this matter undue attention and with not beating a dead horse or with distracting from serious matters with a sideshow. The he-said-she-said stuff that a lot of the Leong crowd engages in is particularly tedious (hence the length of this post to set the facts straight). The Leiter/Leong camp have been promoting false and misleading statements via multiple forums, including the ABA, to promote the filing of the bar complaint to make it look like a big deal. I feel that my post helps to restore some balance in the force.

      It may be true that she thinks that this publicity will help her earn a tenure track position at a high ranked law school...but I doubt it. Law schools want to lay low right now, and she looks like she will bring a lot of baggage, negative publicity, and other headaches.

      Delete
    3. Agreed. She should have kept her mouth shut. Any future employer would look her up online and would conclude she was nothing but trouble. She has probably done more damage to her own career than dybbuk could ever have hoped to do through his postings, and Leiter has only made things worse for her. But she made her own bed and now she must sleep in it. So sad for her.

      Delete
    4. Great post, Adam B. I think you accomplished what needed to be done.

      Delete
    5. Good comment at 12:19.

      I think Leiter took what started as genuine confusion on Nancy Leong's part, and with his endless, obsessive prodding turned it into something closer to genuine hatred. So now Leiter has another malicious troll doing his work for him.

      Nancy Leong really needs to step back and reconsider what kind of person she's becoming or has become. This may appear normal in the law professors' fantasy world, with its endless struggles for prestige, supremacy, and revenge. But it's far from normal, and decent people don't want to go deeply in debt to pay for this sort of thing. That includes not only prospective law students, but taxpayers and future taxpayers as well.

      Delete
    6. "I think Leiter took what started as genuine confusion on Nancy Leong's part, and with his endless, obsessive prodding turned it into something closer to genuine hatred. So now Leiter has another malicious troll doing his work for him.

      Nancy Leong really needs to step back and reconsider what kind of person she's becoming or has become. This may appear normal in the law professors' fantasy world, with its endless struggles for prestige, supremacy, and revenge. But it's far from normal, and decent people don't want to go deeply in debt to pay for this sort of thing. That includes not only prospective law students, but taxpayers and future taxpayers as well."

      ^^^THIS^^^

      Excellent comment.

      Delete
  22. I love that silly word that Nancy Leong thinks is so clever: "commodification." She may think it refers to turning something into a commodity. That, however, is what is meant by the proper word, "commoditization."

    As far as I can discern, the word "commodification" would mean to turn something into a commode. Nancy Leong appears to have achieved that at Denver U, and undoubtedly has ambitions to do the same at UCLA.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Commodification...best definition ever.

      Delete
    2. When this blog does its 2014 end of year review, please quote this definition as a memorable moment.

      Delete
    3. When used in a sentence.

      The lack of quality applicants due to a lack of jobs has caused the 'commodification' of several law schools, even some ostensibly in the first tier.

      Delete
  23. Who commodified UC Hastings? I want to know!

    ReplyDelete
  24. So suppose, just suppose, Dybbuk and the anons had never harped on on Leong's appearance in the first place? Suppose the anons had looked at themselves in the mirror and gone 'You know, maybe I won't type a skeevy racist comment about her last name today.'

    I don't give a fig about Leong's feelings but I do think it's notable that no women have offered to write here since TALP quit, given the kind of comments some people left on TALP's posts - and TALP never mentioned her appearance, only the fact that she was a woman. That, alone, was enough to generate sexist comments on many of her posts.

    While Leong is a garbage fake intellectual who's not worth the time of day, I do think it would be smart if you guys who write & minimally moderate this here frathouse were to refrain from making incessant comments on women's appearances in future, and at least made some show of not encouraging these comments from your brodude readers. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Very perceptive, and I agree 120 percent.

      Delete
    2. Please cite these "incessant comments."

      The scam movement has had women contributors. Angel, Rose, and Kimber Russell (pre-abandonment) had solid blogs in the pre-ITLSS era.

      This isn't a gendered issue, and to my knowledge, this place does not have "incessant" sexist comments. TALP left for entirely different reasons.

      Delete
    3. Exactly - there have been many women contributors to the scam movement, which makes it all the more mysterious that none of them have offered to contribute to this blog.

      Except it's not even slightly mysterious if you've ever read the comments. No, TALP didn't leave for entirely different reasons, but any woman who read the comments to TALP's posts would have seen clear reason to stay the fuck away.

      Delete
    4. Are you offering to write for the blog? Submit guest posts? Find new female writers? And why do you assume no one behind the list of ambiguous monikers is a female?

      Delete
    5. A passerby trolling with no basis for claims. Delete or ignore.

      Delete
  25. Why are we still talking about this Tiger Mom wannabe? (Just another entitled prof trying to kickstart a career through controversy...move along, nothing to see here...)

    ReplyDelete
  26. Ok. I know that this is a few months late, but I'm hoping somebody takes note in case the 'racial' complaint goes anywhere. We know that the ridiculous racial complaint is based on the 'luau' comment Leong's purported 'native Hawaiian ancestry'.

    Here's Leong purporting to be Chinese-American, which would indicate to me that she's not native Hawaiian - although it may be possible that she have both Chinese and native Hawaiian ancestry. It's also possible she's lying.

    https://twitter.com/nancyleong/status/444544467903578112
    https://twitter.com/nancyleong/status/442780099411054592

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  27. Lady Leong used her gig to attack a public defender, in the Chicago area.
    Her complaint did not meet muster, and the ILL bar did not file ethic charges against the person, who is an American citizen, in his capacity as a citizen. MR D- screen named must have felt he had to be ANNON, as law professors have a lot of BLACK BALL power in America, like a pack of wolves. Leong's Pa is some big cheese with a giant engineering firm, that gets lots of federal contracts. Her big splash on her wedding in the New York Times, is one indication she seeks out the limelight. But, her road to any real litigation in Court is just a pipe dream, as to being a real officer of the court. She plays the fem- ethnic card, like just driving around Denver people are out to be road rage drivers, against her, seeing an ethnic card at every turn, as if she is in the wrong lane, most of the time.
    It is ironic, she puts herself up on the altar as having an entitled BIGGER 1st Amendment right than others, as she sought to crush the lowly public defender as being a full bore citizen with rights.
    But, she sure tracked him down. Did she ever, like a blood hound.
    that was amazing, indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Notice a lot of those professors never actually worked in the law, it is almost as if it is a snooty thing with them to attack citizens. Recall Leong in her ROAD story was painting students as just the zoned out Colo drug set,(her made up fiction) decrying law school as boring,(her planted mindset of her phantom students),
    and that the dream was a bad dream--law, the profession. Not sure how MR D picked up on this cultural trend of the professors, as going into some pack of wolves, as predators, or some new breed taunting students, like almost treating them as suckers for being in law school. That is fed by both CAMPOS at U of Colo Law School, and Brain Leiter at the U of Chicago Law School, who have gone on and on in year long pissing contests on which one is the most out of their gord.
    Campos worked only about 1 year at a law firm in Chicago, Latham and Watkins, then he went straight to law school, as an associate professor in Boulder, C U Law.
    Can any wonder if he could not cut it working in a law firm, so then he starts writing absurd law reviews, and articles on fat. He too seems to like the limelight, getting in food fights, and baiting Brain Leiter. How much does C U pay him, if it is what he is worth, why doesn't C U have him mow the lawn, and cut his salary, to $ 28,000/ year ?


    ReplyDelete