A few days ago, the board of trustees at Golden Gate University met to discuss the fate of its über-toilet law school, which faces both serious financial problems and the risk of losing ABA accreditation. Indeed, it seems difficult to address either problem without making the other worse.
As we reported here at OTLSS, last autumn's full-time entering class got free tuition. Since Golden Gate's financial position hardly enables it to dispense charity, this move was obviously intended to bribe students with higher potential to pass the exam. "See, ABA? Now we've barely met the standard." Whereupon the ABA would rubber-stamp the über-toilet. Of course, Golden Gate cannot operate forever at zero tuition, so it would go back to charging fees, the quality of the class would sink again, and after a few years there would be another notice of non-compliance and another round of free tuition… Indiana Tech tried the same thing, and folded a year later. Old Guy knows of only one school that pulled it off: UC Irvine, when it opened. That was an unusual case, with financial and institutional backing from the enormous UC system. It also lasted only one year (well, the following two classes got smaller discounts), and, incidentally, it failed to achieve the desired result of springboarding Irvine into the top 20 by the "ranking" of You Ass News.
According to the article cited above, Golden Gate had hoped to drum up some money by selling off buildings in downtown San Francisco "and optimiz[ing] its physical space requirements" (read: making do with a lot less). A downturn in the real-estate market, however, is likely to leave Golden Gate with less cash than it had hoped to receive.
It appears that the dean was quietly replaced just before the board's recent meeting. Sudden changes such as this are common at dying über-toilets.
The article also mentions a "distressingly low" employment rate of only 38% for the latest graduating class, coupled with "a projected debt of around $283,000 per student". Old Guy is not a bit surprised that people ass enough to borrow that much money on non-dischargeable loans at high interest struggle to find work as lawyers. I certainly wouldn't hire a lawyer who was that stupid.
Expect to hear the death knell toll for Golden Gate very soon.
Putting a comment here again as it only made it to the end of the last thread:
ReplyDeleteCan we have some discussion on a topic that Scott Bullock and Paul Campos touched on near the end of their blogging, and that is that the legal system, and legal services, are largely worthless? That basically many cases are decided on arbitrary factors, and by and large there's no real skill in practicing law. Folks have picked up on this, and thats why nobody will pay for legal services, ever. A hidden issue not often discussed, but very true.
Reply
Feel free to write an article; we can post it for discussion.
DeleteThere's definitely real skill in practicing law, and it's very, very, very apparent the difference between a skilled, experienced attorney and a newbie or poor attorney.
DeleteThere is a lot of worthless bureaucracy and white collar make-work, most of it is far more secure, pays much more, and does much less than law however. Corporate America is almost entirely make work but it just pays so well and has little to no stress, law is a terrible idea for that reason moreso than anything else.
Respectfully, is that a serious post? Saying that legal services are largely worthless? As a criminal defense attorney and a former prosecutor with decades of experience, I can tell you for a fact that there is certainty to outcomes for a variety of cases. The legal system is not arbitrary and capricious, and in fact Sentencing Guidelines are used to ensure fair outcomes for folks with similar record convicted of similar crimes. I have seen many cases where Defendants charged with the exact same offense, in the same jurisdiction and timeframe do one of 3 things: Retain a good private lawyer, use an overworked Public Defender, or represent themselves. I have seen radically different outcomes for folks who are represented by Private Counsel, by the OPD, or who are pro se. Outside of that, say a person is badly injured by a negligent driver, and suffers severe injuries and property damage as a result of an accident that is not their fault. If that person tries to represent him or herself, insurance companies will ignore them, a Judge would not be impressed by them, etc. Retain a good PI lawyer and a 5-6 figure settlement check will end up in your bank account. Saying, no, I don't need a lawyer, I will handle this myself would be insane.
DeleteYes, the quality of lawyers varies immensely. But a good lawyer can still come up against a shitty judge who renders a horrible decision or otherwise makes a mess of things. Or a virtuous client with a good lawyer can encounter unending delay and other money-wasting nonsense on which the courts may smile.
DeleteThere's a great deal of arbitrariness. A recent book entitled Noise discusses the influence upon decisions of irrelevant shit such as whether the local football team won its latest game, whether the judge is hungry, whether the client happens to remind the judge of someone whom the judge likes or dislikes, how the two or three previous cases came out (the judge is likely to be a hard ass right after going soft on a few accused in a row), whether the judge has a political or other axe to grind against people like the client (many lawyers keep files on judges that contain information such as that). In a recent case, a goddamn judge admitted on record to feeling sympathy for the opponent because she reminded him of his grandmother.
"Retain a good private lawyer, use an overworked Public Defender, or represent themselves" does not cover the bases: another common outcome is retaining a bad private lawyer.
Notwithstanding the quality-or lack therof-of any given attorney, the hard truth is contained in the original post: Nobody wants to pay for a lawyer. Add this to the dramatic over-supply of attorneys and it's a recipe for disaster.
DeleteOutside of litigation, Google provides most answers to transactional questions. Companies have caught on that litigators are scam artists, whether at a V5 firm or a small slip and fall. The jig is up!
DeleteUC Irvine was the "passion project" of the Great and Powerful Chem.... he had a passion to become Dean of UC Berkeley and scammed California into creating a new law school to serve as resume filler..... Boomers gotta Boom, after all.
ReplyDeleteThe circumstances that made Irvine possible are unlikely to be repeated for decades to come. And even Irvine, with its immense resources, didn't succeed in buying a class of the quality that it had wanted. Some bullshit law school such as Golden Gate cannot expect to do better with the few pennies in its coffers.
DeleteOut of curiosity exactly what were the circumstances that made Irvine possible?
DeleteMainly:
Delete* Support by the powerful University of California system, of which it became a part.
* Huge amounts of money—enough to hire lots of allegedly "star" professors at fancy salaries and bribe the first three entering classes (the first class got free tuition; the next one got 2/3 off; the third one got 1/3 off).
Yea but doesn’t Irvine have good employment stats and entry into the LA/OC/SD big law markets? It can’t be considered a flop.
DeleteAloha and maholo for reading in advance! I’ve been a practicing attorney for over a decade in Kona and am reaching out to multiple
ReplyDeleteConstituencies on whether to open a new law school in HI. It would serve the outer islands, the main campus would be in Maui with a satellite campus in Hilo. Because U. hawaii is public and secular, we are looking into a non profit, church based education. I know this is a tough crowd but we want to stress test this with even the naysayers. With the right admissions marketing strategy, we think we
Can get 100 new students a year, a lot from SoCal.
Well, your "stress test" is itself illustrative.
DeleteNotice how you appear to be focused on whether you can "get to 100 students per year." But that of course is a metric that looks at whether you can bring in enough tuition revenue for a sustainable business. If you really are guided by the ethics of what would be a religiously grounded institution, it shouldn't be demand for seats that is your primary focus. It should be demand for GRADUATES.
According to Law School Transparency, only about 60% of UH graduates of the 2022 class have full time long-term bar passage required non-school funded non-solo jobs, and a median salary of 63k which far from justifies the six-figure cost, especially in a very high cost of living area like Hawaii.
That all would indicate that the Hawaii market (like most everywhere) already has more lawyers than it needs, and of course UH law students can always simply start up or join whatever religious club they want, so it's not like you can just assume that every state needs a religiously-oriented option for law school. So what is your argument to the contrary, and what data backs it up?
First of all, it's "mahalo", not "maholo". You should know that after being in Kona for more than a decade.
DeleteAs others have already pointed out, there's no need for the law school that already exists in Hawai‘i, let alone another one—especially one with religious strings attached. (Serving God and Mammon?)
But apparently the purpose here is not to fill an educational need but to line certain pockets through a "marketing strategy". In other words, this proposed law school would be very much a part of the law-school scam. I'm not willing to advise current or prospective scamsters, so I shall not say anything more.
It is not a business, it is a non-profit enterprise. You need paying students or a school cannot sustain itself. I highly doubt alums of a public law school have six figure debt, tuition is cheap there. Not all of Hawaii is expensive, by the way.
Delete@OldGuy, sorry for the typo? My spelling was never great. The need for this school is that a lot of would-be lawyers would prefer the religious background and private setting. They also do not want to have to move to Oahu for school, it's very far.
How am I lining my pockets? That's a pretty serious accusation.
Well, here's your "stress test": their are legions of reasons why Hawaii doesn't need another law school, church-based or otherwise. But 12:23 gets right to it: only 60% of UH grads get real law jobs. So let me be direct: as OG pointed out previously, the only beneficiaries of a new law school would be the handsomely remunerated deans/professors/administrators, making a lot of money at taxpayer expense. The students? They'd simply be saddled with unpayable debt.
DeleteI mean, what is a “real law job”? I think you may be a bit overly strict here. Okay but what if my law school was better than UH? We’d take those jobs from those students and mine would pay off the loans. Also the outer islands are a completely different market with unmet legal needs.
DeleteOn Hawaii-like everywhere else in the USA-an attorney can make a go of it only if there are enough paying clients. So what's your point-you want more attorneys on Moloka'i? Or Ni'ihau? You can't be seriously arguing that the other islands need more lawyers?
DeleteIt's amazing how easy it is to justify saddling students with unpayable debt while living well off the fat of taxpayer student loans.
Have you ever been to Molokai? I’ll ignore your comment on Niihau, Wikipedia access must be nice. To think islanders on Molokai have access to legal services beyond a low grade zoom call to honolulu is ridiculous. There’s a major shortage there, Hawaii, Kauai, and Maui.
DeleteBingo, 8:26. And besides, everybody knows the paying clients are all in Nebraska, just waiting for recent graduates to show up and take their cases.
DeleteI always point out to people how practicing law in a small market is a lot like selling wedding dresses in one. There isn't much you can do to expand the market and most people will only drive so far. Those willing to go a long way are probably driving away from you and toward a bigger town.
And OBTW, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of different wedding dresses for sale on the internet, many of them made in and shipped directly from China where labor costs are very low and only the manufacturer is getting a mark up. The Legal Zoom documents I've seen were relatively simple things but I couldn't have done any better a job on them than they did and they were charging less than I do. Meanwhile the census bureau says fewer and fewer people are getting married. I read the other day that the percentage of people in the U.S. over 40 who have never married is at an all-time high. Some of them will eventually get married but selling a big, poufy wedding dress to a starry-eyed 22-year old is one thing, selling one to a 42-year-old something else altogether. During the pandemic the P.I. and DUI lawyers in these parts were rending their garments and wailing about the empty dockets that would inevitably follow months and months of empty roads and closed restaurants and bars.
My point is that anyone opening a bridal salon or a law office in a small market is, of necessity, going to have to get a lot of their business by taking it from the existing players. The new kid on the block with little experience and no track record will have a very long row to hoe. No matter how bad it is in Nebraska, it's got to be worse on an island.
And in the end the bridal salon owner has a huge advantage over the lawyer. In my state the only thing I can sell a client other than legal services is title insurance. The salon owner can branch out into bridesmaid or prom dresses. There used to be a small store near me that sold white shoes you could dye to match your bridesmaids' dresses.
So no, Virginia, Hawai'i does not need another law school, and anyone who is filling young people's heads with the "there's a great reservoir of unmet legal needs waiting for you in [insert location]" bullshit is committing fraud and knowingly teeing people up to ruin their lives.
And now we get the completely unsubstantiated claim that a god-bothering upstart law school with two campuses will sail past the U of Hawai‘i. Ten years ago, when this Web site was started, the people who founded short-lived Indiana Tech claimed, again without any evidence whatsoever, that their Hoosier wonder would outrank two of Indiana's four established law schools from its first day.
DeleteYears ago, the state of South Dakota tried to bribe lawyers into setting up shop in rural locations. I don't recall reading that anyone took the offer, precisely because the bribe would soon be spent and then there would be long stretches between files. The entire state has only about 850k people, more than half of whom live in or around Sioux Falls or Rapid City. Most rural counties are declining in population. Furthermore, the people in rural parts of South Dakota just don't have enough legal needs to support a lawyer, even one who tries to cover a dozen counties. There is a reason for which lawyers are not champing at the bit to set up shop in rural South Dakota.
A little basic knowledge of the demographics of Hawai‘i will show that there is no shortage of lawyers on the smaller islands. The island of O‘ahu alone has more than 70% of the state's population, with Hawai‘i and Maui together making up the bulk of the remainder. The other islands combined have only about 90k people, of whom about 80% live on Kaua‘i. Moloka‘i has only a few thousand people; Lāna‘i, even fewer. The only other island that is in inhabited (by a couple of hundred people the last time I checked, years ago) is Ni‘ihau, which is closed to outsiders because it is privately owned.
If there were enough unmet demand for legal services—services for which people were prepared to pay proper fees—to support a lawyer on Lāna‘i, Moloka‘i, Kaua‘i, or even one of the larger islands, that fact would have come to the attention of lawyers in Hawai‘i and elsewhere by now. In reality, people living on these sparsely populated islands are well aware that they cannot find law firms, concert halls, universities, world-class hospitals, even well-stocked grocery stores down the street. When they need legal services, they have to find them elsewhere. So do people in rural South Dakota or rural Nebraska. The question is not whether anyone in these remote places might find it convenient to have a lawyer down the street but whether there is enough demand, backed by money, to support even one lawyer, never mind dozens of new ones every year. And the answer is an emphatic NO.
Thanks for an overwrought analogy to wedding dresses. Let’s stay on topic.
DeleteOld guy, you do understand Lanai has massive corporate presence and development, right? With many high net worth individuals involved? Most posters here probably couldn’t afford round trip airfare to Lanai along with the accommodations it offers, yet they seem to think they are fit to lecture a local concerning on the ground conditions.
Kauai has a diversified, modern economy. Go to princeville. These are complex capital flows requiring attorney input.
Regarding Indiana tech, you contradict yourself. You seem to think no “upstart” law school can beat established ones, yet Irvine is beating the SD and other OC options, let alone many in LA. It is doable. Most Hawaiians are pious and would prefer a church based option.
Here's the reality: you have not supplied any evidence-even anecdotal evidence-that there is a need for another law school. And as OG and 10:20 have shown, the sparsity of population and corresponding simple economics make it clear that it isn't feasible for an attorney to financially make it in remote low population locations.
DeleteBut you've already decided that yes, Hawaii needs another law school, and there's nothing and nobody who will convince you otherwise.
We see it over and over again, 8:11: people decide ab initio that their region needs a law school, then they sponsor a "feasibility study" that—surprise, surprise!—confirms that their region needs a law school. Indiana Tech will always be the poster child for that, having not only paid for a bogus "feasibility study" but also rejected all criticisms of their ill-fated project. After three years and a bit, the parent university pulled the plug.
DeleteMore sensible heads prevailed long ago in Alaska, which has never had a law school. There a legitimate feasibility study was commissioned, and it showed both that there wasn't nearly enough demand for a law school and that any law school would consistently lose a great deal of money. Students from Alaska did and do go elsewhere for law school, just as they go elsewhere for studies in many other fields.
And when Valpo, which unlike most über-toilets dates back to the nineteenth century, tried to dump itself onto Middle Tennessee State University, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission put the kibosh on the proposal after a serious feasibility study revealed both the cost of accepting that white elephant and the other sorts of harm that would ensue.
I provided statistical and anecdotal evidence. There is a refusal here to understand the economic landscape of lanai (booming under Ellison’s ownership) and Molokai (primed for massive development). Kauai and Maui also have a lot of new economic activity (neither of which are remote or low population)
DeleteI have no opinion on Indiana tech or valpo. I do know my law school would serve legitimate needs of the island population AND be in the black with robust enrollment (attracting SoCal students is crucial, and I think we could build an alumni network in entertainment and defense industry firms there).
"Attracting Socal students is crucial"
DeleteYou torpedo your case for a Maui based law school with this statement. The argument for a Maui or Hawaii island based law school is that the residents of those islands access to legal education is not being served. And then only one island can benefit unless multiple micro campuses are established. If the argument is that legal services are underserved, there is no reason why U Hawaii grads cannot establish practices on the other islands. Or Socal law school grads for that matter.
SoCal grads subsidize the local students on Maui and in Hilo. There are not enough qualified students with 165+ LSAT scores on the outer islands, and the SoCal students can pay full fare.
DeleteHawaii already has a law school. If you can show us that nearly 100 percent of its graduates are swiftly employed post-graduation in good jobs and employers are desperate for new lawyers, then starting a new law school might make sense. That said, as Hawaii only has a population of about 1.4 million people, I very much doubt there are enough jobs to even justify the one law school that already exists there, and if you set up another one the only people who will benefit from it are law school professors, Deans, and the staff generally. Remember, saying "we're a non-profit" and then paying your staff a half-a-million per year is the oldest trick in the book: Law School Deans and professors will end up being exorbitantly paid by students taking out loans that will burden them for the rest of their lives, in all likelihood, if you succeed in your plan to put two law schools in a state without the population to support one new class of lawyers every year, let alone two. The students--the exact people who are supposed to benefit from the school--will end up being scammed, indebted, and unemployed, on Hawaii just as they are on the mainland.
ReplyDelete1.4 million is a lot of people. Most of U. Hawaii is employed, and there may be a reason the 40% is not thriving. Maybe they pursued other private sector industries or did not like their legal education.
DeleteNo one said staff would be paid 500k a year. Also Mainland debt and loan taking habits are quite different.
When 40% of the current law school class "is not thriving" that's a pretty poor reason to create and fund-with taxpayer money via student loans' another law school.
DeleteYes but that is A DIFFERENT law school. This one is a different entity and would avoid issues UH is facing. You understand this, right? It’s like in 2009 with auto company issues saying we don’t need Tesla because Ford is having problems. Also not all tuition is debt financed.
DeleteYou cite no evidence-none-that Hawaii needs another law school-but so what, it's Ford v Tesla. Yeah right, as if education expenses had anything at all in common with heavy industry.
DeleteAnd nobody said "all tuition is debt financed". The reality is MOST is debt financed; at UH law school, as of 2021(and no doubt it's gone up) the average student debt was $60K.
And what evidence do you have another law school is needed in Hawaii? So far you produced....zero.
It's clear that you want a law school and hey, why shouldn't you jump on the student loan gravy train? But don't kid yourself-calling it "a different entity" and "religious" doesn't make it any less of a cash grab.
Every upstart, 5:27, calls itself "a different kind of law school". Every upstart also whores after LSAT scores and, of course, position on the "rankings" published by You Ass News. As "different" as they pretend to be, law schools are very much the same.
DeletePlus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
60k is very low in terms of debt load and is indicative of a healthy state legal market. I did point out the dearth of lawyers on islands beyond Oahu. There really aren’t enough, especially for small businesses, civil defense, and plaintiffs work. Anyone from the outer islands in business would agree.
DeleteReligious schools aren’t cash grabs. Depending on the denomination, there are vows of poverty and mendicants.
I don’t see why schools shouldn’t want a high ranking and LsAT, Old Guy. Mark my words, we’d surpass UH fast.
This person reminds me of the one who champions Cooley as offering lots of good times and other good stuff.
DeleteWho champions cooley? Can you provide a link? Why be so accusatory?
DeleteWhat evidence of a "dearth"? The only evidence you've supplied is you. Just go away; it's clear that nothing will persuade you that Hawaii doesn't need another law school.
DeleteBut help me out: name a single law school currently run by "mendicants" who have taken a "vow of poverty".
@6:05 I do not think the two are the same person, but the tone of the comments remind me of the same level of delusionality.
DeleteBut the Cooley champion I think at least is probably sincere in their delusions. This proposed scheme of a private unaccredited small vaguely Christian affiliated law school seems like trolling. I don't know how anyone could realistically expect to garner the support and investment to get such a project off the ground. I guess when Old Guy quietly reports the opening of a new law school on Maui, we will know it was a serious endeavor.
Well, 8:14, I laughed heartily at the image of hack scamster Lisa McElroy, now Lisa Tucker, as a mendicant under a vow of poverty. She wouldn't get many package tours to Kenya, penthouses in Hawai‘i, or even red-velvet cupcakes.
DeleteIf you don't know what this is about, read this gem of an article and the highly amusing comments:
https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2015/10/who-wants-to-be-lousy-fiction-writer.html
I don't know where the guy is getting 60k as the debt load for UH.
Deletehttps://www.lawschooltransparency.com/schools/hawaii/costs
If there is no current mendicant run law school, then why not one now? There’s a first for everything.
DeleteIt wouldn’t be small, it would be 300 students across two campuses per my proposal, 100 graduates per year. It would be accredited quickly. Over half would come from the islands, but many from SoCal.
Google the 60k.
Treacherous Boomer LawProf Paul Campos - Law school is a scam, Also Pay Me! - is suing his employer for retaliation and some other things. They stripped him of his Property class for "making racially insensitive remarks" and other Un-Soviet activities that he probably didn't commit, but bureaucracy demands blood and ideological conformity didn't save Robespierre. Apparently Colorado law is also running at a huge deficit and half their budget comes from central administration.
ReplyDeleteI hope he extracts enough from the school to retire early. And then go away.
Campos caught Trump Derangement Syndrome pretty hard. He might have said something discourteous about white men and someone had the guts to report him. Sorry to get political, here.
DeleteNo way they are pursuing a claim based on comment about white men. This is a campus, sir. You can attack whites, men, Christians, and heterosexuals all day long.
DeleteCampos after figuring out that he sold out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5TkOhHEgvv4&pp=ygUQamltYm8gbGF3IHNjaG9vbA%3D%3D
DeleteNever understood the Cult of Campos, as if he was some great beacon of truth. Before latching onto criticism of The Scam-however briefly, and still getting $$$ from his law school-Campos would rail long and loud about the medical profession's bias against fat people. Seriously.
DeleteCampos was a turd. He knew his entire career was fraudulent yet he kept taking tuition checks.
DeleteI once asked old guy if he would take a law prof job if offered, and he admitted that he would. As would I, as would almost anyone that's sane and doesn't have other top-of-the-profession options like a lifetime federal judgeship appointment or something.
DeleteOne does not become a hypocrite merely for taking a job they think should not exist. The fact is, it does exist. If you don't take it, someone else will, and we all have to put food on the table in the best way available to us.
So I don't fault campos at all for cashing his paychecks. He never claimed to be a martyr for this cause, but merely used the security his tenure provided to point out the scam without fear of getting canned. So he's no hero given the position of safety from which he pontificated. But neither is he a villain.
Not to ignore what a scam Golden Gate is and has always been-but the article states that UC-San Francisco(the old Hastings) grads are saddled with $270K of debt-and this from a "public" law school. How in the world, short of BigLaw(which relatively few UCSF grads get) does any grad pay this debt back and still afford a car, or, godforbid, the American Dream of a house(ok, that's from yesteryear, but still)....or just be able to move out of their parents' basement?
ReplyDeleteSo I'd vote to close both of these schools, if only to save the taxpayers when the grads fail to pay back their loans.
Millennials and soon zoomers
DeleteDon’t want to buy houses. Many are comfortable with debt for the experience of a legal education. They like public transport (no car needed) and living with your parents is common in Europe, so why not here?
Unlike law-school scamsters, who all must have mansions (the arrogant founding scam-dean of Irvine got more than $1 million from the school for his mortgage) and inflated salaries and expensive cars and such. Riches for me, debt for thee.
DeleteGeorge Carlin, 3:21, quipped that the American Dream bears that name because one would have to be asleep in order to believe in it.
DeleteAlthough the US arrogantly calls itself "the land of opportunity", it in fact offers the least opportunity for advancement in the First World. The American Dream can most effectively be pursued in Denmark.
So much cynicism! Intelligent, hard working people who make prudent decisions get rich. Maybe you should’ve gone to the hawaii church based law school :)
DeleteHow could he have "gone to the hawaii(sic) church based law school"? It didn't exist and doesn't exist.
DeleteTake a joke. It likely will exist, based on how the state operates and past trends of law school enrollment. The scam will return in a bad labor market when recent grads don’t want to work at Domino’s.
DeleteYes, those millennials love debt-especially for the "experience" of a pointless legal "education".
ReplyDeleteIt's always amazing the nonsense Defenders of the Scam will spout to keep that loan cash coming. Sure, the deans/profs/admin live well while doing little work, but it's no big deal, because the unemployed grads are forever grateful, as they pour that next latte, for the experience of soul-crushing debt.
Whether they call it a "feasibility study" or anything else, it amounts to making excuses for the unjustifiable. The excuses are become more outrageous as time goes on. A decade ago, Indiana Tech shed crocodile tears over the inability of some allegedly promising jurists to go to any of the 30-odd law schools within a four-hour drive of Fort Wayne, to say nothing of the 170-odd more distant law schools in the US. A few years ago, one of Cooley's peers declared that Shreveport, Lousiana, was just crying for a law school, and that it, of course, was the perfect institution (with LSA scores around 140) to fill the putative need. Now we're being told that the members of today's younger generations don't need money or housing or employment, and that they would be delighted to assume hundreds of thousands of dollars in high-interest, non-dischargeable debt for the glorious experience of going to some god-bothering bullshit upstart law school while fattening the scamming Tartuffes who have the unmitigated gall to do it all in the name of Jesus.
DeleteCool, these entering law students are at least 22, not children. They know the odds and took their shot to be a practicing attorney. You act like they are victims. Short of publishing fraudulent employment outcomes, they are not victims. They went after a better life.
DeleteUnjustifiable? I explained why Maui and Hilo needs a law school. Who are you to say Shreveport doesn’t need a law school? Local legal markets are unique with their own dynamics. I hope you settle down after that curse laden tirade. Millennials are, indeed, different than someone named “Old Guy” and see the world differently.
The students at Golden Gate still lost opportunity cost even when they attended tuition free considering the employment rate is only 38%. So if they spent 3 years studying tuition free and end up unemployed, think of the money they could have earned just flipping burgers at McDonald's over 3 years. They would be that much further ahead financially.
ReplyDeleteYea but the patty flippers wouldn’t have a JD. The jd can at least get them in McDonald’s corporate.
DeleteDoubt McDonald's will hire Golden Gate University Law School graduates as their in-house counsel. Maybe Stanford or Berkeley Law grads.
DeleteA JD from Golden Gate or any other law school gets you into Mc Donald's corporate?
DeleteYes. Use a simple LinkedIn search. There are golden gate alums in house there.
DeleteThe professors, Deans, and Career Services Office workers at law schools all make great money, funded by student loans. The students themselves get three years to live large, funded by student loans, which do not come due until graduation. So the professors, Deans, etc., get paid a lot to do very little work. The students get three years of living, all expenses paid, with "student loans". The American taxpayer really doesn't take a hit, because we all know that 1) the loans are bad and will never be repaid, and 2) the US Government is not, in fact, funded by taxpayer dollars, but rather by a borrowing literally tens of millions of dollars a second, building up a "National Debt", aka Deficit that the US will never repay. Worst case the government resorts to "Quantitative Easing", aka print-and-spend. As long as none of the debts are called in--the National Debt is ignored, Student Debt is "forgiven" and repayment of it is pushed off until the Supreme Court gets involved, it all works out for everyone. It all ends in tears, of course, with hyperinflation and a dollar collapse (see, e.g, what happened to Venezuela, where it takes a stack of currency inches thick to buy a hamburger) but we can all just close our eyes and "kick the can down the road" for another few decades, right? Historians will marvel at a country that basically paid people to attend schools that granted degrees of no fiscal worth whatsoever, while also funding other countries while ignoring its own decaying infrastructure.
ReplyDeleteIf the degrees are so bogus, why does the government fund them? I think you’re exaggerating a lot.
DeleteI think that you're awfully naïve. Do you really imagine the government to be a source of pure wisdom, free of corruption, never inclined to favor private interests at public expense?
DeleteSlamming as many people as possible into college has been Federal policy since the 1960's. Most college freshman now read at a 7th grade level because there are NO ADMISSIONS STANDARDS! To keep them in, the colleges have created slates of bogus courses that are impossible to fail - instead of Calculus you can take The Spirit of Mathematics. Instead of Physics you can take Science and Society: Global Questions. Too many people have a degree, and too much of the course work is worthless, for a degree to hold any real value today.
DeleteI think that you’re awfully naive. Do you really imagine lawyers (who are overwhelmingly white and male) to be a source of pure wisdom, free of bias (hawaii is a majority minority state, so you won’t get many haole alums), never inclined to protect the status quo at the expense of marginalized groups? Still waiting to hear if anyone has actually been to lanai or Molokai or even Maui, since people here complain about being broke all the time.
DeleteOG-nothing on Earth-or in heaven, for that matter-will convince them that creating a new law school is at best unnecessary and at worst a terrible idea.
DeleteThe government funds all kinds of things that are worthless. Law school aside, it is absolutely routine for the government to loan money to 18-21 years olds earning degrees in "Philosophy" "Film" and other worthless majors. These folk often end up moving back in with their parents and working minimum wage jobs with their useless degrees, BA's, and in fact many then go on to law school, for three more years of living free and easy, without having to work for a living, on "student loans" that will never be repaid. Again, until we hit hyperinflation, as Venezuala did, and as many other nations have and will in the future, the whole charade will play on, benefitting professors, Deans, and others, while hurting the students that colleges and law schools were created to help.
Delete10:08a-Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought government loans for undergrad were pretty limited-eg $5K/year, whereas the Grad Plus nonsense allowed for total cost of attendance per year. So yeah, lots of people getting worthless BAs but the government loan end of things is much less.
DeleteI would say, 11:45, that sending every knuckle-dragging dolt to university has been public policy since the 1980s. Whether or not the policy goes back farther, as you suggest, only in the 1980s did it succeed. In the late 1970s, even a high-school diploma was considered optional—precisely because there was an abundance of well-paying blue-collar jobs, at least for able-bodied men (especially white ones). Things changed very quickly. I remember hearing around 1980 that soon enough one wouldn't be able to get a job as a garbage collector without graduating from high school.
DeleteAt the same time, well-paying blue-collar work began to dry up in a hurry. In the early 1980s, young people were being urged to finish high school; in the late 1980s, they were urged to go on to university. Yes, within seven or eight years a high-school diploma went from being newly essential to being insufficient.
As you said, just about anyone nowadays can get into university and graduate with a meaningless degree. At many universities, much of the entering class is enrolled in remedial courses in reading and writing, arithmetic, and the like. (When Old Guy was young, any remediation had to be done before enrollment: people who couldn't read were considered inadmissible, unless they made the male football or basketball team.) Jokes about courses such as "Physics for Poets" and "Clapping for Credit" have been common for fifty years. With ridiculous new majors such as "Golf-Course Management" and "Interior Decorating", the universities have become vo-techs at best.
And since law school requires nothing but a bachelor's degree in any field (even the LSAT is no longer required), boatloads of completely unsuitable "students" sign up for a JD. The ejookayshunnal scam, with its monopoly of access to most jobs with any potential, soaks the public for trillions, notably through federally guaranteed loans handed out to anyone whom a hackademic institution decides to admit.
One more personally abusive comment by this tout of a new law school in Hawai‘i will result in his being banned.
DeleteTo see how different the economy has become, one need look no further than the percentage of the workforce that is unionized (a great proxy for the "well paying blue collar jobs" of which OG so rightly speaks. The graph speaks for itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Union_Membership_in_the_United_States,_1960-2020.svg
DeleteSo yes, an "everyone should go to college" mindset may have emerged earlier, but for that to really take hold requires there to be a dearth of other options, which is what has become the reality over a more recent timeframe. It is that dearth of other apparent options that higher ed exploits, especially but not only with law school, and that is why another law school in Hawaii (or almost anywhere else) is more predatory than anything else. The marketing might as well just cut to the chase: "Law school. Because what the heck else are you gonna do with a BA in English/poli sci/philosophy/etc?"
Golf course management gives the public and private groups incredibly beautiful landscapes and activities. It’s not frivolous. And film is art.
DeleteOld Guy, I did not mean to be abusive
To you or anyone else, apologies. I came in here to propose an idea and get feedback and felt hurt by so much negativity. I think I have adequately explained why maui and Hilo should have law schools and how SoCal enrollment can subsidize locals.
The unions leeched off companies and the taxpayer. I am grateful President Reagan decimated them. I am better compensated now as an attorney for using my brain than some plumber. Because of the GOP breaking unions, we have cheaper consumer items and economic growth for decades
The point was that golf-course management doesn't belong in a university.
DeleteYou have not explained why another law school is needed. We've spent ten years explaining that no other law school is needed ANYWHERE in the US. What you call negativity is well justified.
We shouldn't get into a political discussion about unions here.
Why shouldn't golf course management be a degree program? Operating a golf course seems to be a complex undertaking. You would need to have an understanding of accounting, finance, groundskeeping, culinary, hospitality, etc. Plus you would have to be halfway decent at golf to have any credibility. The opportunities are probably limited but golf course management seems like it would be a lot more lucrative and rewarding in general than law.
DeleteI think it does belong in a university. Golf management is serious business,
DeleteAesthetically and financially. It is surely
More intellectual and useful to study why Ross Fazzino and MacDonald made the decisions they did than on whatever “racism studies” or
“Acronym Sexual Studies” is normalized nowadays.
I only mentioned unions because some here paint them as positive influences on the country, whereas many disagree.
I have proven why the outer islands need a law school. It would be (1) a product differentiated from UH, (2) subsidized by SoCal students, and (3) leads to many jobs and economic growth in booming markets like Lanai and Molokai.
This board attacked Irvine, which is a phenomenal law school with amazing stats. We hope to replicate what they did on a 300 student scale.
You haven't proven anything regarding the need for attorneys on Lanai and/or Molokai; what evidence do you have that there is a lawyer shortage on those islands? So far, you've supplied none.
DeleteBut on a more basic level: why do you keep coming back? Your initial premise was that you wanted feedback regarding a new law school in Hawaii. You have received near universal negative feedback. Yet you return again and again. And you've branched out, to attack unions, racism studies, etc etc, while singing Reagan's praises and rhapsodizing over UC Irvine. It's clear that you had no intention of considering, let alone following, the advice you requested.
So here's a clue: the words "law school" and "scam" are in the title for a reason.
Indeed, 8:03, this discussion has been sabotaged quite enough. We're not here for glorification of Reagan or attacks on racialized people, nor yet for repetition of unsupported claims about an alleged need for yet another toilet law school. Actual or would-be scamsters who come here to provoke us had better feign seriousness, else their comments will be suppressed.
DeleteI don’t think I attacked radicalized people. I didn’t do anything other than point out what came out in discovery when Harvard got sued. Their internal research was made public.
DeleteI received most of the feedback here that I was looking for so I’ll cool it.
We did some internal studies on the Molokai lanai legal markets (and Maui and Kauai and Hawaii). We also spoke with many business executives. Our findings were different than the consensus here. I understand this is a self selective group, but I do think I was treated somewhat unfairly and with personal venom. Please look at who brought up unions, a very divisive topic. It wasn’t me.
The union comment specifically said that it just serves as a good proxy for the high pay/low skill jobs of the post WWII economic boom. It's not like the NLRA was ever repealed so their decline probably has more to do with the move away from domestic manufacturing than political action, though political action (much of which is at the state and not federal level with stuff like right to work laws) certainly helped it along.
DeleteThat's no comment on unions being good or bad, merely that as a factual matter they tended to exist most prevalently in the assembly-line type workforce and thus serve as a good data point to see the economic shift away from domestic manufacturing that drives people to pursue higher education (unfortunately devaluing that education in the process in a phenomenon very similar to monetary inflation; thus student loans drive the price up while the returns on students' investments are simultaneously driven down because supply increases without a corresponding increase in demand).
We seem to all agree that the practice of pressuring just about everyone who graduates from high school to go to college is idiotic. The scam has gotten much worse over the years. When I attended a large, well known state university in the late 80's and early, grading was brutal. Often only 10 percen of a class of undergraduates would get A's, just like in law school, but unlike law school professors liberally handed out D's and F's. It was very common for students to be put on Academic Probation for having a GPA of less than a 2.0 and even Failed Out for several semesters in a row of a sub-2.0 GPA. Tuition at this college, when I attended, was very cheap, like 5K a year. So yes, a lot of dummies went to college, but often they only lasted a year or two--sometimes just a semester or two--and they came out with little, if any, debt. Now the dynamic has completely changed. College tution has skyrocketed, keeping pace with student loans. The more money the government will lend students, the higher the tuition the school can , an does, charge. Since a student may be worth 50-100K in tuition over 4Y, the school has a strong incentive NOT to place students on academic probation or fail underperformers out. Instead, at many low-ranked US colleges, Grade Inflation rules the campus. The dumb, lazy, partying students are given A's and B's they don't deserve, and instead of focusing on their studies they party hard and have a blast for 4-5 years. Afterwards, they end up back at home with their parents working a dead end job. And, of course, some of these dummies, with inflated GPA's and low-ranked law schools desperate for more Student-Loan-Conduits, will in fact go onto law school, and then perhaps Business School after that. They can avoid the workplace, and let the good times roll for the better par of a decade.
ReplyDeleteEmployers love JD-MBAs. To be fair, a
DeleteLot of the lowering of standards you describe is a result of affirmative action. Less than 1% of Harvard students would be from one demographic group on a strict academic basis, instead they are over 10%.
"Employers love JD-MBAs"...huh? What evidence do you have to support this? It sounds like something said by someone working at the admissions office of one of the scam schools highlighted by this blog.
DeleteIf you can't get work with your JD, supplement it with an MBA. Then there will be two fields that are closed to you.
Deletehuge lol at this. MBA and JD both have value that is dependent almost entirely on prestige. Just as it's not worth getting a JD from any school that doesn't place the majority of its graduates in biglaw or federal clerkships, no MBA is worthwhile unless it places the majority of its graduates at investment banks or big 4 consulting.
DeleteThe only thing that makes the non-elite MBAs slightly less scammy than the non-elite JD is the fact that it is a year shorter and thus a year cheaper, it doesn't pigeonhole you as much as a JD, and most people have at least some preexisting professional work experience so they aren't relying entirely on the degree to get them a job.
Joint JD/MBA only makes sense if they make sense separately, which for both depends largely on prestige of the school and preexisting connections you have coming in.
1. It is MBB, not big 4 consulting. Ibanking is a joke at HBS and SBS, if you are in finance you want to be on the buy side. If you cannot hack it there, you forgo investment banking and move onto another industry, generally.
Delete2. Vulture funds, distressed debt funds, and major real estate institutional players love the JD-MBA and almost exclusively recruit from those pools for their top positions.
This phenomena is real. I have read, and even talked, to law students gushing about "the social scene" on their campus. When I attended law school, socializing almost did not exist in the 1L year, and it got marginally more common in the second and third year. People worked hard, and fought for PAYING internships back when I attended law school. Knowing that just about everyone would get a job, but the pay rates for those jobs varied a lot, people were serious, focused, and committed. Honestly, the law school I attended rejected about 80 percent of its applicants, the students there were very smart. If they lived in a reality where licensed attorneys scrambled to line up "Temporary Document Review Positions" paying as little as $22 per hour, I think many students would have dropped out on the spot. Knowing what I could earn with my bachelor's degree, which was not worthless for a bunch of reasons, I definitely would not have stuck around for three years, and taken on tens of thousands of dollars in loans, if there was no good prospect for a job post-graduation. As things worked out for me, I had a (low paying) job lined up long before I got my bar results. That job led to a better job, which led to more jobs. . .you get the picture. For my legal career, it has turned out that there really is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (and a lot of drudgery, pitfalls, and a long bumpy road with both successes and failures along the way).
ReplyDeleteThank you for the inspirational story, I like to hear about your success. That said, you can have this outcome today while socializing in law school. Being social is crucial to self esteem
DeleteAnd mental health for many law students.
Yeah, making friends with people with a shared experience is important no matter what you're doing. While I still don't think most people should go to law school (or should drop out if they emerge from 2L OCI with no summer associate offers) the fact remains that mental health is important and socialization is key to that.
DeleteIn my experience, most students are aware of the fact that grades are curved and (for 1L grades at least) highly determinative of career outcomes. But most of them just make friends anyway, for the sake of happiness. The days of trying to get ahead by tearing pages out of library books or whatever are long gone. And not just because of technological progress rendering such techniques useless, but also because it simply isn't healthy.
Yes, instead of the cheaters and page tearers, you have more Tracy Flicks. Not malevolent, just hopelessly misguided.
DeleteLegal services are, by and large, a worthless product that nobody wants to buy. Thats really the problem of law graduates in a nutshell (and the fact there's too many of them and the degrees are grossly overpriced).
ReplyDeletePeople usually don't seek a lawyer with pleasure; they do so because they are in some sort of trouble. In the main, legal services are viewed as a necessary evil, not as something desirable in its own right.
DeleteI honestly do not understand why anyone would say that legal services are worthless. If you to court by yourself if you're charged with Domestic Violence, or DUI, or whatever, you better bring your toothbrush. 1) You cannot objectively represent yourself, your emotions, and desire to portray yourself as 100% innocent no matter the evidence will get in the way and 2) a seasoned prosecutor will grind you to a powder. Do non lawyers understand why 911 calls are usually admissible in Domestic Violence cases? Do they understand The Hearsay Rule, let alone the Excited Utterance & Present Sense Impression exceptions to the Hearsay Rule, or that some courts have held that these phone calls are "nontestimonial in nature" and should therefore be admitted in Domestic Violence cases? Joe or Jane Sis pack probably cannot spell, let alone understand all of those things. Are you in front of a "hanging judge" or a notorious softy? You would have no idea, you're in court by yourself for the first time! Nah, you definitely don't need to shell out cash for a lawyer, save it for purchases at Jail Commissary after you're done in court. . .
DeleteYeah, they're not worthless, but they are definitely not something anyone WANTS to pay for either.
DeleteOf course, most professional services are not entertaining, but if you're a dentist or doctor or CPA or something, people need you on a regular and ongoing basis. You don't wait until your teeth are jet black and rotting out of your head to go to the dentist, but that is precisely the equivalent of what it takes to get the average person to actually hire a lawyer (unless of course, it's a contingency fee type of case).
Sure, big companies and rich individuals with estate planning needs do use lawyers in a more "preventive care" type of manner, but there's not enough of those kinds of clients to go around. Many regular people can go their entire lives without once using a lawyer, so long as their kids don't grow up into rebellious teenagers who get in trouble with drugs or whatever, and so long as they don't find themselves embroiled in a contentious divorce.
This is the reality that is so often ignored: nobody but nobody wants to pay for a lawyer, and the average person never needs a lawyer over the course of a lifetime.
DeleteServices can be valuable to a consumer while relatively worthless on the market. Someone charged with a DUI or domestic violence prizes having a lawyer. He can also get one for free from the government with public defenders. Given how many attorneys want public defender jobs, the salaries are depressed, despite Joe "Beat My Wife" Six Pack really wanting an attorney desperately.
DeleteMany people need a lawyer for a limited purpose such as writing a will, getting a divorce, or administering an estate. Some people need one for defense against criminal charges. Few become involved in civil litigation.
DeleteAll of that together, however, doesn't amount to a great deal of demand. And some of that demand may well be declining. For decades it has been possible to buy a form with which to write a will oneself. Yes, laypeople who use these things tend to do a poor job—but how many lawyers write competent wills? Very few, in Old Guy's experience. And how is a member of the general public supposed to find one of the few lawyers who can do the job right? Perhaps it's better to buy the form for $20 and take one's chances.
Ironically, I think the surest sign of an F up is when someone goes to a lawyer to write a will and a will is what they get.
DeleteA will usually has to be probated and most people want their heirs to be able to AVOID probate. So it should be all about making sure beneficiary designations on insurance policies are up to date, pay on death designations on bank accounts, putting stuff in trusts during life with a carefully-considered trustee and successor trustees, making sure the person has great long-term care insurance so they don't lose everything if they have to go to a nursing home, ladybird deeds if your state has 'em, etc etc. The will is just the "pour over" to catch stuff that was missed, which you hope nothing was. So if you go to a lawyer for a will, and a will is all you get, odds are we've just witnessed just such a screw up.
Nice-yep. Probate can be avoided in many cases.
DeleteOk, paying for criminal law defence in a high stakes prosecution- fair enough (provided your lawyer is good, there are some terrible private criminal lawyers out there). But this is a tiny market. In the main, legal services are something that people just wont pay for (and this was true well before the internet, though the internet has made this worse).
ReplyDeleteRespectfully, when you say "this is a tiny market" that simply is not true. Hundreds and hundreds of people are prosecuted for all sorts of crimes every single morning and every single afternoon every day of the week in the state where I practice, and in every other state in the US. The state I practice in has about 6.1 million people, and there are easily over 1,000 prosecutors, public defenders, and private defense attorneys--probably thousands plural. If someone gets a DUI in one of our larger county, they will get 25 mail solicitations from attorneys, along with radio ads, TV ads, billboard ads, internet ads, and on and on. Someone--whether it is private counsel or a public defender--is representing over 90 percent of all criminal defendants, and someone else is prosecutiing 100 percent of them, while a District Court Judge, a Circuit Court Judge, an appellate judge, an Administrative Law Judge, or Master/Special Master/Magistrate is presiding over their proceedings. Hundreds of people work full time as law clerks, as paralegals, as legal secrataries, as Private Investigators. . .this is anything but a "tiny market" and actually employs thousands of people full time. The problem is not that people don't need lawyers. The problem is not that people cannot, or will not, pay for lawyers. $10,000 fees are not rare in criminal practice, nor are fees of over $100K for homicide, rape, etc. The problem is that there are too many lawyers. That 's it, in a nutshell. Far too many law schools produce far too many JD for far too few jobs.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm saying criminal law defence (for not guilty pleas) IS an area where skill is required and where people will pay. But it's a tiny market-most people use the public defender to plead guilty etc. For virtually all other legal services-nobody will pay for then, because, by and large, they are useless services.
ReplyDeleteHigh level criminal defence: lucrative for the few cases that run here. But the vast majority of criminal cases are guilty pleas by the public defenders (who encourage everyone to plead guilty). But anything else in law- no money in it. This is the real real problem- nobody wants the product. Thats why every private lawyer fights like a dog to get a public sector job and shuts their 'practice' immediately upon getting it.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes there's far too many law schools and too many students and the fees are way too high. But the real real problem is that nobody wants it.
I don't think most public defenders encourage everyone to plead, at least not any more than private ones do. Yes most cases do plead, but that's true no matter who you hire and the important question isn't whether it was plead but whether it was a good deal. Most civil cases settle and most criminal cases plead out, it's the way the system works. Indeed, for minor offenses you usually don't even plead guilty anymore. You may "admit to sufficient facts for a finding of guilty" but in a diversion program the case is technically just continued til the client stays out of trouble for a certain amount of time, gets some treatment, etc., and then the charge gets dismissed. If the client jumps through the hoops of a diversion program properly, they won't have been convicted of anything. No wonder so many cases plead out if that's what you can get for them!
DeleteAnd with a DUI, at least first offenses without accident/injury, you're not even so much worried about the criminal case as you are about the administrative DMV proceeding. That's just a preponderance of evidence standard, and there's no jury just some ALJ from the DMV, and that is where most of the real daily life impacts will come from. You could totally get acquitted on the DUI in criminal court and STILL end up with a driver license suspension (and an expensive interlock device requirement when you do get it back) because the administrative proceeding still finds against you.
But I will say this: If something DOES need trial, the public defenders in my town are among the best lawyers I know. They may not have a lot of time for hand-holding like the private guys do. But they have more courtroom experience than almost anyone you can hire, and they know the specific judges and their quirks better than anyone because they're in front of them all the time.
Er, yes they do, public defenders are a guilty plea factory
DeletePublic defenders are guilty plea machines, everyone knows it.
DeleteAnd everyone knows, shockingly enough, that the people who plead guilty are in fact guilty.
DeleteSending out solicitations to people charged with a criminal offense is just a form of ambulance chasing. It shows that even many established lawyers are short of work, to the point of having to engage in whorish practices that traditionally were considered unbecoming of a professional. What chance does an upstart today have—especially one from some stinky über-toilet?
ReplyDeleteYes, of course there are stiff fees for certain criminal cases and other legal matters. But they don't come in every day, nor does every lawyer get them. Most of the public doesn't have $100k to pay for a lawyer.
Yes, there are far too many lawyers—another reason to stay the hell away from the legal "profession" and law school. But I tend to agree with those who say that legal services are just not wanted. People who drop thousands on a lawyer for criminal defense do so because they feel forced to, not because they want to. Corporations may just regard their hefty legal bills as part of the cost of doing business, but most people don't seek legal services with pleasure, except for very limited purposes (maybe immigration or estate planning—and like as not the lawyer will fuck these things up).
Anyone check out Stephen Harper's blog post about Northwestern's corrupt obsession with Sportsball?
ReplyDeleteThe old Boomer finally dialed in on the real world.... Who has the heart to tell him that colleges have also largely purged academics from the "college experience" and that you can graduate without actually learning anything?
Or as the senior lawyer said to me in the lift just after I started 20 years ago 'Have you figured our it's all bullshit yet?'
ReplyDeleteAnd it's a wonderfully self-destructive profession; joining other states which clearly don't care if lawyers actually get paying jobs, the Colorado Supreme Court has approved the creation of "Licensed Legal Paraprofessionals" for "limited legal services in certain types of family law matters." Yep, godforbid anyone should actually have to hire, much less pay, an actual lawyer.
ReplyDeleteIt’s for the best. You don’t need three years of law school to practice what is now called “law.” Hopefully aspiring attorneys can take the lower license with lower debt.
DeleteBest for whom? Yet another examples of the legal Powers that Be doing all they can to destroy the livelihood of small practitioners.
DeleteThe concept of "licensed paraprofessionals" is the death knell for small offices. Thankfully, I am winding down my practice of 40 years. My kids are not lawyers, all to my great relief.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, a medical licensed paraprofessional holding a surgical subparapfessional license, limited to surgical procedures using only a dull scout knife, removed my brain a week ago.
And so the nightmare continues.
My state has those parapros for like small claims. minor traffic type crimes (which are not public defender eligible if there's no prospect of jail time) and family/juvenile law (if no complex issues like business valuation, QDROs, UCCJEA or ICWA fights or severance of parental rights).
DeleteState supreme court, in creating the rule, cited data that over 95% of those litigants go pro se as it is, meaning it doesn't compete with lawyers if there was no way one would've been engaged anyway.
I think that makes sense if these rules are crafted carefully to avoid these parapros getting in over their heads. Unless the legislature opens up money to pay appointed counsel in cases where it isn't constitutionally required, it's the best option they have considering the fact that pro pers are huge hassle for judges too. And it's a lot better than worst alternative which is to have mandatory pro bono like in New Jersey. Their mandatory pro bono isn't even a certain number of hours by the way, it means you can just get randomly appointed to do some case for free in an area of law with which you may be completely unfamiliar. https://www.njcourts.gov/attorneys/pro-bono#262301.
One FAQ answer above is particularly frightening: "The Supreme Court addressed this issue in Madden v. Delran, 126 N.J. at 607-08. It recognized that frequently attorneys who have no experience in the substantive area of the law involved in the pro bono case will be called upon. As the Court said: “Real estate attorneys, corporate counsel, experts in commercial leases, all have been assigned to represent indigent defendants charged with simple assault, driving while intoxicated; all were required not only to learn how to defend those cases but to find out where the courthouse is.” 126 N.J. at 607.
Yikes. I'll support the parapros over that kind of regime any day of the week.
The cost of living in San Francisco is insane. It's a bad offer, even with 100% free tuition.
ReplyDeleteOne law school in Hawaii is more than enough. Alaska doesn't have any, yet somehow they manage to get by.
Alaska is a way more homogenous state with fewer residents. Apples
DeleteTo oranges Bud
No new law schools are needed in the U.S., Sweetheart. Also, "homogenous" is not a word.
Delete