tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36600830249191447932024-03-18T11:05:18.491-06:00Outside the Law School ScamUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger746125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-35928901374033688672024-03-07T23:01:00.000-07:002024-03-07T23:01:20.734-07:00ABA busy with rubber stamp of approvalLately the ABA has been wielding its rubber stamp of approval with relish. <a href="https://charlestonbusiness.com/aba-acquiesces-whats-next-for-charleston-school-of-law/">It has "acquiesced" to letting über-toilet Charleston School of Law become a so-called non-profit institution.</a> Acquiescence apparently is a sort of <i>noli contendere</i> that lets the state and federal authorities make the real decision. <div><br /></div><div>Provost Larry Cunningham cited "two key benefits to the change: it will bolster the school’s academic
reputation, separating it from those institutions accused of being
'diploma mills,' and it will make fundraising easier as potential donors
will be attracted to the tax advantages of giving to a nonprofit
school." Charlatan Charleston will, however, be a diploma mill whether it is nominally non-profit or not. It's so odious that even InfiLaw tried to acquire it. As for raising funds, I suppose that someone somewhere will be ass enough to donate to this flagging über-toilet and may be more inclined to do so if money can be saved on taxes. Still, it's a hopeless scam-school with no future.<br /><div><br /></div><div>In addition, <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/big-big-deal-ju-law-school-gets-provisional-accreditation-letting-grads-take-bar-exams/ar-BB1jj4qy">the ABA has given provisional accreditation to the upstart über-toilet at Jacksonville University</a>. Scarcely a year and a half old, this bullshit institution started life with a handful of students and still expects only 40 in the next entering class. It's a ridiculous and ill-fated attempt to establish a law school in Jacksonville where Florida Coastal failed after years with more than a thousand students. Of course, the ABA hands out provisional, and even full, accreditation like breath mints, so its scam-enabling conduct comes as no surprise.</div><div><br /></div></div>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-57431007964907959242024-02-04T03:54:00.002-07:002024-02-04T03:54:40.917-07:00Wilmington University in Delaware opens über-toilet<p>Bucking the trend of closures since the second half of 2016, Delaware's <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/new-law-schools-opening-with-smaller-than-expected-classes-have-high-hopes-2023-08-21/">Wilmington University opened an über-toilet law school last autumn</a>. Despite forecasting an inaugural class of 65 students, the über-toilet got only 20. Indiana Tech did about the same: actual enrollment was less than one-third of the pie-in-the-sky prediction.</p><p>Phillip Closius, dean of this dump, risibly explained the shortfall: "I just over-estimated it.… I
had no experience dealing with a school that was new and seeking
accreditation. We didn’t get in front of enough people to produce those
numbers." Indeed, he evidently had "no experience"—and didn't bother to glance at the histories of similar failed ventures, such as Indiana Tech.</p><p>Although we at OTLSS have not found any information about the LSAT scores of the twenty fools who signed up at this dive, Harvard need not quake in its boots at the thought of sharp competition from Delaware. One hundred three people applied, and Closius claims that twice as many were needed for a class of 65. The claim seems questionable: had there been twice as many similarly situated applicants, we should have expected enrollment around 40. Perhaps he meant that the hypothetical second slate of 103 applicants would have been much poorer and much more likely to matriculate. Or perhaps he just can't do arithmetic.</p><p>And now it's time for the obligatory announcement that Wilmington is a Different Type of Law School™. Closius again: "There was no reason to open up a new law school that’s doing exactly the same thing as 190 other law schools." Quite so. What, then, sets Wilmington apart from the pack?</p><blockquote><p>Wilmington Law aims to distinguish itself with relatively low tuition — the current cost is $24,000 a year — and a focus on preparing students for the bar exam. Class assessments are designed to mimic the format of the attorney licensing exam, Closius said. The school will also emphasize hands-on learning through externships, he added.</p></blockquote><p>Let's work through this item by item.</p><p>A law school can be expensive despite "relatively low tuition", thanks in large part to the cost of living and other expenses. It can also fail. Indiana Tech did, right after giving the entire student body ZERO tuition; Golden Gate is closing now after doing the same for all full-time students. Law schools with an unbroken heritage going back to the nineteenth century, such as the notorious Valpo, have gone tits up. Why should Wilmington be viable? Where exactly is it getting the money to operate with a faculty of 7 and a student body of 20? That's not even half a million dollars of revenue, far too little for operating expenses.</p><p>We hear, however, that the new über-toilet Jacksonville University College of Law doubled its entering class to 27 students last year after drawing only 14 upon opening in 2022. That's still too few students for sustainability, by Old Guy's estimates. And infusions of cash into a law school can quickly sink a parent university: Indiana Tech, once again, provides a fine example, and even the U of Minnesota is hurting from the millions of dollars' worth of subsidies needed to keep its upper-fourth-tier law school afloat.</p><p>The "focus on preparing students for the bar exam" tells us two things: 1) Wilmington, like many other über-toilets, will be a glorified bar-review course; 2) already Closius & Co. know damn well that their charges will struggle to pass a bar exam, because they're admitting students of low calibre.</p><p>And "hands-on learning through externships"? Ho-hum. Other law schools say exactly the same thing, without yielding results to match the rhetoric. Emphasizing "externships" as a vehicle for "hands-on learning" amounts to an abrogation of the duty to teach. And who the hell in Wilmington is going to offer "externships" to a couple of dozen über-toileteers?</p><p>In sum, Wilmington is indeed doing what 190 other law schools are doing—or perhaps I should say 160 or so, to exclude the élite and near-élite schools.</p><p>Admit it Closius: 1) you don't know what the hell you're doing; 2) there just isn't any practical or innovative way to make minimally competent lawyers of the lousy human material that your unneeded shit pit of a law school attracts. Unlike you, Old Guy has actually considered what would be needed to run a law school for Wilmingtonian über-toileteers: maybe a dozen years or so of demanding full-time instruction, starting with remedial training in reading, writing, and logic long before introducing anything to do with law. Some of your so-called students might complete the program, but it would be painful for all—and Old Guy isn't volunteering to teach it. </p><p>Wilmington has sunk tens of millions of dollars into buildings that seem to excite Closius more than his shitty students and shitty law school. Indiana Tech and Thomas Jefferson are but two über-toilet law schools that pissed money away in precisely the same manner, only to have to vacate the new facilities almost as soon as they had moved in.</p><p>Prediction: This pig of a law school will fail to thrive. Old Guy doesn't expect it to survive four years.</p><p>Other news:</p><blockquote><p>High Point University — a private, Christian university in North
Carolina — is moving ahead with plans to launch a new law school next
August. Applications for the coming school year will be available in
September, according to its website.</p></blockquote><p>Just what we need: a god-bothering private joke of a university with a new über-toilet of its own, in a state that lost a horrible law school (Charlotte) just a few years ago and still has far more law schools than it needs. Expect an update from OTLSS as information comes to light.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com67tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-40892688174715653732023-12-30T00:52:00.001-07:002023-12-30T00:52:16.377-07:00Happy new year from OTLSS<p>This has been a slow year here at OTLSS: there just haven't been very many developments to report in respect of the law-school scam. Still, we've had good news, most notably the imminent closure of the failed JD program at Golden Gate, which will mark the sixteenth closure of a law school since 2016 (when Indiana Tech, the first to close in the modern history of the law-school scam, announced that it would shut its doors at the end of the academic year without so much as a "teach-out" plan). Odious über-toilet Charleston has put in for "non-profit" status, a sign of its going tits up very soon. </p><p>Signs suggest that the law-school scam may have gained its second wind. A couple of upstart über-toilets appeared in 2022, though they gained only a risibly small number of students. Applications to law school seem to be on the rise again. On the other hand, more closures can be expected. We shall also continue to watch the various schools under a "Reliable Plan" by the ABA, with dispensations that prolong for years non-compliance with even the ABA's bottom-of-the-barrel standards.</p><p>We at OTLSS wish you a very happy and scam-free new year.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com78tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-89202459274214868182023-12-03T22:32:00.002-07:002023-12-03T22:32:40.758-07:00Golden Gate to be locked for good: one more über-toilet closes<p>Just over five months ago, we at OTLSS reported that notorious über-toilet <a href="https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2023/06/golden-gates-gilding-flakes-off-uber.html">Golden Gate was struggling to stay in business</a>. Now we have found out that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/law-degree-program-axed-californias-golden-gate-university-amid-accreditation-2023-11-30/">Golden Gate is going to close its JD program in May 2024</a>, while still offering degrees in law other than the JD (presumably LLMs).</p><p>We at OTLSS are delighted to see yet another über-toilet bite the dust. Predatory failed law schools such as Golden Gate do not deserve to exist, nor should they be permitted to fatten themselves through federally guaranteed student loans. The sorts of people who go to über-toilets, in the main, have no business attending law school and should not be allowed to do so.</p><p>Golden Gate has thus become the sixteenth ABA-accredited law school to shut down since 2016:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>Cooley (one campus)</p><p>Hamline (merged with Mitchell)</p><p>Indiana Tech</p><p>Whittier</p><p>Charlotte</p><p>Savannah</p><p>Valpo</p><p>Arizona Summit</p><p>Cooley (a second campus)</p><p>Thomas Jefferson (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</p><p>La Verne (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</p><p>Concordia</p><p>Cooley (a third campus)</p><p>Florida Coastal</p><p>Penn State Law (probably) </p><p>Golden Gate</p></blockquote><p>Which law school will be next? </p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-85182096279931177812023-10-25T00:06:00.001-06:002023-10-25T00:06:35.705-06:00Charleston seeks non-profit status<p>Back in 2015, Old Guy wrote this little ditty (based on a famous old dance tune) to an über-toilet called the Charleston School of Law:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>♪ Charleston, Charleston,</p><p>Made in Carolina.</p><p>Some sham, some scam,</p><p>You'll take it up the vagina</p><p>Down in Charleston, Charleston,</p><p>Lord, how they can swindle!</p><p>Ev'ry time they pull</p><p>O'er your eyes the wool,</p><p>Don't believe their bull:</p><p>They've made pocketsful.</p><p>Damn sham, flim-flam,</p><p>Will be a back number;</p><p>But at Charleston, yes, at Charleston,</p><p>That scam school's surely a comer!</p><p>Some time they'll bilk you one time,</p><p>The scam school called Charleston,</p><p>Made in South Carolin'. ♪</p></blockquote><p></p><p>For the early history of Charlatan Charleston, <a href="https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-charleston-saga-embodiment-of-lucre.html">see this old article</a>. </p><p>After an unsuccessful bid to sell the dump to InfiLaw (which itself has gone tits up or, more likely, has found another scam-business into which to put its ill-gotten gains), the so-called leadership of Charleston has revived the old plan to go for "non-profit" status: recently it asked the ABA to "acquiesce" to this proposal. Old Guy takes "acquiescence" to be a polite reference to the old-fashioned wink and nod, wherewith the ABA can enjoy plausible deniability of responsibility while the new "non-profit" institution distributes money in less dividend-like ways.</p><p>This Civil War paradise of scamry is perfectly odious, drawing much of its class from the 140s on the LSAT and leaving many unable to use their costly Mickey Mouse JDs for purposes much better than lining the spindle in the necessary room. In recent years it has been fingered by the scam-cultivating ABA for falling below so-called standards for success on the bar exams and by the US Department of Education for being one of the two schools whose graduates perfomed so badly in the department of "gainful employment" as to call continued access to student loans into question. Its survival testifies to the degree of entrenchment of the law-school scam. </p><p>And now we are told that the owners are just surrendering it to "non-profit" status, without taking a penny for it. Well, as Laocoön wisely put it, <i>Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes</i>. The Valparaiso University School of Law, which unaccountably preferred to call itself Valpo, tried to give itself away to distant Middle Tennessee State University, but the Tennessean authorities stepped in to scupper that little Trojan horse. Indiana Tech tried to fob itself off by offering free tuition to an entire entering class, but only fifteen people swallowed the bait—and the über-toilet announced its closure a year later. </p><p>Owners who diligently extract money from their plutocratic entity don't ordinarily give away a profitable going concern, so the prudent anti-scam activist will suspect something less savory—perhaps unprofitability, perhaps a veiled quest for filthy lucre. Whatever may be going on, expect the ABA's "acquiescence", which will save the scamsters the trouble of getting out their rubber stamp.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-31714643126734363622023-08-22T02:45:00.000-06:002023-08-22T02:45:27.473-06:00Non-élite colleges have been scams for decades<p>Those of a certain age may remember Paul Fussell's amusing book <i>Class: A guide through the American status system</i>, from 1983. Fussell breaks US society into nine classes, plus a non-class called X, according to the tastes and ambitions that are typical of each. Diet, dress, décor, hobbies, language—each is linked to a class's distinctive trait, be it the carefree self-assurance of the upper-middle class, the simpering conventionality of the middle class, or the fearful striving of the high proles. Forty years after publication, it is still good for a few chuckles.</p><p>It is Chapter VI, "The Life of the Mind", that concerns us here at OTLSS. The higher-education scam turns out to be nothing new (at 132–33):</p><p></p><blockquote>The assumption that "a college degree" means something without the college's being specified is woven so deeply into the American myth that it dies very hard, even when confronted with the facts of the class system and its complicity with the hierarchies of the higher learning. For example: Vance Packard, in <i>The Status Seekers</i>, was persuaded as late as 1959 that the idea of "a college diploma" carried sufficient meaning to justify the class designation "the Diploma Elite." Quite wrong. To represent affairs accurately, you'd have to designate an "<i>Elite</i> Diploma Elite," because having a degree from Amherst or Williams or Harvard or Yale should never be confused with having one from Eastern Kentucky University or Hawaii Pacific College or Arkansas State or Bob Jones.… As late as 1972 Packard is still taking that rosy egalitarian view and thus still making the same essential mistake. In <i>A Nation of Strangers</i> he writes cheerfully, "In 1940 about 13 percent of college-age young people actually went to college; by 1970 it was about 43 percent." But no. It was still about 13 percent, the other 30 percent attending things merely denominated colleges. These poor kids and their parents were performing the perpetual American quest not for intellect but for respectability and status.</blockquote><p></p><p>Indeed, college/university was long ago decoupled from intellect—something not especially common at Harvard and Yale—and reduced to a status-seeking device. When Fussell wrote those words, a bachelor's degree was still decidedly a luxury, the high-school diploma having only recently become <i>de rigueur</i>. About six years later, however, the BA was being billed as essential: one could not expect to find decent work without it. From that time on, young people have been herded into the universities whether or not they have any intellectual ambitions, or even two functioning brain cells to rub together. </p><p>Fussell rudely hits the nail on the head with the observation that "the only meaningful educational distinction today is that between the college-educated and the 'college'-educated" (at 133). The scare quotes imply a correct sneer upon those many institutions—more than two thousand already in Fussell's day—that can politely be called non-selective but that over the past several decades have caparisoned themselves with the name "college" or "university". What we might call toilet colleges—the great majority—thrive on a reputation earned in generations past but no longer deserved. "[T]he statement 'He (or she) is a college graduate,' … long years ago, might have carried some weight. But by the 1950s the scene had changed.… The word [<i>college</i>] remained unchanged while the reality altered drastically" (at 132).</p><p><i>Cui bono</i>? More to the point, <i>cui malo</i>? Referring pointedly to "the college swindle" and "the great college-and-status hoodwink" (at 134), Fussell harbors no illusions (at 133–34):</p><blockquote><p>One of the saddest social groups today consists of that 30 percent that during the 1950s and 1960s struggled to "go to college" and thought they'd done that, only to find their prolehood still unredeemed, and not merely intellectually, artistically, and socially, but economically as well. In <i>Social Standing in America</i>, Coleman and Rainwater found that going to a good college—or in my view, a real one—increased one's income by 52 percent, while going to a really good one … increased it by an additional 32 percent over that. But they found that you achieved "no income advantage" if you graduated from a "nonselective" college… No income advantage at all.</p></blockquote><p>The rich fill the élite academies, while "'[t]he newly arrived, eager, upwardly mobile person,' says Leonard Reissman, 'sweaty from his climb up the class ladder, wipes his brow and learns that the doors to full recognition and acceptance are still closed to him" (at 134). Consequently, "the effect of the whole system is to stabilize class rigidity under the color of opening up genuine higher learning to everyone" (<i>ibid</i>).</p><p>Fussell locates this college swindle "largely during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations" (at 135), when hundreds upon hundreds of institutions of a vocational rather than an academic character springboarded themselves into the ranks of "universities", for which status they were quite ill prepared. This "unearned promotion … was simply an acceleration of a process normal in this country—inflation, hyperbole, bragging" (<i>ibid</i>).</p><p>Hovering above this heap of unduly elevated institutions is an élite group, generously as many as 200 strong, that do confer some cachet. Columbia and the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Swarthmore and Carlow College, exist in a dialectical, heads-and-tails unity of opposites. The Dartmouth sweatshirt says as much as the bumper sticker for Eureka College. Indeed, "colleges and universities are the current equivalent of salons and levees and courts" (at 141).</p><p>Fussell's book is contemporaneous with the notorious "rankings" of <i>You Ass News</i>, which somehow crowned itself supreme authority on the relative merits of allegedly academic institutions. Those "rankings" filled, and fill, a socially constructed need for reducing prestige to a single handy-dandy metric. Thus we hear fools gloat of attending the 179th best college, or the 38th best law school. (Incidentally, genuflecting to authority betrays the middle class, according to Fussell.) The élite academies pack their cohorts principally with the scions of the top three classes (top-out-of-sight, upper, upper-middle); the middle class and the three "prole" classes are stuck with Zero College and East Bumblefuck University. These no-account establishments may seek the bubble reputation through a male football or basketball team, but that too has its limits, and only a few dozen can attain the athletic veneer of respectability. No matter: none of them offers real intellectual or aesthetic fulfillment, nor even much potential for a decent job.</p><p>People who 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago would never have gone beyond high school (and might well not have graduated) now scheme for a college as high up the <i>You Ass News</i> "rankings" as possible. Yet from position 200 or so to the end there is no real difference in prestige: they are toilets, one and all. Unfortunately, this information is not widely known or understood, so undistinguished schools flourish at the expense of ambitious but misguided members of the public.</p><p>The same is true of law schools. As many as thirteen (Harvard and Yale above all others) may confer genuine prestige; the rest, only a fake prestige if any at all. Although there is real potential for an enterprising person of humble background to land at a Harvard or a Michigan, monetizing the degree may prove difficult—and boasting about a prestigious law school won't pay the bills.</p><p>The proliferation of law schools and universities is no eleemosynary project; it is a quest for profit in a day bereft of such traditional options as factory work. There may be twenty lousy schools for every one of recognized merit. Serial "rankings" by the likes of <i>You Ass News</i> delude the public into supposing that schools stand on a continuum, when really they fall into two groups: an élite and all the rest. This was true in the 1950s, according to Fussell, and today it is true in spades. Do not fall for non-selective undergraduate institutions or law schools.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com139tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-77174447680646346452023-08-06T14:38:00.000-06:002023-08-06T14:38:02.345-06:00Inflated earnings, Part MMMCMLXXVIII: Back to the old $160k claims<p>One might wonder how <i>U.S. News</i>, which Old Guy has rechristened <i>You Ass News</i>, came to be recognized as arbiter of matters pertaining to the commercial side of legal education, in particular the choice of a law school and the promotion of the law-school scam to the general public. After all, <i>You Ass News</i> has no expertise in the area; it couldn't even keep its magazine afloat.</p><p>A new scam-promoting piece in <i>You Ass News</i>, "<a href="https://www.usnews.com/education/articles/what-type-of-salary-can-you-expect-with-a-law-degree">What Type of Salary Can You Expect with a Law Degree?</a>", takes us back fifteen years to that time when just about every ABA-accredited law school claimed an average salary of $160k for its graduates. It's all peaches and cream for people with fresh JDs, one would think after reading this dithyramb to that Million-Dollar Degree™. </p><p>Median starting salaries for those in private practice range from $155,000 in firms with 100 or fewer lawyers to $215,000 in firms of 1000 lawyers or more, "according to a <a href="https://www.nalp.org/uploads/PressReleases/NALPPressReleaseAssociateSalarySurveyMay2023Final.pdf">report</a>
recently published by the National Association for Law Placement, an
association of more than 3,000 legal career professionals who advise law
students, lawyers, law offices and law schools". This information is at least suspect. First, it is published by a group of "legal career professionals"—people whose bread and butter come from the law-school scam. (Why are "more than 3,000 legal career professionals" needed, if well-paying opportunities for lawyers abound?) They can hardly be expected to publish information that might shrink their future clientele. Second, the claim that law firms with 100 or fewer lawyers have a median starting salary of $155,000 cannot be correct, since the vast majority of firms in that category are tiny ones with only a handful of lawyers (often only one) and no ability to pay such fancy salaries. Old Guy isn't going to waste money on the "report" in which this claim appears, but the press release at the link above—yes, a press release, touting high salaries—shows that only 29 firms in that category provided information about starting salaries and that only 26 cities, all large, were considered. The urban restriction itself renders the selection unrepresentative, and it seems likely that the firms surveyed were on the large end (where placements would generate fees for the "legal career professionals"), not two-lawyer offices.</p><p>The article creates the illusion of choice by presenting various options as if they were realistically attainable—delicacies on a menu placed before discerning JD-anointed toileteers. A tout for the National Association for Law Placement advises that "[a] student taking a $100,000 position in Indianapolis is going to have a
better standard of living than a student receiving a $250,000 salary in
New York City because of the cost of living in those places." Perhaps (I rather doubt it), but the vast majority of new graduates won't be offered either position, let alone both. Likewise, the assertion that the public-interest sector pays around $50k at first comes unaccompanied with any information about the dearth of positions and the stiff competition for them. Indeed, many positions in "public interest" are unpaid.</p><p>Only two notes of caution, both soft-pedaled, are sounded anywhere in this article. One states that "law firms are notoriously stingy" about benefits, something that might lead one to take a job in government instead. But the option will not arise unless one actually gets an offer of a job in government, which, for the great majority of law students, is a very big <i>if</i>. The other points out "that top 14 law schools, often referred to as “T14,” are more likely to have graduates who work in bigger law firms". That's true, but the rest of the article implies that those outside the T14 can settle for $155,000 or so—something that is not true at all. </p><p>Nowhere does one read about the high rate of unemployment among recent graduates of law school—several times that of the general public, which doesn't take on a six-figure amount of non-dischargeable debt at high interest for the privilege of being out of a job. Nor is anything said about starting salaries in "business and industry", a category calculated to inspire thoughts of management but more likely to involve flipping hamburgers or gathering shopping carts.</p><p>If called out for this deception, scamsters and their bitches would hide behind the claim that they have only presented data that are necessarily incomplete. Wrong: they purport to answer the question "What Type of Salary Can You Expect with a Law Degree?" By suggesting that new graduates <i>can expect</i> such fancy salaries, without the slightest reference to the likelihood of having to sling hash at a fast-food dive or being outright unemployed, this piece misleads the public. And since the facts of the law-school scam are well known to those who have been selling their "rankings" and other scam-promoting propaganda for more than a third of a century, it can fairly be concluded that they have willfully engaged in deception.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-71750238408127707702023-07-15T21:53:00.001-06:002023-07-15T21:53:33.636-06:00Golden Gate not closing quite yet, unfortunately<p>The board of Golden Gate Univershitty recently voted <a href="https://sfstandard.com/2023/07/13/golden-gate-university-says-law-school-wont-close/">to keep the über-toilet law school open for another year</a>, at least.</p><p>The über-toilet pledges "to ensure at a minimum that all currently enrolled and entering students
will continue to receive their scholarships and be able to receive an
ABA-accredited degree". That sounds like an intention to shut up shop. Why else refer to "currently enrolled and entering students"? The faculty have already been warned that layoffs may be in store. Those with brains would have figured that out long ago: a school with major financial problems, trifling revenue, and a rapidly shrinking student body cannot sustain a bloated staff of scam-professors.</p><p>ABA accreditation is not within Golden Gate's control. In 2021, the über-toilet was found to be out of compliance with the ABA's low standard for passing the bar exam: at least 75% of those graduates who take a bar exam must pass one within two years, yet at Golden Gate the rate in 2019 was 67%. The ABA notoriously hands out exceptions like breath mints, to the point that its "standards" lose their meaning. Old Guy expects that the ABA will give Golden Gate the usual dispensation if necessary—unless the ABA needs to appear principled and decisive for a change, in which case it may well crack down on this über-toilet, which is headed for closure anyway.</p><p>Golden Gate had to bribe its new full-time students, one and all, with free tuition, even while being desperately short of money. Plans to raise operating funds by selling some land in downtown San Francisco failed when prices declined sharply.</p><p>The university refused to state the number of students, but the head of the Student Bar Association reported "about 200". That's about 70 per class, which isn't very many: Old Guy has previously estimated a minimum of 75 per year for the long-term survival of a law school.</p><p>Since the parent institution "has been fighting to stay afloat in recent years", the last thing that it needs is a money-losing über-toilet law school. Perhaps it would gladly shut the law school down today if not for potential liability. The ABA requires a "teach-out plan" of any law school that intends to close down: this serves to keep the students from being left high and dry in a sudden closure. Über-toilets such as Charlotte and Arizona Summit have suddenly bolted the doors, but they had no parent institution that needed to worry about survival and possible litigation. </p><p>Take this bit of news as a shameful admission by Golden Gate that its über-toilet law school will soon join the ranks of Indiana Tech, Valpo, and the InfiLaw trio. Any bets on the next school to close?</p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-66267444007512893042023-06-26T01:01:00.000-06:002023-06-26T01:01:27.060-06:00Golden Gate's gilding flakes off: über-toilet struggles to survive<p>A few days ago, <a href="https://www.jdjournal.com/2023/06/21/golden-gate-university-law-schools-future-hangs-in-the-balance/">the board of trustees at Golden Gate University met to discuss the fate of its über-toilet law school</a>, 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.</p><p>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 <i>You Ass News</i>.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Expect to hear the death knell toll for Golden Gate very soon. </p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com121tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-74332405627929820732023-02-18T21:09:00.000-07:002023-02-18T21:09:59.334-07:00Happy 10th birthday to Outside the Law School Scam<p>Outside the Law School Scam is about to celebrate its tenth birthday: it was founded on February 27, 2013.</p><p>When we started this site, not a single law school had closed down in many years. We predicted that ten would be gone by the end of the decade. That prediction came to pass, and by now fifteen law schools have taken a one-way trip to Hell:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p>Cooley (one campus)</p><p>Hamline (merged with Mitchell)</p><p>Indiana Tech</p><p>Whittier</p><p>Charlotte</p><p>Savannah</p><p>Valpo</p><p>Arizona Summit</p><p>Cooley (a second campus)</p><p>Thomas Jefferson (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</p><p>La Verne (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</p><p>Concordia</p><p>Cooley (a third campus)</p><p>Florida Coastal (and with it InfiLaw)</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p>Penn State Law (or maybe Dickinson—one or the other will be closing)</p></blockquote><p>This humble site has been cited in the mainstream media and other publications. It has done much both to dissuade people from attending scam-schools and to foster public discourse on the law-school scam. Its material has been read more than 3.3 million times. We have had fun with original poems and other art, and we have singled some particularly vile scamsters out for public denunciation and (where appropriate) ridicule. Undeniably, we have had a hand in the decline of the law-school scam and the closure of various über-toilet law schools. People have also thanked us for saving them from the mistake of enrolling at a scam-school—or attending law school at all.</p><p>Our work, however, is far from complete. Four or five new über-toilets have been announced in the past year or two. And although many über-toilets have shrunk to a mere fraction of their former sizes, and quite a few are in financial or administrative peril, the law-school scam has shown resilience. Attacking the federally guaranteed student loans that make the law-school scam possible will remain a priority.</p><p>Many happy returns of the day to Outside the Law School Scam!</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com178tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-72051463322713627652023-01-30T00:53:00.000-07:002023-01-30T00:53:57.521-07:00Software passes exams at "prestigious" U of Minnesota Law<p>A piece of software called <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4335905">ChatGPT passed four out of four exams at the law school of the U of Minnesota</a>. Most of the questions were multiple choice (a format that was not used at Old Guy's élite law school), but many required essays, and on some of the latter ChatGPT scored in the top half of the class.</p><p>The authors of the article cited above suggest that ChatGPT may be useful to practicing lawyers. Without wishing to boast, Old Guy admits that he has a reputation for writing excellent briefs (some lawyers call them the best in the jurisdiction), and he would never use a tool of this kind. It is evident from the article, and quite predictable, that the software just looked through material on the Internet and pieced it together into text, without understanding what was asked. Although the text was perfectly grammatical (which is more than can be said for that of many students), it gave no real analysis: it would often cite an authority on a point of law, but it would not analyze the applicability of the authority to the case or even offer clear conclusions or advice. (There appears to be a mode in which it gives definitive or at least assertive answers; that was disabled for the purposes of this experiment.) Old Guy will continue to write his briefs the old-fashioned way—by himself.</p><p>(It must be said that useful software packages known as expert systems have been around for many decades. An expert system asks questions of the user in an attempt to solve problems. These have been developed to assist physicians with obscure diagnoses. Conceivably they could help lawyers to explore options for litigation. Again, Old Guy relies on his own abilities. He can sometimes come up with a creative solution that would escape 99%+ of lawyers and that would probably elude software as well.)</p><p>The authors also suggest that students are likely to use tools such as ChatGPT, either to prepare for exams or to cheat on them. A student running short of time, for instance, could submit a question to ChatGPT rather than giving no answer at all. That would clearly constitute cheating (unless, improbably, the professor invited computer-generated answers). More profitably, the student might generate a first draft with ChatGPT, improve it, and submit the result as the student's own work. That too would be cheating. Or a student preparing for an exam could run sample questions through ChatGPT and rely on the output for guidance. That sounds like skating on thin ice. But ChatGPT can apparently outperform many toileteers already.</p><p>More interesting than the possibility of using software to generate briefs and such is the possibility of turning some legal work over to computers, thereby casting many lawyers out of a job. Software for writing wills has been around since the 1980s (taking the place of forms that used to be sold), and much other legal work is so formulaic that it may soon be automated. For clarity, Old Guy does <i>not</i> recommend that anyone produce a will with software or forms, although even a naïvely generated will may be better than none at all (yes, I said <i>may</i>!). But is the day far off when an expert system will be able to interview a testator and generate a respectable will—or a referral to a lawyer when the expert system cannot handle some difficulty (assets outside the country, complicated trusts, sophisticated estate planning)? Old Guy uses a template—his own—for the purpose, although it invariably requires alteration rather than mere filling in of blanks. Although Old Guy does not write many wills, he prides himself on producing superior ones. For uncomplicated situations, maybe the task could be automated.</p><p>Last month a company announced that its software was going to be used experimentally to defend a traffic ticket: it would listen in court and tell the accused (through an earphone) what to say, and the company would pay any fine. Perhaps some common defences could be handled effectively by software, and the options for some tickets are likely to be so limited that the approach might work some of the time. But effective computer-generated cross-examinations and closing arguments are probably a long way off.</p><p>Old Guy's work, in the main, is along the lines of briefs for court more than basic wills or defense to traffic tickets. He doesn't expect to be displaced by a computer. But some bottom-end legal work—filling out routine forms, calculating support in a divorce, document review, soon enough perhaps even traffic court—may soon be automated if it hasn't been already, and that will reliably reduce the number of openings for lawyers. Über-toilet law schools will suffer the most: after all, their graduates are the most likely to do bottom-end work as it is, and they cannot expect to migrate into something like appellate litigation that will be a human endeavor for some time to come.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com69tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-60070511515156232882022-12-18T00:51:00.001-07:002022-12-18T00:51:41.603-07:00Über-toileteers continue to perform terribly on bar exams; ABA issues four notices of non-compliance<p>NEWS ON SEVERAL ÜBER-TOILETS</p><p>The disclosures that the ABA requires from law schools under its so-called Standard 509 are due by December 15. Usually the ABA publishes the reports on a Web site, but this year it still has not done so; one must hunt up the reports on the law schools' own Web sites.</p><p>Old Guy can't be bothered, but he has checked a few, for your information.</p><p>Appalachian School of Law has long been a target of derision here at OTLSS. This year only 51 new students enrolled, a number well below the figure of 75 that Old Guy has estimated as the minimum for a law school's long-term sustainability. Such low enrollment is bad news for this particular über-toilet, which has been in dire financial straits for several years. </p><p>Another piece of bad news for Appalachian School of Law is its graduates' abysmal performance on the bar exams. Of the 53 graduates from 2021 or prior years who took a bar exam for the first time, only 18 passed. That's 34%, far below the level of 75% that the ABA has nominally required since 2019 (the rule says that "[a]t least 75 percent of a law school's graduates who sat for a bar
examination must have passed a bar examination administered within two
years of their graduation"). I say "nominally" because in practice the ABA readily excuses non-compliance; <a href="https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2020/06/aba-notifies-ten-law-schools-of-non.html">its rule contains more holes than a wheel of Gruyère</a>. It is true that the data show only the number of graduates who passed on the first attempt, so these data do not prove that Appalachian School of Law is out of compliance; however, it would take a hell of a lot to catch up, and the über-toilet has little control over its graduates' preparation for the exam or even their willingness to take a bar exam again. </p><p>At the odious Western State College of Law, which in recent years has changed hands among a wacky church and a couple of private entities supposedly in the field of education), only 55% of this year's candidates passed a bar exam for the first time. First-year enrolment soared from 23 last year to 128 this year, Old Guy is sorry to report.</p><p>Über-toilet Charleston enrolled 223 new students, which is 223 more than it deserves. The bar-passage rate was 59%, again well below the ABA's threshold.</p><p>Ohio Northern, another über-toilet that seems too small to be sustainable, has not yet published its 509 report. Its bar-passage rate was 71%, still below the threshold.</p><p>Cooley this year had 191 new students and a 38% rate of bar passage. See below for more on this poster child of über-toilets.</p><p>FOUR MORE SCHOOLS OUT OF COMPLIANCE</p><p>Last month <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/public-notice/sanctions-remedial-action-noncompliance/">the ABA issued new notices of non-compliance with the standard of bar passage to four law schools</a>: Ave Maria, District of Columbia, Hofstra, and Vermont. All four have been called before a meeting to be held in May 2023 so that they can try to prove that they are in compliance with the standard. That is likely to be difficult, in light of this year's new data:</p><p>Ave Maria, 63%<br />District of Columbia, 33%<br />Hofstra, (no data since 2020)<br />Vermont, (no data since 2021)</p><p>Vermont Law School doubled down this year and turned itself into Vermont Law and Graduate School, the "Graduate School" part apparently referring to a whole slate of new degrees of questionable value marketed to people who don't have a background in law. Perhaps that was done in contemplation of losing accreditation, because the "graduate school" could go on operating anyway, although I fail to understand what would attract anyone to the little unincorporated crossroads of South Royalton, Vermont.</p><p>In August 2022, two Puerto Rican law schools each got a three-year extension of the time to achieve compliance, however remote the possibility may seem. Cooley got the same in May, and we can see how very little progress Cooley is making towards its fulfilling its purported plan to reach the 75% mark (which is disgracefully low, but that's another issue).</p><p>Old Guy is going to bet that the ABA will rubber-stamp a similar extension for the four über-toilets newly notified of their non-compliance (as if they hadn't long been aware of it) and that it will also find some cockamamie excuse to grant additional indulgences once the extension lapses for those four and the others. In the meantime, Old Guy will say yet again that nobody at all should attend any of these so-called law schools, or indeed any other law school in the US but perhaps as many as thirteen (Harvard, Yale, a few others) that in theory may be worth attending under certain conditions.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com47tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-47785613945984842152022-12-12T03:08:00.001-07:002022-12-12T18:09:13.475-07:00Fifteenth closure: Penn State Law to be merged into Penn State Dickinson Law<p>An anonymous poster mentioned in the previous article that <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/LawSchool/comments/z80vxf/news_penn_state_dickinson_law_and_penn_state_law/">Penn State Law and Penn State Dickinson Law are merging</a>. Although nothing official has been announced, it appears that the Dickinson campus, located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is going to absorb the much larger campus of Penn State Law, which is in University Park.</p><p>The poster opined that this merger constitutes the closure of a law school. I agree: it's on a par with Hamline and Mitchell, several years ago. Merging law schools is a discreet and subtle way to effect the closure of one of them, without drawing adverse attention.</p><p>Of course, there will be plenty of talk of "synergy" or "improvements" or "economies of scale", all of it designed to cast this effective closure in a favorable light. Students, however, are already complaining that the news was broken to them just before their exams, when they did not need the stress and worry of uncertainties about where they would be next year, and that the president severely curtailed the period for questions about this topic of great interest to everyone in either law school.</p><p>In any event, the number of law schools that have closed in the past six years now stands at fifteen:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p>Cooley (one campus)</p><p>Hamline (merged with Mitchell)</p><p>Indiana Tech</p><p>Whittier</p><p>Charlotte</p><p>Savannah</p><p>Valpo</p><p>Arizona Summit</p><p>Cooley (a second campus)</p><p>Thomas Jefferson (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</p><p>La Verne (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</p><p>Concordia</p><p>Cooley (a third campus)</p><p>Florida Coastal</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p>Penn State Law (probably) </p></blockquote><p>Which scam-school will be the sixteenth to close? Appalachian, Ohio Northern, Faulkner, Western State, Mississippi College, Golden Gate, District of Columbia, Vermont, Western New England, Charleston, the rump of Cooley, and a number of others seem like prime candidates. Feel free to discuss this topic below.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-46761163765977015432022-11-22T01:23:00.003-07:002022-11-28T21:52:49.961-07:00"Rankings" by defunct magazine finally being dumped<p>In the past few days, at least eight law schools have decided not to participate in the "rankings" put out by defunct magazine <i>U.S. News and World Report</i> (called by Old Guy <i>You Ass News</i>): Berkeley, Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, Stanford, Yale. Typical explanations focus on the flawed (or meaningless or irrelevant) methodology employed by <i>You Ass News</i> and the perennial manipulation of the idiotic "rankings" by law-school scamsters.</p><p>Those points are, of course, perfectly valid. And one might well wonder how a failed mass-market magazine became the sole authority on the quality of law schools. But Old Guy says that all of that is beside the point. The main reason to oppose these "rankings" is that <i>law schools shouldn't be ranked at all</i>. For years and years I have said that maybe thirteen law schools are worth considering, under certain circumstances. If I am right, there can be no point in distinguishing #14 (however identified) from #200, because no one should be going to either of those schools. And even the thirteen that possibly might be reasonable choices for certain people don't need to be ranked: Harvard and Yale form a little group at the pinnacle; then there are the other eleven. It is true that Stanford is not Duke or Georgetown, but nobody needs a numerical ranking to draw whatever distinctions exist within this small set of law schools.</p><p>The fatal flaw in the "rankings" is not the particular choice of criteria (although the criteria chosen by <i>You Ass News</i> are undeniably stupid) but the idea of "rankings" itself. Far more useful than any "ranking" would be an article—such as those published here—that said "Consider attending these 13 schools, but be careful" and "Don't attend any other school". Of course, there's no money to be made in that simple proclamation (which is why Old Guy will have to defer those plans to retire on the Côte d'Azur). Lemmings wouldn't heed it anyway: they would just go looking for some other publisher of "rankings" that would allow them to take pride in admission to the 37th or 56th or 83d or 121st best law school, as identified by some scam-profiteer.</p><p>Undaunted, <i>You Ass News</i> has announced that it will continue to assign these schools a "ranking", notwithstanding their refusal to genuflect at the temple of you-assiness. And something tells me that some of the institutions that had the temerity to defy godlike <i>You Ass News</i> will find themselves kicked down several notches next year. Maybe <i>You Ass</i> will take a leaf from Cooley's book and come out with a "ranking" that places Cooley in second position, ahead of all others but Harvard (or maybe Appalachian will displace the pride of Cambridge, Massachusetts). </p><p>In other news, the scam-fostering American Bar Association is setting the stage for abolishing the requirement of standardized testing for admission to law school. Until recent years, everyone applying to an ABA-accredited law school (and also to most Canadian law schools, and even some in Australia and elsewhere) had to take the LSAT and divulge the score. Then a number of schools began to accept the GRE instead, on their own initiative. Now testing of any sort is about to become "optional". Of course, those who avail themselves of the option to skip testing will be overwhelmingly those who would score poorly. And where will these people apply? Realistically, to über-toilets. Although the measure is being passed off as a "progressive" way to promote "diversity" (perceived exclusively in racial terms, it seems), Old Guy predicts that it will serve mainly to let the über-toilets conceal some of their shittiness. If data on LSAT scores are reported at all, they will be skewed upwards by the simple expedient of encouraging the worst applicants to skip the LSAT. Once again, the ABA does a great service to the law-school scam.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-22830583701039852202022-10-29T18:34:00.001-06:002022-10-29T18:34:34.779-06:00Wilmington University to open the seventh law school in greater Philadelphia<p>Wilmington University, in New Castle, Delaware, <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2022/10/13/local-university-plans-to-start-a-law-school.html">is preparing to open a law school</a> in 2023. This new über-toilet will be seventh law school in the general Philadelphia area.</p><p>Whatever its charms (and Old Guy must admit that he likes a good cheesesteak), greater Filthadelphia does not need the law schools that it alraedy has, let alone another. So what are the gimmicks that supposedly set this future über-toilet at Wilmington University apart?</p><p>First, <a href="https://blog.wilmu.edu/news/2022/10/28/introducing-the-wilmington-university-school-of-law/">allegedly low tuition of $24k per year</a>. According to dean Philip Closius, who has made his career at various über-toilets around the US, "it will cost [students], at most, a total of $72,000 to earn a law degree". The cost, however, involves more than multiplying the annual tuition by three years. (And is he guaranteeing that tuition won't be raised?) On top of that, what is the <i>value</i> of a law degree from an unknown, unaccredited upstart of an über-toilet? He doesn't discuss that inconvenient little question.</p><p>Second, it proposes to prey upon "traditional- <span class="s3">and non-traditional-age students, </span>professionals transitioning from other careers, and multicultural populations". In short, it will be Indiana Tech all over again: a few local people whose commitments keep them from going to a decent law school (if they could get into one), older people whom age-based discrimination within the legal profession will soon hit right in the face (Old Guy being the poster boy for that), and various exploitable ethnic or racial minorities who can be duped into signing up for law school whether they belong there or not. According to LaVerne Harmon, president of the university, "[o]ur law school instructors will genuinely care about their students and
be committed to making a difference in their lives." Pardon me while I yawn. She continues: "One of their main
functions will be to prepare students for the real world that awaits
them as attorneys." Assumes facts not in evidence, Harmon. Already lots of law students never pass a bar exam—a fact admitted in Wilmington's puff piece of an announcement. There is no reason to suppose that Wilmington's students will become attorneys. Closius makes the same mistake: he says that his über-toilet will help those many students who "want to specialize in areas of law they find meaningful but can’t
because they have to choose specialties that aren’t as rewarding — just
to pay off their loans". Something tells Old Guy that Wilmingtonians in the main are not going to enjoy abundant options in the legal profession—and that many won't become lawyers at all. But of course scamsters cheerfully dangle fantasies before the glassy eyes of 0Ls.</p><p>Another of those fantasies is the possibility of working far from Delaware—in Arizona, for instance. Outside a few élite and slightly sub-élite law schools, students rarely enjoy in practice the portability that exists in theory. If you want to work as a lawyer in Arizona, go either to a Harvard or to a law school in or very near Arizona. Do not throw your lot in with a bullshit question mark in distant Delaware. For that matter, if you want to work in Delaware, still don't go to Wilmington: look around for a decent school, such as Penn.</p><p>Yet another fantasy is access to "externships". The über-toilet will offer students academic credit for a 21-week "externship" with a lawyer. The difficulty is that local lawyers are hardly likely to snatch up all of the students who would like to avail themselves of this option.</p><p>Sound familiar? That's because we've seen it time and time again: an über-toilet opens amidst a load of self-congratulatory propaganda about being "a different type of law school", its tiny entering class has a median LSAT score in the 140s, and soon enough the propaganda yields way to reality. Old Guy predicts that Wilmington will prove to be yet another bottom-trawler that tries to prettify its students' general shittiness under the signboard of "diversity". The fancy educational opportunities envisioned by Closius will turn into mandatory bar review, and soon enough the school will shut down.</p><p>As is by now well known at this site, Old Guy recommends staying away from law school—except maybe Harvard, Yale, and eleven other schools listed elsewhere, and even those should often be avoided. Don't even consider Wilmington.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-38635835614227790122022-09-30T00:50:00.001-06:002023-02-18T21:11:16.724-07:00Golden Gate is the new Indiana Tech<p>Marx famously said that the major events and personages of history appear twice: first as tragedy, then as farce. With Indiana Tech, however, the farce seemed to come first. The second time around will be scarcely better—and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/struggling-san-francisco-law-school-slashes-class-size-cancels-tuition-2022-09-29/">now it is taking place at Golden Gate University</a>.</p><p>In a desperate but ill-fated attempt to save itself, Indiana Tech one year reduced tuition to zero and slashed enrollment to 15 students. Über-toilet Golden Gate—maybe Rusty Gate would be more like it—has taken a leaf from Indiana Tech's book by doing the same: only 21 full-time and 24 part-time students enrolled, so this year's class is a third of the size of last year's. And all of the little full-time dolts, and about half of their part-time analogues, who were ass enough to sign up at this dump are getting zero tuition for all three years.</p><p>Why would a moribund über-toilet suddenly whore itself out free of charge? Obviously not in a spirit of generosity or public service. No, Golden Gate did this for the sake of its survival: the ABA threatened last year to pull the plug because Golden Gate fell short of a standard by which at least 75% of those graduates who take a bar exam pass one within two years of graduation. In theory, Golden Gate could lose its ABA accreditation next year by failing once more to meet the standard. In practice, we know damn well—from ample experience—that the ABA doesn't seriously enforce its "standards": it instead readily makes excuses for the underperforming über-toilet and offers extensions and other dispensations as often as it pleases. Thus Golden Gate isn't really in danger, even though last year only 38% of those who took the bar exam in California passed it. None of the 17 other ABA-accredited law schools in California did so poorly.</p><p>Anyway, by offering free tuition, Golden Gate hopes to draw in slightly better students. And it has succeeded: the median LSAT this year went up to 153 from last year's 151. Two lousy points, however, can hardly suffice to bridge the immense gap in bar passage so as to propel Golden Gate barely over the line this year. In any event, cheap stunts such as this are unsustainable. Perhaps for a couple of years this über-toilet will draw money from an endowment or otherwise keep the lights on for its handful of charges and its similarly large faculty (many of whom are being reassigned to bar-review courses in support of that desperate attempt to meet the 75% threshold). Once the gimmick of free tuition has expired, however, whatever appeal this thing may have will predictably dry up and the median LSAT score will sink like a stone. </p><p>Two new ventures—a useless master's degree and a "Bachelor of Arts in Law"—will throw a few shekels into the coffers. But these recent stunts in the JD program presage the law school's death in the next, say, four years. Old Guy reminds everyone that Golden Gate is not worth attending even on free tuition.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com90tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-67733294408369462172022-08-12T08:45:00.000-06:002022-08-12T08:45:56.312-06:00Jacksonville: Newest über-toilet attracts only 14 students<p>One might think that the closure of fourteen law schools in the past six years would deter prospective scamsters. Jacksonville, Florida, would seem an especially unlikely place for a new über-toilet, since the stench of recently shuttered Florida Coastal, which once brought in classes in excess of a thousand students, still hovers mephitically over the city. </p><p>Alas! one would be wrong. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/newest-us-law-school-has-big-plans-few-students-so-far-2022-08-10/">The Jacksonville University College of Law opened on Wednesday with an inaugural class of 14 students.</a> Scam-dean Nicholas Allard, who had hoped for 15–20 students and had imposed a ridiculous "cap" of 30, claims to be proceeding "in a very methodical, brick-by-brick fashion". Well, so did Indiana Tech (apart from the astounding expenditure on a curated art collection from the first day), which nonetheless dried up and blew away within four years—in one of those years not collecting a single cent in tuition, for it tried to give itself away by offering zero tuition to everyone but still got only 15 takers. </p><p>Über-toilet Jacksonville charges $36k per year in tuition. Suppose that it didn't give a single discount ("scholarship") and that it will fully collect tuition from all students but will not receive other income (so, for instance, no profitable sales of highly coveted Jacksonville sweatshirts). That's $500k in revenue. With ten scam-professors to pay, not to mention support staff, payroll alone will suck up all of revenue and much more. I'm well aware that few lawyers, and still fewer law-school scamsters, could perform arithmetic of this sort if their lives depended on it; but it doesn't take much intelligence—admittedly a lot more than one can expect from either the students or the faculty of this dump—to discern that erecting this edifice brick by brick while posting large losses is going to cost the parent institution a pretty penny. </p><p>And ten professors for fourteen students? Why not throw in four more and offer full-time private tutoring? They're building it brick by brick, so they say, yet they front-load it with a bloated faculty. They could have started with two or maybe three professors for their tiny cohort, but they had to hire ten. Well, at least they included Scott DeVito, whose recent experience as scam-dean of Florida Coastal will come in handy when his new über-toilet likewise has to be wound up.</p><p>Indiana Tech offered to its handful of students such luxuries as four—four!—certificates in Global Leadership™ (a Fort Wayne specialty) and absurd courses such as Hip-Hop and the US Constitution. Old Guy would consider those frivolous at best, idiotic at worst if they were found at a serious law school like Harvard; at vacant Indiana Tech, they stood as monuments to the hauteur and self-importance of the scamsters who bled the parent university for their short-lived vanity project. Whatever can be said for the fifteen to thirty-odd dolts a year who signed up at Indiana Tech, they could ill afford to pose as the global leaders of tomorrow or listen to André Douglas "Dougie Fresh" "Pond Scum" Pond Cummings prate endlessly about hip-hop.</p><p>If Jacksonville University wants to be raped of its endowment for the sake of this flash in the pan, Old Guy certainly cannot stand in the way. He will only point out that opening in "the largest U.S. city without a law school" does not guarantee success. In Fort Wayne or Shreveport, in Anchorage or Murfreesboro, there is only so much demand from local people who want to go to law school but cannot move or commute a couple of hours away to attend a toilet school that at least has the significant advantages of an image (however shitty) and ABA accreditation. Very few people from other places will matriculate at Jacksonville, and those who do will probably be desperate for a visa or else will be bought off with free tuition—something that won't contribute to the über-toilet's coffers. Already Florida Coastal could not sustain itself even with a twentieth of its peak entering class in supposedly thriving Jacksonville, so why should an upstart in the same city do better? </p><p>When will Jacksonville shut up shop? Difficult to say. That depends on the willingness of the parent university to inject cash. Old Guy would never have let it get past the bullshit "feasibility study" that must have been cobbled together, but maybe Jacksonville University is prepared to throw a lot of good money after bad. In the meantime, scamsters are about to pull the same stunt in North Carolina and West Virginia, and a foul über-toilet in Louisiana that draws its so-called students primarily from the low 140s on the LSAT is pretending to operate a branch in Shreveport. And the general public, saddled with federally guaranteed student loans that will never be repaid, will end up footing the bill.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-23824022088177562202022-07-16T20:07:00.002-06:002022-07-16T20:07:44.697-06:00The seven tiers of law schools: updateOur article "<a href="https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-seven-tiers-of-law-schools.html">The Seven Tiers of Law Schools</a>" is now more than five years old. It's time for a brief update.<div><br /></div><div>That article was written about seven months after the start of the wave of closures that continues to batter the law-school scam. Two schools in Tier 6 (the lowest tier) are described as "soon to be closed".</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, in the ensuing five years, <i>fourteen</i> schools have closed (or switched to state accreditation only), if one counts three campuses of the Cooley chain as separate schools:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote><div>Cooley (one campus)</div><div>Hamline or Mitchell (the two merged)</div><div>Indiana Tech</div><div>Whittier</div><div>Charlotte</div><div>Savannah</div><div>Valpo</div><div>Arizona Summit</div><div>Cooley (a second campus)</div><div>Thomas Jefferson (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</div><div>La Verne (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</div><div>Concordia</div><div>Cooley (a third campus)</div><div>Florida Coastal</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>All fourteen of these defunct toilets were in Tier 6. Several others in Tier 6 are apparently endangered, and even Vermont (Tier 5) and the U of Minnesota (Tier 4) seem to be tottering financially. </div><div><br /></div><div>Old Guy hasn't taken the trouble to appraise each surviving law school anew and make adjustments to the tiers, mainly because his basic position remains the same: below Tiers 0–3, all schools should be avoided. Those four tiers collectively contain only thirteen law schools—the very ones that they contained five years ago. It's true that Tier 4 is not altogether out of the question for those who get free tuition (a "full scholarship", in scamsters' jargon), so maybe there's still a point in reviewing Tier 4, in which case Drake, Chicago–Kent, Case Western, and a few others would be demoted. But Tiers 5 and 6 really need not be finely distinguished. And Old Guy has doubts about Tier 4.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, for convenience' sake, here is the updated list—now down to six tiers, the last two from the old ranking having been consolidated:</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">———— * ————</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>TIER 0: Definitely worth attending. Leap at the chance to enroll at one of these schools, even if you have to borrow the full cost.<br /><br />*** NONE ***<br /><br />Comments: Formerly occupied by a handful of schools, this tier has been vacant for years and is likely to remain that way until the second half of the century. Not for nothing is it named Tier 0.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">———</div><br />TIER 1: Excellent choices for trust-fund babies. Others should seriously consider them while bearing in mind the very real risk of a bad outcome. You cannot, after all, eat prestige for breakfast.<br /><br />Harvard<br />Yale<br /><br />Comments: No, Stanford, your jive ass is not in the same league as Harvard and Yale. Petulant Californian demands for representation in Tier 1 don't sway me one bit.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">———</div><br />TIER 2: Rich kids should feel free to attend these. Others should not enroll without a substantial discount and should weigh the risk of a bad outcome carefully.<br /><br />Chicago<br />Columbia<br />NYU<br />Stanford<br /><br />Comments: Formerly this category also included Michigan and Penn.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">———</div><br />TIER 3: Rich kids are likely to consider these insufficiently prestigious. Others should not even apply without a fee waiver and should not enroll without a large discount, probably at least 50% off; even then, the risk of a bad outcome would loom large.<br /><br />California—Berkeley<br />Cornell<br />Duke<br />Michigan<br />Northwestern<br />Penn<br />Virginia<br /><br />Comments: This category, which has shrunk considerably since 2010 or so, is the end of the group that, as of the last time that I checked (http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.ca/2014/12/guest-post-by-old-guy-which-law-schools.html), saw at least 50% of the graduating class get jobs in Big Law or federal clerkships. I advise against attending any school below Tier 3. Even Tier 1 is questionable nowadays.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">———</div><br />TIER 4: Expect a disastrous outcome at these unless you get tuition waived, have local connections, and intend to build your career in the vicinity of the school (no farther away than, say, an adjacent state). As always, rich people can go to one of these schools if they really want to.<br /><br />Alabama<br />Arizona<br />Arizona State<br />Baylor<br />Boston College<br />Boston University<br />Brigham Young<br />California—Davis<br />California—Irvine<br />California—Los Angeles<br />California—Hastings<br />Cardozo<br />Cincinnati<br />Colorado<br />Connecticut<br />Denver<br />Emory<br />Florida<br />Florida State<br />Fordham<br />George Mason<br />Georgetown<br />George Washington<br />Georgia<br />Georgia State<br />Houston<br />Illinois<br />Indiana—Bloomington<br />Iowa<br />Kansas<br />Kentucky<br />Louisiana State<br />Loyola Marymount<br />Minnesota<br />Nevada<br />New Mexico<br />North Carolina<br />Notre Dame<br />Ohio State<br />Oklahoma<br />Rutgers<br />St. John's<br />Southern California<br />Southern Methodist<br />Temple<br />Tennessee<br />Texas<br />Texas A&M<br />Texas Tech<br />Tulane<br />Vanderbilt<br />Wake Forest<br />Washington<br />Washington and Lee<br />Washington University in St. Louis<br />West Virginia<br />William and Mary<br />Wisconsin<br /><br />Comments: Many of these are what Paul Campos has called trap schools. Others are toilets with employment figures that are better than those of typical toilets. All are best avoided, from the faux-prestigious outskirts of Tier 3 to the toilety outskirts of Tier 5.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">———</div><br />TIERS 5 & 6 (combined): Tier 5 was originally described as follows: "Don't go near these unless you are independently wealthy, crave a little wind-up-toy law degree, and are too dumb to get into a school in a higher tier even after exploiting your rich connections." Tier 6: "The survival of these into 2017 offers an argument against the existence of a just god. Anyone who enrolls at one of these should not be allowed to roam the streets unsupervised." Now, in 2022, Old Guy's ranking of law schools merges these into one tier: "Hell, no."<br /><br />Akron<br />Albany<br />American<br />Appalachian<br />Arkansas—Fayetteville<br />Arkansas—Little Rock<br />Ave Maria</div><div>Baltimore<br />Barry</div><div>Belmont<br />Brooklyn<br />California Western</div><div>Campbell<br />Capital</div><div>Case Western Reserve<br />Catholic<br />Chapman<br />Charleston<br />Chicago—Kent<br />Cleveland-Marshall</div><div>Creighton</div><div>CUNY<br />Dayton</div><div>DePaul<br />Detroit—Mercy<br />District of Columbia<br />Drake<br />Drexel<br />Duquesne<br />Elon<br />Faulkner<br />Florida A&M<br />Golden Gate<br />Florida International<br />Gonzaga<br />Hawaii<br />Hofstra<br />Howard<br />Idaho<br />Indiana—Indianapolis<br />John Marshall—Atlanta<br />John Marshall—Chicago<br />Lewis and Clark<br />Liberty<br />Lincoln Memorial<br />Louisville<br />Loyola—Chicago<br />Loyola—New Orleans<br />Maine<br />Marquette<br />Maryland<br />Massachusetts—Dartmouth<br />Memphis<br />Mercer<br />Miami<br />Michigan State<br />Mississippi<br />Mississippi College<br />Missouri—Columbia<br />Missouri—Kansas City<br />Mitchell | Hamline<br />Montana<br />Nebraska<br />New England<br />New Hampshire<br />New York Law School<br />North Carolina Central<br />North Dakota<br />Northeastern<br />Northern Illinois<br />Northern Kentucky<br />Nova Southeastern<br />Ohio Northern<br />Oklahoma City<br />Oregon<br />Pace<br />Pacific<br />Pennsylvania State—Dickinson<br />Pennsylvania State—University Park<br />Pepperdine<br />Pittsburgh<br />Quinnipiac<br />Regent<br />Richmond<br />Roger Williams<br />St. Louis<br />St. Mary's<br />St. Thomas—Florida<br />St. Thomas—Minneapolis<br />Samford<br />San Diego<br />San Francisco<br />Santa Clara<br />Seattle<br />Seton Hall<br />South Carolina<br />South Dakota<br />Southern Illinois<br />Southern University<br />South Texas<br />Southwestern<br />Stetson<br />Suffolk<br />SUNY Buffalo<br />Syracuse<br />Texas Southern<br />Thomas Cooley<br />Toledo<br />Touro<br />Tulsa</div><div>Vermont</div><div>Villanova<br />Washburn<br />Wayne State<br />Western New England<br />Western State<br />Widener<br />Willamette<br />Wyoming<br /><br />Comments: The distinction between Tiers 5 and 6 was not meaningful in practice, except for a handful of rich kids. None of these schools is worth attending: all are very likely to lead to atrocious outcomes. Anyone with potential in the legal profession can do better than these. If the best that you can get is a school in this tier, do not go into law; find something else to do with your life. By the way, any new law school that may be opened—and it seems that three or four are in the works—will presumptively start in this tier and will probably never get out. Special circumstances that are unlikely to be repeated allowed Irvine to get into Tier 4, and even its scam-dean never aimed for Tier 3.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">———</div><div><br /></div><div>GRAVEYARD: These have been shut down since 2017, the start of the unprecedented wave of closures in which the anti-scam movement played a major role.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Cooley (one campus)</div><div>Hamline or Mitchell (the two merged)</div><div>Indiana Tech</div><div>Whittier</div><div>Charlotte</div><div>Savannah</div><div>Valpo</div><div>Arizona Summit</div><div>Cooley (a second campus)</div><div>Thomas Jefferson (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</div><div>La Verne (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)</div><div>Concordia</div><div>Cooley (a third campus)</div><div>Florida Coastal</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Comments: Every one of these was in Tier 6. Outside the Law School Scam reported on the deaths—often colorful—of every one of them. Expect more closures still, but not nearly enough.</div><div><br /></div>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com64tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-59238229198631625302022-07-01T14:38:00.000-06:002022-07-01T14:38:07.609-06:00"Law-school lite": will bachelor's degrees in "legal studies" deplete the ballyhoo'd "JD advantage"?<p>The so-called University of Southern California joins other institutions in <a href="https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/top-20-law-school-joins-handful-of-others-offering-undergraduate-degree-in-law">offering a bachelor's degree in "legal studies"</a>.</p><p>In many countries, the professional degree in law is a bachelor's degree: students can go straight into preparation for the legal profession after finishing high school, without first obtaining a bachelor's degree in another field. This new bachelor's degree in "legal studies", however, will not give access to the bar. Its purpose is anything but clear. Scam-professor Bob Rasmussen denies that it is "law-school lite": he says that the program will impart "general
knowledge for what you would want a smart, educated person to know about
the law". Smart, educated people have presumably been learning about the law for centuries without the help of four-year degree programs, so I don't see the urgent need for this new degree. </p><p>The curriculum includes the following courses: "Law and the U.S. Constitution in Global History, Law and Society,
Introduction to Criminal Law, Fundamentals of the U.S. Legal System and
Current Court Cases". That sounds pretty thin to me. "Current Court Cases" is obviously ephemeral, and a few of those other courses sound like candy-ass crapola of the dreaded "law and" variety. Conspicuously absent is rudimentary training (outside the criminal field): what exactly is a contract, and why should one care? </p><p>Vague notions gleaned from "Law and Society" will not prove useful for employment. At first I speculated that the purpose of the degree was to curry favor with admissions offices at not-quite-toilety law schools. But the piece cited above ends with the following:</p><p></p><blockquote>Undergraduate degrees in law could help graduates obtain JD-advantage
jobs without the cost of a law degree, said Kyle McEntee, founder of the
advocacy group Law School Transparency, in an interview with Reuters.</blockquote><p></p><p>Kyle McEntee was indeed the founder of Law School Transparency, but this year he apparently sold it and the anti-scam movement for thirty pieces of silver and a cushy job at the LSAC. The law-school scam is unlikely to thank him for suggesting that jobs in its mythological "JD-advantage" category can be filled without the supposed advantage of a JD, just a cotton-candy bullshit bachelor's degree in "legal studies". Nor will scamsters be flattered by the unfavourable comparison of "the cost of a law degree" to that of majoring in "legal studies" in the course of an undergraduate program. </p><p>If you are stupid enough to sign up for law school, expect to be undermined by a bunch of undergraduates who opt for "legal studies" instead of some other major with similarly bad prospects for employment. </p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-74432895219474146752022-06-08T23:56:00.002-06:002022-06-08T23:56:46.797-06:00Namby-pamby ABA gives dispensation to non-compliant CooleyTwo years ago, when the ABA supposedly tightened its so-called Standard 316 for accredition of law schools, <a href="https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2020/06/aba-notifies-ten-law-schools-of-non.html">we pointed out the weaknesses in the new standard and predicted that the ABA would allow non-compliant schools to remain accredited</a>. We were right.<div><br /></div><div>Odious "Western Michigan University's" Thomas M. Cooley Law School, an erstwhile chain now shrunken to two outlets, has received a three-year "extension" of time to come into compliance. The standard requires that at least 75% of those who take a bar exam pass it within two years of graduation. Cooley's rates for 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively, were 66.01%, 62.31%, and 59.51%. </div><div><br /></div><div>As we pointed out in the article cited above, law schools and their administrative enablers have resorted to various stratagems for temporarily bolstering bar-passage rates without improving quality. One popular old ruse was to cajole or bribe inferior students out of taking the exam, so that their predicted failure would not affect the bar-passage rate. Schools have been known to pay quite a few thousand dollars just to keep one student away from the exams. Another trick is to pare enrollment down artificially just long enough to make the school more "selective", with better students more likely to pass the exams—only to return to open admission as soon as the school achieved compliance with the norm. Unabashed pursuit of compliance has turned a number of über-toilets into glorified test-prep courses. And of course there is boundless potential for special pleading, flim-flam excuses, and other bullshit reasons to get "extensions" that amount to indefinitely renewable licenses for shameful non-compliances.</div><div><br /></div><div>The scam-enabling ABA reassures us that Cooley's extension comes with strings attached:</div><blockquote><div><p>They
include working with faculty to improve teaching and learning,
reviewing the effects of more rigorous grading policies, and making a
“significant financial investment” in a “reliable plan” to ensure that
the law school has resources to operate in compliance with the
standards.</p>
<p>Also, the law school must adhere to a revised admissions policy, so
entering classes have stronger success predictors for graduating and
passing a bar exam.</p></div></blockquote><div>What exactly is meant by "working with faculty to improve teaching and learning"? How will that be measured? Not at all, Old Guy imagines. What good will "reviewing the effects of more rigorous grading policies" do, especially if those "effects" turn out to be nil or negligible (or even negative)? Just what will the "reliable plan", the "resources to operate in compliance with the standards", and the "revised admissions policy" entail?</div><div><br /></div><div>Note too that the ABA gave Cooley a three-year extension to a period of compliance that by default lasts only two years. One does not ordinarily think of an "extension" as being longer than the original period. Furthermore, with a bar-passage rate that shows a rapidly declining trend, Cooley is hardly the ideal candidate for an "extension". If Cooley gets a three-year extension for such dreadful results, would <i>any</i> school be denied?</div><div><br /></div><div>When will the ABA cut the crap and admit that it is not serious about standards for accreditation?</div><div><br /></div>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-84811936102387066682022-05-07T21:50:00.000-06:002022-05-07T21:50:02.684-06:00ABA proposes to abolish required testing for admission to law school<p>Having introduced the GRE as an alternative to the LSAT, <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/council_reports_and_resolutions/may22/22-may-memo-revisions-501-503.pdf">the ABA now proposes to stop requiring any sort of test for admission to law school</a>. Its so-called Strategic Review Committee recommends that Standard 503, which currently requires the use of "a valid and reliable admission test" (with some exceptions), be changed to read as follows: "A law school may use admission tests as part of sound admission practices and policies. The law school shall identify in its admission policies any tests it accepts."</p><p><i>Cui bono?</i> Above all, the lousiest of the scam-schools. Once the one objective, uniformly assessed element of applications is eliminated, every über-toilet will be able to cover up the fact that it draws its marks primarily if not exclusively from the bottom of the barrel.</p><p>Even the LSAC, which produces the LSAT, has been in on the act, with a new alternative scheme for admission that will not require any standardized test. As far as Old Guy can tell, the scheme involves taking a couple of candy-ass courses that somehow magically prove suitability for law school.</p><p>Just stay the hell away from the law-school scam. Old Guy doesn't know what else to say.</p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com47tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-2875204053351349752022-03-20T23:19:00.003-06:002022-03-20T23:19:40.267-06:00Law-school scam surges aheadMarch 2022 has been a terrible month for the anti-scam movement, and we still have eleven days to go. Four major setbacks have come to our attention here at OTLSS.<div><br /></div><div>The first was the announcement, reported in the previous article, that privately owned Jacksonville University plans to open a law school and has even obtained the required funding from the municipal government.</div><div><br /></div><div>Soon after that, privately owned High Point University in High Point, North Carolina, announced that <a href="https://journalnow.com/news/state-and-regional/new-law-school-at-high-point-university-could-open-as-early-as-2024-president-says/article_2c2fdc44-b4de-5f25-b1a0-16999cb16ddc.html">it too is going to open a law school</a>, possibly within two years. As if that weren't foolish enough, the university also plans to open a school of optometry, a school of nursing, and a school of entrepreneurship (whatever that means), while spending $400M—about $70k per student—on construction. How it's going to pay for all of that I don't know, but I certainly am not offering to underwrite the loans. But the law school cannot possibly be needed. North Carolina already has six law schools (seven before the Charlotte School of Law went tits up), only one of them possibly worth attending in Old Guy's assessment. All of them are in the north-central part of the state, from Durham to Winston-Salem. One could drive to all six of those law schools in two hours or so. High Point University is only about twenty minutes' drive from two other law schools: Wake Forest, in Winston-Salem, and Elon, in Greensboro. Why the hell should another goddamn law school be built in that area? If it sees the light of day, it will certainly be another über-toilet, with not even accreditation to offer to new students. Like Indiana Tech, it will fold soon enough.</div><div><br /></div><div>The third setback is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/law-school-test-maker-acquires-non-profit-that-pushed-better-jobs-data-2022-03-02/">the absorption of Law School Transparency into the Law School Admission Council</a>. As the article states, "Law School Transparency was a thorn in the side of law schools when it
launched in 2009, criticizing what it said was misleading graduate
employment data and calling for changes in how schools report student
outcomes". LST did good anti-scam work. Now the LSAC, which coordinates applications to law schools, produces the LSAT, and thus greatly promotes the law-school scam, has taken LST over. In exchange for surrending LST, Kyle McEntee, its director and founder, has been hired as "senior director"—perhaps one should say scamster-in-chief—of the LSAC. <i>Et tu, Brute?</i> </div><div><br /></div><div>And recently the LSAC has announced <a href="https://www.lsac.org/legal-education-program">plans to introduce its "Legal Education Program" as an alternative to taking the LSAT</a>. Until the past few years, law schools in the US and Canada (other than some non-English-speaking localities), and even a few in other parts of the world, required the LSAT of all applicants. A few schools introduced the GRE as an alternative, and many others followed suit even though it had not been approved by the American Bar Association (the scam-leading organization in charge of accreditation of law schools in the US). Now the LSAC will let applicants take a couple of years of courses in lieu of writing the LSAT. Billed as "equally valid", this new approach will serve mainly to confuse the data so that it will become impossible to assess student bodies objectively. Whatever its flaws (and Old Guy thinks that they are greatly overstated, mainly by scamsters and people who score poorly on the test), the LSAT provides a consistent measurement of applicants' ability to think logically and to understand English text. A few cotton-candy courses on "the skills necessary for success in law school", "the legal profession and law school experience", and "strong support networks" will not. </div><div><br /></div><div>The two proposed über-toilets aren't of great concern: they can be expected to shut down as quickly as they open. But the LSAC's little coups revitalize the law-school scam. Let's hope that they encourage the federal government to curtail access to student loans, without which the scam could not endure.</div><div><br /></div>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-8635737655028819102022-03-02T02:09:00.001-07:002022-03-02T02:11:49.263-07:00Jacksonville loses one über-toilet, will gain another<p>Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Florida, has announced <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/florida-university-open-first-new-us-law-school-since-2014-2022-03-01/">its intention to open another goddamn law school</a>. Florida Coastal, also located in Jacksonville, survives only to give its last few students another year to finish their studies and collect a Mickey Mouse law degree from the last über-toilet of defunct scam-chain InfiLaw.</p><p>As usual, the stated justification is geographic. The mayor of Jacksonville reported that his is the largest city in the US that does not have a law school. (He said nothing about the one that is shutting its doors after having enrollment of almost 4000 students not many years ago. Might it be that Jacksonville just doesn't need a law school?) Of course, he also alluded to the supposedly vast numbers of local people who can't possibly get off their asses and go to any of the twelve law schools that already exist in Florida—such as the U of Florida, only about an hour and twenty minutes away—or for that matter to any of almost two hundred more distant law schools, practically all of which have more to offer than an upstart.</p><p>This would-be über-toilet is to be housed "in a downtown office building", rather like Thomas Jefferson School of Law and other whopping failures. Already the city of Jacksonville has pledged $5 million, curiously enough the very amount that the university expects to spend on opening its vanity project. Initially there will be only four professors, not exactly enough to offer Law 'n' Hip-Hop or a range of certificates in Global Leadership—nor even to inspire confidence in the university's commitment to sustaining the dump long enough for the first class to graduate.</p><p>Targeted enrollment for the initial class is 20 to 30 students. Within two years the university wants 150 students—whether per class or for the entire school is not clear. Nor is anything said about the important question of costs. Still, Old Guy has seen quite enough to advise resolutely against signing up for three years at an ill-considered über-toilet that may not last that long. Even a horrible shithole like Cooley is marginally better than this big <i>if</i>. Expect another Indiana Tech or worse.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-32251013023525341242022-02-07T23:17:00.000-07:002022-02-07T23:17:21.001-07:00Über-toilet coming to West Virginia?<p>A new bill before the West Virginia House of Delegates <a href="https://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/bill-introduced-to-create-law-school-at-marshall-university/article_c457a43b-b4f5-5dad-bee1-6b261ab22b66.html">would establish a law school at Marshall University</a>.</p><p>Now, Old Guy had never heard of Marshall University, but he can say that this proposal is even more ridiculous than the proposal to open a law school in Shreveport, Louisiana. West Virginia is declining in population. The largest city, Charleston, does not have even 50,000 people. Pretty though its mountains can be, the state is the very poster child of illiteracy and backwardness. (Q: What does a West Virginian girl say when she loses her virginity? A: "Cut it out, Pa; you're crushing my Marlboros.") This rural, retrograde state absolutely does not need even the toilet law school that it already has, let alone another one.</p><p>Even Brad D. Smith, the president of Marshall University, has expressed polite doubts. He points out that he and his colleagues have not "seen or conducted a market study for the development of a law school". Indeed, Mr. Smith, a sensible person would start there! Especially after the Indiana Tech catastrophe. But don't expect much sense in the West Virginian legislature.</p><p>How little sense? Have a look at this:</p><blockquote><p>A law degree is one of the most versatile degrees, [Delegate Matt] Rohrbach said. Many corporate CEOs and other corporate leaders hold the degrees to help them better fulfill their roles without ever stepping [<i>sic</i>] foot in a courtroom, he said.</p></blockquote><p>First of all, as we have said countless times, a law degree is actually one of the <i>least</i> versatile degrees. It's useful for practicing law—and just about nothing else. And it's not even very useful for that, because there are two graduates for every entry-level job. </p><p>Second, we've also exposed the fallacy of concluding that the fact some "corporate leaders" or other supposedly prominent people have a degree in law implies that the degree contributed significantly to their professional attainment. Many "corporate leaders" own a set of golf clubs, but it does not follow that by buying a set of golf clubs you will stand a decent chance of becoming a "corporate leader".</p><p>Third, a new law school at Marshall University would only ever be an über-toilet, and anyone who wants an idea of what would await its graduates can have a look at the many über-toilets that see fewer than half of their graduates working in law ten months after graduation—and then usually in low-paying positions. An über-toilet in West Virginia could expect to fare even worse than its established counterparts in more urbanized states, because whatever demand there is for lawyers in West Virginia is amply met by the one law school in the state and others in the region. </p><p>In a manner strikingly reminiscent of Indiana Tech's "feasibility study", Rohrbach maintained that his proposed law school would "fill[] the need in the Huntington, Charleston, Beckley market. There's [<i>sic</i>] a lot of people with a need, but they can't really quit what they're doing and move to Morgantown for three years" in order to study law at West Virginia University.</p><p>Why does that recall Indiana Tech? Because there too we were told of the vast numbers of people stuck in Fort Wayne who couldn't move their asses to attend one of several law schools within a two-hour drive. But the bogus "feasibility study" could not change the facts. What Indiana Tech found was that the local market consisted of a couple of dozen people at most—by no means enough to run a law school. And hardly anyone moved to Fort Wayne for the privilege of studying law 'n' hip-hop at Indiana Tech. The über-toilet was gone in four years, and the parent university lost much of its endowment on the disaster. The same fate would surely befall a law school at Marshall University, except that Fort Wayne—which is quite a bit bigger than Huntington, Charleston, and Beckley combined—would look downright promising in comparison to southwestern West Virginia.</p><p>Mr. Smith, take it from Old Guy: resist every effort to saddle your institution with a law school. </p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-68723086443815026182022-01-28T16:22:00.002-07:002022-02-01T01:02:41.339-07:00No merger of Akron and Cleveland State<p>Toilet law schools University of Akron and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law (Cleveland State University) contemplated a merger, <a href="https://www.wksu.org/education/2022-01-28/law-schools-merger-falls-through-but-only-for-now">but now those plans are off</a>. It seems that each of the toilets wanted to maintain its campus.</p><p>Old Guy never saw anything to be gained from pretending that Cleveland and Akron, a good 45 minutes apart, offered fertile ground for this endeavor. He remains of the view that both law schools should close down—as indeed should all nine law schools in Ohio. The best of the lot is Ohio State University, which ridiculously insists on styling itself "The Ohio State University"—a mediocrity where more than a quarter of the class ends up not working in law after graduation. Far better law schools than this can be found nearby in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ontario. Down in the depths of über-toiletry lies dreadful Ohio Northern University, which, with only 59 students in the latest entering class, is likely to dry up and blow away. More than two-thirds of the class gets discounts ranging from 50% to 100+% (that's right, outright bribery occurs at the top), while 40% of the graduates find themselves not working in law (and usually not working at all) ten months after graduation.</p><p>Despite its undeniable charms, the Buckeye State just does not need a law school at all, let alone a reformed or reconstituted Akron–Cleveland hybrid. The entire region spills over with law schools from Tier 2 to Tier 6. How exactly a large state like Ohio has managed to assemble an assortment of law schools ranging from humdrum to shitty is a good question for historians of the law-school scam, but in practice all nine should go. Never mind that it is a big state; never mind that under more propitious circumstances it might have pulled off a respectable law school: it has not done so, and now is certainly not the time to try.</p><p>If you live in Ohio or Indiana, your nearest choices of decent law schools are Michigan, Chicago, Northwestern, Penn, and probably a couple of schools north of the Great Lakes. Do not go to any Buckeye or Hoosier law school.</p><p><br /></p>Old Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02399124824529778710noreply@blogger.com23