Friday, February 7, 2014

Vermont Law Might As Well Offer Free Balance Transfers Too

Remember when credit card companies were able to set up shop on campus offering t-shirts and other inducements to get students to sign up for their cards? It seems like Vermont Law School has picked up on this technique and applied it to the law school paradigm. According to this press release, Vermont Law is signing partnership agreements with a few historically black colleges and universities (HBCU's). These agreements will allow students at these colleges to have access to pre-law counseling from real life law school counselors and a tuition break (cleverly disguised as scholarships) once they sign up for classes.

This plan by Vermont Law is a new direction that I can see more law schools taking. This agreement gives Vermont Law a captive audience at the HBCU's they are partnering with. The law school lemmings are poster children for the primacy effect; by simply being around campus, Vermont Law is going to be the only law school these students will want to apply to. They have little to no appreciation for the fact that simply working hard isn't enough to make it in the real world. After listening to their friendly Vermont Law counselors, these students will be convinced that a Vermont Law degree is the key to that $160,000 starting salary everyone talks about. The counselors have at least a year to whisper sweet fantasies into the students' ears and convince them three years in South Royalton is just like being in Lake Havasu and Harvard at the same time. I am sure that the HBCUs' administrations are getting a kickback here in exchange for pushing their undergrads towards law schools like lambs being led to the slaughter. It's a win-win for the schools, even if the students are being lured into financial ruin.

It is very possible that this is an innocent counseling program designed only to help students. But the overwhelming evidence shows that students are the last consideration for law schools. In 2013, a whole year of tuition at Vermont Law totalled $46,110. A $5,000 "scholarship" still means that the school gets at least $120,000 in tuition from each student who enrolls. Vermont Law doesn't need very many students to sign up in order to recoup their investment in spades. This is just good business.

The law school scam has shown that the only way law schools are innovative in their marketing their product. People saying that your product is advertised misleadingly? Admit that the naysayers are right, but your hands are tied because that's how the game is played. People not signing up for admission anymore? Tell everyone that you understand that the legal job market seems bad now, but hey, it'll all be better by 2016 when the Baby Boomers all retire at the same time. People complaining about the cost? Tell everyone about IBR and public interest repayment, which are really ways to get an education for free! (note: may result in large tax bill at time of loan forgiveness where applicable). Nothing is too terrible to be massaged over and explained away.

75 comments:

  1. Vermont Law School and Historically Black Colleges - talk about strange bedfellows. I suspect it's a marriage of mutual desperation. And of course, the whole thing is cloaked in that increasingly odious word - "diversity."

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  2. Oh, there is "diversity" all right...as in the income streams that the law schools are trying to solicit. Some from weathly families, some from poor, some white, some black, some asian, some male, some female...

    It's a lot like diversifying your 401k - hold some stocks, some bonds, some EFTs, some foreign markets, etc. Make sure you get the mix right.

    Maybe the "counselors" can hold up some "show me the money!" ads to the prelaw students, like this one:

    http://prelaw.uconn.edu/2013/10/15/million-dollar-law-degree/

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    1. The law degree is certainly worth millions to some people—those odious profe$$ors and admini$trators who ride high on the law-school scam.

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    2. And to people who collect speaker fees shilling for them.

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  3. The Atlantic slave trade never could have functioned without an extensive network of Africans willing to sell their fellow Africans to slave traders.

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    1. How much money is Vermont Law School paying these comprador institutions for the opportunity to prey upon their Black students?

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    2. True (and to sell them guns, which puts the non-slavers at a distinct disadvantage).

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    3. It's a barter deal. HBCU can say that its students have a special leg up in getting scholarships (i.e. discounts) from a prestigious law school, VLS gets more suckers who are willing to sign on the line that is dotted.

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  4. This is despicable. It is so FUCKING despicable. In the 1990's I (then a solo) got an unsolicited resume from a young African-American woman who had graduated from a super-elite women's college and a T5 law school and then done six months in biglaw. Willing to be hired as a lawyer, paralegal or secretary. Spoke to a partner I knew at her former firm and he said she was in so far over her head she needed diving gear.

    If saying this makes me a racist then so be it. This woman had clearly cruised along on quotas and preferences until she hit the cold, cruel world of kill-what-you-eat. But she must have had something going for her to get into the schools she got into. Vermont Law School has got to know the drill, that the students who are at HBCUs were not able to get into elite colleges despite affirmative action. It's not like HBCUs give race-based scholarships. So go become the friend and mentor to these people and promise them a scholarship. Flash some dummied-up employment stats and tell them how opportunities are expanding for minorities so they will be able to compete with minorities coming out of T25 schools, or T100 schools for that matter. All they have to do is sign some student loan papers, the check will go right to the school . . .

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    1. "...the students who are at HBCUs were not able to get into elite colleges despite affirmative action."

      Maybe, if they tried to get into elite colleges. But there are several good reasons for good black students to attend HBCUs. They may be closer to where the students live, their tuition may be lower, and most of all they turn out a disproportionately large number of black professionals.

      My interpretation is that HBCUs care about black students as exactly that, students rather than diversity statistics. They teach, encourage, and socialize their students better than any elite school--or a frigid, remote debt factory like VLS--ever could.

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    2. And there are even white students who attend Black colleges and universities—not because they couldn't get in elsewhere, but because they want to study in a mostly Black environment.

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    3. Well, right 10:18 and 9:06 but the question remains of why VLS isn't forming partnerships with non-HBCUs that have similar admissions standards. What is their reason, out of the blue, for partnering (read: targeting) these particular schools? Wouldn't a wider net catch more fish?

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  5. Vermont is a lily-white rural place that prides itself on its progressive image. This project will pass for progressive among the many people who do not know what is really going on: Vermont Law School is in the financial shitter and is merely trying to use Black people as conduits for money.

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    1. Almost all HBCUs are in the South. I can guarantee that most students from the South aren't going to like the cold winters in Vermont. This is cynical (and almost sadistic)exploitation of minority students who lack the knowledge, connections, and social capital to avoid an obvious scam.

      But if they stay for a year and then drop out, Vermont Law School just got an extra $40,000 to support the decadent lifestyles of its longtime stakeholders. This is welfare for the well-to-do, paid for by the debt slavery of black students. What could be more progressive than that?

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    2. 10:41 PM is right.

      That's something I hadn't considered.

      Essentially, Vt. is simply pandering to dramatically boost its 1L enrollment numbers. If Kwanzel Brown Jr. drops out, no big deal.. They still got paid. If some of the shit on the wall sticks, they get paid through 2L and 3L.

      Cooley is known for churn-and-burn tactics because hey.. they still got paid.

      All Vt. is looking to do right now is solely increase it's raw 1L students. Any that stick and are left over in subsequent years, hey, it's all gravy.

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  6. Isn't "you con" the second person conjugal form of the verb "to con?"

    And I love the fact refreshments were served at the presentation.

    Kool aid, perhaps?

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  7. "If saying this makes me a racist then so be it:. It does and you are.

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    1. Beg to differ. I found that comment to be a valuable blast of fresh-air and truthfulness, and one that mirrors my own experience in the real world. I would venture that you are the true hater, or a law professor. Or both.

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    2. Welcome back, Nancy!

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    3. Do you disagree with what he said?

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    4. The truth can really suck, though, can't it?

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    5. How is what 7:38 said racist? It is the truth, isn't it? Admissions standards at HBCUs are relatively low, and lower than they used to be because once segregation was done away with the top Black students started going to more prestigious schools. The real racists in this story are the folks at VLS. Why don't they form some partnerships with non-HBCUs with comparable admissions standards? There are plenty of them out there, more than there are HBCUs. 10:55, can't you see what is going on? VLS is holding itself out as the friend of Blacks when all it is really doing is trying to dupe some of them into signing their lives away to keep their sinking TTT afloat.

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    6. "true hater, or a law professor"

      The two go hand in hand - law professors hate and despise everyone except themselves .... and the occasional large donor to their scam.

      In their own minds they are better than everyone else - literally.

      This of course is the attitude parasites have adopted throughout the course of human history.

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  8. When I look into a garbage can I expect to find garbage.

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  9. Line up to be the first into a dying industry!

    It's shit like this that puts paid to all the "oh we didn't know what we're doing, the employment/admissions stuff was the job of the administrators" crap from the law professors. You're targeting people who you know just don't have the networks to tell them it's a bad idea.

    Guess what, you don't have to have a lawyer in the family to get on the internet, so spread the word everybody.

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  10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=520rhYHmKGg

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  11. They must have taken a leaf from the book of Uncle Tom Alexander at Indiana Tech Law Skule and Tattoo Parlour.

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  12. The racists are the deans who are exploiting African-American students with schemes like this and reverse robinhooding scholarships.

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  13. If you sign up now, Vermont Law Skule will throw in a set of Ginsu knives.

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  14. Be you White or Black, their interest in you is in trying to keep themselves out of the Red.

    Debt-funded higher ed: The share-cropping of the 21st Century. Don't be bamboozled.

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  15. Not sure I would refer to a partnership with HBCUs as an "investment in SPADES." But what do I know?

    The premise of this post is patronizing and insulting. So students at HBCUs are "lambs" being led to a "slaughter?" And Vermont will "be the only law school these students will want to apply to?" Black students want to apply to Harvard and Yale, just like you did. And with affirmative action, they have a better chance of getting into HYS than a similarly-qualified white or Asian student. Black students aren't idiots. Or a "captive" audience.

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    1. The whole point of advertising is deception—getting people to do something that they wouldn't otherwise do.

      Remember that Vermont Law School is seeing its classes shrink rapidly year after year and is also so short of money that it has been paring down its faculty and staff (except in the money-raising department). It may well have to shut its doors in the coming years. This new partnership is no progressive move; it's an exploitative plan to cash in on Black students who otherwise might not have considered law school at all and almost certainly would not have considered Vermont Law School.

      Those who get into Harvard or Yale weren't going to go to Vermont Law School anyway, so failing to attract them is hardly a loss. Vermont Law School knows that it won't attract Black students who have high LSAT scores and GPAs. Instead, it is going after marginal students whose schools are not visited by any other law school—yet.

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    2. Malcolm X @355,

      Suuuure. I said "similarly qualified white or Asian students" but you conveniently left that part out. Which means that your "reply" is really just begging the question. Almost every black student at HYS beat out a better-qualified white or Asian applicant.

      LOL, judging from your "reasoning" "abilities," I'm guessing that you aren't exactly HYS material yourself. You might not even be VLS material - eh, Bungsie?

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  16. ...and another example of how the disenfranchised, poor or lower middle class are especially victimized by this scam....believing as their parents and teachers have told them that education is useful and valuable....they march off to be no more than a conduit for student loan dollars to earn a worthless degree that trains them for nothing practical...to be dispensed on a hyper saturated job market...left to their own devices as to how to pay back the horrendous loans.....all the while the banksters are bailed out and the house flippers and gamblers can declare bankruptcy to eliminate their ill gotten debts. What a f****ing system! Won't someone write their Congressman? Won't someone write their prelaw advisor and their humanities teachers and tell them of the scam?

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  17. Next step: Vermont Law School becomes the first ABA-accredited law school to make the LSAT optional for admission.

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    1. Step after that: Completely open admissions.

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    2. Already the LSAT is required only in the sense that the ABA insists that applicants write the thing. One can satisfy that "requirement" by handing in a blank paper, as the law skules are free to admit people with any score at all.

      Vermont Law Skule's median LSAT score is below the 50th percentile. Many of the skule's matriculants are well down in the 140s. And some skules dip well into the 130s.

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  18. "refreshments will be served" is usually code for alcoholic beverages

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  19. "They know that any criticism of this can be dismissed as racism..."

    Yes, it can be dismissed as racism, by arrogant, ignorant, dismissive law professors who think "racism" is a magic word. Most people have gotten over that, but law professors are still living in the 70s and 80s.

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  20. I can see through this charade that VT Law is trying to pawn off as some progressive policy move. Ridiculous. One of my relatives attended VT Law and the best she could do was obtain a paralegal position, which ended after a year. You will have very limited opportunities coming out of VT Law, even if you are at the top of your class. It just can't compete with better known schools in metropolitan. Besides, who wants to hang out in the one-horse town of South Royalton for 3 years. You have to travel 20 minutes out of your way just to get groceries. Avoid this failing dump.

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    1. Last year, while driving through northern Vermont, I went out of my way to see South Royalton and Vermont's only law skule. Even "one-horse town" is an exaggeration: it's really nothing more than a crossroads. On one side of the two-lane highway, across a small bridge, stand Vermont Law Skule, maybe four or five sad-looking shops, and a bit of housing; on the other side is a gas station with a sign in the window advertising handmade maple-tapping buckets. As I recall, the "town" of South Royalton is not even incorporated. The nearest grocery store is half an hour away, in New Hampshire. Even getting to the post office requires a fifteen-minute drive.

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    2. How did it come to be built there?

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    3. It seems to have been a hippie project. An old school building was taken over in the early 1970s. It was cheap and easy to start a law skule forty-odd years ago in an unused building in the little whistle stop of South Royalton.

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    6. Technical point, 9:25. South Royalton is within the incorporated Town of Royalton. It is very common in New England to have multiple named locations within one town. All of MA, CT and RI are within incorporated cities and towns and in VT, NH and ME only wilderness areas are not incorporated. The system of local government here, left to us by the Puritans, is unlike anywhere else in the country.

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  21. Not law school related, but Paul Campos has a new article out at Slate.

    Crybabies of the 1 percent: Spoiled rich kids, Tom Perkins and the real affluenza
    http://www.salon.com/2014/02/08/crybabies_of_the_1_percent_spoiled_rich_kids_tom_perkins_and_the_real_affluenza/

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  22. The Kool Aid flavor was "Everclear and LSD" to wash down the message that JDs are million dollar tickets to success.

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  23. A short walk from Vermont Law Skule is a monument indicating the birthplace of Joseph Smith. Maybe Vermont Law Skule should set up a partnership with Brigham Young University in order to attract more Mor(m)ons to the area.

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  24. Here's an interesting article from last year which Nando linked to on his site:

    http://vtdigger.org/2013/06/27/vermont-law-school-makes-more-cuts-as-class-size-drops/

    Reading the comments, you'll see that Vermont increased its tuition from $28 in 2007 to $46k in 2013. This was a deliberate policy initiated by the previous dean to try and game rankings, mainly through merit scholarships. This has failed spectacularly, needless to say.

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    1. Given the history of the institution I wouldn't be surprised if he was an Obama supporter and a giant hypocrite.

      And that should read $28k not $28...
      But even $28k would still be over twice what tuition at this craphole is actually worth.

      But you can kind of see why they did this. Firstly, government put GradPlus into place, meaning they actually could charge this much. Secondly, the surge of applicants around 2008. Until very recently the number of law school applicants had never seen any significant decline, leading schools to believe this increase in applicants was the new normal.

      So they decided to take a gamble... but still there's no justification for it. It was just stupidity.

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    2. Actually, the article doesn't show the decline in enrollment being all that severe, at least not yet, so I'm thinking that the financial issues are the result of giving ever steeper discounts in order to keep the seats filled, which is the last option available when any meaningful admissions standards have been done away with.

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    4. The comment about a Prius is apt. In front of Vermont Law Skule's main building are recharging posts for electric cars. Whether any of them ever get used is anyone's guess, but at least they look sexy whenever anyone shows up to examine the skule's "program" in "environmental law".

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    5. Why did this small law school have an "assistant director of community relations and alumni affairs" in the first place? That's typical of the profligacy that has "necessitated" monstrous increases in tuition.

      And one-fifth of the professors "voluntarily moved from full-time to part-time positions"? The scam-dean must think that we were born yesterday.

      "The school attracts a certain type of student, Mihaly says — people more concerned with changing the world than making money — and those who don’t fit that mold generally don’t apply." More bullshit propaganda calculated to appeal to the emotions of prospective students who fancy themselves as noble and selfless leaders. Well, I certainly hope that the students of Vermont Law Skule are not very concerned with making money, because they're most unlikely to succeed in that department. Mind you, they won't succeed in changing the world either…

      “We’ve always accepted a relatively high percentage of our applicants because the people who apply to us self-select.” What? Applicants at every law school self-select.

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    6. True, 10:02, but VLS applicants do it for totally altruistic reasons.

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    7. 10:02, that woman was not on they payroll as an assistant director of whatever because the school needed her to carry out her sinecure duties. She was on the payroll because she got herself elected to the Vermont state house, and the law school thought it would be good business to have a politician on the payroll, watching out for its interests in the capital. She must not have done a very good job if they canned her.

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  26. Look out, MA ... there's an "echo" over at Nando's TTR site. Basically, he plagiarized your article about the Vermont Law - HBCU partnership. He changed around SOME of the phrases.

    It's mighty funny watching a bunch of lily-white layabouts wax indignant and righteous over black students being the focus of an advertising campaign. They benefit from affirmative action at your expense, they (mostly) receive cross-subsidized "scholarships" that ensure they pay only a tiny fraction of that 50K annual tuition, and everyone else pays a HIGHER bill (and goes even deeper into debt, of course) so the black students can attend for free. The POOR black students!

    In many ways, baseball as a national pastime has been uprooted and supplanted. The NEW national pastime seems to be for every white idiot in America to run the fake outrage machine over the deplorable - deplorable! - abuse of black America. LOL

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    1. I consider Nando a pioneer and am happy that he ran with something I wrote about.

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  27. I went to this shithole's website.

    This is a cynical - a highly cynical - scam.

    This is like.. I was left with the feeling of Boomer-Mania. A bunch of cynical, limousine liberal lilly Whitey, McWhitty's aiming their institution at a squarely 20-Something naive crowd using the "Do Good / Change the World / Protect the Environment / LGBT Rights" etc. "Join A (PC) Cause" classic hippie bullshite.

    They showcase, of course, successful grads (survivor bias in play) and talk about how principled they are and how the school took stands on various issues, etc. Risk-taking is good, yada, yada, yada...

    The website has all the right buzzwords to attract naive Lemmings. Slick, polished - and highly planned with a purpose.

    Disgusting.

    I clicked closed with a feeling of disgust. All law schools play on these themes to a greater of lesser degree. But this Toilet takes it to a whole other level.

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    1. Perhaps we need a way to combat survivor bias. Imagine how Web sites and other promotional publications would look if law schools were required to publish, with equal prominence, accounts from all recent graduates about their success or otherwise in finding work.

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  28. Did you recently suffer severe brain damage, 12:48?

    Here is the portion you are referring to, which has not been edited by me in any way, idiot:

    "http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2014/02/vermont-law-might-as-well-offer-free.html

    OTLSS contributor MA posted an entry labeled “Vermont Law Might As Well Offer Free Balance Transfers Too” - on February 7, 2014. Read the following excerpt:

    “According to this press release, Vermont Law is signing partnership agreements with a few historically black colleges and universities (HBCU's). These agreements will allow students at these colleges to have access to pre-law counseling from real life law school counselors and a tuition break (cleverly disguised as scholarships) once they sign up for classes.

    This plan by Vermont Law is a new direction that I can see more law schools taking. This agreement gives Vermont Law a captive audience at the HBCU's they are partnering with…After listening to their friendly Vermont Law counselors, these students will be convinced that a Vermont Law degree is the key to that $160,000 starting salary everyone talks about. The counselors have at least a year to whisper sweet fantasies into the students' ears and convince them three years in South Royalton is just like being in Lake Havasu and Harvard at the same time. I am sure that the HBCUs' administrations are getting a kickback here in exchange for pushing their undergrads towards law schools like lambs being led to the slaughter. It's a win-win for the schools, even if the students are being lured into financial ruin.” [Emphasis mine]

    There is no honor among academic thieves. In their eyes, students are a means to an end, i.e. federally-backed student loans."

    That is referred to as correct citation and quotation, moron. Look it up sometime.

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    1. Nando, I am honored to have inspired a article on your excellent site.

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  29. MODERATION NOTE:

    1. Our policy favors openness for a number of reasons. We've been accused (faslely) of deleting substantive criticism. We essentially have to fight trolls on two fronts: those who want to fill the site with rubbish and then claim we encourage rubbish or are nothing more that rubbish on one hand, and on the other hand those who want us to heavily moderate the comments so they can claim that we delete unfavorable viewpoints and aren't interested in serious discussion. As a result, we (I, at least) default on letting quasi-substantive commentary through for open rebuking and discussion unless it mentions the one troll who has been banned.

    2. I have deleted the repetitively racist and anti-semitic troll comments and left one as an example of what was posted. I find this a respectable response to the concerns in item 1. Obviously - and you would have to be really fucking stupid to believe otherwise - no one endorses the racist and anti-semitic overtones mixed in with the partial substantive comment and possible application of Poe's law. If we need to delete this poster entirely, we can take that matter up later.

    3. I also deleted commentary directed at the moderators. I can't speak for the other moderators, but it pisses me off far, far more seeing whining about the moderation than it does seeing troll commentary. Being a moderator on this site is fairly simple. Contact us, post a few main posts, show loyalty to the movement, and sha-zam, you can moderate comments here. Instead of posting snide little remarks, why not volunteer?

    And, if you don't want to do that, please email if you have a problem with the moderation instead of posting comments and mucking up the comment thread. I will continue to delete such comments in the future regardless of what else is in the post.

    And a final word: to the loser asshole who continues to try and post comments about a certain banned poster: please stop. I don't care what posts you think he's making. You are the only one who is obsessed with him. I will continue to mark every one of your inane comments that mentions said poster as spam in the hopes (fingers crossed) that Google's spam filter will pick it up and start nuking your stupid comments on sight.

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  30. You are doing God's work here in exposing the overlord's lawland scams. Its got to be tough moderating this site and I respect that. As possibly the Greatest Poster Known (GPK) and the greatest lawland truthsayer and prophet who has predicted much of the down fall of the business model of law, I say my hats off to you! God bless!

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