tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post6429869748728783144..comments2024-03-28T10:56:31.720-06:00Comments on Outside the Law School Scam: The Bar Exam and "Math."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-90566330389413285762016-10-31T14:58:19.416-06:002016-10-31T14:58:19.416-06:00Clearly, if you take test difficulty down to 0, th...Clearly, if you take test difficulty down to 0, the bar passage rate is NaN. (infinity) How can that not make sense?<br /><br />Sheesh. I think you're too generous on the underwater basketweaving comment; I think the OP would drown.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14589786369504386306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-67272569362395931592016-10-05T10:24:42.528-06:002016-10-05T10:24:42.528-06:00If you're selling law degrees to people you kn...If you're selling law degrees to people you know will not be able to gain licensure, you're a con artist.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-15988217429789903742016-10-05T09:26:12.225-06:002016-10-05T09:26:12.225-06:00It is possible to be an academic and a con artist ...It is possible to be an academic and a con artist simultaneously. They've been profiting off of lies for years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-59173992996968084462016-10-05T08:52:09.840-06:002016-10-05T08:52:09.840-06:00And of course nobody knows going in whether they w...And of course nobody knows going in whether they will be part of the "sliver," even coming out of HYS.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-89667919627045675902016-10-04T21:34:04.867-06:002016-10-04T21:34:04.867-06:00some 55 y.o temp my firm hired to help out during ...some 55 y.o temp my firm hired to help out during busy season told me if i'd get my law degree (to complement my cpa license) that i'd be golden. I had to refer her to ITLSS and OTLSS. it's a lost battle to tell these old fucks that the law degree is not worth it anymore except for a very small sliver of ppl.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-54366886389983999372016-10-04T20:03:45.540-06:002016-10-04T20:03:45.540-06:00For whatever this contributes, I took the LSAT in ...For whatever this contributes, I took the LSAT in December 1981 on the 200-800 scale. I scored a 675 and that was 89th percentile.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-70204400613608284792016-10-04T06:44:06.902-06:002016-10-04T06:44:06.902-06:00Up until 1982, the LSAT was scored on a scale of 2...Up until 1982, the LSAT was scored on a scale of 200-800, which was the scale when you took the exam. Between 1982 and 1991, it was scored on a scale of 10-48. From 1991 to the present, it has been scored on a scale of 120-180.<br /><br />I took the LSAT in the fall of 1989 and got a 41 which, based on percentiles, is roughly equivalent to scoring a 165 today. For whatever it's worth, that was only good enough to get me into a second tier school in 1990 and the (2015) 75% LSAT at my old school is 158. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-62506610256953860522016-10-03T19:49:32.001-06:002016-10-03T19:49:32.001-06:00The best analogy is the Walmart affect for the leg...The best analogy is the Walmart affect for the legal profession.Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance Kingnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-20663615255431686822016-10-03T16:02:27.912-06:002016-10-03T16:02:27.912-06:00Most Prawfs and Deans are not "con artists.&q...Most Prawfs and Deans are not "con artists." They are academics and many are our colleagues. What happened is that some con artist for profit and recently accredited law schools with the ABA's blessing came on line and dumped lawyers onto a glutted market. That forced incomes down and rippled to all levels of the market. That resulted in a vicious downward spiral....less income and work for everyone in the legal profession created a disincentive for the best and the brightest enrolling in law schools. The numbers went down and the standards were lowered. The delicate system is out of kilter.Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance Kingnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-84859262830997541702016-10-03T13:22:18.535-06:002016-10-03T13:22:18.535-06:00curious. . . not sure if I remember correctly, its...curious. . . not sure if I remember correctly, its been more than 35 years for me, but I seem to recall the LSAT was graded where the average score was say 500 and a good score something like 650 or 700? Am I right about that? So a 500 then is equavalent to a 150 now? If so, the average college grad has an IQ of say 110. Surely an IQ of 110 is smart enough to pass the bar exam?? So if 150 is average, why are you suggesting running a risk of never passing (note, I took three bar exams in three states and passed them all with flying colors . . . I'm pretty smart . . but as I recall, my LSAT was somewhere in the 600 range if I am remembering right)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-56133049129920824972016-10-03T12:11:16.434-06:002016-10-03T12:11:16.434-06:00Not sure if they still exist, but there was a chai...Not sure if they still exist, but there was a chain of low cost women's clothing stores called "Dots" because the price tags were color-coded disks, e.g., all $5.00 items would be marked with an orange dot. There used to be one in my city and a female friend who had gone in to look around reported that the clothes appeared as if they would not survive three trips through the washing machine. We then discussed that the only advertising they did was to leave photocopied flyers around, concluding that you'd have to sell a whole lot of $15.00 dresses to justify an ad in even our relatively inexpensive local daily paper.<br /><br />On that theme, one has to wonder how many $49.00 traffic tickets you'd have to handle just to cover the monthly rental on the billboard and start to turn a profit.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-44230977714465345222016-10-02T18:31:12.347-06:002016-10-02T18:31:12.347-06:00Aye, there's the rub. There is a constant thr...Aye, there's the rub. There is a constant thru-put of newbies who slash fees to get business for a year or two then go under only to be replaced by a new crop.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-4089414167510301552016-10-02T15:39:39.248-06:002016-10-02T15:39:39.248-06:00The fact that going to an elite law school does no...The fact that going to an elite law school does not guarantee you any type of employment is very different from what one would expect. You assume someone with double Harvard or Princeton and Yale degrees can always find work but that has not been true for lawyers for at least the last 20 years. If you have those degrees and your law degree is from Harvard or Yale and you are unemployed or underemployed, what is going on? These are people who had extraordinary success all of their lives until middle age. The answer is that law is no longer a good career. It is too risky in terms of job security for a career to be a good bet any more. I am not talking about job losses for a few months. In these cases, losses of an in house or law firm job was a permanent job loss. Maybe the lawyer can temp after that, but even temping is competitive because of the immense lawyer oversupply.<br /><br />Bottom line - you may have wasted your opportunities by getting a Harvard or Yale Law degree if you cannot find full-time permanent work that uses a law degree or other comparable work after middle age.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-2065614499012757722016-10-02T10:37:41.145-06:002016-10-02T10:37:41.145-06:00Does anyone really believe the bar exam is getting...Does anyone really believe the bar exam is getting harder? Look, these people (the law school cartel) are professional con artists. They will say and do anything to deflect responsibility and keep the scam going. The bar exam isn't getting harder; the graduates are getting dumber.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-8338195801464495142016-10-02T02:51:18.276-06:002016-10-02T02:51:18.276-06:00—— The bar exam does not properly measure or refle...—— The bar exam does not properly measure or reflect the aptitudes necessary to be a successful lawyer.<br /><br />I fully agree. There are far too many lousy lawyers, almost all of whom passed the bar exam. Until the exam keeps most of these people out, it won't validly measure what someone above called minimal competence.<br /><br />But this complaint has nothing to do with the shabby performance of so many law skules' graduates. The bar exam is what it is. With a few exceptions (such as people covered by exemptions in New Hampshire and Wisconsin), everyone seeking to become a lawyer will have to pass the exam. Law schools know that. They also know that almost all of their students are undertaking their studies for the purpose of becoming lawyers and therefore both expect and need to pass the bar exam. They also know, or should know, that applicants with LSAT scores below 150 run a high risk of never passing, and that those below 145 are very unlikely to pass. Yet they go on irresponsibly admitting thousands of such applicants, and inducing them to spend not only three years of their lives but also hundreds of thousands of borrowed dollars in the pursuit of an unattainable goal.<br /><br />Old Guyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-88965069893328127852016-10-01T21:39:59.190-06:002016-10-01T21:39:59.190-06:00—— Bar passage rates have a numerator (student abi...—— Bar passage rates have a numerator (student ability) AND a denominator (test difficulty).<br /><br />No: the numerator is the number of candidates that pass; the denominator is the number of candidates.<br /><br />Yesterday at Third Tier Reality I posted this:<br /><br />—— The reality is that if one ABA school gets a passage rate that is above the state average, another one will be below it.<br /><br />Idiots. Look at the following:<br /><br />12<br />12<br />12<br />12<br />2<br /><br />The average is 10. Four of the items are above the average, but only one is below.<br /><br />People who don't know what an average is shouldn't be teaching anything more intellectually taxing than underwater basketweaving.<br /><br />I'm beginning to think that a course or two in the integral calculus should be required for admission to law school, just to screen out the sorts of pretentious "learned academics" and Cooleyite morons who don't understand ratios and averages.<br /><br />Old Guyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-73598663872010335722016-10-01T15:16:58.755-06:002016-10-01T15:16:58.755-06:00Only about 2000 people per year get scores of 170 ...Only about 2000 people per year get scores of 170 or better. (Just a few years ago, the number exceeded 3000.) Many of them won't go to law school at all. Of the others, many will end up at an NYU or a Michigan or even a Minnesota.<br /><br />Thus Harvard and Yale find it more difficult to draw in people with scores in this range. They dip deeper and deeper into the 160s, thereby encroaching on the territory of the Penns and the Cornells. These in turn cut into the traditional range of the UCLAs and the Emorys. The cascading effect continues all the way down, to the point that _UNT and Indiana Tech and Thomas Jefferson have to take people whose scores are scarcely better than what one would expect from random guessing.<br />Old Guyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-38473668594584434802016-10-01T14:02:09.826-06:002016-10-01T14:02:09.826-06:0010:59 thinks that FSU, Miami and U of F are "...10:59 thinks that FSU, Miami and U of F are "as good" as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. I don't agree with that. He also thinks elitism is what prevents all those Barry and Florida Coastal grads from finding jobs. I don't agree with that either. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-10174832168920417152016-10-01T13:34:25.819-06:002016-10-01T13:34:25.819-06:00The argument that a possible change in the denomin...The argument that a possible change in the denominator (an increase in passage requirements by the state) is a valid excuse for poor bar passage rates is a flawed one. It might be valid in the short term, before law schools can adapt, but it misses the point of the bar exam. The bar exists is not a test to determine how good someone will perform as a lawyer. I don't know any lawyer who would even say that with a straight face. It is an exam of minimum competency. The ABA doesn't determine what that minimum standard is, and neither does the law school. Each state has the right to determine what the requirements should be to practice law, and that requirement shouldn't change for the convenience of the law schools. <br /><br />Even if the requirements are higher now than they used to be,which I haven't seen any evidence of, bar exams are still there to determine minimum competence. If schools are producing significant numbers of students who can't pass, they're producing significant numbers of students who aren't minimally competent. If law schools are going to take high tuition from government loan programs and saddle students with non-dischargable debt, they have an ethical responsibility to ensure that all of their students are capable of passing the exam to prove they are minimally competent to be lawyers. It doesn't matter if those students are theoretically as good as they were 10 years ago. If they can't pass the bar now with a harder exam, they don't need to be in law school.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-40665584770312063802016-10-01T12:07:59.844-06:002016-10-01T12:07:59.844-06:00To some extent, I agree with you, 10:59 AM. Howeve...To some extent, I agree with you, 10:59 AM. However, it's not the scambloggers that are elitist; it's the profession itself. Don't shoot the messenger.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-67352764945735636412016-10-01T11:52:16.519-06:002016-10-01T11:52:16.519-06:00This year the entering classes at Harvard and Yale...This year the entering classes at Harvard and Yale Law have lower LSAT scores than in the past. Columbia raised its LSAT scores over last year but at the expense of the 25th percentile GPA. Stanford has not yet given out its statistics. <br /><br />Given the dearth of better law schools near Stanford and Chicago and their small size, they may be more insulated from the declining quality of the application pool than the eastern law schools.<br /><br />Applicants are starting to realize that it is a bloodbath out there for lawyers. Similar to what it always was then you got a PhD at a top graduate school and then did not get tenure. You could be subject to a lifetime of working as an adjunct at $4,000 a class, with short-term appointments, no health insurance and wearing out your car to drive to your three teaching engagements in one academic year. You never know where your next paycheck is coming from.<br /><br />Law is like that now, even if you go to Harvard or Yale. It is easy to end up unemployed a little down the road with no job opportunities that use your elite law degree. Thank you ABA and not challenging up or out policies that leave especially older women and minorities and also a not insignificant number of older white men with worthless Harvard and Yale Law and other top law school degrees.<br /><br />Young people are getting the message. Unfortunately, not enough of them are getting the message before it is too late and their lives are in shambles due to underemployment and unemployment in the legal profession and being too old and indebted to be able to train for a career where the supply and demand are more balanced.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-66479051612111136892016-10-01T11:37:06.858-06:002016-10-01T11:37:06.858-06:00The argument about the Florida bar being harder be...The argument about the Florida bar being harder because the pass rate of experienced lawyers is just a few points higher than that of non-experienced lawyers is probably a sham. Most of the people taking the exam are likely to be recent graduates whose credentials are weaker than earlier graduates.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-63964298758942815692016-10-01T03:48:10.129-06:002016-10-01T03:48:10.129-06:00—— Ask multiple choice questions that are a realis...—— Ask multiple choice questions that are a realistic measure of what every lawyer needs to know by heart before beginning practice<br /><br />No. Anything that "every lawyer needs to know by heart" should be tested directly, not through multiple choice. <br /><br />—— Alternatively, maintain the current level of detail but make the MBE open book<br /><br />No. The exam should be made more difficult, not easier.<br /><br />—— Replace essays with more MPT exercises<br /><br />No. Maintain the tests of writing—and score them to a stricter standard.<br /><br />—— Find a way to test for basic skills in interviewing, communicating with clients, negotiating, and other skills that everyone agrees are essential for a lawyer to have<br /><br />No. This is just a way to smuggle "soft skills" in as a distraction. <br />Old Guyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-64308680403592808772016-10-01T03:18:47.593-06:002016-10-01T03:18:47.593-06:00It's not about élitism. As I have shown before...It's not about élitism. As I have shown before, only 13 law schools see even half of their graduates get the sorts of jobs that pay enough to support the debt from law school. Only 16 see 40% of their graduates get those jobs. Only about a third of the law schools see 10% of their graduates get those jobs. (http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.ca/2014/12/guest-post-by-old-guy-which-law-schools.html)<br /><br />Even if the University of Horrida and Horrida State University have excellent law schools, still no one should attend them.<br /><br />Old Guyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-72440878502418297072016-09-30T16:26:22.797-06:002016-09-30T16:26:22.797-06:00Even to a Solo like me out of law school over 20 y...Even to a Solo like me out of law school over 20 years, Solo practice is very frequently underemployment. No work for long periods of time. At least I started out my career as a gub'mint attorney and gained some seasoning and experience and then went out on my own. It was good until 2006. About 75K consistently. Then the bottom fell out and has not returned. That is correlated with the bottom ranked law schools dumping legions of newbies into the market who couldn't find jobs and beginning their careers as Solos and overcrowding "appointed work" lists. Not enough to go around for everybody. Like trying to split an Arby's Roast Beef sandwich among 20 hungry people. For them, it is functional unemployment to go to court for next to nothing. There are billboards posted in and around the Chicago area advertising $49.00 traffic ticket defense. Ask yourselves: How do you think that works out for the client?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com