A NAVAJO LAW SCHOOL?
Diné College, of the Navajo Nation, is considering the establishment of a law school. "In a press release, the tribal college stated that discussion about developing such a program occurred during a symposium on Dec. 12 and Dec. 13, where participants talked about accreditation, core courses and specializations, judicial advocates, traditional Navajo law and names for the law school."
One critical question seems to have been left out of that symposium: money. How much would it cost to set up a law school at Diné College? Where would the money be found? How much would the students pay? Would the school generate sufficient revenue? Exciting though the planning of curricula and the selection of a name may be, these practical questions must be answered first.
I'll surprise everyone by saying that this is one case in which a new law school is justified in principle. The Navajo Nation legitimately needs the educational and other institutions that will support genuine sovereignty. And no existing law school can properly teach Navajo law, despite the pretensions of narcissistic law professors who think that they know everything. Nonetheless, it is not enough to say "We should have a law school", as college president Charles "Monty" Roessel did in a press release. Many localities from southernmost Texas to northern New England, from remote Appalachia to rural Idaho, are saying the same thing. Unless the proposed law school would be viable, it should not be established.
"LAW SCHOOLS GIVE BACK TO THE TUNE OF $111 MILLION"
A ridiculous advertisement masquerading as journalism asserts that despite law schools' "bad rap", "it would be hard to argue that they are not assets to their communities". Why? Because the Association of American Law Schools (Ass'oALS), whose name says it all, claims that "the total value of the students’ time" spent on "the delivery of legal services through clinics, other experiential courses and pro bono activities of graduating law students" during their last year at some 105 law schools "is estimated to be in excess of $111.5 million". On the basis of that allegation, the "article" concludes that "[l]aw schools give back" to their communities.
There are several problems with this piece of nonsense. An obvious one is the questionable claim that the students' time is given by the law schools. There might be some justification for that at those schools, most of them über-toilets, that require their students to perform unpaid work and even charge them hefty tuition for the privilege. Even so, the credit that Ass'oALS gives to law schools (surprise!) appears to be misplaced.
The valuation of the allegedly donated time is, quite frankly, idiotic. Our own Dybbuk demolished last year's similar claim that the "legal services" in question were worth $81.8 million. Three years ago, I similarly put paid to a ridiculous claim from tiny über-toilet U Mass Dartmouth that its students' so-called pro bono work since 2010 was worth $4.5 million.
If my experience was any indication, law student spending in local barrooms and liquor stores far outstripped the contributions of clinics. Hell, some clinic work involved keeping dead-beat tenants in their apartments for months rent free by raising every trivial defect the clinicians could find in the eviction process. Of course, piling on the overhead for the landlords who catered to those without a lot of money to pay did a lot for the working poor who could pay their rent.
ReplyDeleteNow that SCOTUS seems to have recognized a constitutional right to shit on the sidewalk maybe the Bay Area's ubiquitous law schools could be ranked by the tonnage of the foo they put out there to help the folks with low-paying jobs in the tourist industry.
At least those of us who spent our spare time buying liquor over a counter paid cash money and shat in the restroom.
I love this comment.
DeleteI'm going to repost my comment from Reddit that goes towards the possibility for a Dine Law School and why the idea has merit:
ReplyDeleteAffordability is a must but thankfully schools (mostly tribal colleges.) like Dine that educate a large American Indian student body get federal money from the Bureau of Indian Affairs for that purpose which should discount the rate (at least for Indians, I could see the college enrolling non-Indians looking for a JD in the southwest but who could not get into New Mexico or the Arizona schools now that summit went belly up.) Indian students at tribal colleges are also favored by scholarship orgs like the American Indian college fund. So school shouldn't be a debt trap. While Accreditation be trickier but the Navajo Nation has a lot of friends with contacts with the ABA: https://www.ailc-inc.org/
I am hopeful this law school could be like the HBCU schools but for Indians. It could also serve as a school for law training prospective tribal judges who are often (this can really range from tribe to tribe though.) middle aged or older members of the community who did not have the opportunity to go to law school or who are entering a second career. There are also a good amount of jobs in Indian law (not high paying but good work that is there and not soul crushing). Overall, it's a really good idea.
A close friend from college worked in the Navajo Nation to pay back his Public Health Service time for medical school. He was trained as an internist, but basically did almost everything-including rudimentary dentistry-because there were no other medical providers available. Most residents don't have running water, many suffer from chronic illnesses such as diabetes, and unemployment is very high due both to location-about as remote as it gets-and recent economic reverses(e.g. closure of a coal-fired power plant which supplied a lot of jobs). The last thing it needs is a law school, which would make the scamming fat cats richer, while saddling their students with massive debt. If anything, if there is extra money, it ought to be spent on basic human needs-specifically healthcare. If any sort of legal training is necessary, it ought to be taught in the traditional way. Seeing how endemic poverty is within the Navajo Nation, it would almost impossible to find an idea more stupid than wasting money on a formal law school.
ReplyDeleteAnd regarding point #2-this canard has been going on for years. And it's a great scam: the law schools charge preposterous tuition(footed by the taxpayer with loan guarantees) and require their students to perform legal services, which the schools then value at preposterous rates(ignoring the fact that law students know so little their "legal advice" is probably worth just that-very little). It's an almost absolute perfect con.
RE the tribal law school, I think the article alludes to your answers. It would actually be run essentially as a sub-campus of the University of Arizona,
ReplyDeletewhich is prolly going to award pretty much max merit aid which the Nation will then match i.e. double. So it doesn't sound like people are going to be asked to go 200k in debt for the place.
As to the value of law student clinics to communities, I don't have a problem with the number, but with its relevance. They could've valued it at $200/hr instead of $20/hr if the students are allowed to practice under supervision, so if anything the number is conservative.
The real problem is that number, like the amount students spend of their loan dollars at bars and restaurants, should be irrelevant. It is divorced from the actual goal of the school which is supposed to be to produce more lawyers, not to produce more law students. Saying the community will benefit from having law STUDENTS around, when it has no need for LAWYERS, pretty much acknowledges that our need for these people evaporates the second they walk across the graduation stage and can no longer work for free or for credit. It's not sustainable because that community benefit is only realized so long as more suckers enroll despite there being nothing for them when they finish. It pretty much robs Peter (the taxpayers funding the $0 IBR payments of graduates) to pay Paul (the beneficiaries of students' temporary ability to work for free). Same is true of what they spend locally; they are spending money borrowed from the taxpayers which will in many cases never be repaid.
That kind of thinking is downright Ponzi-esque, as it depends on new people continuing to enroll despite the ever-increasing number of unemployed and under-employed people coming out the other end.
There are no jobs for most new and recent law school grads, but law students and applicants refuse to acknowledge this reality. I have been practicing law for nearly a quarter-century, and I run into unemployed and under-employed lawyers at local courthouses and jails all the freaking time. They fall into three broad categories: part-time work for the Public Defender's Office, temporary document review projects for 22 bucks per hour, and pro bono work for the local domestic violence shelter. I have gone on Reddit and tried to explain this to law students who refuse to acknowledge reality and literally think they will get jobs as Navy JAG officers like Tom Cruise in that movie, or like the JAG TV show. Or they blabber about their bright future in BigLaw, when in fact at most schools 90 percent of the class will never secure an interview with BigLaw let alone a job. And, at bottom schools, only the top 5 percent will be considered. I blame the media in its idiotic portrayal of lawyers and the law practice, I blame the law schools that blatantly lie to applicants, and I blame the gullible young applicants and students themselves. Bottom line, this does directly affect me, and affects other experienced lawyers I know, because it is very hard to raise our rates when unemployed fools are pouring out of law school and are willing to do legal work for pennies, or in some cases literally work for free. Right now in my state Court-Appointed Translators are paid just as much as Panel Attorneys representing cases referred out by the Public Defender's Office, and it appears, based on the grumbling I hear from translators, that soon a person whose sole skill is speaking Spanish and English will be paid more per hour than someone with a 4 year degree, plus a three year degree, plus the Bar Exam. It's just a pathetic, absolutely pathetic state of affairs for the "legal profession".
DeleteAfter three decades of legal practice, I can only echo everything written by 9:21a; basically the market is saturated and new JDs, often working for little or no pay, are flooding the market. Even the local US Attorney's Office was posting no-pay positions lasting one year, with no promise of any type you'll even be considered for a paying position.
DeleteAnd JAG? I was in JAG 30 years ago; no statistics were published then, but as far as we could tell then, it appeared that over 50% of applicants were accepted. The percentage could well have been higher.
Now? Well, before JDU went bust, there were several posters who commented that as far as anyone could tell, JAG acceptance rates now were much much lower, probably 20% or so.
So it's pretty simple: until dozens of the TTTs close, the market will continue to be saturated, thereby continuing to depress wages. Simple supply and demand.
Can't blame anyone too much, except of course the schools and the moneylenders themselves.
DeleteThe scambloggers are up against the American worldview itself, whereas the lemmings are just adhering to what every suburban American child is taught practically from birth: The idea that we live in a meritocracy, that you can be anything you want if you just work hard enough and have the "courage to follow your dream," and the idea that anyone who says otherwise just has a case of sour grapes.
Of course, the Horatio Alger myth is, indeed, a myth. Hard work in and of itself never got anyone anything. It must be combined with a shrewd analysis of supply and demand, plus varying degrees of luck (right family connections, right place/right time, etc) to pay off. Otherwise you're just a hamster in a wheel: Working very hard but getting nowhere.
"The scambloggers are up against the American worldview itself": well said. We are Cassandra, telling the truth that few are willing to hear. Many people prefer to believe flattering old lies.
DeleteEven as a young boy, Old Guy readily saw through the lie that "you can be anything you want to be". Irrespective of his inclinations, Old Guy was never going to be president, astronaut, quarterback, or first violinist. It was also obvious, even to young Old Guy, that US society is no meritocracy. What Old Guy did not see, however, was that even conventional routes to the fulfillment of modest aspirations might well be closed. Although he Did Everything Right, Old Guy could not sustain a career in high technology (what seems to be called STEM nowadays) and has likewise failed to find a job as a lawyer. People with Old Guy's disadvantages but without his advantages cannot expect to fare better.
It is commonly believed that Horatio Alger's so-called novels—tiresome variations on a single tired theme, in the style of Harlequin Romances—promoted the value of hard work. They in fact promoted the value of luck: a street urchin who happened to catch the eye of a rich benefactor would suddenly be elevated to some clerical job, while millions of other street urchins went unmentioned. So the Horatio Alger myth is a myth in more ways than one.
Incidentally, before writing those awful books, Alger was driven out of the clergy for molesting boys in the congregation. Could there be a seamy side to those stories of boys who found favor with rich male benefactors?
If it's one thing I've learned in life, and it's something that took me a long time to accept, it's that the truth is utterly irrelevant.
DeleteIt is whatever society deems is the truth that actually becomes the truth, for that time. This truth can and often is in complete contradiction to reality, but trying to fight the conventional truth is an even harder task than fighting reality.
Well, OG, "Could there be a seamy side" doesn't tell the half of it. In an age when the mainstream media is cautious of saying anything that might be construed as homophobic the term "Chicken Hawk" has fallen into disuse, but old Horatio was like the great-granddaddy of them all. For the uninitiated, a pedophile is attracted to pre-pubescent children, while Chicken Hawk is slang for something that really doesn't have a medical name, a man attracted to pubescent or post-pubescent boys and young men in their teens or very early twenties. (Like the "N" word, however, I have overheard it used by gay men speaking among themselves.)
DeleteAlger never denied the accusations of his fellow clergymen and sorta-kinda apologized. He had no known interest in women and later in life "unofficially" adopted a couple of "street boys" whom he graciously invited to move in with him. Your analysis is spot on and OBTW, "unofficial" adoption gets you around those pesky laws about incest.
The irony of Alger's story is that in response to changing public tastes he had to introduce elements like crime into his later books to bolster sales. In a somewhat clueless era this led to efforts to ban his books from public libraries by librarians for whom what you picked up on went right over their heads. Bet they missed the point of the sharing a bed stuff in Moby Dick, too.
Not directly related to OG's post, but what a profession; no wonder I-and so many others-regret our choice:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/ethiopia-crash-victims-relatives-were-061140663.html
One the offending law firms was Witherspoon Law Group. Google them. Here are some previews:
Delete1. Their clients, apparently, are not put off by the CEO's inability to write grammatical sentences on their web site.
2. Wouldn't do it myself but their practice of using funeral directors to solicit wrongful death clients for them is (legality and ethics notwithstanding) actually kind of clever.
It is considered good practice to wait until the body is cold before soliciting the bereaved.
DeletePerhaps some enterprising pettifogger will install on aircraft a device that will scatter business cards in the event of a crash.
Meh; the practice of paying off funeral home employees, ambulance drivers, paramedics, etc etc has been going on for decades. There was even a movie about a hack lawyer who paid off funeral homes-The Verdict, with Paul Newman as the hack. Typical Hollywood nonsense; he's an unreconstructed alcoholic hack attorney who suddenly finds his inner Clarence Darrow when confronted by institutional corruption and he gets justice. Yep, just like real life.
DeleteBetter still, OG, try this. When I was young airports had vending machines where nervous passengers could buy one-trip life insurance coverage. Pull those machines out of storage and re-tool them to dispense one-trip wrongful death retainer agreements.
DeleteHey, 10:55, 5:49 here. A couple of things.
Delete1. I saw The Verdict when it came out, but you should really Google this Witherspoon Law Group. The Verdict depicted Paul Newman passing some folded bills to a funeral home employee - as you point out, old hat. But Mr. Witherspoon and his staff have taken it to a whole new level, maybe even a level or two above that. They've got funeral directors telling the bereaved that that nice Mr. Witherspoon can advance the money for a nicer funeral than they can afford (or maybe even any kind of funeral because they can afford nothing) as part of a larger deal. A win-win for everybody but the client who is now in hock to the lawyer with only one way out. I should have made that part clear in my original comment.
2. In the years after seeing The Verdict I came to appreciate how unrealistic it is on so many levels, e.g., seasoned trial counsel at white shoe Boston firm sinks his own case by asking a "why" question on cross. But it's worth a look for something it could and should have developed more, the conflict between the search for truth and economics. The scene where Newman is in the Bishop's office and turns down the settlement is very good, however improbable, when he talks about people who should care being paid to look the other way. So is the scene when one of the defense lawyers ells the Bishop the damning witness' testimony is irrelevant because it has been stricken but the Bishop gets no answer when he asks: "But did you believe her?" The Bishop was played by Edward Brinn, a fine performer who never wanted for work but never managed to really break out of minor supporting roles.
In any event, as has been pointed out all over this blog so many times there is a great pool of unserved clients and a lot of unobtained justice because by flooding the marketplace law schools have made serving them uneconomical.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Harvard Law School's first Native American professor is running for President. Perhaps the excess students, meaning most of them, from a Navajo law school could become change agents and politicians. It is truly a versatile degree!
ReplyDeleteAs Old Guy said though, all joking aside the Navajo Nation is a rare example of a place that really does need lawyers, especially lawyers who are actually from the reservation.
DeleteWhat people don't realize is how developed the judicial system out there actually is. They even have their own bar exam, but the problem is that their own people can't pass it. Basically, nonmembers have to be lawyers licensed in one of the four corners states to sit, whereas tribal members can just get an associate degree and become "tribal court advocates." Problem is, the bar exam is a real bar exam, so the would-be advocates almost never pass but the JDs almost always do. As a result, there are very few practicing tribal court advocates, most of whom are only around because they were grandfathered out of the difficult bar exam. The lawyers who practice out there come from elsewhere, and they tend to represent corporate interests.
They want lawyers who are actually from their community and truly understand their culture, and they need something like this to get it. They're not going to be looking to make money off the students, who it must be emphasized often grew up in poverty given a 50%+ unemployment rate on-reservation. Heck, a lot of people out there would come from homes that don't even have electricity. This is not some casino-rich tribe located within spitting distance of a major metro. It's extremely remote, even frontier in a lot of places, and working there is really akin to doing doctors without borders in a third world country or something.
I suspect the U of A will see this is a charitable endeavor and the last thing they or the Nation want is to saddle these kids with a bunch of debt. They'll probably spend money, not make it, and just run the school at a loss indefinitely, again as just a charitable endeavor for the benefit of tribal members. It will be cheap, and when they graduate the tribe will have pretty much guaranteed jobs waiting for them.
This is a very unique circumstance specific to a very unique population. A law school really is needed out there, as amazing as it is to utter those words and think there might actually be a situation where it is true.
Sorry, but this is a profoundly terrible idea.
DeleteAs a practical matter, Navajo have solved their legal problems through traditional methods for centuries, and as a (quasi-) sovereign nation, continue to do so today.
And for most disputes involving non-Navajo actors, US courts-either state or federal-will control.
And if there is a desperate need for attorneys "who are actually from their community and truly understand their culture" then it would be much much better to simply fund full tuition/living expenses scholarships for several Navajo at the state law school. It can be similar to public health scholarships, where the recipient pays back one year service for every year paid.
But there is absolutely no need for a law school, and in fact it would be an utter and total waste of resources, and would create an worthless entity to absorb valuable dollars needed elsewhere.
Let's fact the facts:
Unemployment is 56%
https://www.discovernavajo.com/fact-sheet.aspx
Median income is $27, 400/annually well below Arizona's $50,400, and it has twice the poverty rate
http://nptao.arizona.edu/sites/nptao/files/navajo_nation_2016_community_profile.pdf
And health care for Navajo is abysmal, with a lower life expectancy and much higher mortality rates:
https://www.nihb.org/docs/07102009/Navajo%20Nation%20Initial%20Response%20on%20NHCR.pdf
Any and all available funds ought to go to healthcare, housing, sanitation-in other words, basic human services. This is one of those "feel-good" ideas which is a genuinely bad idea.
To that I would add that the reason going to small-town Nebraska doesn't work is that there are too few people who need and can afford legal services spread over too large an area to serve economically. A friend in Chicago once told me of the much higher fees charged in downstate Illinois for routine work like real estate closings. Without the higher fees lawyers couldn't make enough to stay in business and the clients pay the premium rates because the alternative is to have to go far from home for services at considerable expense and inconvenience.
DeleteOn this massive reservation you've got even fewer, much poorer people spread out over a vast area. If there was a way for lawyers to make money they'd already be there.
They do not solve all disputes with traditional means. Their tribal courts apply traditional ideas through a concept they call "fundamental law" but that is basically just their own homegrown common law and it is developed through judicial precedent like anywhere else.
DeleteSecond, not all tribal members are traditional, and not all disputes are between tribal members anyway as certain contracts will consent to tribal court jurisdiction as a condition of doing business on the reservation. Even when it is between tribal members, a lot of them reject the "old ways" and do not believe in medicine men and whatnot. Using a medicine man for dispute resolution is available, of course, but optional for the litigants and it is really just ADR, which they call "peacemaking" instead of mediation. If the medicine man doesn't get them to settle their dispute, it will return to an American style courtroom.
As to whether the need could be met by just giving a certain number of them a scholarship to regular schools, that already happens. In fact, elite schools clamor for these kinds of "good story" applicants and often pony up a lot of scholarship money for them. The problem, though, is that once educated, they tend not to want to return to the reservation.
As to the poverty statistics, the post above specifically mentions the 50% unemployment, and indeed the lion's share of the money for social services already does go to healthcare and whatnot. For example, all sorts of housing and loan assistance and other enticements are available if you are a nurse or doc going to work in an I.H.S. hospital, or if you are a teacher going to work at a reservation school. But almost no attention has been paid to legal services, and those who try to provide them coming in from outside often can't because there's no housing for nonmembers unless you work at the hospital or school. But these are not poor people's only needs. Domestic violence and general lawlessness are huge issues out there, as are various off-reservation businesses that prey on the ignorant poor such as payday lenders, buy-here-pay-here used car lots, and mobile home manufacturers who also use a predatory buy-here-pay-here style of financing. And it isn't just the tribal members themselves who need help with these problems, it is the tribal council that can try to legislate in ways that help, and the intergovernmental relations with stateside and federal authorities that happen all the time too.
There's an unmet need out there for expertise of all kinds, law is one of them, and sending them away somewhere they usually won't return from is no solution.
10:46-it's clear you and I will never agree, and in fact several of the issues(corrupt local businesses preying on Navajo) you mention require attorneys trained in state/federal law. And any cultural needs could be met with full scholarships with payback for Navajo students.
DeleteIt's also clear that your familiarity with the nation is cursory at best. I know a teacher who worked there for four years, as well as the physician who worked there for four years also, both within the past few years. Living conditions are deplorable; with grinding poverty to the point where many have no running water, let alone central heating or AC. The quality of healthcare available is very good(my friend and his colleagues were all excellent providers)-but it's very very sparse. Jobs are non-exisitent. And how you can justify spending any money-at all-when unemployment is above 50% and most live well below the poverty line is simply astounding and utterly indefensible.
This is one of those "feel good" law school ideas which benefits only the scam. Let's provide a better standard of living for people before dumping more money into what is already recognized as a scam par excellence, the Law School Cartel.
Prediction: Southern Illinois University will be the first public law school to close. I base this on:
ReplyDelete1. Declining enrollment (85 1Ls)
2. Dismal employment (58%)
3. Low bar passage rates (62-ish percent)
4. Parent University is broke, and is rated junk-bond status
5. Illinois is broke and can't bail them out.
Thanks for your prediction. Southern Illinois is indeed a prime candidate for imminent closure. So is Northern Illinois, for most of the reasons that you gave.
Delete12:02-that would be a great way to start the new year-and the new decade.
DeleteBut let's not get too optimistic; have any public law schools closed recently? Even if the school is a money-pit, there's usually a local politician(several actually) who want places like this to stay open because it would make them look bad to the local voters for it to close, since many of these places are economic generators for the local community. And yes, that's a terrible reason for a law school to stay open, but such is politics.
But if you are correct, that could open the floodgates to the closure of many unneeded publicly funded law schools.
NIU does, however, have the advantage of geography. While not an easy commute it is commutable from many large Chicago suburbs, especially for a day student who will be heading west when most traffic is heading east and vice versa. A friend who went to DePaul has, over the years, counseled some DePaul-bound 0L's to consider opting for the commute over the private school tuition, the reputations of the two schools being not much off each other's. Carbondale's nearest population centers are both 100 miles distant: St. Louis, MO and Evansville, IN, the citizens of neither of which are eligible for in-state tuition
Delete4:23 here, and boy was that my bad. Both NIU and SIU charge the same tuition for in-state and out-of-state students. A year's tuition at SIU will set you back under $18K. Adjusted for inflation that's less than what you'd have paid for a year at a lot of private T-25's in the mid-1980's, and living expenses must be pretty reasonable. Toilet or not you'd think they would be packing them in just on price.
Delete