Allegedly the closure of one more campus places Cooley "in a position of strength". If it is so damn strong, why has it closed three campuses in the past few years? Cooley's president blamed COVID-19 and changes in the demand for law degrees, without ever mentioning the utter shittiness of his über-toilet. Yale, which Cooley left in the dust on the widely ridiculed Cooley rankings, managed to increase its first-year enrollment by 4% in precisely the same context. How is it that Cooley shrank by 46%? Might it be that something other than external factors contributed significantly to Cooley's fate?
Cooley has recently failed to meet one of the ABA's standards for maintaining accreditation. In practice, the ABA can be expected to extend the time for achieving compliance, which is a polite way of saying that it will not meaningfully enforce its own so-called standards.
The number of law schools that have closed in the past five years or so now stands at thirteen:
Cooley (one campus)
Hamline or Mitchell*
Indiana Tech
Whittier
Charlotte
Savannah
Valpo
Arizona Summit
Cooley (a second campus)
Thomas Jefferson†
La Verne†
Concordia
Cooley (a third campus)
Which school will be the next to close? Florida Coastal and Appalachian are strong contenders. Not far behind are Mississippi College, Golden Gate, Ohio Northern, Faulkner, Western State, District of Columbia, John Marshall, Vermont, and a number of others. Step right up and place your bets!
NOTES:
* Hamline and Mitchell merged. Which one closed is difficult to say: arguments can be made on each side. Anyway, the two schools became one, so effectively one of the two closed. The merger was a closure in dignified guise.
† Forfeited ABA accreditation and continued with only the accreditation offered by California.
They're doing their part to build a "socially just future." By closing a campus. That's almost telling the truth.
ReplyDeleteShould the Ave Maria Ann Arbor campus also appear on this list?
ReplyDeleteI think that that one is "Cooley (a second campus)" on the list above.
DeleteBy the way, the little half-branch in Kalamazoo is also closed for the year. Don't be surprised if it never opens again.
Yes there was a Cooley ann arbor, closed eff. 12/31/14, but there was also another law school in Ann Arbor founded by the dominos pizza founder called ave maria. Dominos guy was a devout Catholic and wanted a Catholic law school as some kind of vanity project.
DeleteAve Law is still around though. It's ann arbor location closed in 2009, but only to move to Naples Florida so they didn't so much close that toilet as move it. I don't think both even operated simultaneously so it's not like closing one campus; they literally moved.
And if you google it you see that didn't exactly go smoothly. Some profs didn't want to move and students were disrupted or worried that the school's reputation (like it ever had one) would suffer. So point is, once they did open in Naples their already bad bar exam pass rate got even worse. But they are still around and still ABA accredited and they never had multiple campuses simultaneously, so overall it wouldn't seem to count as a closure.
Personally, I can't figure it out. If you're gonna go to (or work at) a Very Bad Law School, might as well be a toilet in a nice sunny place by the beach. You'd think the profs would've been overjoyed to move to Naples. Sun sand and surf beats miserable Michigan winters any day, and you're no longer sharing a town with a top 14 law school (UMich) constantly reminding you of your inferiority.
Well, Old Guy would prefer Ann Arbor to Naples, Florida. Probably a lot of the professors wanted to stay put because of family, friends, a spouse's career, or even a distaste for Ave Maria's destination.
DeleteNo law school needs a religious mission. What's more, religious law schools turn out to be shitty, because they alienate the superior non-believers while pandering to the inferior faithful. What would happen if Harvard rammed Jesus down everyone's throat? Many people would pass it up for Yale or Columbia or Penn. In addition, the religious ones are for the most part newcomers, with short reputations. That too will leave them on the toilety end of the spectrum. Despite all of the self-serving propaganda about being A Different Kind of Law School, any new school today is going to be a toilet. Fourth-tier Irvine is at best a weak exception, made possible by the institutional presence of the U of California and a heap of money—enough to buy off the first entering class and in part the next two. Even it is far from glorious, and the others are whopping failures. Students of any quality are not going to go to some nameless upstart such as Indiana Tech or Concordia or Ave Maria.
There's an interesting angle to Hamline/Mitchell that I never hear discussed here. I agree that who the true survivor is remains a chicken-or-the-egg discussion, but I think what drove them to the brink is very clear. The University of St. Thomas opened its law school in 1999. (They claimed it was a reopening, the prior incarnation having folded in 1933, but whatever.) Recognizing the limitations of the You-Ass News rankings but having no better gauge at hand, it's worth noting that UST floats at around 115 while H/M floats at around 145, just outside of Rank Not Published land. Not sure how UST did it, but at least two other Catholic law schools opened that year, Ave Maria and Barry, and both remain in RNP land. UST has a $5 billion+ endowment, but that is in the range of Tom Monaghan's personal net worth.
DeleteI don't think the Twin Cities need three law schools but no one save the worst toileteers would seriously claim they need four. My read of the situation is that Hamline's 1970's cash cow had turned into a cash black hole and Mitchell's faculty feared for their pensions. When it became clear one of them was going to be doomed they quickly found a way to work something out, lest they both go down while facing each other in a Mexican Standoff.
I might also note that UST's rankings and quick rise would seem to put them within striking distance of overtaking their nearest Catholic rival, Marquette Law School, which was founded in 1892.
Three might be too many for Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska combined. Instead, those five states have nine, and they had ten before Hamline or Mitchell closed (however you wish to interpret that merger).
DeleteIf I were forced (kicking and screaming) to put four law schools in Minnesota, I would perhaps put two in the Twin Cities, one in Rochester, and one in Duluth. Four in the Twin Cities is two or, really, three too many.
7:47 here. My bad. UST's endowment and Tom Monaghan's net worth are both in the half billion plus range, not 5 billion plus, but the point remains the same.
DeleteSpeaking as a Minnesotan by birth and education, I would say that Duluth would prove to be the Fort Wayne of Minnesota. Outside the confines of Duluth and Superior, WI, you've got a big lake, iron mines to the west, some decent timber in Wisconsin and the scrub growth of the Canadian Shield. Real wilderness in northeastern Minnesota and western Ontario; canoe country.
DeleteKind of like U of Maine. A state surrounded by ocean and French-speaking Canada with New Hampshire to the west. And most of NH's population is closer to the six schools in Boston.
Let's not slip into the "every population center needs a law school" fallacy.
Quite right, 11:58. Minnesota needs perhaps one law school; Duluth does not need one at all. I didn't mean to suggest that Duluth needed a law school, just that Minneapolis–St Paul does not need three or four.
DeleteNeither New Hampshire nor Maine needs a law school: both are amply served by the six in Boston (and, for outlying areas, possibly even the ones nearby in Canada). Vermont does not need a law school: it is near numerous law schools, including some decent ones. Connecticut does not need three (keep only Yale).
Idaho did not need one law school, never mind two. Indiana did not need five and still does not need three; I'd say two at the most, and probably no more than one when we consider that everyone in Indiana can easily get to a law school in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, or even Ontario. Virginia does not need nine. Florida does not need twelve. California certainly does not need anything like fifty-eight (including the state-accredited and unaccredited jokes).
Will have to disagree with you on Connecticut, OG. Relatively few Yale grads are from CT or stay here. The flagship state university has a decent if unspectacular law school that is more than enough to serve local needs. Quinnipiac is a toilet, its main accomplishment has been to pull Connecticut students away from the uebertoilet Western New England, forcing the latter to lower standards even further.
DeleteConnecticut is a small place in an area greatly overserved by law schools. Yale can hardly be said to serve the general public; but what about the heaps of law schools good, bad, and lousy that are just over the border in New York, not to mention plenty nearby in Massachusetts, a shithole in Rhode Island, and several not too far away in northern New England or New Jersey? I stand by my opinion that Connecticut does not need a school other than Yale while so many other law schools surround the state. At least we can agree that it doesn't need Quinnipiac.
DeleteUCONN, though, is a public university. So for Connecticut residents, tuition is "only" 30k per year right now according to their website. That's cheap by law school standards, indeed it is half the 60k they charge out of state students.
DeletePer LST their median student has about a 160 LSAT and a 3.5 GPA. Employment outcomes are about 75% employed as lawyers and 10% "JD advantage" with no school-funded positions. So about 85% have a job. Although they do not provide salary data, large firms employ about 15% of the class.
Bottom line: Not outstanding results out of that place, but it isn't a toilet and it is quite cheap relative to private schools. Indeed, only about 20% of the class pays sticker.
Connecticut should keep uconn. Indeed I think every state should have one "public option" for a law school. But they don't need any others except Yale where as others have mentioned, few stay in CT anyway.
BTW, a humorous aside. I once needed to look something up that wasn't available electronically and used Western New England's library. I sat down at one of the study cubby things and someone had scratched into it with a knife. The graffiti read "this place sucks." Underneath it, someone else had scratched in "yeah big time." I'm guessing 2Ls or 3Ls for whom reality was becoming apparent!
8:42 here. 1:20 covered much of what I wanted to say, but there's another thing, OG. Look at the geographical area you propose for UConn students and the schools available there. There are four T-14's (Ithaca is NOT just over the border), but most folks at UConn are probably not T-14 material, save some seeking to avoid debt. After that, only BU and BC outrank UConn in the You Ass News rankings and Yeshiva is in a virtual tie. Everything else in New England and NYC/Long Island/NJ is a toilet, or worse. We can all agree that there should be fewer schools but closing a UConn and disbursing its students will not help nearly so much as closing a WNE, Vermont or NELS and some of their victims finding no place willing to take them.
Delete1:20, I agree with your point about public options, but will just note this. Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont operate a Tri-State Lottery in order to scrape together jackpots in which people might be interested. Those states would do well to pool their resources for a centrally located Northern New England Law School. With U of South Dakota's bar passage rate in the warning track they and North Dakota would do well to seek a similar accommodation with the U of Minnesota or Iowa. A contribution to the budget in exchange for some guaranteed seats for your state's best and brightest.
The U of Connecticut, I freely admit, is not high on the list of those that I would close. I would certainly go after Western New England, Vermont, U Mass Dartmouth, New England Law School, Touro, Albany, and plenty of other shitholes in the region before I touched U Conn.
DeleteThat said, I don't agree that U Conn is needed just because its peers are three hours away. If U Conn is the best that you can get, you should not be in law school. Maybe forty years ago. Maybe forty years from now. But not today. And if you insist on going anyway, you should have to accept that you may have to move to a mediocrity like U Conn, rather than demanding that it be available within walking distance. We must resolutely oppose the parochial view that every whistle stop needs its own half-ass or worse law school.
You're right about the regional consolidation of law schools. If there must be one in northern New England, there should be ONE. Likewise, a couple of law schools would suffice for the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska. Already there are agreements by which students from some of those states get in-state tuition in some of the others.
Of course, unlike a lottery, a law school realistically has to be situated somewhere, and the various states would squabble hopelessly over that.
Right. They would also squabble over control. For example, the little town I grew up in had no high school. Instead, it paid the next town over so the kids could go there. But that meant that there was no representation from my town on the school board. It was, quite literally, taxation without representation.
DeleteThere actually already is a regional arrangement, sorta. It's called the "New England Compact." Under it, UCONN knocks off about 10k per (so 50k sticker instead of 60) for residents of VT and RI. Must be some kind of interstate compact there, but it's probably about the most that can be accomplished politically.
Another nice thing UCONN does: CT law allows 2Ls and 3Ls to establish residency, so long as they're not dependents of out-of-state parents. Since graduate students are usually paying their rent with loans and are not claimed as dependents, virtually all the out-of-staters will be able to reclassify as residents after the first year. That cuts 2L and 3L tuition in half even if you're paying sticker. That is super generous. My state's public universities, for example, have an ironclad rule that if you were not a resident for at least a year before you enrolled, you can't become one until a year after you leave school, thus proving you were there for more than just going to school.
"We must resolutely oppose the parochial view that every whistle stop needs its own half-ass or worse law school."
DeleteAbsolutely. Kudos, for example, to that place in Louisiana that decided one was not needed there, I think you wrote about it in another post.
But it's hard to turn down all that cash. I think the tension here for local interests is how much money a law school injects into the local economy. It's a lot. The students all come with checks from the DOE to pay local landlords in full. There's going to need to be a building, and it's going to be palatial. Big job for the local general contractor and his countless subcontractors.
There's going to be jobs created locally in that building - not just for profs but all manner of secretaries and assistants and janitors. The students, still flush with lent cash, spend at local bars and restaurants. And they can't risk bar license by getting in trouble so the local cops aren't busting up parties and dealing with drunk 19 year olds like you'd see with an influx of undergrads. And, it's not like a med school or something where you'd need a big nearby teaching hospital to affiliate with; any kind of field experience is entirely optional for JDs so it's plenty if the random county judge nearby agrees to take a couple of externs and some solos around town agree to take some unpaid interns (and their free westlaw accounts).
The school will also probably have clinics, which the local judge will rejoice over because now there will be law students helping poor people for free with their divorces and other crap that has jammed up their courtroom with pro pers.
Overall the law school is self-contained - it doesn't need the community to have much of anything around, the students aren't going to cause trouble and probably won't even register to vote in this temporary home of theirs unless they already come from there. Basically, the students only emerge from the law school's walls in order to spend their borrowed money at local businesses.
The fact that these students are spit out the other end as unemployable lawyers doesn't matter; there's a fresh crop with DOE checks in hand coming in every year.
So, from the local community's perspective (as well as the school's) it is demand for seats, not demand for graduates, that matters. As long as they can fill those seats, a new law school is a boon to the economy in its immediate vicinity regardless of whether there is any actual need for lawyers.
If you're on some whistle stop town's city council, you'd be hard-pressed not to salivate over a law school setting up shop in your town.
Get a load of this:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.abajournal.com/news/article/wmu-cooley-law-school-will-close-its-grand-rapids-campus
—— “There was not really enough students to make it work,” he said. “Each campus operates almost like its own law school, so the expenses are the same, whether it’s 100 students or 500 students. We were hoping the Auburn Hills closure would be enough. With COVID—even though applications to law school are up slightly—the applications to us in the range of students we’re trying to attract is way down.”
That's James McGrath, the dean of über-toilet Cooley. His grammar is godawful. Try again, Mr. McGrath:
There WERE not really enough students to make it work
the applications to us in the range of students we’re trying to attract ARE way down
Jesus H. Christ on a fucking fence post.
"The kinds of students we're trying to attact"?!
DeleteWTF. Cooley actually posts its admissions criteria online. https://www.cooley.edu/about/public-information/admissions-data
They specifically state that anyone with an LSAT at or above 145 and a GPA at or above 2.0 is pretty much a guaranteed admit. So he's saying that while they got plenty of applicants, not enough of them could meet even that lofty standard?
145/2.0 = Auto-admit, and even that can't fill a class. Holy freaking hell. To borrow a sentiment from roger ebert reviewing a terrible movie:
"This doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This isn't the bottom of the barrel. This isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."
Another one bites the dust.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE
We used that line two years ago in reference to Savannah Law School:
Deletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2018/03/another-one-bites-dust-savannah-law.html
We did it! Anyone who enrolls in a lower ranked school now be aware of the huge risk of closure and no transfer! Lets redouble our efforts to close the lower 100 lawschools. Let freedom ring!
ReplyDeleteA new generation has taken up the scam-fight.
ReplyDeleteDo Not Apply to These Law Schools: Predatory Law Schools!
https://youtu.be/0CN3WVO9mE0
Just a thought from this aged denizen of the Junkyard to stir things up:
ReplyDeleteIt isn't just the bottom 100 or the for-profits that is the problem, it's the large classes at all schools. As the poorer schools shut down, the better schools look at opportunities to enlarge their capacities. The easiest way is to take in more transfers from lower schools (especially at sticker), but at the right time the schools will expand the 1L classes. Sooner rather than later, while all that easy federal loan money is still available.
100 schools with an aggregate class size of 40,000 is not an improvement over 200 schools with an aggregate class size of 40,000.
Louisiana has turned its bar exam into an open-book test to be written by e-mail, with no monitoring whatsoever or other controls to prevent cheating:
ReplyDeletehttps://patch.com/louisiana/across-la/law-school-grads-will-now-take-open-book-bar-exam
I think barzam should be open book because real life is open book. It's like allowing calculators on a math test: It's not a plug-and-chug or "memorize and regurgitate" skill, so if anything open book is better for getting at the skill you're really trying to test: Issue spotting and the ability to apply law to facts.
DeleteGranted, doing it by plain old email leaves little in place for preventing someone else from taking the test for you, but this is also not the LSAT, it's measuring specific knowledge rather than aptitude, plus there's Louisiana's weird civil law system which isn't even common law. So Louisiana has never had the multistate bar exam, presumably for that reason.
So whomever someone might hire to take it for them would probably have to be a person who did quite well on a recent Louisiana bar exam. Such a person would guaranteed lose their license if caught, so I doubt there'd be much fraud: It just wouldn't be worth it. You could also reduce the ability to get outside help by releasing the question at 9:00AM or whatever and then the replies are due 4 hours later or whatever. Unless you've got accomplices on standby like on who wants to be a millionaire, it'd be hard for this methodology to materially skew results.
Doc review now asks for top one third and law review. That tells me everything about the state of this profession. I bet they're having no trouble filling those seats at that too.
ReplyDeleteReally? They're scrutinizing people for doc review? I thought that they took anything with a JD. Why should they care about law review? Just because they have their pick of unemployable applicants? Whom are they trying to impress with a bunch of former editors shuffling PDF files in some boiler room?
DeleteBingo! @ 4:26 PM
DeleteI called this years ago. I knew one day it would come to this. There is NO DROUGHT of JD's. It's a Buyer's Market. There is NO DEMAND for anything but the T10 schools. Anything else, demand is NEGATIVE and these employers KNOW IT.
Look, friend.. Don't even worry about it.
All I ever got, like Nando, was scorn and ridicule when I was heavily crusading against the law school scam. These fucks will find out what "Real World" employment looks like for their non-elite JD's when they graduate.
And they'll owe $150-300k. And that debt will compound, then double, etc.
Too bad.
Fools gonna be fools. The System was rigged from the start.
OK. . .first of all, doc review jobs pay as little as 22 bucks per hour. If a job paying a licensed attorney that sad joke, if the employer has the nerve to ask for the applicants grades and whether or not the applicant made law review, that should cause the applicant to walk away from the law on the spot. There are 18 year old high school grads who make 22 per hour in various jobs.
DeleteLaw review: the opportunity to clean up the footnotes in some arrogant hackademic's Open Road scholarshit, while paying a fortune for the academic credits, all in the hope of getting a job that pays $22 per hour and lasts for a couple of days.
DeleteI started law school in 1992, at the best law school in my state. I was surrounded by very smart people, some of whom were smarter than I am. They all had high college GPA's and high LSAT scores, as the school had about a 30 percent acceptance rate. Paid summer internships were the rule and unpaid work was the exception, back in those days. 22 per hour doc review projects literally did not exist back then, though work could be had for 35 per hour with lots of over time (equivalent to at least 40 per hour with 60 per hour OT in today's dollars). If those students had been told borrow at least 150K in student loans for the chance to possibly earn 20 bucks per hour (22 dollars in today's dollars would be worth 20 at most in the early 90's) they would have dropped out and gotten better jobs. At the risk of dating myself, I think that today's law students are gullible and quite stupid, which is probably also why the bar pass rate has steadily dropped for years and they cry for "diploma privilege". It is hard for me to have sympathy for suckers and dummies, as cruel as that may sound. Back in those days, there probably were people dumb enough to apply to law school because they watched too many lawyer shows on TV, but those folk would never get the grades and LSAT score they needed to actually get into any respectable law school in the nation, and they certainly would not pass the Bar Exam even if they did somehow get a J.D. I think that things have changed a lot in the applicant pool since the early 90's both in terms of who applies to law school, who is accepted, and who ends up actually sitting for the Bar Exam someday, and these changes are all for the worse.
DeleteTrouble is Dilbert, those "dockers" work for shining silver towers in the sky lawyers (they do exist, even if many don't last long). The 0L who is dumb enough to apply to fourth tier toilets is also dumb enough to believe that he/she will be spending his/her career in one of those towers in a partnership-track position.
DeleteThe rallying cry "Diploma privilege" unites toileteers with scamsters. Just a few days ago I saw some dolt claim that the two little jobs that he had during law school proved his ability as a lawyer and that his failure to pass the bar exam on two occasions was unfairly holding him back. If he's so damn capable, why can't he pass a dippy little bar exam? Needless to say, he attracted plenty of support from similarly dumb people.
Delete@dilbert: On some other post I commented similarly, to the effect that law school was probably still a pretty good investment until sometime in the 1990s based on tuition history and number of law schools founded by year. Til then, tuition was relatively reasonable, schools were pretty selective, and if things didn't work out BK was actually an option (after 5 years) until BAPCPA became law in 2005.
DeleteIt's important to remember that the good old days were not THAT far in the past. We're not talking boomer times here, we're talking people born in the 70s. On the one hand, that is good in the sense that it's not as impossible to get back a better world as it would be for things like factory work.
On the other hand, it's important to remember that boomer retirements are not going to take out all these people grandfathered in to the better opportunities that put them on a better trajectory from the get-go. Many "Old Economy Lawyers" are actually people who still have 20ish years to retirement so they're not going anywhere anytime soon.
Another merger is in the works. I think the close/merge avalanche is about to begin. Maybe Nando won.
ReplyDeleteCleveland State University and University of Akron to explore ‘unified’ law school
https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/careersandeducation/cleveland-state-university-and-university-of-akron-to-explore-e2-80-98unified-e2-80-99-law-school/ar-BB18rmgg
The U of Akron has been shrinking. Perhaps this proposal amounts to the closure of Akron.
DeleteThe cities of Cleveland and Akron really are not very close (otherwise we'd probably think of Akron as a suburb of Cleveland). A "unified" school seems unrealistic. It would be impractical to take courses at both "campuses".
It might be the first step in a sort of merge/close process, where Akron basically closes but all the students are automatically enrolled at Cleveland State, and they call it a "unified school initiative" or some other academic-corporate gibberish.
DeleteSo what's the scorecard...as in, how many more TTTTs need to close(obviously "all" is the correct answer, but trying to be realistic)? Another hundred or so? As it stands now, there are 203 ABA accredited law schools.
ReplyDeleteLet's try to answer that question on the basis of objective data. Suppose that we agreed that any school left standing should have, as the LSAT score for its class's 25th percentile, at least the median LSAT score for all of those who take the test. That median score is 152. But 87 schools fall below even that weak standard.
DeleteSo, yes, I'd say that about a hundred toilet schools should be closed in the near term.
Yeah. Only about 40% of MCAT-takers manage to get into any US medical school, and they've already survived the weeding out that is organic chemistry and enough other hard science classes that you might as well just declare a bio major.
DeleteIf median MCAT ain't good enough even among a group that has already survived a much harder undergrad curriculum than most, then a liberal artist with an undergrad transcript full of poofter classes and a sub-median LSAT certainly ought not be good enough for law school.
Colorado couple sees $200,000 in student debt discharged by judge
ReplyDeletehttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/colorado-couple-sees-200000-in-student-debt-discharged-by-judge-131501065.html
Interesting appellate case on student loans:
ReplyDeletehttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/colorado-couple-sees-200000-in-student-debt-discharged-by-judge-131501065.html
Not sure how good this news is. Seems the courts have said that the bankruptcy exemption only
Deleteapplies to federal loans, not private ones. If that holds up the private student loan industry will cease to exist. I do not hold out a lot of hope that those lemmings who might have used private loans will not now run for the cliff of federal loans. We thus probably end up where we are now, with no hope save the feds turning off the spigot.
It doesn't say that private student loans are dischargeable. It essentially says that private student loans that "were not made solely for cost of attendance" are dischargeable. The definition of cost of attendance is pretty broad, and can include things like room and board. But, it presumably would be constrained by the actual cost of attendance certified by the school.
DeleteIt sounds like what was going on here is that these "tuition answer loans" were available in excess of the school's approved total cost of attendance. Not uncommon. Students, especially older ones, often want more to live on than a cost that is estimated based on a studio apartment.
Navient apparently conceded that the loan was not an "education loan" because of this lack of limits, but instead tried to argue that it was not dischargeable because it was an "educational benefit."
The court disposed of that argument with the commonsense definition of such a benefit: That would be something like a conditional scholarship that is not ordinarily expected to be repaid, but which might have to be repaid if the conditions are violated.
Bottom line: Even if this analysis became settled law nationwide, the lesson for private lenders is not necessarily that they need to get out of the business. The lesson is that if they lend above a school's approved cost of attendance, then the entire loan is going to be dischargeable.
So it will be like union fees for private sector jobs in non-right to work states. Don't want to join the union? Fine, you don't have to pay dues, just a "fee" equal to the portion of dues spent on negotiation, grievances and anything else not involving lobbying and political contributions. That fee is over 95% of the dues. Of course, no one is stupid enough to believe that number but who has the resources to fight it out in court? And who is ready to face some goons in the parking lot who might want to explain to you why its can be problematic to be a troublemaker? Schools that don't want to lose non-trads or other big spenders have little to lose by jacking up their approved total cost of attendance. The frugal student will live on a shoestring no matter what the school estimates and those who want to live large will borrow away. When I was in school I drove a rusted out Ford Torino, lived in a tiny apartment and considered cheeseburgers with lettuce and tomato an occasional treat I might allow myself. Others were driving Mercedes, living in high-end apartment apartment complexes with pools and dining out often. Who is going to question the school's decision on living costs or, if necessary, start a war over it?
DeleteI repeat, nothing will change and the scam will go on until the spigot is turned off.
In all fairness, 6:03, the schools don't have much incentive to inflate the COA. Tution and fees, sure, but allowances for cost of living are going to private landlords and such, not the school.
DeleteHeck, my local big state U now allows only freshmen to live in the dorms, because they didn't want enrollment growth to depend on building more residence halls.
The local townies aren't happy about the college students bringing their drunken shenanigans to the off-campus neighborhoods in hugely increasing numbers, and neither are the local cops who would rather have the university's police department deal with busting up the parties. But the university just gives them the finger. They know where their bread is buttered, and it's tuition not room & board.
6:03 here. 12:42, you completely missed the point. This recent case ruling says a private student loan might be fair game for discharge in bankruptcy if the amount borrowed exceeds the school's approved cost of attendance. The point is it costs a school nothing to inflate COA by inflating what rent and (for schools in NYC and other places where groceries are expensive) even food cost. If the case holds up private lenders won't lend above COA. This free exercise for the schools keeps the school from losing students who want bigger loans for living expenses from shopping around. The school wins, the lender wins and, as always, the lemming loses.
DeleteAnd OBTW, nothing personal but your statement that tuition and not room and board is where it's at reveals a lack of knowledge about such matters. The pandemic has killed some small colleges, some with roots in the nineteenth century, because room and board was an important profit center for them and with 100% online learning tuition alone could not sustain them.
All I was saying is that I don't think the schools make much money from room & board, or at least that such profit is easier to make by simply increasing tuition and/or enrollment. You've got one way of making money that will require you to make big capital expenditures and incur large ongoing staffing/maintenance/depreciation costs, and one that doesn't. What would you pick?
DeleteAs to colleges going under, that's because people want the "traditional college experience." If your education is going to consist of watching youtube videos and emailing homework assignments to your professor, then you might as well do that at a community college. It's not that the school depended on the room & board revenue; it's that without any kind of a campus experience people aren't as willing to pay the tuition.
It is true that the colleges could see an inflated COA as a painless way to make students happy. But that only goes so far - the point is that it doesn't contribute directly or significantly to the bottom line for the school itself.
They also gave up their ball park naming rights.
ReplyDeleteStruggling Cooley Law School Relinquishes Minor League Ballpark Naming Rights
DeleteThe law school has paid $1.5 million since 2010 to have the park named Cooley Law School Stadium, but challenging economic times prompted the school to decline renewing a naming rights agreement.
By Karen Sloan | September 04, 2020 at 04:02 PM
[Photo]Cooley Law School Stadium in Lansing, Michigan, is the home of the Lansing Lugnuts.
It’s the end of an—admittedly strange—era in law school advertising.
https://www.law.com/2020/09/04/struggling-cooley-law-school-relinquishes-minor-league-ballpark-naming-rights/
Good wine proverbially needs no bush. But vinegary plonk like Cooley has to resort to advertising of that tacky kind, which set the über-toilet back $1.5M per year.
DeleteCooley may well dry up and blow away in a couple of years.
How many lemmings borrowed their lives away to fund those naming rights? I have a cast iron stomach but the thought sickens me.
DeleteMy theory on a standalone law schools advertising via stadium naming rights is that it is similar to when for-profit diploma mill University of Phoenix got the AZ Cardinals stadium named after them: The motivation is that getting your name attached to sports increases your name recognition.
DeleteIt's a shame, but the perceived "layman prestige" of a school is often tightly linked to its sports programs. Put simply, a lot of people judge a school based on whether they've heard of it. The schools most laypeople see as "famous" are going to be either the Harvards and Yales of the world, because those are the schools always portrayed in TV and movies when a character is to be portrayed as highly intelligent, or they will be the schools with well-known sports programs because they see those on TV, they see that these schools have a lot of fans, etc.
Would Ohio State be anything more than just another state school if it didn't have a powerhouse football program? It raises alumni donations, reputation, and (for public schools) even legislative appropriations.
University of Phoenix has no football team, just as Cooley has no baseball team. Indeed, Cooley couldn't even theoretically have one because it historically had no affiliation with any undergrad institution. (A problem Cooley also tried to fix via a loose affiliation with western Michigan university that seems to provide little integration beyond the ability to use the name).
Perhaps getting the place where someone else's team plays named after you was seen as the next best thing to having sports of their own. Of course, in classic Cooley fashion they could only get a minor league stadium, just as they could only get a very loose affiliation with a real(ish) college.
But that's cooley for ya - half-ass all the way. At least U of PHX got an NFL stadium, lol.
Those comments about sports (read: male football and basketball) are also relevant to the stupid "rankings" put out by You Ass News. A major component of those "rankings" is reputation, which is measured by sending surveys to various jurists. Notre Dame's law school can be expected to profit handsomely from the reputation of the university's sports teams.
DeleteOf course, "reputation" is a ridiculous criterion. Put Princeton on the list and watch it get a great score for reputation even though it hasn't had a law school for decades.
Not sure if they had a written fee agreement, as required...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/09/05/us/ap-us-attorney-misconduct-allegations.html
Florida Coastal cut faculty pay, and they're getting sued over it.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/education/2020/09/04/florida-coastal-professors-sue-school-saying-pay-illegally-cut/5709497002/
If the profe$$ors actually had a contract under which Florida Coastal owed them the money that they claim, perhaps they can enforce it. Otherwise, they should probably be thankful that they still have overpaid sinecures at a dying über-toilet whose first-year enrollment has fallen by 90% over the past nine years.
DeleteAnyone who enrolls at Florida Coastal today is too ignorant or stupid to belong at any law school. Florida Coastal is obviously collapsing, and we can expect it to close abruptly just like the other two InfiLaw dumps (Charleston simply locked its doors, and Arizona Summit announced its closure about two weeks before the planned start of the semester).
The "Don't be a lawyer song":
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs-UEqJ85KE
lol that song got circulated around a lot when it came out. Problem with the lyrics though: It says you'll end up abandoning dreams of environmental or human rights law in order to make money "workin' on a pharmaceutical company's merger with another pharmaceutical company"
DeleteIn other words, it continues to convey this notion that you'll have this choice between doing fulfilling but unremunerative work, or doing lucrative but soul-sucking work. Most people will get stuck with something that is both, if they're lucky enough to have any work at all.
The idea that the worst possible outcome is handling one pharma company's acquisition of another, with a big paycheck but niggling doubts about your real value to the world, actually perpetuates the scam myth. If only the abandonment of childish dreams of "human rights law" were the reason lawyers were unhappy, as opposed to worrying about actual homelessness!
Spot on. The video feeds the myth that the worst that will happen is that you will be well paid but bored. But in fact the hypersaturation of graduates means there will be no work for anybody ever.
DeleteYup. In fact, the pharma merger example they use actually wouldn't be "boring" unless you're just on the doc review. If you were on the deal in a substantive way, it would be a very high-level practice area.
DeleteContrast public interest work. Most of it isn't the precedent setting appellate work that places like ACLU do. Real, on-the-ground public interest work is civil legal aid or public defender.
Public defender is good, lots of courtroom experience and a government pension if you stick around. But really hard to get. Civil legal aid isn't easy to get either, but even if you do get it, it is more like social work than law practice: Helping clients navigate the bureaucracy of the welfare state by filling out forms and such to get/keep all manner of public benefits, begging landlords for more time, walking them through self-help packets to file for divorce/custody/restraining orders, etc. Lots of stuff people can (and usually do) handle on their own, except that with the extremely poor there is an alarmingly high rate of functional illiteracy so they need a lot of hand-holding.
The key language: [Any legal job is] "really hard to get". Almost all TTTT graduates will have no chance at getting any job as a lawyer, let alone PD/legal aid. Instead, if they are very, very lucky, they'll get taken on by a PI churn and burn firm and make the lordly sum of 60K a year with minimal or no benefits. And that will last a year or two at most, before the PI boss realizes he can get a new grad for 10K less.
DeleteAnd the other TTTT grads? They don't find a job as a lawyer ever, period. This "corporate v public service" dichotomy is patent nonsense.
If you graduate from a TTTT, you'll have no choice at all.
Lots of toileteers are never even called to the bar at all. The ABA's new "standard" for accreditation allows a law school to go on forever with as many as a quarter of the graduates who write the exam (the many who don't write it at all are excluded from this calculation) failing to pass it within two years.
DeleteYet we still hear the lie that toileteers can choose between richly remunerated corporate work and noble dolphin-saving jobs.
Yup. You hear that a lot. You tell some 0L that they're not going to make any money and get some kind of response like "that's fine, I'm not going to sell out anyway."
DeleteUmm no, you missed the point Mr./Ms. 0L. You can't sell out if no one is buying, and when I say you're not going to make any money I DON'T mean you won't get rich. I mean you won't.. make.. ANY.. money.
Document review hell:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzXFm1ghKdc
Tales of Misery with a Law Degree: I MISS J.D. Underground. Attorney Life & Jobs after Law School?:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZzXz4nJ9dI
I was Ace Rimmer on JDU. It sort of turned into an awful Reddit clone towards the end. And, the Scamblog movement has been taken up by a new generation on Youtube.
DeleteDo Not Apply to These Law Schools!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CN3WVO9mE0
She even singles out Nando's Third Tier Drake for being at the top of the list for revoked conditional scholarships.
I used to post on JDU as well, but it was really a very nasty place and it was full of scam apologists. I think the admin there just encouraged some of the nastiest people, and when that happens, that's all you wind up with.
DeleteI can't say I miss it at all. Also reddit would be an easy place to have anti-scam subreddits, but there's little to no interest in it. And quite honestly, I don't know if it's people eventually do move on or what, but there just isn't interest in sustained anti-scam material, this is by far the best continuing blog.
Nando is gone, JDU is gone, lawschoollemmings is done, joblessJD is long gone, as well as the other various blogs of yesteryear. Whenever I see the subject come up in something mainstream like Reddit, everyone claims they have great outcomes a decade later or what not. It's hard to keep things going against those stories, because nobody ever wants to think they'll be the one that's frozen out. I strongly suspect the positive stories, outside of the survivorship bias, also have people that simply do not disclose their connections. The most insidious part of the law school scam is that law is really a very aristocratic profession. They opened up admissions and allowed more people to call themselves lawyers, but the actual good jobs in law are still extremely limited, to the "more cultured" which is code for the good old boys club. If you don't know that, or what that is, you're not part of the club and you were never actually invited to the table. For whatever reason, many people that aren't at the table want to insist it doesn't exist or, contrarily, insist they are in fact at the table that does not exist.
In a sense, law is actually quite meritocratic, if you define merit exclusively with reference to standardized test scores which is a whole other problem.
DeletePretty much everyone who can crack a 170 can get in to a top school, and pretty much everyone who can get into a top school can get biglaw. Sure the unconnected are less likely to make partner or obtain some other lofty perch but so what? Most biglaw associates are in it to pay off their loans and get out before the recruiters lose interest.
Country club polish isn't needed for an hour-churning cog. Just a top school JD, the ability to not come off as a total aspie during OCI or as a summer associate, and the willingness to work 80+ hours per week for however long it is until it's time to leave.
Without connections, people outside the top schools are screwed. That's true. But biglaw has no qualms about drawing from the bottom of Harvard's class, and Harvard has no problem admitting someone from Compton if that person somehow managed to score a 175.
It's very unfair to the people at all the other 200 law schools. But it's also pretty meritocratic. Brutally so, in fact.
Why Going to Law School is a Bad Idea:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd1myS17q8c
Is it just a matter of oversupply or is it also that lawyers are just simply becoming obsolete? Much in the way that ropemakers, sailmakers and illuminated manuscript copiers became obsolete.
ReplyDeleteLawyers are certainly not becoming obsolete, but many areas of legal practice are shrinking. Most civil and criminal litigation of any difficulty or gravity will require lawyers for a long time to come. That goes doubly for appeals. Wills can be written cheaply with on-line services (or forms bought at a stationery store, the counterpart before personal computers became prevalent), but I usually consider that inadvisable: even what may look like a simple estate involves more issues than the naïve user of forms is likely to expect. On the other hand, family law is rapidly becoming an administrative function; I have even said for years that most divorces could be sent instead to an administrative office and referred only if necessary to the courts. Paralegals in some places handle routine divorces, incorporations, conveyances, and other routine matters—and that may be fine, as long as they carry adequate insurance and practice only within authorized limits. Computers are taking an increasing role in corporate mergers and acquisitions.
DeleteDemand for legal services appears not to be growing significantly, if at all. And much of the demand is at the bottom end—people who have no money, people who won't pay. I recommend viewing law as a career of the past. It's being promoted heavily by law-school scamsters who in most cases have only a couple of years' experience in practice, if that, and whose fancy incomes and benefits are funded by putting asses in seats whether those asses will ever end up in decent legal jobs or not. Law offered real opportunity in 1975 but no longer does.
I think lawyers ARE becoming obsolete. Yes there are exceptions for the complex stuff biglaw and the boutiques do, and for the things like serious crimes where lawyers couldn't be eliminated without changing the constitution. But we're being squeezed out everywhere it is possible to do so, that's for sure. We're too expensive, too generalist, and we cause too much delay, so the world is moving on without us. As you've said, it's already happening in places like family court that have really become glorified admin agencies. But even traditional safe harbors like personal injury may eventually fall. The 7th amendment doesn't apply to purely state law matters, so in theory even torts could be adjudicated administratively like workers comp.
DeleteIt's a slow death by a thousand cuts, to be sure. But the things that are lawyers' "exclusive territory" are getting narrower and narrower. In my state for example, UPL is pretty much unenforced except in the context of appearances on behalf of someone else in a court of general or higher jurisdiction. Anywhere else, it's pretty much up to the client whether a JD is worth anything. A lot of small and midsize businesses get legal advice all the time, but it's mostly from their CFO or their "compliance officer" or their HR director or their CPA. And individuals rely on tax preparers and realtors and self-help forms and even their uncle who happens to be a cop.
We have a territory that is ours alone. But the scope of that is narrowing all the time. This will only continue and a pattern of it is entirely consistent with the way obsolescence works. The department of defense has computers that run nuclear missles that still use floppy disks. The fact that a few are still around for narrow and specialized uses doesn't make them not obsolete; it just means that even obsolete skills (like obsolete tech) usually manages to carve out a few last niches for itself.
Lawyers are like fax machines: Still gotta use them occasionally, and in fact some institutions (like healthcare) still use them a LOT. But the idea that there are a few niches in which otherwise obsolete things survive doesn't mean they aren't obsolete or fast approaching it.
A well trained, experienced, skilled and financially comfortable attorney will still always be a tremendous necessity for corporations and the wealthy. However the profession is limited to those clients. There are not all that many of those, and this profession has no real barrier to entry so many call themselves lawyers that won't ever have the training, experience or connections to ever even get to work for these entities.
DeleteIf law school graduates were cut to around a fifth it still probably would be too much. Those positions do not open up often enough that they need newer entries anyway, there's maybe some 10,000 total lawyers needed in the nation at a time. And of that, none of them under 60 or so would even contemplate moving on, many practice into their 70s with no real dropoff in their ability, if anything, the expertise only helps them more.
You can't graduate some 5x that number every year. Even graduating that entire number every year is obviously too much, considering life and career expectancy. Maybe a tenth of that a year makes sense, so 1000 total students. Which unsurprisingly is probably roughly the total of T14 graduates a year. Of those, the largest class is from Georgetown, and GTown students have difficulty in landing great career options too, the bottom half or so is really not much better off than most students in lower ranked schools.
According to a study from Economic Modeling Specialists, nationally there is a demand for about 25k new lawyers each year, and we produce about 50k. ATL, meanwhile, says the bimodal salary distribution is such that if you disregard biglaw and the misleading averages it creates, a typical newbie lawyer starts out in the 50-70k range IF they're lucky enough to have a law job at all.
DeleteFinaid.org, meanwhile, says that while the ideal is to have debt no more than starting salary, people can typically swing debt up to double their starting salary. If you debt-finance your law school education nowadays, and especially with undergrad debt, you're prolly looking in the 200k neighborhood when probably the 100k neighborhood is the maximum sustainable if you had full lawyer employment in that median.
So, bottom line: The data seems to support something Campos said a long time ago: We should be producing about half the lawyers we currently do, and the debt they take on to do it should be about half as much. Half the lawyers at half the cost. That, IMHO, should be the rallying cry.
An easy slogan and a reasonable one; I wouldn't go so extreme as to say something like 1k lawyers/yr. We need to take both numbers and cost and cut them in half. That is probably the point at which supply and demand would be in some semblance of a relationship to one another.
Alumni giving has tanked at my toilet of a law school. They're browbeating us about it too. Not one penny.
DeleteI issued a cease and desist from communication e-mail to my law cesspool at least 20 years ago. About 6 months ago I received an e-mail from the skool. I responded that no further communication from the skool is welcome.
DeleteALERT: PROPOSED NEW LAW SCHOOL FOR NORTHWEST LOUISIANA
ReplyDeleteAlas, the people of northwest Louisiana are not safe from the law school scam. Someone posted above about how Louisiana's higher education board gave the thumbs-down to a new law school in the Shreveport area last winter. However, local politicians whined and chanted the mantras of "access" and "diversity," blah, blah, blah and the board has mysteriously reversed their opinion, apparently without any additional data being collected.
The proposal on the table is apparently a "satellite," or expansion of the shithole HBU Southern University law school, a la we need more "diversity" in the legal profession in northern Louisiana, blabbity blabbity blabbity, ad infinitem.
And, yes, local economies benefit to some degree, with the influx of a few dozen law profe$$ors, and students with suitcases full of federally-guaranteed loan money. Of course no one ever thinks of the downside of having a local cesspool of a law school birthing a few dozen unemployable attorneys into the region every year. I guess the local billboard business will benefit after these people grajooowate and try to drum up business that simply doesn't exist in that area.
I live in East Texas, and I don't think I have to worry about any of these morons crossing the boarder and getting licensed in my state, so I don't really have a dog in this race. I'm also too lazy to look up and give references, which is your bailiwick, Old Guy.
Go get 'em. Looking forward to a blog post about this situation.
Louisiana is a relatively shabby, isolated state with four law schools, none of them worth attending. It does not need a fifth. As one of our writers said last year, it certainly does not need one because of unmet demand in Shreveport, a down-at-heel city with plenty of other two-bit law schools nearby.
DeleteSouthern University is one of the lousiest ABA-accredited law schools. It can't run its current campus worth a tinker's damn. Just imagine how horrible a satellite campus would be.
Because of its special legal system, Louisiana arguably needs one, maybe even two, law schools. It already has four. The last state to create a fifth one was Indiana—and it lost not only the new law school but also an established one that was founded in the nineteenth century.
By the way, of the nine law schools outside Puerto Rico that are out of compliance with the ABA's new so-called standard for passing the bar exams (https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2020/02/eleven-law-schools-are-out-of.html), six are in the Southeast—eight if we count Cooley (which has a campus in Florida) and the U of the District of Columbia. I am of the view that no other law school is needed anywhere in the Southeast—or, for that matter, anywhere in the US.
This also proves, once again, that the scam is truly a bipartisan effort, seamlessly crossing party lines to fulfill its mission. These new law schools have become political vanity projects, with both parties on board.
DeleteKilling a proposed and utterly unneeded law school ought to be easy-and it was, the first time around. But after the politicians-both GOP and democrat-realized the feds would be footing the bill, at least initially, everybody got on board the gravy train.
And since it's a state school, while completely worthless, it will last forever. Not sure how many publicly funded law schools have closed, but it's probably very, very few.
When it comes to founding ANY publicly-funded institution, the question should never be whether it CAN be opened, but whether it SHOULD be opened. Sure, the taxpayers of Louisiana probably could front the money for a new law campus in Shreveport, but SHOULD they?
ReplyDeleteIf you are a local politician and you want to support the entry of ANY kind of business into your fiefdom (cannabis, gambling, prostitution, cock-fighting), simply chant "economic development" and "increased tax revenue" until you get your way. That's how the Shreveport-Bossier area ended up with the riverboat casinos. From listening to the proponents of the idea, you would have thought the entry of that sordid business into the area would have led to them paving the streets with gold, and a chicken in every pot. Why is it then, that, when I go there to count cards (one of my hobbies) and take the casinos' money, I drive through a ghetto to get there? I remember back when they were debating whether to allow the casinos to be located there, their supporters/lobby also advertised that they would bring beaucoups of jobs to the area. Yeah, shitty jobs standing at tables slinging cards or cleaning commodes in hotel rooms. It seems that the "economic development" associated with certain endeavors benefits a select few.
But, unlike the law school scam, the casino business is at least self-limiting, as there is a finite amount of disposable income to be had, and it's pretty hard to borrow substantial amounts of money to play slots. For example, an economic study a few years ago indicated that the Shreveport-Bossier area could support 1-2 fewer casinos that were already there. And, sure enough, one of them--the shittiest one--closed as soon as COVID hit. Too bad it's not that way with law schools, which apparently are immune to the normal laws of economics, as they are supported by an artificial "demand" that is fueled by borrowed money and unrealistic expectations.
In the case of the law school, it will create a few low-level administrative jobs for the area, and that is okay. But, I would assume most or all of the academic and leadership positions would be filled by out-of-towners. I guess a few landlords and bars would benefit from the hapless students spending the students' borrowed money, much of which will never be repaid.
In the end, the rest of us are left footing the bill.
For a politician, any job is a good job. And although the profs and leadership would indeed be transplanted, but they're still gonna buy houses and such locally. Also, not really analogous to a casino; not going to attract those seedier elements. The students need to pass C&F, after all. And so what if they graduate unemployed? They just IBR the debt and are really no less unemployable than their useless liberal arts degree already made them, and they got a three year "all expenses loaned" vacation from reality.
DeleteIt's what economists call a negative externality. So long as you can fill the seats, the profits are insourced and the losses are outsourced. For the school and community, it's all upside so long as those classes stay full.
It's true that a public institution should care more about those more macro-level issues. But they don't. Governments have decided they should subsist almost entirely on tuition, so public higher ed has become really just another business.
This is from 2018. U of Minnesota is living off of handouts and subsidies:
ReplyDelete"Since 2012-13, the U has given the law school $39.9 million to cover budget shortfalls. The ongoing annual subsidy has reached $7.5 million.
President Eric Kaler is proposing to increase the yearly subsidy to $12 million by 2020-21, while also covering a $1.9 million shortfall next year."
https://www.twincities.com/2018/05/10/umn-subsidy-for-law-school-soars-as-applications-suffer-a-steep-drop/
Well yes, most law schools have gone from being cash cows to being welfare cases. But the U of M, like all public law schools, can always ask to have more money taken out of the paychecks of working stiffs in low paying jobs to fulfill their sacred calling of dispensing million dollar degrees to a privileges few and supporting their faculties in lives of indolence. Where it is going to get interesting is among private law schools that are now receiving subsidies from their parent universities. Check out this article in Forbes and its accompanying ratings of the financial status of 933 private colleges and universities. The list does not include the remaining indy law schools but that doesn't matter. The issue at hand is how much longer law schools affiliated with larger institutions can expect to be subsidized.
DeleteHere is a link to the article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2019/11/27/dawn-of-the-dead-for-hundreds-of-the-nations-private-colleges-its-merge-or-perish/#7401af2d770d
Schools are given a financial GPA on a 0.0/4.5 scale and a corresponding letter grade of D up to A+. The grading is tough. Only fifteen schools, and only six Ivies, earned a perfect 4.5 GPA. And there's no curve. Another article describing their methodology noted how many more D's there were in these 2019 ratings than in the first ratings they did six years earlier. And some well-established institutions surprised me. U of Chicago A, GWU B+, Georgetown B, Fordham C-.
In any event, while I encourage everyone to review the matter thoroughly here some observations of mine:
1. Valpo, Whittier and Indiana Tech, while not 4.5's, are a lot better off than many schools that have yet to cut their toilets lose.
2. D's were awarded to WNEU, Faulkner, Illinois Tech (parent of Chicago-Kent), Barry, Pace and Detroit-Mercy.
3. In addition to Fordham, C-'s also went to Touro, Golden Gate and Samford. I might have missed some D's and C-'s.
As the accompanying article states, there is a reckoning coming when the number of graduating seniors starts dropping a few years out. I for one cannot picture any financially struggling school choosing suicide over hacking off the diseased limb of a money-losing toilet law school.
I had once thought the indies would go first, but some time ago I realized it will be the toilets that have to justify themselves on an ongoing basis to a higher authority comprised of people who are at risk of losing their own sinecures.
12:24 here again. There was an error in my list of well established schools that surprised me with their Forbes financial grades. It should read: U of Chicago A, NYU B+, Georgetown B, GWU B-, Fordham C-.
DeleteNando's Drake is given a C+.
DeleteAs to your point, I wonder what the associate professors at U of M feel about their budgets being constrained to fund subsidies for the law school, where the professors earn twice as much.
This subsidies might not be sustainable any more. $65 million shortfall:
Deletehttps://www.startribune.com/u-moves-spring-break-to-april-at-twin-cities-campus-because-of-virus/572678092/?refresh=true
Subsidies? UMinn is a public school. The whole darn thing should be a subsidy, including the larger university. Do we ask if the military "loses money"? Your local elementary school? Your public works department? No. These are government services and taxes are what's used to pay for it.
DeletePublic schools should primarily subsist on public support. And if the public doesn't want to support them they should close. Private colleges, meanwhile, should not be entitled to 501c3 status if they cannot subsist primarily on endowments and grants.
Only a private and openly for-profit institution can truly and morally defend making a margin on tuition, and then only if people pay it without government support.
Schools becoming "tuition dependent" is the Great Cancer of higher education.
Law schools are so toxic on so many levels. . .law school infantilize their students. They tell their students that they should focus on their school grades and school journal (as opposed to actually learning how to practice law). Telling a student to focus on his school grades and school journal is great advice for 14 year old high-school freshman, and if he really works hard he might make the Honor Roll and write for the school newspaper! Telling the same thing to a 20-something in trade school is aggressively stupid. If law students weren't so dumb themselves they would see right through the condescension, and focus on learning what they need to know to practice law instead of polishing an apple for the teacher . . .
ReplyDeleteActually, dont really agree with your comments. First and foremost, nobody should go to law school. But, if you've already enrolled, then your marks should be your total focus. Take it from someone who is still haunted by their poor marks in law 25 years later; the only thing people care about is your marks.
DeleteI, too, have been practicing, for over 25 years. In that time, I can count on one hand the number of employers/potential employers who have asked me about my grades. For 90 percent of law students, grades are irrelevant. If you are in the top ten percent of the class, and, ideally, also on the Law Review, that will open up doors to BigLaw and federal clerkships. But for nine out of ten law students, grades are irrelevant, and participation in a journal, Moot Court, etc. won't change that. Getting work experience with actual lawyers in law offices practicing law can open some important doors to post-graduate employment. Honestly, other than getting your first jobs, grades aren't important at all for lawyers, so I'm not sure how they are haunting you decades after you graduated, but I am not saying that to attack you or be negative. The job market for lawyers was actually pretty good 25 years ago, at least in the region where I worked, and not bad 20 years ago, but then it started to get awful. Today the job market for lawyers is mostly non-existent, but idiots still keep going to law school.
DeleteWell, you're both right: law school sucks in all its facets, period full stop.
DeleteBut ridiculously enough, the only thing employers care about are your grades. I got very few interviews coming out of law school, but most of those consisted solely of being asked: what's your GPA? Oh, and a couple of those asked if I was on law review.
I didn't have the nerve, but should have said "It's a 4.0, and yes I'm editor-in-chief. I just forgot to put that on my resume."
I also disagree with dilbert on this one, because law is so different than all other licensed professions.
DeleteIn pretty much everything else, you have to have a certain amount of experience and/or prerequisite courses before you start the professional school, then during school you have to get a certain amount of field placement, and finally after school you have to have a certain amount of post-graduate experience before you can get an independent license. In other words, professional education in every other discipline supplements, not replaces, apprenticeship. There's experience components before, during and after, so being issued a license means you actually know what you are doing. That makes your experience more important than you grades in most cases.
In law, OTOH, all experience is optional, and the classes you take in 2L and 3L will vary a lot. But 1L grades are blind, rigidly curved, and everyone takes the same classes as a cohort. Thus, your 1L class rank and the rank of your school are the two things employers primarily go off.
So my advice, like others, is not to go. But if you must go, you must go to the best school you can get into and focus completely and exclusively on getting the best possible 1L grades. Little else matters.
Its the guy here from 3.26am. Firstly, of course, nobody should do a law degree- in fact all law schools should be shut for a thirty year period to allow for the glut to settle itself.
DeleteHowever, if you are stupid enough to enrol in law, then your total, and utter focus should be your marks. Your marks (particularly in first year law, for some reason), totally determine whether you get the 'A Stream' ie biglaw, federal clerkships, and if you dont get the A stream, then you are stuck in shitlaw, for life, earning less money than an apprentice garbageman. So rule 1 - dont go, rule 2- if you are stupid enough to go, get high marks.
I have respect for you both and your positions. I graduated from the best law school in my state in 1995. In those days, at least in my state, the job market for law school grads was pretty good. The Public Defender's Office would talk to anyone, and at a minimum give a lawyer some "panel work" to put some money in his pocket. If you really wanted a job there, and committed to it, you could probably get it, without difficulty. It was hard to hired as a prosecutor, but not impossible. Other government agencies were hiring, as were solo lawyers that needed an associate, small, and mid-sized law firms. Grades literally never came up in discussion with any of those employers and potential employers, at least in my experience. In fact, at least where I live, the job market for lawyers was good until at least 2000. The problem isn't grades/class standing, as I see it. The problem is simply a massive over-supply of lawyers. In my recollection, going to a good law school made sense in the early 90's, tuition was much lower, even adjusted for inflation, and there were jobs to be had. Today, however, going to law school is aggressively stupid.
DeleteTechnical point, not all law schools grade on a curve.
DeleteWithout wishing to contradict anyone, I must say that the account given above by 1:19 is not accurate. Grades generally do make a big difference, but they do not by themselves put anyone on track for Big Law or a federal clerkship. Two other factors are important: school and pedigree.
DeleteSchool matters because those desirable jobs go overwhelmingly to graduates of élite or near-élite law schools. Scalia once said that he wouldn't consider anyone from a no-name school as a candidate for a clerkship. It is not true that only a handful of schools turn out graduates fit for clerkships, but it is true that a name like Harvard or Columbia makes a big difference. Federal judges and Big Law generally want the name—and get it. Thus even the best grades from a mediocre or worse law school will not give one a good chance of landing a clerkship or a job for a lawyer in a big law firm.
Pedigree matters a great deal at the élite institutions. During my first few days at one of these, a classmate told me that there was no need to study, since everyone would get at least a B–, which would be enough for a good job. He was wrong on both counts: some people did get less than a B–, and even my excellent grades (I finished with top honors) mattered little in the absence of wealth and connections. I got a federal clerkship but nothing decent beyond that. I am still struggling to scratch out a living.
Absolutely, dilbert: It all fundamentally boils down to oversupply. The obsession with class and school rank is a symptom of that, and indeed this oversupply problem really didn't start to come to a head until the turn of the 21st century or so.
DeleteIf you're a legal employer and you get 100 resumes every time you post a job, you need something objective with which to weed out the vast majority of them, and it can't be something vague or subjective that might get you in EEO trouble. In a world where your other educational pursuits are essentially irrelevant and where no one is expected to have any meaningful experience, they simply don't have anything else to go on.
But let me stress how right you are: This prestige obsession is a symptom of the oversupply. That oversupply is always the root cause, except in "prestige positions."
@OG: I'm surprised you got a federal clerkship and were otherwise shut out. Assuming you mean a real clerkship; post-graduate, paid, district court or higher, and not one of those "judicial externships" you do during the year, I've never heard of a former federal clerk not getting biglaw, or even already having it on a deferral for the duration of the clerkship. Regardless, I think as dilbert said, the oversupply problem is what's causing the prestige obsession to trickle down into even "normal" legal jobs. I don't think they're doing it "because they can," at that level. They're doing it because they're getting so many applications and need something objective with which to cull.
@8:43: True, not everyone curves formally, but that tends to happen at top schools that can get away with it because employers are interested in everyone.
DeleteOther schools typically release rank for the top X kids, but that still tells you there IS a ranking, and the associated curve needed to create it, it's just not disclosed below a threshold.
The other thing they do is use codes. Northeastern for example doesn't use letter grades at all, but there are buzzwords in the evaluations that readily translate to class rank, and only so many of different buzzwords will be awarded. The most I can say is that sometimes such places conceal the curve, but those who need to know, know. The wheat must be distinguished from the chaff or employers wouldn't hire anyone from such places.
More to OG's point, this reminds me when I was living in Chicago in the 1980's and the Tribune ran a feature story about black kids in the 'hood who were top performers at their high schools and hoping to get out of the 'hood by means of education. The students discussed were all obviously very bright and also very realistic. Several were quoted as saying words to the effect of "I know the A's I am getting here would be C's in the suburbs." In other words, they knew the competition in college would be a lot stiffer. With the exception of medical school, where the floor level for admissions is so high, it is thus with all education. If Cooley 1L's were competing with HYS 1L's they'd all flunk out the first semester. I have seen valedictorian and editor in chief of the law review types from lower-level schools get a foot in the door but those are some pretty long odds
DeleteNot sure I'm contradicting anyone, but my experience was very similar to 1:19's. I attended law school decades ago, at a "top 50"-per USNWR school, which is a truly laughable honor. Anyway, I got several interviews at OCI and every one-every single one-asked what my GPA and class rank were. For at least a decade after law school, at every single interview, I was asked my GPA/class rank. Literally, every single time. Some of the interviews, both OCI and years later, lasted literally a few minutes, as that was the only question asked.
DeleteAnd yes, several asked if I was on law review, as if I'd forget to put that on my resume...and as you can guess, my GPA was nothing worth noting, so it wasn't listed on my resume.
My guess is the experience for people like OG who actually went to a top school and got top grades(and got a clerkship because of those grades) is entirely different. But for those of us in tier...well, not sure which one, but definitely down the list, if you want a job, grades are pretty much all that matter. And if your grades are like mine-pretty mediocre-you're not going to get a job. My guess it's even worse now, with more grads and fewer law jobs.
To me, the lesson learned was don't go to law school. At the also-ran law schools like mine, it's a poor investment.
Interesting analysis of law school as an investment:
Deletehttps://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/082416/going-law-school-worth-it-anymore.asp
Basically, don't do it.
Yes, mine was a genuine federal clerkship; and, yes, I was still shut out, because of my age.
DeleteWell I went to a mediocre school (at night), albeit decades ago, and still got a job in a relatively large firm in my city simply by knowing people. My experience at our firm, which had some very large clients, was not so much your grades that counted but how well you fit into the organization and got along with the other lawyers. but we were a "litigation" firm, and it is very true that good litigators may be far from the best students....Having been a litigator for decades now, and with my own firm forever, the school where my opponent went or his grades are utterly and completely meaningless. I am far more interested in his willingness and ability to try cases, and not surprisingly, that is not something where the "elite" students typically excel.
DeleteOld Guy's employment problem following clerkship, despite top law school and grades, is 100% due to his age. Employers don't want junior-level people reporting to supervisors who are much younger than themselves because of the workplace interpersonal problems that inevitably ensue. And, if the junior employee is over 40, any adverse employment action could precipitate an age discrimination complaint / lawsuit, something no employer wants.
Delete(This topic should really have its own blog post.)
Old Ruster, feel free to write an article; we do take submissions here.
DeleteI graduated from a crap law school nearly 30 years ago which is usually ranked somewhere b/t 50-75. My recollection about OCI is that most employers required that you be ranked in the top 10% or be on law review to even qualify for a screening interview. A few employers were a little more lax and would interview people in the top 25%. But the bottom line was, the vast majority of students in my class didn’t qualify for a single OCI interview. And keep in mind, our lame career services department put 90% of their time and effort into the OCI process. That’s when it started to dawn on me that the whole thing was one giant scam.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if you went to an elite law school, you had more leeway with grades. You don’t need to be in the top 10% at Columbia or Chicago to land a legitimate legal job. But once you leave that rarified air, first year grades were critical.
I’m not exactly sure what OG means by pedigree - but if he is talking about having employment connections, that was most important for the students whose grades and/or law school reputation were insufficient to open employment doors (which was most of us). That’s how I ended up getting my first job out of law school working for a state agency. Incidentally, that agency didn’t care about my law school grades. All it cared about was my connection and the fact that I had passed the bar and was admitted.
Let's say that you went to Villanova, neither the best nor the worst in that range. At the top end, your classmates had a shot at something sub-élite but considerably more respectable—easily Emory, maybe even the U of Minnesota or Boston University on a good day. Down below, they barely stayed out of Ohio Northern or Nova Southeastern. That's why all those people with mediocre to poor grades can't get jobs from a school like yours.
DeleteBy pedigree I'm referring to inherited wealth. That's what the élite schools are made of. Connections go with money most of the time. As a hayseed with neither connections nor money, Old Guy didn't have a chance.
But you said above, OG, that you felt your experience was due to age.
DeleteGenerally, bringing on people who have "F U money" would be bad for business. They need their associates to be deeply indebted so that they can completely own their lives during their period of indenture. Their business model depends on it. All a law firm really does is buy time at wholesale and sell it at retail. To make a big margin on someone who makes 200k you need them to bill a lot, and you need their rate to be high which for some 25 year old with no experience the elite JD is needed to justify. That's a perfect fit for some middle to upper-middle class striver, but a person from inherited wealth would be anathema to such wage slavery.
I went to Columbia or Chicago many years ago, and had close to 30 continuous years in big law. However, I started working when I was very young, and my time in big law ran out well before I hit my mid-50s. After that, I was able to get only intermittent work in big law and in mid-law, but without job security. One really needs to be able to modify the scope of one's law practice as the world changes to be successful, and, in my case, the opportunities did not exist in any meaningful way after 30 years of law practice, even though I tried and tried to get those opportunities. If I had started today from Columbia or Chicago, the opportunities would be much worse. The lawyer oversupply has dropped incomes outside of big law and job tenure well below what public sector employees make in blue cities. The published salary figures assume continuous full-time employment as a lawyer, and that is not an option for a huge percentage of even elite law graduates. It may be that today, one is better off in terms of career opportunities and financially with a public sector job and no advanced degree than having a law degree from any one of the top schools. It really does not matter which of the top schools one has attended - the lawyer oversupply severely dilutes the value of a top law degree and totally takes away any semblance of job security for many, many people after a few years of law practice. If I were doing it over again, I might have gotten some type of tech degree that I could have completed in a couple of years after my longer-term big law tenure ended. Tech expertise would probably have opened many more opportunities for me to work more continuously as an entrepreneur, even without getting hired by anyone.
ReplyDeleteOne of my familiar members studied in a medical specialty, not nursing, for 4 semesters. With her associate's degree she was immediately hired, of course, has had the ability to move from job to job with ease, at ever-increasing earnings, and eventually got to the point where she makes over 100K per year. But idiots will spend four or five years getting a worthless liberal arts degree, find themselves back at home with mom and dad working stocking shelves at the local Target, and decide to go to law school. I'm actually not worrying as much about the lawyer oversupply anymore, as these fools never get legal employment anyway, and some literally end up back in blue-collar jobs after 7 or 8 years of higher education. You can go on Reddit/Law School and read about these fools (sent out 500 resumes, got two callbacks and one interview, YAY, the job search is going great! It only takes one!). They literally say things like that and then whine about being "ghosted" by law firms and government agencies, failing to understand that there are at least 100 applicants for each job they try to get, and no employer is going to send 100 responses. . .
DeleteYour story reminds me of how I think of biglaw: As a tightrope strung over a pit. Most graduates start out in the pit with little hope of ever climbing out. The top grads get to start out on the tightrope, but fall off for whatever reason and they can easily end up in the same pit as everyone else.
DeleteThey get Latham'd. Either after 4 years or so the Managing Partner sets a meeting with the associate, tells him or her you're not partnership material you're not on the partnership track etc., you've got 90 days to stay here and try to find another job and then we need you to resign, or they are just given a awful annual work review and told to hit the street. They will ask themselves what did I do wrong, all my prior work reviews went great because they aren't bright enough to understand that 10-20 percent of the lawyers at the firm may have been given bad work reviews and "stealth layoffs" see, e.g. Back in February 2009, Latham & Watkins laid off 440 people. They weren’t the first firm to lay people off, they weren’t the last, and you can even argue that they didn’t even lay off the most associates in percentage terms.
Delete@3:39 That is great for your familiar member, but what if you don't feel confident about a job dealing that closely with other people? Because of my social phobias I sought out jobs where I could potentially avoid people therefore for education I chose accounting and law.
Deleteits not like they fall off the earth and are unemployable. They find other law jobs, maybe with government or smaller law firms or whatever..making less money. Its not like big law lawyers are relegated to document review I wouldn't think.
DeleteI beg your pardon? Respectfully, getting fired or "laid off" from Biglaw is the end of the road for many attorneys. And yes, there are former big law partners doing document review. Please understand, there are simply not enough jobs for the vast and ever-growing pool of lawyers. Sure, 30 years ago you might have made a smooth transition from big law into an in-house counsel position or another job--and that still happens for a few people today--but, generally speaking, once you are fired from any legal job, the odds of swiftly finding another one are very steep.
DeleteWMU trustees consider ending affiliation with Cooley Law:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2020/11/western-michigan-university-to-consider-ending-cooley-law-school-affiliation.html
I have been trolling various Australian websites where law students coagulate. I have been directly confronting them with their schools misleading statistics, and the students very bad prospects. They just dont listen. At the most they say they 'wont get a corporate job', not understanding that the vast majority of them will not be getting a job at all! Its only recently dawned on me that the real culprit of the scam is not the faculties (as guilty as they are) but the hopelessly clueless lemmings, who will just not listen to facts or reason about how disastrous it is out there.
ReplyDeleteHow'd this pass through the net? USC hired a new dean, and a judge on the interview committee let the truth slip!
ReplyDelete"Federal Judge Michelle Childs asked Hubbard since each law school class graduates about 200, and only about 50 of that number are highly sought after for top legal jobs, what were his plans for the remaining 150 graduates to try to get them good jobs?"
https://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article243629242.html
Does Australia face a similar problem to the US, of far far too many lawyers and not enough jobs for them? I thought this was a uniquely American problem (like a growing list of problems are).
ReplyDeleteThere's pretty much a glut in every 1st world common law country. BUT it's not nearly so much of a disaster because they don't require kids to go into nearly so much debt. They use the LLB (bachelor of laws) plus an apprenticeship system.
DeleteSo the people who can't get apprenticeships can't get a license either and just go do something else. They don't have nearly so much invested and there's no shame in doing something unrelated to your UG major, so it's much easier for them to cut their losses.