Recently the ABA changed its requirements for continued accreditation such that a law school must see at least 75% of those graduates who write the bar exam get a passing score within two years of graduation. Eleven law schools failed this standard, and far more came within one or two students of failing.
Here is the list of greatest shame:
Faulkner, 62.5%
District of Columbia, 64.1%
Mississippi College, 64.2%
Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, 64.5%
Cooley, 66.0%
South Dakota, 67.2%
Florida Coastal, 67.3%
John Marshall—Atlanta, 67.3%
Florida A&M, 70.8%
Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, 70.9%
Charleston, 72.1%
Golden Gate just met the standard, with a rate of 75.0%. Thirty-three schools came in below 80%, and 96 below 90%.
Bear in mind that these figures are for those who take a bar exam. Law skules are notorious for discouraging their lousiest graduates, to the point of bribing them to "defer" the exam.
What happens to the aforementioned über-toilets now? The scam-administering ABA will review the data this month and send out letters to those law schools that are indeed non-compliant with the new standard. Those schools get two years to bring themselves into compliance. Of course, the ABA can always extend the deadline, change the rules, or otherwise do nothing about the most appalling toilet law schools, to say nothing of the merely horrible ones.
Well, this one's easy: none of the schools close b/c of ABA action. All get the letter and a stern lecture from the ABA, then get another two years.
ReplyDeleteLeaving out the two PR schools, why would anyone-anyone-attend a law school such as the ones on this list?
And why does the ABA bother anyway? If a US medical school had a below 75% pass rate on the boards, the AMA would shut it down yesterday. The entire legal "profession" is a joke. And the joke is on the taxpayers who fund these TTTTs.
The two in Puerto Rico should not be exempted. I hadn't looked into them very much before, but I was shocked to see this:
Deletehttps://www.lstreports.com/schools/catholic-pr/jobs/
Ten months after graduation, 59% of the Class of 2018 was unemployed, most of the rest had short-term or part-time jobs, and only 4% had regular jobs (all in government). In other words, not even one student in twenty got anything like a good result here.
And this is hardly glorious:
https://www.lstreports.com/schools/interamerican/jobs/
The ABA feels the need to be seen as doing something about the law-school scam. So it sets up "standards" such as a requirement that 75% of those who take a bar exam pass within two years of graduation. As you said, that's a terribly weak standard.
DeleteBut even that standard means very little, because the ABA won't enforce it. I suspect that the ABA will use this excuse to yank the accreditation from one or two über-toilets—maybe Faulkner and John Marshall, which are probably going to have to close anyway because they don't bring in enough money. Such limp-wristed efforts may create the impression that the ABA is Doing Something. Actually, it is merely perpetuating the scam while pretending to take principled action.
Some notes about that standard emerge from its FAQ: https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/council_reports_and_resolutions/may19/3-19-may-316-faq.pdf
DeleteFirst, some statements in there make it pretty clear that they did this, in part, because DOE requires them to have some sort of "outcome based" measure, and they felt bar passage would be better than employment outcomes. In other words, they enacted this to beat back pressure to actually measure placement success which they would regard as even worse.
Second, the actual enforcement mechanism says that a school out of compliance gets two years to come into compliance and can also get longer if they demonstrate "extraordinary circumstances" whatever that means. Could be unlimited extra time.
Third, they can always use scholarship bribery and cut class size for a couple of years to come back into compliance, then once compliant, go right back to admitting people with 135 LSATs until they get pursued for noncompliance again.
Finally, the number is computed based only on people who sit for a bar exam, and only based on the grads who respond to a questionnaire. Something tells me the bottom X% of the class is, much like with employment numbers, going to magically become really hard to "find" after graduation. Or the school could put them in some kind of school-funded job that doesn't require them to sit for the bar, and just keep them in it until they're outside the two year measuring window.
It also doesn't stop the schools from flunking out the bottom X% with no degree after they've milked them for a couple of years tuition, nor from modifying curricula to teach heavily to the bar and forcing the at-risk students to enroll in intensive bar-prep programs as a condition of graduation, rather than just relying on barbri.
Bottom line, they made sure the schools can still game this, and the whole reason they did it in the first place was to beat back pressure to enact an employment-based outcome standard.
Probably conceding too much, but in light of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria, at least the PR schools(both pretty bad schools by all objective numbers) have a somewhat reasonable excuse for things being a mess; the stateside schools have no such excuse.
DeleteGood observations, 1:20.
DeleteFrom the document that you cited:
"The Council concluded that bar passage outcomes are better measures than either graduation rates or employment results to meet the DOE’s requirements. Those other important outcomes are not as directly relevant as bar pass outcomes to determining whether a law school is offering an educational program that is comprehensive and sufficiently rigorous to merit accreditation.… Employment outcomes may relate to whether a law school’s enrollment is right-sized for the current market and whether the market/profession accepts the rigor of a school’s program by hiring its graduates. Employment outcomes, however, are far enough removed from the school’s control to make them inapt measures of the comprehensiveness and rigor of a law school’s education program."
What a load of crap! As if anyone cared about "the comprehensiveness and rigor of a law school's education program" divorced from practical considerations. Certainly "whether a law school’s enrollment is right-sized for the current market and whether the market/profession accepts the rigor of a school’s program by hiring its graduates" are not far removed from the school's control. Yet the ABA is happy to accredit La Toilette as long as some low standard of passing the bar exam is met, even if the students end up saddled with unmanageable debt and cannot find work.
Solution: Strip the scam-fostering ABA of all authority and influence over the accreditation of law schools.
@1:20: Makes you wonder just how bad the employment statistics really are. Also it seems like the scammers have been forced to move off the similar "minorities access to the legal field" schtick they were running. Turns out even the unconnected minorities eventually figured out that getting a worthless law degree does not in fact grant entry into practicing law in gainful employment. The good, stable employment in law is still lily white as always. The minorities get to work doc review, while enjoying their student loan debt. Interestingly enough, when minority lawyers brought suit to argue discrimination, pointing to the law firms' usage of doc reviewers for their diversity statistics, the rigged system immediately insisted that was a laughable reasoning and those doc reviewers are full fledged, respected attorneys and no distinction can be made with associates. Then turned around and refused to count doc review for legal experience requirements for waiving into the bar.
DeleteWhile I don't share the same doom and gloom others do, or perhaps it's more that I have zero belief in any change actually ever happening in my lifetime, the facts do generally speak for themselves as well as the great lengths these schools take to obfuscate and outright hide material facts. Imagine practicing law the way these scammers operate, the court would come down hard on any attorney that believed this type of behavior could be justified.
Here's the plain-English of the standard:
DeleteAt least 75% of your "Active and Engaged Alumni" (the ones who keep you informed about where they are and what they're up to with no effort on your part to track them down) have to manage to pass the bar within FOUR ATTEMPTS (bar is generally offered 2x/yr).
And if you can't meet that lofty goal don't worry, particularly not if you are a longstanding member of "the club." You get two years plus potentially unlimited "extraordinary circumstance" extensions, which will only be denied if we need a sacrificial lamb such as some newly-created upstart that isn't a "real" member of our club anyway, like an Infilaw school.
So rigorous.
9:28,
DeleteAccording to the USMLE, in 2017-2018, 95% of MD examinees from US and Canadian med schools passed Step 1, 96% passed Step 2 CK, and 94% passed Step 2 CS. Passing all of these exams is required to graduate and start residency. How could there be such a stark difference in outcomes between med schools and law schools? Having gone through law school in the mid 2000s (when the legal market was supposedly great) and having struck out at OCI with Big Law and Big Fed despite good grades and law review, having been rejected by s—t law, local prosecutor offices, the public defenders offices, and local government, and having gone through med school, the match, and residency, I can tell you the goals of law schools are very different from med schools. Law schools are operated solely for the benefit of the lazy non-practicing attorneys in administrator and professor positions. Their salaries are tied to admitting lemmings eligible for student loans. Med schools, relying on practicing physicians to teach students, operate with the goal of matching students into residency to produce practicing physicians. I’ll never forget when a med school professor (and practicing physician), lamented to our class that some Med school grads where forgoing residency to join tech startups. These graduates took spots from people who wanted to practice medicine. But in law school, the toilets churn out more grads than available legal jobs. So the toilets brag when a lemming returns to an old corporate job. That’s a JD advantage job! What happened to all the poor people out there who were representing themselves and couldn’t find a lawyer? Law profs and administrators don’t give a damn. Otherwise they’d be out there helping the poor pro bono.
I have said this before. For all of the jokes some people may make about Carribean med schools, going to a Caribbean med school is a safer bet than going to a toilet law school. U.S. grads of international med schools had a 59% match rate according to the NMRP (compared to 93.9% for grads of U.S. med schools). That is a far better employment rate than the toilet law schools. As residents, those grads earn salaries in the $50k range, with full benefits. Most of those grads will go into primary care and earn salaries ranging from the low $200s at academic medical centers to the $400s in rural areas. These grads are eligible for PSLF as long as they continue to work for a non-profit after residency (we’ll see if the Feds start forgiving loans or continue PSLF). But if you go to a toilet law school and borrow $250k+ and go solo, you need to pay for an office, pay for health insurance, pay back your student loans, on a salary that some estimates put as low as the mid $30k range. I really wish a Cooley student or other toileteer would comment on this blog and explain their thinking.
Good observations about the stark difference in outcomes between medical schools and law schools. The medical exams are also decidedly more difficult and more demanding than the exams for admission to the bar.
DeleteOne slight correction: the law-school scamsters are not all "lazy non-practicing attorneys". Many are not attorneys at all. Some don't even have legal training (although that's also true of various hackademic "specialists" in "bio-ethics" and the like that teach bullshit courses at medical schools).
Another difference: professors of medicine are expected to do beneficial practical work and research, whereas profe$$ors of law are actually expected not to do anything beneficial. No profe$$or of law wants to touch the word practice with a barge pole. That would ruin chances for tenure. Instead, profe$$ors of law are expected to produce utterly useless scholarshit published in journals edited by law students. Many professors freely admit that they have no idea of how to start a lawsuit, draft a contract, or do anything else that we lowly practitioners do. They even pride themselves on their ivory-tower removal from the practice of law. Just try to find a professor of medicine (other than the assorted fakes like "bio-ethicists") who would boast of being unable to treat an ordinary infection and who would publish self-indulgent tripe about post-modern intersectional neo-Rawlsian narratives of medicine & hip-hop.
There are two primary differences between law and medicine as they relate to supply and demand:
DeleteFirst is third-party payment, whether insurance or medicare/caid. This drastically increases demand, particularly in states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA.
Second is the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which caps residency slots and thus caps supply.
With one hand, the government has given people the ability to pay for a professional service. Simultaneously, it has arbitrarily limited the supply of people who can provide that service by freezing the number of slots essentially at whatever they were in 1997.
If you raise demand and freeze supply, the effect on price (and thus, doc pay) is a predictable one.
And with law school, they did the exact opposite: They restricted demand by ensuring that only a narrow category of relatively serious criminal cases are generally eligible for publicly-funded legal counsel (with no federal support for the state/local expense of this constitutional obligation, thus ensuring states will do the bare minimum and pay the bare minimum), while simultaneously increasing supply by writing blank and limitless checks for tuition which schools naturally lowered their admissions standards to grab. As above, increases to supply with flat or decreasing demand have a likewise predictable effect on price and salary.
We had a firmwide diversity event this week, and I was obligated to go.
ReplyDeleteWe went to a swanky place on the Upper East Side, I walk in and I’m the first one there. I see a couple of young kids working as a greeters (handing out name tags, directing traffic to bar, etc). I am the first one from my firm to arrive, so I decide to hang out at the entrance with the kids. Now when I say kids, I mean early to mid twenties.
There’s a solid 8 Latina greeter and she starts telling me about how she’s happy to be a greeter at the event and it melds with her interest to be a lawyer. I asked her if she is in law school now. She says she’s a 1L. I said fuck it, I’m not saying shit, I just don’t care. She kept talking to me about how she moved to the East Coast from the West Coast and how her parents are pissed about it. I asked why she decided to move to the East Coast for law school (obviously, she’s at a TTT). She’s like I’ve been here for five years already. I was like oh nice, that’s how you got into the hospitality industry? She’s like yeah and I was also a teacher...
At that point, my heart sinks and the rage begins to boil. I asked her, and I’m not joking, with my lips quivering, “were you teaching at private school?” She’s like no, I was teaching in public school. I couldn’t let it go, I just couldn’t at that point. I pound the beer in my hands, put self interest aside about turning off a hot chick (I’m engaged, so I don’t care anyway) and about some sociopath hearing what I have to say and crippling me. I asked her “please tell me you weren’t tenured track.” She laughed and said “yeah, I was.” At that point, I just started begging, pleading, explaining, but that lemming would have nothing of it. “Please don’t discourage me, other people have told me this stuff already.” My response: “Listen to me, most of the people in this room are miserable, especially the men, and ask yourself why is a guy telling you all this negative shit? What interest do I have to look like an asshole to a pretty girl? I’m engaged to be married, and I’m not hitting on you, I’m trying to stop a disaster. This is my card, call me and I will put my fiancée on the line and she can tell you how I live, and what her main reservations about marrying me are. She can also tell you about her sister that’s a teacher in NYC, like you were, and how she’s living ten years out.” As I’m saying this shit, she’s ignoring. Some law school professor from her school came to the event and he started talking to her, etc. If it were not a crime, I would have no problems to commit as many heinous acts against that savage motherfucker as possible.
This girl left a tenured, NYC teaching gig to go to law school. Her health is going to get destroyed. She will never ever make the total career compensation of an NYC teacher as a lawyer and she will work 5 times as hard as a lawyer.
You know how this happened? No one told her the truth when she was teaching: you aren’t doing a sacrifice, this isn’t a calling, you aren’t underpaid. You are making a post-WWII salary with the associated life style. Shut your mouth, collect your salary, do your job and get your pension.
This girl literally threw her life away so some asshole at the TTT can mentally masturbate for half the year, confer upon her no useful skills, and saddle her with debt. If she manages to overcome all that, her reward will be 80 hour weeks with no retirement benefits or job security.
This is beyond ridiculous now.
lol good story. I am reminded of NYC's infamous "rubber rooms."
Deletehttps://nypost.com/2016/01/17/city-pays-exiled-teachers-to-snooze-as-rubber-rooms-return/
That girl's former job was so secure that even if she had been a truly awful teacher, it would have been so near-impossible to fire her that the best they can do is make you sit in a room, not teaching, with full pay, for years, hoping against hope that you'll just get so bored that you just quit. And that's for the worst of the worst.
I'm with you man. I have no idea why anyone would give up something that secure for something as awful as law.
Ah well, you can't really save anyone that doesn't want to be saved.
DeleteI mean we're not in 2005 back in the dark ages of the internet where there was no information around. The NY Times wrote an article, there's Campos, the Law Scamblogs had their heyday and are even winding down. We've been through some three generations of scambloggers and forums.
At this point, maybe it's just fate accompli. Let's be honest, someone as lazy as this person who was handed a great job and refused to be grateful for it perhaps deserves to be brought down and suffer in the mud. That will build appreciation eventually for these solid jobs and what you actually have in life, rather than everyone constantly believing they are all part of the wealthy classes and mocking each other for not having that show of prestige.
It takes awhile but things do eventually correct. If birth rates for the middle class drop, then society bifurcates into the natural elite wealthy class and everyone else in the same peasant level. It's absolutely natural. It was and is the course of things pretty much everywhere outside of 1950s-2000s USA. THAT is actually the anomaly. A strong middle class, or even a majority of real middle class. It's supposed to be serfs and lords, peasants and nobles, slaves and masters. There isn't supposed to be a much bigger group in between those.
“ I'm with you man. I have no idea why anyone would give up something that secure for something as awful as law.”
DeleteBecause if you are told your job is bad as a matter of political correctness, you begin to believe it.
Her life is going to be materially worse in every single respect: stress, physical health, mental health, financially (over the long term, etc. and why? Why does this have to happen? Solely for the benefit of law school professors receiving federally guaranteed money. Why can’t we just limit the money? Why is this fucking blank check being written to these parasites?
Why a fucking blank check? For reasons similar to those that explain the US's insane health-care "system", which combines high cost with uneven services and bureaucratic nightmares—all so that goddamn insurance companies can fatten themselves.
DeleteI have run into lemmings like this over the last 6 or 7 years and they just do not want to hear what you have to say. They can't be saved. I keep trying but I know that they just have to find out for themselves.
DeleteHer one saving grace is that she is attractive. Attractive gals in law school do tend to wind up in better places, and if she's a New York 8, that must mean at least a 9 or 10 anywhere else.
It's probably been mentioned before, but has anyone noticed that the 'you should have done your research' crowd are basically admitting the scam is right.
ReplyDeleteThey used to at least try to contradict the scambloggers, but now they're saying 'yep the figures are fake, and law leaves you worse off than not doing it, but you should have done your research!'.
Are you stupid?
DeleteIt's pretty obvious how many posts you make because the style is always the same, constant whining, victimhood, and lashing out at everyone trying to insist they are all supporting law schools.
You can put me in the group that says there is no excuse in 2020 for anyone to go to law school. Know who else you can put in that group? Old Guy.
So basically, you can just shove it. Your posts are always pathetic and you've probably driven off the handful of quality posters that still would come on here with insight on dealing with the law fallout. Like that poster that wrote about gutting through Big Law to provide for his family, and all you did was whine and complain and attack him every chance you got, with dozens of posts.
At least do me the favor of using a handle if you're going to make so many posts attacking people, so I know to skip over them more easily.
Yes, 10:31, I have maintained for years that there is no excuse for anyone to go to law school. Exceptionally I would allow an excuse for people—mostly trust-fund babies or retirees—who can pay for it in cash, want the degree for its own sake, and neither need nor expect to make any money with it.
DeleteThere was no excuse for Old Guy to go to law school. He blames himself for his folly.
Er, um, I'm not sure who I've offended. I'm simply saying that the law school defenders used to say 'its not that bad' and quote (usually bogus) statistics about grads doing quite well, but they've even stopped doing that now, they just admitted its a scam and we should have been more wary. At no time have I ever endorsed the scam, nor said anyone else has endorsed it, ('cept for the really obvious 'bootstraps' posters). Geez. And I dont post very often as you may notice from when I post, I'm on the other side of the world. Anyway, carry on.
DeleteI don't think they've stopped. Even the worst schools usually place the top 1 or 2 kids in biglaw, whose anecdotes are then used in the glossy viewbooks (which definitely still exist) to draw attention away from anything resembling actual data. And they can still say "95% employment" without mentioning the high percentage that's in either a school-funded job or waiting tables. Sure the ABA now requires a more detailed disclosure form, but they just bury that in a hard-to-find corner of the website.
DeleteIt's like an infomercial for a weight loss product. "Results not typical" in the fine print.
It's only around the time of post-2L OCI, by which point you are pot-committed, that the career services office all of a sudden starts to become brutally honest, before ignoring you entirely 9 months after graduation.
Smart people stopped going to law schools that aren't named Harvard, Yale, or Stanford a long time ago. You know who goes to law school today? Idiots who literally think practicing law is like an episode of "Suits". Eventually they figure out that good jobs only exist for the top ten percent of the class, but no matter, 90 percent of 1L's fully expect that they will graduate in the top ten percent of the class. . .it's pathetic. . .and then they flood the market and drive down fees for successful lawyers like me. . .
DeleteNotwithstanding the melodrama-quivering lips and all-it's important to recognize that this woman, who had to be in her late 20s, previously had a job-public school teacher-where she would have been set-up pretty well.
ReplyDeleteBut even more important is the following line:
“Please don’t discourage me, other people have told me this stuff already.”
So it's a term that's fallen out of favor, but here's a suggestion the it makes a comeback: Special Snowflake. It wasn't just 1:20-others have tried to talk her out of this path of self-destruction-but she doesn't want to hear it. Others have tried and she ignored them, and she's being polite to 1:20 b/c he's a guest at a function at which she's working. My guess is if he tried to give her this advice in a social setting, she'd tell him in very pointed language to drop dead. I long-ago gave up trying to talk snowflakes out of attending; after being told repeatedly by the 0L that "I'm different" and "You're just bitter" etc etc, I just nod and smile when someone says they are going to law school. And this is the part of the scam that can't be blamed on the TTTTs alone; there are snowflakes who claim to know the odds in terms of bar passage and jobs and debt-and still go to law school anyway because they are different and will succeed. And nothing will convince them otherwise.
A while back when Valpo was imploding, there was a news article in which several recent grads were interviewed. One woman who had flunked the bar already a couple of times was working retail sales, had a mountain of debt, and zero legal job prospects. She told the reporter she didn't regret anything about attending law school.
How can you reason with that?
I was going to write something earlier but you've done the work already.
DeleteBasically, all these people have drunk the Kool-Aid.
They have, in fact, been literally force-fed the stuff since high school, i.e. the "more education is always better" mantra.
They are indoctrinated and cannot think or reason objectively for themselves no matter that the hard realities of post-graduate life and debt are staring them point-blank in the face.
No point really..
Just smile and walk away. I'm sure the passengers on the Titanic all felt the same way. After all, they were told the ship was unsinkable.
Read Andrew Yang’s book. What are these people supposed to do? Admit they are “chumps” because they went to law school? It’s far better to pretend because admitting you are an idiot is only going to make things worse.
DeleteLook at 1:20. What did he (or she) accomplish by telling some hot chick not go to law school? Lol. It just made a bad situation worse. He could have impressed the chick by pretending he was a big time firm attorney. Instead, he looked like an idiot.
The only thing that can done, which will never ever be done, is elimination of all governmental intervention in education, including but not limited to the guarantee of loans by the same. Until that happens, lemmings will go off the cliff courtesy of the US tax payer, and professors will ride the lemming corpses to Hawaiian resorts for the all-important purpose of discussing the capitalist and Caucasian exploitation of transgendered amphibians in post-feminist America.
It's good that she left the public schools. After all, children deserve better than a nincompoop like her.
DeleteShe was going to some such stinky local toilet as New York Law School or Touro. She was at that expensive venue to hand out name tags. Perhaps she wasn't even being paid: I wouldn't be surprised if her toilet law school had sent her over there as a volunteer on the pretext that she would get to rub elbows (or other parts of the body) with a prospective employer (as if any law firm that would hold an event at an expensive place on the Upper East Side would consider a toileteer). She ignores sound advice just because it bursts her bubble, yet she latches onto some creepy scamster from her toilet school.
She may have been so defensive because it might not be that easy for her to go back to her old job. It might be a little late to be talking her out of the path she is taking because she doesn't see any other path at the moment.
DeleteShe may be better off just completing the law degree and then try to get back into teaching with the added credential which would have some value in the education sector. I would advise her not to take a bar exam before exploring opportunities in her former career.
Factually, public school teachers are not underpaid, many start at over 50K per year, for a job that comprises 9 months of the year with a week off at Christmastime, another week off for spring break, lots of snow days, etc. Factually licensed attorneys work for 22 bucks an hour doing "temporary document-review projects" while some electricians earn 90-100 per hour with a high school diploma and some trade school. But these facts don't matter to law students and those applying to law school. Read the law school Reddit page, and just about everyone on it expects to earn "190K plus bonus", or, in the alternative, become a Navy JAG Officer like Tom Cruise in that movie. . .These idiots literally compete for unpaid internships, and frankly, anyone stupid enough to compete for the opportunity to work for free simply isn't smart enough to be a good lawyer. I try to sympathize, but at some point you have to either have a modicum of intelligence, and use common sense when moving through life, or you will have only yourself to blame for all of your failures.
DeleteWhatever "value" a JD from a toilet law school may have, it cannot make up for three or more years of lost income, the cost of law school, the interest on top of that cost… This woman also gave up what appeared to be a sure thing, or close to it, with a questionable chance of getting it back. Having demonstrated a lack of commitment, she may not be first choice—or even fiftieth—if she tries to return to teaching. On top of that, she will be seen as having failed in law and wanting to use teaching as Plan B. That will be a big strike against her.
DeleteAnd an honest question: does a JD constitute an "added credential" which is of some value to get back into teaching. My state has pretty specific requirements as to what constitutes an added credential(getting a Master's is strongly encouraged), to the point where a Master's other than in Education doesn't count(e.g. MBA).
DeleteNow they do encourage career changing teachers, with more demand for STEM. For example, if you are an attorney with a chemistry degree(very rare, obviously), you do the career changer program and get your provisional license-BUT your old JD counts for nothing in terms of the higher pay offered to teachers with(the appropriate) advanced degrees.
But are there locations that are different-where the old JD gets you the bonus of having an advanced degree for salary purposes?
And a lawyer has to maintain a license at significant expense just to have a chance at working on "temporary document-review projects" for $22 an hour as a glorified Kelly girl.
DeleteTo 3:20 this is 10:08: I don't think a lower tier JD is such a credential. I was thinking along the lines of the well known fact that these and sundry degrees are used boost the salary, providing that the position is or has been secured based on other criteria, but extending that logic to if she is a known quantity, perhaps, the JD could be parlayed into a desirable additional attribute.
DeleteThat is however logic and theory, and in my case it has been a miserable failure, trying to parlay the JD as an advantage for any position, including lawyer. But this girl is basically stuck and I was just thinking of the best case scenario for her. If I were to revise my recommendation, I would say if she were a 2L or below to quit. 3L might as well stick it out, but skip the bar.
To Old Guy @ 1:47, no I don't think it has any real value, unless a career is procured from it.
There are jobs that ask only for a degree, any degree. Even a BA in underwater basketweaving from Big Bubba's Kollidge o' Law 'n' 'Possum Hunting with a GPA of 2.01.
DeleteThere are still some jobs, often in the public sector, that pay a bonus for any "advanced" degree. A JD, whether or not from a Cracker Jack box, would count. Of course, the resulting "JD advantage" would pale in comparison to 3+ years of foregone income, a quarter of a million in debt, and other common accoutrements of law school.
Old guy: You have it backwards..
ReplyDeleteIn her mind, he was the creep - for tying to give a Lemming a dose of reality. The law prawf, on the other hand, was the Good Guy for encouraging her hopes and dreams.
Problem is, he's a liar and a fraud. And a Circus con man as good as any from the days of P.T. Barnum.
Old Guy, did you see this?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.chronicle.com/article/One-University-s-Leadership/248183?cid=wcontentlist_hp_latest
Can't make this stuff up.
I could read only the headline, but it looks like a continuation of what we were discussing here:
Deletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2020/02/texas-southern-university-fires.html
Things must be bad when people are bribing their way into an über-toilet.
8:08-it's a pay-per-view article, but the headline and summary were pretty good. Since Texas Southern is a well-established TTTT that's unranked by the hacks at USNWR and its numbers are almost unbelievably bad:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/4/desc/LSATLow
Who in the world had to pay bribes to get into that place?
People really don’t understand the source of this problem. The law school and higher education scam has at its root a very insidious and totally undisclosed source. Specifically, it’s to accommodate the ego of the children of the rich, including the capable ones and the incapable ones.
DeleteThe system has to pretend it’s a meritocracy and it has to have a path for the idiots of the neuveau riche to get a degree to pretend they achieved.
The hardworking and intelligent scions of the rich work in biglaw and other such positions, don’t make the mistake and think just because someone is born with money necessarily translates into stupidity or laziness. There are people from the upper middle class that have something to prove. Some of them are incredibly hardworking and incredibly intelligent. The prestigious positions provide them with a venue to compete and establish independent merit. The fact that being born rich provided them with the stability and focus to concentrate on goals of that kind, doesnt change the facts. What is fucked up is that in order for them to feel good about the situation, there has to be an appearance that the system is meritocratic on a complete level. In other words, they want to say they would be exactly where they are if they had no money. In order to sustain that illusion, you need non-dischargeable loans. They don’t want anyone to be able to say, “hey, I have a 3.0 because I had to drive a cab to pay for my law school while you studied all day,” like it was thirty years ago. That’s the function of loans. They can turn around and say “hey, you had the same opportunity to study all day, just like me, all you had to do was take out loans.” The reality that someone that is leveraged to the hilt is in no way on the same level as them on a psychological, connection, and concentration point of view because the system leverages the lower classes so hard is blown under the rug.
With respect to the lower tier schools, it’s a similar phenomenon. If your old man owns ten car dealerships in Texas, you want to be able to show you did something even if you are an idiot and lazy, not just in relation to your monied peers, but the general population, and that’s how you get bribery to get into a school like that.
If this society doesn’t get its act together and stop funneling everyone into fields that were historically reserved for the rich, so that we can simultaneously enourcage the egos of the children of the rich while also preserving their advantage, we are going to have a total collapse.
^^^ is there something wrong with people feeding their own egos? Does that not help them feel good about themselves, help them prosper in the very competitive United States. Isn't getting a law degree and passing the bar potentially priceless when it comes to how a person sees themself?
DeleteWon't address the "priceless" part b/c there's a larger problem: so many of the TTTT grads-as noted in OG's initial post-don't pass the bar. So how does a person with a mountain of debt and a degree from a TTTT see himself when he flunks the bar?
Delete@1:55,
DeleteNot when the cost is facilitated by the US tax payer and the basis for viewing oneself in a better light is based on a lie, namely that the source of success is the law degree, not underlying wealth and stability that is transferred intergenerationally.
Pull the federal guarantee and let the chips fall where they may. Pretending that some kid who has to go 300k in non-dischargeable debt to go to Columbia law school is in the same position as a kid whose parents pay cash because both will wind up with the same “high” paid job is a laughable disgrace.
Similarly, pretending that some fourth tier grad that is going to open up a PI mill with family money is a self-made success by opening up the federal coffers for every mouth breather from the lower classes to attend is equally laughable.
It was better when the rich just had social balls and hung out in their yachts, having tea time with each other and gossiping.
DeleteWhen the rich decided they were going to "work" it killed everyone else. Work is the province of commoners, done for survival. The aristocracy had never worked through history, they didn't need to.
But now the aristocracy decided to take all the decent jobs and then force everyone else down the ladder, further leveraging them with debt. Debt in the past was reserves for slaves. Outside of the US plantation era, that is what a slave historically was. A slave was someone that would sign a contract to provide labor in exchange for a wage. Once you were done with your contract term you just left. Even Moses was a slave for 2 years, and left with the master's daughter and plenty of wealth afterwards. That is slavery---today those are considered impressive employment terms accessible only to the very few, and you don't get to marry the boss's daughter most of the time either.
I think @6:58 is right and it's even more insidious than that, but at this point I am tired of wasting my time even trying to get through to people. The worst of the worst just repeat right wing talking points. Nobody seems to notice or care that we have a fiat based debt economy, where the government literally invents money and then lends it to the banks and hands it to the elites, and that is considered "trickle down". How do the elites earn this money? They absolutely don't, they're just handed it, and everyone else is told they have to earn it, but since the elites are handed everything everyone else becomes a beggar.
I must apologize for responding so late to that purported boomer big law partner sociopath who commented last month. I don’t get to comment as much as I would like because of work. That person is full of crap, delusional, and probably has a personality disorder. That person claimed, “If you are willing to work incredibly hard with a law degree, there is still opportunity.” There are more law graduates than jobs available. The legal market has shrunk over the past couple decades. This is not a “work hard” problem. Have you ever heard anyone tell a former travel agent, “sorry, you just didn’t work incredibly hard.” No, when a market is hypercompetitive and shrinking, you tell people to go find a job with better opportunities. This boomer tells all of us to just work harder. But they would never give someone like myself or most law grads the opportunity to work as an associate under them. The boomer’s argument is really just a poor attempt at rationalization. We didn’t go to an elite law school, so they don’t want to hire us. We couldn’t find a job in this shrinking market, so we point out the diminished value of a law degree on this blog. The boomer fears the comments diminish the prestige of their big law job and elite degree, so they claim we are just lazy.
ReplyDeleteAnd what about those of us who did go to élite law schools, and even excelled in our studies, but still couldn't get an opportunity? Just exactly how are we supposed to "work hard"?
DeleteThat poster seems not even to have been real. I don't believe any of what he wrote.
I think he mixed some truth---I do believe a handful of people from elite law schools are allowed to slave away at Big Law for a number of years with a high salary. That is the best bet the unconnected get, and it's at terribly long odds for a horrible outcome that doesn't justify going to law school.
DeleteIf you do get that money, and can hang on for a bit, you can indeed setup your family. And if you continue to operate under legacy principles, such that each generation gets at least something to start with, that's really the only path to anything in this pathetic country.
I'd rather have honesty all around, I wish everyone would just admit how bad it is and that it's all rigged, but they don't want to.
The poster said he sent his daughter to London, a coronavirus hot spot. He said he sent his son and 3 classmates partying around south east Asia, where it originated. And he said this is how he cares about them. Plus he has recently been to Singapore, which is having problems with coronavirus as well.
Delete***
ReplyDeleteHere are three takeaways from the document:
1. Investigators had serious questions about how the law school handled its money.
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Before René left Texas Southern, the university found $13,456.25 stashed under his desk calendar in his office, in the form of cashier’s checks and money orders, according to the investigation.
More than $95,000, including law-school application fees and seat deposits, seemed to have been improperly deposited into the university’s foundation — outside of Texas Southern’s direct control — and not into a university account.
And, at least in October, investigators believed that an unknown balance, ranging from $14,660 to $31,600, was “unaccounted for.” Investigators said René did not provide a detailed financial report when asked.
A spokesman and the university’s law-school dean did not respond to questions about whether the money held by the foundation had moved to the university’s direct oversight, exactly how much money was unaccounted for, and whether the university had tracked down those funds.
2. The investigation began when someone at the law school found unenrolled students taking classes and attending orientation programs. Investigators believed an alleged bribe and an under-the-table admissions change were partly to blame.
Joan R.M. Bullock, the law school’s dean, found five student “anomalies” upon a closer review of the unenrolled students.
One first-year law student paid $14,000 in cash to René after the then assistant dean promised a $14,000 scholarship and admission, according to the investigation. The student, who did not meet the academic admissions requirements, was removed from the program, according to the report. (Upon his withdrawal, the person asked for the $14,000 back, the investigation found.)
One admitted transfer student had “character and fitness issues” that were not disclosed on his application, according to the findings. Investigators accused René of allowing the student to remove evidence of those issues from his file. The student’s admission was revoked.
In the “character and fitness” section of one version of the law-school application, applicants are asked to reveal prior suspensions, expulsions, probations, arrests, and convictions. “Full disclosure is required,” the application reads, “even though you may have been advised by any source that you are not required to do so.”
Two additional students were not on official class rosters but attended first-year classes, the investigation found, and when they finished their admissions files, they formally enrolled. One person was found to not meet initial academic requirements — a 140 LSAT score and 2.5-or-higher GPA — and subsequently withdrew.
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3. The university did not want this document released.
Under state freedom-of-information laws, The Chronicle requested the investigation’s findings on November 19, the day after the board announced that it had “contacted local authorities” after confirming admissions improprieties. The university appealed the request to Texas’ attorney general the following week, seeking to withhold the report.
On February 24 the attorney general’s office ruled in favor of The Chronicle, saying the university had not promptly submitted the requested information for the office’s review. The Chronicle received a copy of that ruling on Wednesday and asked Texas Southern for the file, and the university complied.
The university last week told the Houston Chronicle that it was considering suing the attorney general’s office to prevent the release of similar documents.
Updated (3/4/2020, 4:30 p.m.) with response from a Texas Southern University spokesman.
Thanks for that. The university seems to be playing this issue both ways. On the one hand, it is focusing attention on René's suspicious conduct, including unorthodox administration of funds (to put it delicately). On the other, it is fighting to hush the details up. That suggests that René may not be the only malefactor. If he were, wouldn't the university happily expose the whole affair and proceed against him both criminally and civilly?
DeleteCharacter-and-fitness problems may be covered up by the law school but will come to light upon any application to the bar. Much of the point of evaluating character and fitness at the time of the application to law school is to screen people out who would probably never be allowed to become lawyers. Unless that transfer student wanted the degree for a reason other than practicing law (in which case he had about as little sense as integrity), worming his way into this über-toilet was not going to work out well.
Funny to ask for a $14k bribe back. No honor among thieves.
And 140 as a requirement for admission? Not much of a requirement: it is met by seven people out of eight.
A little off topic here...to those posters who think College is a waste of time: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/06/opinion/working-class-death-rate.html?fbclid=IwAR0W-37WzGEvyGzutEr-OkAd37-1kWsPbONPPFvzgvwV8W44sC3Ak6qU2ZI
ReplyDeleteHere's an obvious problem with drawing any conclusions from this study: the age of the participants. The massive debt incurred by college-and law school-students has increased dramatically in the past 20 years or so, with those individuals just now entering the reviewed cohort, so it will be approximately 10 years before an apt comparison can be made.
DeleteAnd there's also plenty or room to dispute the study's definition of working class. No one here recommends retail or similar unskilled labor, which is what this study determines to be "working class", and the college degrees derided here are generally in the liberal arts-for the simple reason the jobs that are available to liberal artists don't pay very much. This opinion piece provides some pretty stark numbers:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/03/22/trump-administration-right-discourage-liberal-arts-degrees/3212348002/
Ignore the Trump cheerleading and focus on the debt and salary: the bottom line is that newly minted liberal artists can't pay their bills. What will their "deaths by despair" chart look like in 10 or 20 years?
I don't think the study is invalid or even outdated really. It just confuses correlation with causation. The so-called "BA/non BA divide" implies that the degree makes the difference between these people who support entire families on what most of us would consider high school "character building" jobs, and us.
DeleteIf only reality were so meritocratic. Truth is, people who finish BAs are more likely to come from leafy suburbs. Even if they're not gainfully employed after a BA, they move back in with parents who can keep them reasonably comfortable and safe. Their parents proceed to call up some friends or whatever and eventually they're in some kind of office environment type of work.
They don't take a job at waffle house and live in poverty just because their BA is useless. They don't have to. The people who do that are suffering from something that is much more intergenerational and a BA probably wouldn't lift them out of it.
Let's be honest. Most of us law students do come from that privileged group. Few of us have ever truly experienced or been on the verge of literal homelessness, as opposed to couch-surfing at mom and dad's being the worst possible outcome really.
There's no question, there are people out there who have it even worse than a toilet JD. Lots of 'em. Heck, being homeless in the US is probably paradise compared to being a regular joe in Afghanistan or whatever. Just because you can find someone whose life is even worse than yours does not mean you have no right to complain.
To 1:55 and 4:47. Passing a bar exam is a red herring. The majority of TTTT grads have the ability to pass a bar exam. The upper end of the 4th tier probably 75-80% can pass, the bottom maybe 50-55%. The purpose of a bar exam is to test for minimal competency. NY and CA might present additional difficulties because of the additional number of arcane subjects tested, but if a TTTT grads plans out their bar study the majority will pass a state bar. The real issue however is that bar passage and licensure does nothing to make a new attorney more marketable. I believe Old Guy will attest to this and I certainly will. Feeding the ego does nothing for career advancement.
ReplyDelete4:47 here; not sure how I got lumped in with 1:55, since the entire concept of getting a law degree for self-esteem purposes seems like a colossally bad idea. That said, it's a pretty clear marker that, if after three years and a mountain of debt you still manage to flunk the bar-as many TTTT grads do-then getting that very expensive JD isn't going to supply any ego gratification at all. Instead, it-along with the debt-will be a constant reminder of a very bad decision with life-long consequences. If you've got an ego to feed, there are cheaper and smarter ways to do it instead of attending a TTTT law school.
DeleteLaw School Transparency did a study on this. They basically conclude that the LSAT is the best predictor of bar exam success, and that schools can manage their "risk profiles" best if they simply do not admit many students with LSATs below 150. If they do admit any such students they'd better at least have a very high UGPA which the data indicates does offset the risk somewhat.
DeleteThe report notes the often startling decline in admission standards at some schools, referring to it as "uncharted territory." For a long time, 150/3.0 was pretty much the minimum to get in anywhere ABA accredited except Cooley. Now, there are several 4th tiers (and even some historical third tiers) with medians in the mid 140s. Suffolk, for example, was usually in the third tier when USNWR had tiers. They had a median LSAT of 156 in 2010 and 146 (!!!) in 2014. People with 156 almost never fail, people with 146 are at "extreme risk" of failing.
As the report says, we are in uncharted waters. While bar exam results would have once been a red herring, some schools are now admitting kids who have a higher risk of failure than ever would have previously been tolerated. That's why the standard, lax as it is, remains controversial: Admitting such students is the only way these places can fill the seats.
I like to think this is because word of the scam is getting out to at least the point where anyone with even a modicum of intelligence who does even a few minutes of google searching is at least somewhat aware of it.
As to the minority angle, that doesn't hold water. I will grant that standardized testing can be culturally biased. If the person you're admitting also has a very high UGPA, they might be hard-working enough to perform better than their LSAT alone would predict, and that score may indeed have been influenced by unintended bias in test design.
So, maybe we can defend keeping the doors open to such "splitters." But people with terrible LSATs and mediocre-to-poor undergraduate records, particularly given today's dumbed-down liberal arts curricula, is indefensible. A more diverse student body will do nothing to promote a more diverse profession if they cannot pass the bar. Of course, this is when the schools start pressuring supreme courts to dumb the bar down too!
Here's the link:
https://www.lawschooltransparency.com/reform/projects/investigations/2015/analysis/
Thirty ABA-accredited law schools, including the three in Puerto Rico, have median LSAT scores below 150. That's 15% of the ABA-accredited law schools. Many of the largest law schools—Cooley, Thomas Jefferson, the three InfiLaw über-toilets—fell into this group until some of them were decimated or even slaughtered. In other words, there are lots and lots of "students" with scores in the 140s or lower.
DeleteI'm more tolerant of a poor undergraduate GPA, especially in an older student, than I am of a poor LSAT score. The former might be attributable to youthful folly. Only the first degree counts; the GPA will be whatever it is, even if it doesn't represent one's potential.
An LSAT score, however, does tend to represent potential. Yes, cultural bias is a problem, as is the influence of money (in forms such as expensive tutors and courses). But the LSAT score is the strongest element of an applicant's file. A high undergraduate GPA could have been achieved through cotton-candy courses, professorial corruption (a notorious example being the dispensing of A's to "students" on the football or basketball team), and other manipulative means that say little about potential in law school. The LSAT is far less manipulable—which is why so many low-end lemmings and law-school scamsters strive to get rid of it.
@Old Guy 7:57. You reminded me of something I have been thinking about when you mentioned that many of the largest schools are uber toilets. The You Ass rankings divides into four quadrants, but it is by school. Has anyone linked those schools to enrollment size. Could it be that the bottom You Ass tier - now known as RNP aka the unmentionables - while 25% of the schools, might constitute 50% or more of enrolled law students?
DeleteTo get the full list of law schools in descending (or ascending) order of first-year enrollment, go to this page and click on the arrows in the lower right corner of "Enrollment":
Deletehttps://www.lstreports.com/national/
Things have changed a lot in the past few years. Now trap school Georgetown is at the top, followed closely by Harvard, each with almost 600 first-year students. At the bottom are a number of moribund über-toilets: Western State (only 23!), Thomas Jefferson (49, and now stripped of ABA accreditation), Ohio Northern (50), and plenty of others.
Just a few years ago, the largest were über-toilets like Cooley, the InfiLaw trio, and Thomas Jefferson. Harvard was still near the top but outpaced by those über-toilets, which rarely see a lemming that they are not willing to admit. Georgetown and Harvard haven't grown significantly, but the huge über-toilets of yesteryear have shriveled up.
The smallest law school that can be called respectable even as a matter of courtesy is Washington & Lee, with 124 first-year students. The smallest one that a sane, well-informed person might consider attending is Stanford, with 180.
So I think that your hypothesis might have been correct a few years ago but probably no longer is. Mind you, there are still a lot of huge über-toilets, such as New York Law School (385) and Suffolk (368).
A quick add-on to OG's reference to "trap" school Georgetown; even this allegedly "good" law school is back to its old tricks by gaming the ABA required job statistics. For its most recent class(2018), it hired 43(!) of its graduates, thereby jacking up its employed at graduation statistics considerably. Add those to the 22 unemployed at graduation, and this reputed "top" law school has serious employment problems upon graduation.
DeleteAnother thought on enrollment size relative to toiletude: The new standard at least no longer rewards growth. See, the old standard was based on the school not being below the statewide average pass rate by a certain amount for a certain period of time.
DeleteSo, by simply growing large enough, a toilet or group of toilets used to be able to singlehandedly make the standard easier to meet by dropping the statewide average.
Thanks for those observations. Note also that the debt-financed cost of a JD at Georgetown is $358k, according to our friends at Law School Transparency (https://www.lstreports.com/schools/gulc/costs/). That's a high price for the bad outcomes that you described. And even the "good" outcomes—Big Law—are seldom worth that amount.
DeleteAlso, those 22 were unemployed not at graduation but ten months later. What are the prospects of those who haven't managed to find a job—any job at all, not only one in law—almost a year after finishing their JD?
Good point, 12:57. Also, large toilets will struggle to push 75% of their (cl)asses through the bar exam. Size is a disadvantage under the new standard when the student body is drawn primarily from the bottom half of the LSAT-score range (150 and down).
DeleteToilets, however, long ago mastered the ploy of getting failure-bound graduates to "defer" the bar exam—often through outright bribery—so that they will not affect the measure used in the standard. They have also mastered the ploy of expelling a large part of the class for poor academic performance, which likewise shores the school up with the ABA.
The days of huge über-toilets appear to be over. Those that are still enrolling 300+ students each year have already suffered sharp declines in enrollment and will probably continue to do so. A notable exception to the declining trend is New England School of Law, which nearly doubled its first-year enrollment in 2019. Any idea of what explains that strange rise in enrollment?
True, OG. And even under the new standard, they can totally still bribe people out of the bar. Indeed, the 75% is only the percentage of people they can find AND who actually take it. But once someone does sit for it, they must pass within two years.
DeleteSo yeah, just give 'em a school funded position for two years instead of 9 months like they used to cuz that was the USNWR measuring window, and a condition of that job is that the person shall not register or sit for any bar exam until after the job is concluded.
The class size grew because so many budding barristers were eager to meet the new dean, Scott Brown. How many of you law graduates can claim that your dean posed in Playgirl magazine? And he was a US senator too-defeated by Elizabeth Warren, no less-but the Playgirl thing is probably more prominent in his Link'din profile.
DeleteThe dean of New England School of Law | Boston posed for Playgirl? Is the centerfold displayed on the über-toilet's Web site?
DeleteMaybe the vertical bar is symbolic.
OG-sorry about the bad info-it was Cosmo, not Playgirl.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Brown_(politician)
Cosmopolitan is even less respectable than Playgirl.
DeleteAnonymousMarch 13, 2020 at 12:57 PM wrote, in part:
Delete" So, by simply growing large enough, a toilet or group of toilets used to be able to singlehandedly make the standard easier to meet by dropping the statewide average. "
Quite right. I did a brief number crunching on FL bar pass rates a couple of years ago (I think it was after the July 2018 exam, but might have been `17) and posted it here.
When I pulled out the 3 or 4 worst performers the overall pass average jumped (IIRC) 8 or 10 percent.
From one of the ABA's propaganda outlets:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.abajournal.com/web/article/what-comes-next-for-aba-accredited-law-schools-with-two-year-pass-rates-below-75
The article correctly reminds us that "diversity", meaning racial diversity, was invoked in opposition to the new standard. What is being glorified here as "diversity" is really just racial exploitation. The standard was also opposed on the grounds that the supposed of California's bar exam would make the standard unfair to law schools in California. Funny, not a single of the eleven schools that failed to meet the standard was in or even near California: the closest one was in South Dakota. (Though Golden Gate, which is in California, just barely met the standard.)
The dean of über-toilet District of Columbia condemned the new standard as unfairly "punitive" because it initially applied retrospectively to classes going back to 2017. What she conveniently omits is that the previous standard also applied to those classes, so her toilet school and all others knew the standard that they had to meet; the new standard wasn't just pulled out of the air. The main change is the elimination of a bunch of formal exceptions allowing schools to go on for protracted periods with appallingly low rates of success on the bar exam. (The new standard still allows exceptions, of course, since it was designed by the scam-fostering ABA.)
"The new standard still allows exceptions, of course, since it was designed by the scam-fostering ABA."
DeleteYup. Two years plus any additional time needed for an undefined notion of "extraordinary circumstances."
This is why I think that no school is going to get shut down over this UNLESS the ABA has a need for a "sacrificial lamb," e.g. due to DOE scrutiny they end up having to bring them someone's head on a platter so the rest can keep scamming. If such a need does arise, you can bet such lambs will be found in the new, upstart law schools. Freestanding for-profits are especially vulnerable, and they always have been. Like the Infilaw places.
Yes, that seems to be the ABA's modus operandi. Now and then the ABA takes some sort of action against an über-toilet by way of appearing to do something about the law-school scam. Ordinarily, however, the sacrificial lamb is at Death's door anyway (think of the InfiLaw über-toilets and Thomas Jefferson) and can be expected to die whether the ABA acts or not. So the ABA really does next to nothing but claims credit for upholding standards.
DeleteThe 'sacrificial lambs' were the InfiLaw schools.
DeleteThe "non-profits" (so-called) didn't want these schools muscling in on their action.
I'm reminded of drug cartels. It's a common practice for them to bribe airport customs in third world countries. But those corrupt agents, not unlike the ABA in this case, still must make big busts periodically to keep up appearances. So the cartel just recruits some gullible white tourist who doesn't have any information they could give up under interrogation to take a fall every now and again. Like on that Locked up Abroad TV show.
DeleteDon't forget that even the current "standard" was voted down twice. The ABA had to override the second vote in order to push it through. Thus there was fierce opposition even to this namby-pamby standard.
ReplyDeleteMore on the ridiculous über-toilet at Texas Southern University:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.click2houston.com/news/texas/2020/03/11/alleged-bribes-kickbacks-for-law-school-admission-at-heart-of-texas-southern-university-turmoil/
More 500 applicants weren't even considered, including some 365 with such strong credentials (by Texas Southern's abysmal standards) that they were presumptively admissible. People called and complained that their applications had been ignored, and still they got no attention. Yet there was apparently plenty of time to take bribes from people who plainly were not admissible.
I'd bet that the 500+ applicants that were ignored will be listed as rejected so that Texas Southern will appear more "selective" than it is (i.e., not selective in the least). Why else would Texas Southern fail to admit so many of its strongest applicants?
One applicant who was inadmissible because of character-and-fitness issues gave the former assistant dean "approximately $16,200 as well as concert and airline tickets in order to obtain admission". At that assistant dean's behest, he removed the character-and-fitness information from his application.
Who in the heck is inadmissible by TSU standards? Median LSAT is 145 per LST. 75th percentile is 147. 25th percentile is a staggering 143.
DeleteThink about that. Fully a quarter of their class got in with an LSAT <143. A 150 would likely get you a full ride. Or it would, if the "scholarships" (AKA discounts) weren't already allocated to people who paid bribes.
The mind boggles...
Listen to the ABA's bitching about the plight of "people who have, historically, had a very difficult time getting in [at law schools]: applicants with low LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs":
ReplyDeletehttps://www.abajournal.com/web/article/dont-have-great-grades-or-lsat-score-new-law-school-pipeline-project-might-be-able-to-help
As if it were oppressive to disfavor those who show strong evidence of inability, or at least of inferiority.
Old Guy: Shall we be expecting more posts in future from the other 12 or so contributors to this blog or has so much long time gone by as to assure that most if not all amicable and polite society has lost interest? Sorry, but it is a fair question I believe.
ReplyDeleteI cannot speak for others. I myself left this site for several months. There seems still to be plenty of interest: we have had almost 3 million visits to this site, and articles do get many comments.
DeleteI know you write your heart out and it is in the right place and well, maybe we are in a market correction right now and the lending situation for higher education, including the law schools, will change as a result. Only time will tell. It is the um, as someone around here often calls it, the"conduit" of easy money if you will, and if the money is not available a lot will change, one would think, and, hopefully, students won't be exploited going forward as has been the practice.
DeleteThere is and should be interest. Again, look on Reddit and you will see that just about every law student and potential law student thinks they have a great shot at BigLaw, and life will be like the TV show Suits. Factually, 90 percent of the class will never even get an interview for BigLaw, let alone a job offer. Well, 95 percent at the loweer ranked law schools, where BigLaw will only consider hiring students in the top five percent. Every once and a while someone with a functioning frontal cortex will point out that OCI (On Campus Interviews) are only granted to the top ten percent of the class, so what can that possibly mean for 9/10 law students. . .and the law students, applicants, and even some graduates seem literally unaware that temporary doc review projects for $22.00 per hour are a reality for many lawyers in this incredibly glutted market, which only gets worse with each passing year. Maybe when some Summer Associate programs are flat-out cancelled due to the Corona Virus and the ongoing economic meltdown resulting from that virus, maybe, perhaps, then some law students will realize that plumbers and electricians earn far more than they ever will with their J.D. . . .
DeleteIt's even worse than you describe. I've seen it, knew some of these kids. At a 4th tier school, even most of the people who grade on to the main law review come up with nothing after OCI. They're the most disillusioned. Doing so well at 1L that you grade on to the main law review, at least, should mean you'll be alright. Or so they're led to believe.
DeleteBut no. It's literally the top 1 or 2 kids in the class who get biglaw out of the 4th tier. Top 5% isn't good enough. Some years, there are none at all, but if they take any, it's the top couple of individuals, not even really the top X%.
3-18-2020 2:26 PM gets it.
DeleteIt was this way 25 years ago. Those cutoffs he mentioned are hard ones as well. You are not even allowed to submit your resume if you don't meet them.
The puzzling thing is (or not..) that they list top 10% and Law Review but most really only want top 5% with LR so half of that 10% is screwed.
That's 5 out of 100 law students at a given TTT that have a shot.. Now, somewhere in that top 10%, you might flop around because of demeanor, looks, social skills, etc. but the math is still the math - half of that group won't get an offer.
As far as Georgetown, there's a special place in my black heart for that scamming trap school. They have been doing this for decades.
They are constantly just outside the Top 10 in US News rankings (12-14/15) and have an outsized 1L class.
Those 45+ people in school-funded jobs - are phucked. Look at it this way: If they could've done better, they would have. Everyone tries.
That's $350K from law school alone PLUS whatever they have from undergrad (assume 40K+) so before they even leave the starting gate, they're down half a million in student loans which can't be discharged.
Georgetown is the perfect example of why law should be left to the aristocracy. They can afford it and they have the connections and that's who the jobs often go to anyway.. The OCI interviews, despite the numbers, are Dog and Pony shows.
The Lemmings get a lot of hard lessons (wake up calls) during 3L. 1st semester is the OCI lesson where 90+% find out they're phucked. 2nd semester is the worksheet lecture where they are counseled as to how much debt they owe - if the school does that sort of thing.
By then, they've paid their money. Or more accurately, borrowed money they didn't have for a piece of paper with a heavily devalued if not worthless degree. The process started in undergrad and finishes here with the failed double down bet.
Über-toileteers should forget about Big Law. Just don't even think about it. Lots of über-toilets see not a single graduate get Big Law, or even a job at a firm with more than 25 lawyers. When one or two people in the class get Big Law, very likely it is because of parental connections.
DeleteAnd nobody gives a good goddamn about the editorial board of The Indiana Tech Review of Law & Hip-Hop. Old Guy was editor of one of the most prestigious law reviews around. Aught it availed him.
I agree with 6:17 about the aristocratic nature of the legal "profession". Hayseeds like Old Guy don't belong, period. Maybe we had a chance a few decades ago. Today we do not; we're simply fucked (or phucked, as you spell it).
I wish to high hell that I had never gone into law. Now I'm old and washed up, and ill as well, and I don't know what I can do. At least I didn't rack up student loans for law school.
Honestly, whenever I look on reddit or any law related place, I never see any even remotely negative outcomes. Everyone brags at what a great job they have and the money they make. You would think law school had great outcomes for most, and only the biggest failures can't achieve anything after.
ReplyDeleteVery rarely I'll see mentions of how bad law school is in more general places, something like underemployed or unemployed/job search related areas of the internet. You might see someone mention how tough it is with a law degree. But you really don't see it in law focused discussion groups/areas.
I've done a lot of doc review and I think it's honestly toxic. The work can be done by anyone with a college degree, but I suspect they use attorneys because only attorneys would put up with it.
Someone earlier said that truly bad outcomes don't happen for most law graduates. That is foolish, plenty have to scrape by with terrible jobs, and the middle class either can not or does not want to support its children the way some think they do. The idea that the average law grad can just move back in with their parents and that is going to be a good healthy outcome ignores the stigma in society for that, and the refusal of most Boomer parents to allow it. Even if they allow it, I can't imagine how bad the long term mental effects are for constantly being told what a failure you are, by society and parents. I know of many law grads that had to do retail and doc review and plenty of other low wage poor condition jobs, usually developing substance abuse issues and sometimes even committing suicide. At the least, many are on anti-depressants and other psychiatric drugs. It's certainly not healthy.
It’s a governmentally funded program for rich kids to stroke their ego, professors to have a comfortable life, PI mills to have cheap labor, and 5000 biglaw partners to have expendable labor.
DeleteThat’s it. Mostly the first group. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with it but for the fact that the federal government guarantees the loans. If it were not for that fact, it would operate like any other market and the natural brutality would pale in comparison to the mal-effects promulgated by liberal crooks.
Biden is going to win, so there’s absolutely no chance of correcting the problem now. It’s a shame because it such a scam. It’s a scam on steroids and it’s ruined so many lives.
I agree with all these assessments, but there doesn't seem to be any solution. While the scammers keep scammin', it only takes a simple Google search to find information about the scam. So while many of the 0Ls don't know, or pretend they don't know, about the scam, what about the others? The many who attend the TTTs and lower, who think they're different and that they'll get a great job, either with BigLaw or the ACLU?
ReplyDeleteIt's nonsense; nobody-nobody-enrolled at a TTT or lower gets BigLaw; it just doesn't happen. And they're not saving the whales, either. But forget trying to reason with them; you'll just be told "you're bitter" or "I'm different" or whatever. They won't be doing doc review like the rest of us; they'll be making big money or doing important work for the whales-because they're special. That's why the scam schools survive.
The reality is the scam schools are filled with Special Snowflakes. They'll get OCI or an internship with Earthwatch because they're special. And they don't want you to confuse them with the facts.
They WILL get an internship with earthwatch, because it's unpaid.
DeleteThat's just the thing though. One thing law school really is good at is pretending like you're destined for big things. Studying all these big, important cases. Unpaid internships at the Hague, and so forth. You're paying them a lot of money, of course they're going to let you live in a bubble for a little while where everyone pretends that you will go on to do Exciting and Important Things. Same thing happens in undergrad. All manner of cool stuff is on offer while you're still a student who can get "paid" in course credit or a good reference. But as soon as you want to get paid in actual money, reality starts to set in and it's back to waiting tables.
Similarly, by the time you come up empty at OCI, you're already pot-committed and the schools know it. What are you going to do at that point, drop out? You should, but psychologically speaking, few can disregard such a huge sunk cost. And even if they could, there's a huge stigma with being a "quitter" or a "drop out."
Those are all good points. And yep, I saw the writing on the wall by the middle of second year and should have dropped out. But no, I didn't, fearing the "stigma" you mention, so I continued on locked in my mediocrity. There were several in my class who dropped out after first semester first year, then a few more the end of first year, then a couple mid-year second year. That took a lot of guts but it was the right thing to do. And I stayed all three years; fat lot of good it got me. In addition to the glories of doc review, I'm now looking at "appearance counsel" gigs at $20-24/hour. Ah, the glamour of the life of a lawyer.
DeleteOnly reason I didn't drop out, even at top 8% after first semester and top I think it was 12% after 1st year, was that I was worried about paying back the student loan debt.
DeleteAnother huge difference between the commoners and the elites. The elites don't have that worry. I even had a scholarship so it would have been a pretty small debt load then, but the worry about getting good employment, which I had never secured post undergraduate either, kept me going.
Truthfully, I was probably fucked the moment I was born. I didn't have smart or affluent parents, no real opportunities, nothing. I went to gifted schools as a child and went STEM undergrad, top test scores and all, and...nothing.
Whenever people talk about how they made it big on their own, they are blatantly lying. Everyone that makes it gets a break, multiple breaks, none of which they created for themselves. The parents you are born to and other life situations are EVERYTHING.
The only reason I even managed anything is because of extreme luck. I wish I could chalk it up to my brilliant mind and skill, but I essentially gambled in the markets and managed to win big for a couple of years. But then that just stopped too. It was enough to let me scrape together something, without that I have no idea where I'd be. Maybe homeless.
I really think if you're in America, and you aren't born to established parents and have something going for you, life sucks and you should try and emigrate to Europe somehow. Or really anywhere. At least the rest of the world has universal healthcare. So you don't die of disease. And they have better tenant protections, employee protections, etc.
The US really sucks. Law is just a microcosm of the US' general shittiness. Call it capitalism or an oligarchy, makes no difference, doesn't matter who the President is or anything. This is a failed empire.
@2:03 - What the hell does capitalism have to do with the law school scam? The government steals money from productive people to make unlimited credit available for idiots who didn't grow up to hide from the world in law school, so useless sinecurist professors can get fat paychecks for doing nothing. Capitalists would destroy this dynamic in a stroke, by simply not funding it. Those lying shit-heels nearly destroyed my life. Capitalism ultimately saved me.
DeleteI agree with 2:03, but I go further and say that the US empire has always been shitty. It owes its very existence to genocide, theft, slavery, and exploitation on a planetary scale. Every page of US history drips with blood.
DeleteImmigrating to Europe is difficult these days for most people. But Canada welcomes immigrants. I know a Yank who landed there as a new permanent resident just a couple of days ago, right before the border closed. Australia and New Zealand are also good choices. Mexico is worth consideration.
@6:11,
DeleteThis guy gets it.
@2:03,
DeleteWho gave it to the rich kids? How did their parents or ancestors do it? The answer is bitter: tremendous sacrifice.
You can do it too. You can live a shit life and your children can be kings- trust me, I know. The only injustice in American society is the lie of the self made individual that manages to enjoy life for his or her own benefit. This is an extraordinary rarity. Anyone in America can decide to live under extreme punishment and provide a better life for their kids. Anyone. Most people don’t want to.
The point is that people whose wealth is inherited enjoy an undeserved advantage. Whether or not any ancestor made a tremendous sacrifice, the points made by 2:03 stand.
DeleteIt’s not undeserved: someone had to sustain extreme suffering or do something incredible for them to have it.
Delete@11:13 PM
DeleteBasically we you are saying is that the children did nothing, so it is undeserved.
The people who worked hard and sacrificed their life for their children conferred the advantage. In most careers and jobs, you are working for the next generation. It takes blood, sweat and tears, and those blood, sweat and tears translate to a better life for the next generation. Deserve has nothing to do with it.
DeleteWill COVID-19 finish off some trashcan law schools?
ReplyDeleteIf anything, COVID will provide the trashcans with an argument to allow more online coursework, which lowers costs AND increases revenue due to a potentially limitless number of virtual "seats." Profs already only have to grade one test per class per year. Maybe add some AI to help with that task and the profs will love the ability to "self quarantine" for the rest of their working lives. Machine learning algorithms should easily be able to be fed years' worth of "good" and "bad" issue-spotting exam responses and then grade/curve the new ones accordingly.
DeleteOf course, you still keep tuition the same or even raise it, so being able to go full University of Phoenix is something I'm sure many law school admins have been salivating over for a long time.
See ABA standard 306(e), which says that an accredited law school may only give credit for online courses for, at most, one third of a law school curriculum, with no more than 10 credits of such courses during 1L.
That's the standard that COVID could put on the chopping block!
Good question. I don't know the answer. One would think that the change to on-line classes would point up the unjustifiably high cost of attendance. After all, unlike their in-person counterparts, on-line courses are often available free of charge, even from prestigious institutions such as Harvard. What's the point in borrowing $350k for La Toilette Über-Toilet Skule of Law 'n' Hog-Calling Arena when the classes are cheap-ass on-line lectures?
DeleteThe flaw in that argument is the assumption of rationality in toileteers. Rather than shrinking from the monstrous cost, toileteers might well flock to on-line law schools because they can do so without regard for the distance.
If you are graduating from law school this year and your parents are not rich, congratulations, your life ended before it started.
ReplyDeleteAny law school...
Absolutely. If you thought the job market for lawyers was bad in 2008-2013 just wait . . .
DeleteAnd you have yourself to blame for the foolish decision to go to law school. We've been denouncing the law-school scam here since 2013.
DeleteThis troll-loll-lolio.. Again.
DeleteYou only have one go-around in life. I would love to hear a detailed plan on how the unconnected Honorary Toileter from Georgetown law, starting in a school funded job lasting 10 months, will pay down the debt-financed cost of $350,000 PLUS about $100,000+ to $160,000 for 4 years of private undergrad == $450,000 - $500,000 or half a million dollars.
(con't)
Let alone provide *anything* for their imaginary kids.. which they won't have because no one is going to marry someone in that kind of debt. Financial suicide.
Yup. But stating facts here equals complaining.
I won't hear any such plan because the Troll has no plan. Spouting 1965 'hard work' bullshit without any regards for 2020 realities.
Just work hard, kids. You'll make it.
(except you won't..)
Didn't this schmuck read the post by 3-22-2020 @ 2:03 pm?
Nope. They just spout off whatever shit comes to mind..
I wasn't even shocked that much by their post. I've seen it all at this point. So he misses top 10% by 2 percentage points .. Jesus. That's all it took in the field we know as law.
But I assume he made Law Review (top 8% after 1L) and that still couldn't carry something (an offer) for Summer, 1L.
Yet this schmuck keeps coming on here with their trollish horseshit. I salute you, Sir. Troll on.
And btw, March 22, 2020 at 2:03 PM is right yet again about Proles and parenting.
ReplyDeleteThe rich will do anything to keep their line going. The rich make sure their kids have no debt and get whatever they need to continue the dynasty. The poor and the Education system feed their kids the mountain of bullshit known as the Horatio Alger Myth and encourage them to gamble - which is essentially what he did, and unfortunately lost.
They can't confer the 'No-Lose' Scenario but want their kids to face the music when and if they fail, which 95%++ will do. The rich don't think or act like that. On;y the Proles do. So that behavior, also, is against you. It's ALL against you and that's what Proles don't get.
The Game is rigged from the start and not just a little, a lot, so when a Prole fails he doesn't just get hurt slightly by the System, he gets put in his place and crushed as punishment, as a lesson not to try and buck the System.
But don't worry.. Our resident Troll has a plan: Hard work.
Work hard kids. Work hard. What bullshit..
You want to go to law school? Fine. Make sure you have the Game already WON before you go. Otherwise, you don't belong there. It's simple but Prole minds with many mental backflips, convoluted unrealistic ideas, and large doses of Kool-Aid make anything possible.
Go to:
ReplyDeletehttps://studentdebtcrisis.org/read-student-debt-stories/
and read. Just scroll and read.
Do YOU want to be one of these stories? Odds are you will be one if you decide to attend law school.
The System has no interest in your welfare. You have only one life. Don't throw it away so recklessly.
And one thing more, something I just caught on there but haven't delved into. They are suing the Dept. of Education for a change where the CFPB is no longer performing oversight of student loan servicers.
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/25/782460891/consumer-agency-failed-to-protect-student-loan-borrowers-lawsuit-says
DIRECT source:
https://studentdebtcrisis.org/sdcvtrump-statement/
Of course, Betsy DeVos is rich. Very rich.
https://www.prwatch.org/news/2017/01/13207/betsy-devos-ethics-report-reveals-ties-student-debt-collection-firm
And here's her awesome plan to make sure you have no way out of debt:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/12/09/betsy-devos-student-loan-scheme/
Note that the NPR article discusses PSLF.
I read somewhere (can't find it now..) that a borrower had made all their payments and the servicer said they would conduct a review after PSLF was requested. That was 2 years ago.. They still haven't been granted forgiveness under PSLF yet.
Practicing lawyer here. I can tell you, for a fact, that layoffs and firings of lawyers due to the Coronavirus and the accompanying recession have already begun. Not one or two, not myth or rumor. In addition, some state bar exams have been cancelled/postponed. So many of the folks who graduate from law school in a couple of months won't even be able to sit for the Bar Exam this summer, and when they do eventually sit for it, those who pass, and are sworn in sometime in early 2021 will have to compete with experienced lawyers who recently lost their jobs due to the Coronavirus/recession. The work product of most newly-licensed attorneys bears a strong resembalance to rotting excrement, so the very few employers seeking to hire lawyers will have an easy choice, between experienced, capable lawyers who lost their jobs due to no fault of their own and brand new clueless lawyers who literally do not know how to draft and file an Entry of Appearance at the local courthouse. People who spent two years studying nursing or learning how to be an X-ray tech will be making money faster than they can spend it, while dummies who spent 4 years in college, 3 years in law school, and eventually passed a difficult two day exam will be unemployed, and unemployable. While all of this is going on the law schools will just lie to the next bunch of dupes filing their applications, and say that but for the Coronavirus all those unemployed JD holders would be earing 190K at big firms. Jails and prisons are full of people who are much more honest and ethical than law school administrators, these days.
ReplyDeleteConcur in part, dissent in part: I fear that you put too much value in being an "experienced lawyer" in the job hunt. I was canned in 2012 for missing the billable hour quota, and that was all she wrote career-wise.
DeleteI agree with both of you. Literally, careers are over. Hundreds of thousands of careers. Meanwhile, the person humble and smart enough to go into in demand careers like nursing and the trades will be in demand and unaffected.
DeleteSuch is the market. The rich kids want to tell you they did it on their own and you assholes gave them the fuel to do so. As they survive this storm because mom and dad are there to foot the bill, eliminate anxiety, provide client connections, etc, they will outcompete you and survive. You will be unemployed. They will feel accomplished as survivors of the greatest economic disaster in the history of the country unfolds.
You will get no help from the government. You will be laughed at. You fucked yourselves and you have no one to blame but yourselves. Even now, as this unfolds, your boomer parents will tell you what you are reading stems from bitter people who want to keep you out of a lucrative field.
Good luck kidos. You are going to need it. And to those of you that had real employment before going to law school, and you abandoned it to get destroyed, with the full knowledge of what’s going on (a benefit I never had), I have no sympathy for you.
To the plumbers, cops, nurses, carpenters and electricians out there who are going to clean house in this downturn, congratulations. I hope you don’t go full boomer and attribute it solely to individual effort, not for anyone else’s benefit, but for your own benefit. Hopefully, your kids follow in your footsteps.
"Literally, careers are over. Hundreds of thousands of careers."
DeleteA lot of people are indeed worried that after this blows over in 6 months or a year or however long it takes, employers that survived and stayed open will basically say "hey we got by without all these people we laid off for this long, guess we never really needed them in the first place."
Some will indeed do that. But before we jump to the most devastating conclusions I think we need to remember that right now, the only jobs that matter are the ones that are either directly tied to immediate survival (healthcare, grocery stores, utilities, first responders, etc) or are the things that enable everyone else to work from home (internet service providers, videoconference services, etc).
That doesn't mean everyone else is and always was useless. It just means we don't need them right now. If the only jobs we ever cared about were the ones needed to keep us alive in the immediate moment, we'd never have progressed beyond an agrarian society.
Eventually, things will normalize. I don't think so many careers are permanently ended. Just majorly disrupted.
Lawyers in regulated industries may have a problem, cuz a lot of regs are getting waived right now and that might indeed lead to people concluding they were never really needed. But there's an awful lot of fights that are getting pushed to the back burner right now that will come roaring back. For litigators, it's kinda like being a soldier in a cease-fire. Not saying there'll be some big pent-up demand, there will always be lawyer oversupply. Just saying that it will get back to something resembling how it was pre-covid.
Hey, Old Guy. Check out this story about Hackcademics at Northern Kentucky Law School:
ReplyDeletereddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/LawSchool/comments/frb7n7/a_word_of_warning_for_anyone_attending_or/
Thanks, but it seems to me that the author has bigger concerns than a bad experience in one course. I, from an élite law school, could tell a similar story or two about disengaged hackademic assholes. But all that pales in comparison to the broader consequences of attending an über-toilet like Northern Kentucky, which include unemployability coupled with monstrous non-dischargeable debt (the debt-financed cost is $194k for non-residents of Kentucky and $142k for residents).
DeleteAnd I don't accept the foolish excuse that this person had to go to Northern mother-fucking Kentucky because it was the only law school for hours around that offered courses at night. What the hell is so difficult to understand about OTLSS's message? DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL! There it is in words of one syllable. Yes, traditionally we have made exceptions, mainly for the rich (they can do as they damn well please). And we have suggested here and there that even a nobody like Old Guy might consider going to one of the 13 schools that have a reasonable claim to being élite (though that has worked out terribly in Old Guy's case). But the basic message is still DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL. I know that the sorts of people that go to Northern Kentucky are seldom strong in such skills as reading, but even they should be able to handle the message reproduced above in full capitals.
Like 2:18 above, I have no sympathy for people who go to law school today—especially those that want to pin their problems on some jackass of a profe$$or rather than on their own stupidity.
No, no, no.... Old Guy, you have to check out that thread. And, check out the link to the professor's private website. You won't believe it!
DeleteNah...the article posted by 2:27 on 3/30 is much more frightening....and much more entertaining. He's not at a TTTT; he's a professor at NYU ls, and it's clear he's an expert on everything.
DeleteThe doofus at NKY knew what he was getting into-read the first paragraph-but went anyway, so what did he expect? And the professor is no weirder than the collection of profs at the late and unlamented Indiana Tech. His new school, Univ of Baltimore, is in for a real treat.
Can't remember where NYU was on OG's tiers, but if a tier 1 school has professors like this....
I never encouraged him to click on his site (I haven't.) I thought the Whitter gang keeping together was interesting.
DeleteDon't bother; the author is a classic Special Snowflake. He knew all the warnings but he attended anyway. From the first paragraph:
ReplyDelete"Yes, it is unranked. Yes, that means some things are necessarily going to be pretty bad. Yes, that means my job prospects are shit. No, Chase does not make much of an effort at helping graduates find legal employment. I understood all that going in..."
Knowing all that EVEN BEFORE HE ATTENDED HIS FIRST CLASS at this TTTT, what did he expect?
I really want these people to die:
ReplyDeletehttps://abovethelaw.com/2020/03/nyu-law-prof-loses-his-sht-after-reality-fails-to-conform-to-his-darwinian-economics-coronavirus-models/
I’ll take it all. Failed life. Misery. Unhappiness. Health problems. It’s my fault for falling for the scam. I deserve it. I’m responsible.
God please let the most hardcore Republican, conservative, gun carrying, scam exposing, capitalist (I’ll even take corporate fascist at this point) politicians sweep the next election and pull the federal guarantee on these motherfuckers. I want to see these scumbags get a dose of real capitalism and free market principles and then- THEN- we can see what these dirtbags are worth.
Compromise on everything. I’m talking about cut capital gains to zero. Pay subsidies to trust funds. Bail out the banksters every two years with no strings attached. Cut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, to nothing, but leave the taxes in place, and triple the size of the military budget so military contractors can live in palaces that rivaled the Pharos. Increase the taxes on rich biglaw associates and other wage minions to seventy five percent. I don’t care. Foreclose on anyone that hasn’t paid a mortgage for one month. Force people with student loans to work on plantations.
Just pull the motherfucking federal guarantee on student loans. These people have to be eliminated. Nothing else matters at this point. It’s that important. They have to be brought down no matter the cost.
I want to go to my favella after working document review for 9 dollars an hour and see these liberal dirtbags beg for food. I don’t want them to have coarse bread to eat.
I pray to whatever forces govern the universe that Trump wins the next election, and someone explains this issue to him, and just for the thrill of making his enemies pay, and for no other reason, he hucklebucks these lying, liberal thieves and deposits them into the trash can of history where they belong.
Yes, let's eliminate the aggressive pestilential species Professor juridicus, in every variety from élite to über-toilet. Narcissus himself would shudder at the egos of these people, born with a silver spoon (or should I say Great-Grandma's antique tea service for fifty?) up their ass, who, as someone pointed out above, think that they know everything about everything and don't hesitate to pontificate accordingly while threatening to flash their résumés (Choate, wedding featured in the society pages of The New York Times, professorial position arranged by hubby or wifey, insignificant or non-existent experience in the practice of law), as if anyone gave a good goddamn.
DeleteBut don't expect Their Majesties to get a taste of capitalism or to join you in the favela. "Teaching" law is just something that they do to cultivate their Brobdingnagian intellectual pretensions. If they got the sack (not bloody likely for a prick at NYU), they could fall back on the old trust fund without having to cancel the penthouse over Waikīkī or cut back on the number of red-velvet cupcakes with which they expand their already elephantine hips (anal beads optional).
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/r/PSLF/comments/a1xjvy/this_has_got_to_be_a_scam/
ReplyDeletedr_wdc
4 points ·
1 year ago
· edited 1 year ago
I'm nearly two years into waiting for a review that was supposed to take "a few months". It's frustrating because the reps claim they can see on their screen that there are payments that were mistakenly not counted.
...
That's where PSLF is at.