ABA promotes law-school scam with backhanded warning

What would you say if I told you that the ABA, dominated as it is by law-school scamsters and their cronies, was warning people to think twice about going into law?

"I smell a rat"? "Beware Greeks bearing gifts"?

Nicole Black and Heather Morse, supposedly "two leading voices in the legal industry" (though I had never heard of them), did the law-school scam a service with their obviously staged but less obviously biased dialogue on the wisdom or otherwise of attending law school. They start with some reasons not to attend, and they cover them with reasonable accuracy, albeit with a heavy foot on the soft pedal.

Then they present "GOOD REASONS TO GO TO LAW SCHOOL":

For starters, it’s a great education that will provide foundational skills, such as analytical thinking and persuasion capabilities, that easily translate and provide value to many different career paths, both legal and nonlegal.

No, it isn't. People who don't have those skills probably won't acquire them in law school. And while a legal education may conceivably "provide value" for careers outside the practice of law, it will not open the door to those careers; it is likely to do just the opposite.

For those passionate about social justice, a law degree is a powerful tool. Now more than ever, we need good lawyers out there who can right wrongs, to cut through red tape, to make a difference for their clients. Whether in private practice or public service, being a lawyer is still a noble profession, and we will always need good advocates.

Note the typical equivocation on the word need, and even on the word we. Do "we need good lawyers"? Yes, if that phrase means 'Society will be better off with capable lawyers acting in the public interest'. No, if the phrase means 'Employers and clients demand additional lawyers and are prepared to pay them'.

However "passionate about social justice" you may be, O prospective law student, you must put bread on the table before you can right wrongs, cut through red tape, or make a difference for clients. Don't fall for the noble-sounding appeal to "social justice" or the quixotic starving-artist-in-a-garret fantasy that richly paid scamsters dangle before you: ask the crucial question, Can I make a living as a lawyer?

Access to justice is another important and somewhat related consideration that aligns with social justice. Legal services funding has been drastically cut in recent years, resulting in reduced access. Rural areas in the United States are particularly underserved and in need of dedicated lawyers who are focused on making a difference in the lives of those who need their assistance the most.

There is "reduced access" to the legal profession, too, because there is not enough "funding" for lawyers. Rural areas may be "particularly underserved and in need of dedicated lawyers", but they cannot pay for legal services. Don't believe the hype about allegedly abundant opportunities in Bumblefuck, Nebraska.

To me it comes down to the “why.” Keep asking yourself those why questions to find your motivation. I spoke to a friend recently who is considering going to law school as a second career (he’s in his early 40s). After a series of “why” questions, his motives for law school were sound, and he asked if he could call me once he began his application process.

Having gone to law school in my forties and faced exclusion despite top grades at a top law school and much else to recommend me, I'd love to hear this guy's "sound" motives for going to law school. He'll be in his mid-forties when he finishes, and he'll find that no employer wants to give him the time of day. Again, a good "motivation" doesn't count for much in the absence of opportunities. And there has been a glut of new lawyers for many years.

These two "leading voices" also offer some "FINAL ADVICE", most notably the following suggestions:

Take some time off to travel and explore the world and grow as a person.

That's charming advice for a trust-fund baby. How are ordinary stiffs like Old Guy supposed "to travel and explore the world"?

Intern in a law office to learn what it’s truly like to practice law in order to decide if it’s really what you want to do.

It's hard enough to get an unpaid position in a law office as a law student, never mind as a 0L. Of course, those with the money to travel the world at age 22 are likely to have connections who can arrange an "internship" in some high place.

And I doubt whether many so-called interns "learn what it's truly like to practice law". They stand a better chance of doing makework, or nothing at all, and seeing next to nothing of legal practice.

Consider night school or a lower-tier law school that offers scholarship options so that you can pay for law school as you go and avoid debt.

Stupid advice. It even contradicts the earlier observations about "graduating at the top of your class from a Tier 1 law school" and the trend of "only hiring from a select number of schools". La Toilette may offer a fat discount (incorrectly characterized as a "scholarship"), but it will also leave an indelible stain on your résumé. Take a hint: rich kids don't elect night school or La Toilette (usually the same thing, since the thirteen or fewer law schools that may be worth attending don't have night schools) in order to avoid student loans.

Ensure that you have a thorough understanding of the effects of the changing legal landscape and how they’re affecting the delivery of legal services. That way you can take steps to position yourself to take advantage of the changes once you graduate.

Hell, lawyers don't have a thorough understanding of that. How the fuck is a 0L to acquire one?

Find a great mentor.

For what? Deciding whether to go to law school? That calls for good advice, not mentorship. This suggestion seems to be for those who have already decided to attend law school.

Realize that the decision to attend law school is not a choice between right and wrong: It is a choice between right and right. How you make that decision is a defining moment. (See Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right, by Joseph L. Badaracco.)

I haven't read Badaracco's book and don't intend to: it sounds like mass-market managerial fluff. Perhaps by choosing "between right and right" he means making the most of whatever one decides to do. But a 0L reading the passage above is almost certain to conclude that the decision to attend law school can only be right. For most people considering law school, however, that decision would be wrong.

Should you decide that [sic] practice of law is not the right choice for you, keep in mind that the legal industry provides numerous career pathways, with or without a JD.

Again, this piece of "ADVICE" appears to be directed at people who have already started, or even completed, law school, and who presumably have had a taste of the practice of law. So what place does it have in an article about deciding whether to go to law school?

The legal industry does provide other pathways for people without a JD but not for people with one. Expect to be rejected out of hand if you, with a JD, apply for a job as a paralegal, a receptionist, or a police officer: you'll be viewed as a pointy-headed intellectual (even if you graduated from Cooley with a C average) and as a failed lawyer. And at least the latter part will be on the mark. Why else would you want another job after pursuing professional training as a lawyer? Well, maybe you have your reasons. But few people will believe you, and anyway you may not be able to afford to pursue another line of work—within or without the legal industry—if, like most graduates nowadays, you bear a six-figure burden of non-dischargeable student loans at a high rate of interest.

Perhaps half or more of those who go to law school never get to try the practice of law, because they failed out or otherwise quit, they graduated but did not pass the bar exams, or they could not find work as lawyers despite being admitted to the bar. Obviously the "practice of law [was] not the right choice" for these people, but they don't get the luxury of deciding to leave the profession.

Far from a baleful warning about the risks of law school, this article amounts to an advertisement (paid or unpaid?) for the law-school scam. Not only the Cooley crowd but also many with a shot at Harvard or Yale will fall for the crass "choice between right and right", especially since they're already inclined to go to law school. And "Find a great mentor" really invites the reader to go ahead and enroll. And of course the "lower-tier law school" is heavily promoted, since this puff piece is directed at people who won't get into one of the few decent schools (few who are admitted to Harvard, Penn, or Duke would seriously entertain Colorado, Brooklyn, or Appalachian).

The correct answer to the question "Should I go to law school?" starts with an N and ends very soon thereafter with an o. Well, there are exceptions: 1) consider Harvard or Yale; 2) consider Tiers 2 and 3 (by Old Guy's ranking) at a considerable discount; 3) do as you wish if you're rich, connected, or both. Note that none of the exceptions invokes "motives" or "social justice" or professions other than that of lawyer.

Toilets Я Us, Parts IV and V: Arizona Summit stops teaching; dead Charlotte stuck with lease

Outside the Law School Scam is delighted to present this special two-part report on the woes of InfiLaw. As our friends know, scam-firm InfiLaw as recently as a year ago operated three profit-seeking über-toilet law schools that drew their "students" largely from the bottom quartile of the LSAT pool: Charlotte, which suddenly shut up shop this time last year; Arizona Summit, slated to lose its ABA accreditation unless (fat chance) an appeal succeeds; and Florida Coastal, which has had to move its dwindling student body to cheaper quarters and put its building up for rent.


PART IV: ARIZONA SUMMIT STOPS OFFERING CLASSES

Less than two weeks before the new semester, Arizona Summit told its students that it would "not offer any classes" in the fall of 2018. It advised them to transfer to another school.

How generous of Arizona Summit to give its students a few days' notice of the cessation of classes! Charlotte didn't even announce its closure last year; it simply went tits up.

The article cited above lists three options for those foolish enough to be enrolled at Arizona Summit:

1) Double down on InfiLaw by transferring to Florida Coastal or taking on-line classes there. With only one semester to his credit, lemming Kurt Fernandez plans to do just that: "I have a 2-year-old and my wife is pregnant, so I'm sort of stuck in Arizona." Enrolling in a dying über-toilet with one small child and another on the way, then undertaking an on-line degree from the same scam-chain that has now left the students at two über-toilets high and dry? History repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce…

2) Transfer to another school. In late August, this is more easily said than done. Arizona State will take the eight or so who are within a semester of graduating, but only as "visiting students": they will still get their degrees from Arizona Summit. Arizona State will not accept all Summitoids: in the words of assistant dean Tom Williams, "We don't have the places for them, and honestly there are a lot of students who wouldn't succeed in our program." Perhaps for similar reasons, Harvard and Yale have not offered to salvage the wretched refuse of Arizona's teeming desert.

3) Hope that by January 2019 Arizona Summit will have concluded a "teach-out plan" whereby Arizona State will take the remaining Summitoids in. As I recently explained, the Summitoids would still get their degrees from long-defunct Arizona Summit, not from Arizona State.

Old Guy meekly proposes a fourth option:

4) Quit, damn it! You dolts never belonged in law school. Now you may have the chance to get your student loans discharged on the grounds that your school shut down on you. That will be the best opportunity of your life. Take it! Take it!


PART V: CHARLOTTE STILL LIABLE FOR LEASE

A recent decision of the Superior Court in North Carolina came to Old Guy's attention. Get a bag of popcorn before you read the story.

Charlotte signed, and InfiLaw guaranteed, a thirteen-year lease beginning in August 2013 for a quarter of a million square feet of first-class office space in which to run its law school. In August 2017, with nine years left on the lease, Charlotte lost its license and ceased operations. In October 2017, it failed to pay the rent and vacated the premises.

The landlord sued Charlotte and InfiLaw for breach of the lease and the guaranty, respectively. Since the facts were undisputed and the law was clear, the landlord sought summary judgment. The defendants opposed that motion on the grounds, typical of a Charlotte-an charlatan, that frustration of purpose relieved them of their obligations under the lease.

The judge, of course, would have none of that. He granted summary judgment against both Charlotte and InfiLaw.

The only disappointing part of the decision is the court's refusal (¶ 40) to say whether the loss of Charlotte's license to run a law school was foreseeable. I agree that the court did not have to speak to that question, but I would have appreciated a little obiter kick in the scamsters' asses. Charlotte's demise was not only foreseeable but foreseen: we in the anti-scam movement had been talking about it for years.

Anyway, now the landlord can set about the task of enforcing its judgment against a defunct über-toilet and the parent scam-company. Presumably the asse(t)s of Arizona Summit and Florida Coastal will be available to satisfy the debt. My advice to the landlord: hurry!

NYU Medical School Offers Full Scholarships to All Students

Why would a legal scamblog make reference to a news story concerning NYU Medical School?  Well, leave it to the medical profession to render an accurate diagnosis:

 

The cost of medical school can keep some people from pursuing a career in the field. Addressing the affordability issue could help alleviate physician shortages, said Rafael Rivera, associate dean for admissions and financial aid.

 

"The debt can scare people away. One of those individuals could be the one to find a cure for cancer. For us, it's important to have the best applicant pool possible and society deserves nothing less," Rivera said.

 

All students enrolled in the MD degree program are eligible, regardless of their financial need or academic performance. The scholarship covers the full cost of tuition, which this year amounts to $55,018.

 

New NYU medical students found out Thursday at their white coat ceremony that their tuition would be covered by a new scholarship.  The debt can also affect what specialty students choose to pursue, deterring some from the lower-paying positions in pediatrics and primary care.

 

"We want people to pursue those fields because it's their passion," Rivera said.

 

Because scambloggers clearly have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to law school debt and the state of the legal profession, perhaps people will listen to the medical community instead as an analogous study.  Interesting that NYU is also offering real, actual scholarships, not bait-and-switch section-stacking grants that the Law School Cartel is famous for.  Again, open road narratives ain't cheap, y'all, and don't compare to the cost of laboratories and teaching hospitals.

 

What about ongoing concerns such as "public service" and diversity?

 

NYU also says medical school debt is "reshaping the medical profession," as graduates choose more lucrative specialized fields in medicine rather than primary care.

 

A report from the AAMC in April said the U.S. faces a shortage of doctors of all types — perhaps more than 120,000 by 2030. The predictions vary widely, however, to between 42,600 and 121,300. The group says the country will be lacking between 14,800 and 49,300 primary care physicians by 2030, while "non-primary care specialties" will fall short by 33,800 and 72,700 doctors.

 

The school says it hopes the plan will also increase diversity among its students — what it calls "a full retrofitting of the pipeline that trains and finances" future doctors.

 

So, if society needs more family-oriented and/or General Practitioner doctors out there, then...help them with the debt such that they can afford to accept "less" pay to do the work that needs doing!  Brilliant.  While room and board costs still exist, these are also clearly recognized and aid is available for those costs, also.

 

Interestingly, a shortage is what sometimes occurs when an accrediting body actually, y'know, regulates their given profession.  Sounds like a nice problem to have (as opposed to decades of law graduate overproduction, by contrast) and it is easily remedied.  But the tuition waiver also gets exactly at the core of the public service issue.  While the Law School Cartel whines about graduates not "defending liberty" and "pursuing justice" while offering soft-default, not-solutions to student debt (and the Department of Education eviscerates public loan forgiveness in the meantime), NYU is actually putting its money where its mouth is.  Something the scamblogs have long criticized the Cartel for failing to do - if you actually want more public servants and more diversity, then hey, open the pocketbook.  NYU is leading by example.

 

Oh well.  It appears that these solutions will help alleviate the SHORTAGE of medical doctors, and also not burden them with a lifetime of unsustainable debt at the same time while increasing access.  I know I am certainly  looking forward to the Cartel's own solution, perhaps using NYU as a model example.  It should be coming along anytime now...I'm sure Cooley and Infilaw are on it, to say nothing of the T100.

 

 

Cooley's Don LeDuc "Got His," Now Retiring to Spend More Time With Family

In a move that surprises absolutely no one:

Don LeDuc, who oversaw Thomas M. Cooley Law School's explosive growth into the largest law school in the country, is retiring as Cooley's president at the end of August.

 

LeDuc arrived at Cooley as a professor in 1975 and served as dean from 1982 until he was asked to resign in 1987. In 1996, a majority of faculty supported LeDuc's bid to become dean once again. He became Cooley's second president in 2002, succeeding founder Thomas Brennan. 

 

LeDuc was not available to comment on his retirement Tuesday evening, according to a public relations firm working with the law school. 

 

One has to ask why a law school, after forcing a resignation in '87 of a professor-turned-dean, would say ten years later "Hey, remember that guy...?  He wasn't so bad...!  Let's hire him!" 

 

In 1995, the year before LeDuc became dean for the second time, the school's enrollment was about 1,700 students. By 2010, that number had climbed to nearly 4,000, according to data from the American Bar Association. 

 

The same year, Cooley paid just shy of $1.5 million for the naming rights for what is now Cooley Law School Stadium, the minor league baseball park in downtown Lansing. Those rights expire in 2021.

 

Cooley also expanded its reach under LeDuc's leadership, opening campuses in Auburn Hills, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor and Tampa Bay, Florida.

 

Oh, right.  Nobody else could ride the scam-wave and drum up the Benjamins quite like that, except maybe the Valvoline Dean.  And to think it might have had to do with academic rigor, mission, or something similar, just like the ABA (snicker).  Every law school needs a minor league baseball park and several satellite campuses, some in entirely different states.  Just ask Yale or Harvard.

Many, many outlets decried Cooley's practices and the consequences thereof, with OTLSS being one of the chorus.  Here are a few select examples, and there are many more out there from various sources:

http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2014/07/breaking-news-cooleys-ann-arbor-campus.html  (declining enrollment)

http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2015/04/lies-damned-lies-and-employment.html  (gaming employment statistics)

http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2014/08/cooleys-michigan-campuses-going-to-take.html  (reducing faculty)

http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2018/05/cooley-non-profit-or-inflilaw-contender.html  (Least selective law school, Cooley lawsuit in response to ABA enforcement)

http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2014/11/keep-your-kids-off-cooley.html (pipeline program)

https://www.lstreports.com/schools/cooley/  (LST Data)

http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-wreck-of-thomas-m-cooley.html (awesome Liberal Arts submission)

Oh well.  At least Cooley has the distinction of being the least-selective law school in the country.  I guess that's something, and Leduc has his golden parachute to show for it.  Scam-on, my friends.

Toilets Я Us, Part III: Arizona Summit asks Arizona State to administer last rites

The notorious profit-grubbing InfiLaw chain of über-toilet law schools is in trouble. The sudden closure of the odious Charlotte School of Law a year ago left InfiLaw with only two toilets, hardly distinguishable in odor. One is Florida Coastal, which last year had to put its building up for rent because of financial woes (first-year enrollment declined from 808 in 2010 to 106 in 2017), threats to its accreditation, high rates of attrition (more than a fifth of those who enrolled in 2014 failed out), low rates of success on the bar exam (less than half of Florida Coast graduates who attempt it in Florida pass the first time), low rates of employment (more than a third of last year's graduates were unemployed ten months after graduation, and many others were precariously employed), and general InfiLaw-style shittiness.

The other, Arizona Summit, was stripped of its ABA accreditation last month. Its only chance of survival is an appeal filed a week ago. The appeal forestalls the inevitable for three months, but the scamsters of Arizona Summit understand that their toilet law school is in for a final glorious flush. Accordingly, Arizona Summit has asked Arizona State University to salvage the matriculated flotsam of the latest InfiLaw shipwreck: under the proposal being negotiated, students already enrolled at Arizona Summit would be able to take their remaining courses at Arizona State "to graduate and complete their degree at Arizona Summit".

Read that carefully: although Arizona Summit would have shut down, its last students would complete one, two, or even all three years of law school at Arizona State but collect a degree from long-defunct Arizona Summit! What's in it for Arizona State? Presumably several million dollars' worth of tuition (Arizona Summit has about a hundred students left in all classes combined), without the indignity of further tarnishing its already humdrum reputation by putting its name on the degrees of InfiLaw's dolts. Small wonder that a deal could be concluded in a week or so.

Let's imagine how this would play out. Fourth-tier Arizona State incorrectly considers itself prestigious: it declares itself "top-ranked" on its home page. But it undeniably stands worlds apart from seventh-tier commercial über-toilet Arizona Summit. It never would have admitted the nincompoops that people Arizona Summit, nor does it want to associate with them now. And any Summit trash that ended up in a class at State would stand out like a sore thumb. One can even anticipate the development of summit as a local pejorative epithet. So Arizona State would have to operate the remains of Arizona Summit separately. And since Arizona Summit is famously "diverse" (more than 40% of the students are non-white), the winding up of Arizona Summit would assume a decidedly "seg" appearance.

Conveniently enough, Arizona State could simply inherit any interest in lands, as well as enough otherwise unemployable professors to keep Summit at a slow boil for two or three years; it wouldn't have to saddle its own professors with the unenviable task of penetrating Summit skulls. After that, it might be able to redeploy Summit's erstwhile facilities for purposes other than a law school. And it could profit enough from the interregnum to justify the administrative inconvenience. After all, InfiLaw technically has to produce a "teach-out" plan whereby its students can finish their degrees—and InfiLaw certainly doesn't want to pour money down this über-toilet any longer than necessary, so it will gladly make the effort worth Arizona State's while. (InfiLaw presumably got away with shutting Charlotte down summarily, without a "teach-out" plan or even notice to the students, because the state yanked Charlotte's license. If the ABA instead yanks accreditation, InfiLaw should be on the hook for the "teach-out" plan, although I wouldn't fancy the ABA's chances of enforcing the obligation.)

Perhaps I've miscalculated Arizona Summit's dénouement. But the announcement makes it clear that Arizona Summit's students would get their degrees from defunct Arizona Summit even if Arizona State administered any "teach-out" plan. So I don't think that I'm wide of the mark.

As a bonus, Arizona Summit may retain students—it expects to lose 30–40% to transfers by the end of the summer—through this coup de grâce, because some may regard themselves as being springboarded into the faux-prestigious ranks of Arizona State. Who knows? Some may even frame their "education" cagily on their résumés, so as to mislead potential employers: "Finished JD at Arizona State University, 2021." Like many swords, this one cuts both ways.

If this ploy succeeds, as it must, we may see it repeated on a grander scale. Imagine Harvard's managing the dregs of the New England School of Law, just to get its paws on some prime Bostonian real estate.

North Carolina Central University survives ABA's "scrutiny"

Predictably, the namby-pamby scam-enabler known as the ABA has backed down from its perfunctory challenge to North Carolina Central University's law school, finding that "the concrete steps taken by the Law School with respect to its admissions policy and practices" show compliance with the ABA's so-called standards.

Apparently the ABA, in its "critical review" of über-toilet North Carolina Central, smiled upon a "corrective action plan" allegedly aimed to address such failures as low rates of passing the bar exam, high attrition (38% of last year's first-year students either dropped out or failed out), and a Cooleyite student body. According to the article cited above:

The corrective action plan includes tighter admissions standards. All incoming students must post an LSAT of at least 142 and a grade point average of at least 2.96. Recent graduates were provided with bar preparation classes, and incoming students will be given online resources, tutorials, academic coaches and will be required to meet with academic advisers to make sure they stay on track.

A minimum LSAT score of 142, which is below the 18th percentile, hardly represents a standard at all; rather, it shows a basic inability to read and think at the level that should be expected of a lawyer. While "academic advisers" and such may help to push North Carolina Central's dolts through to graduation, they won't be able to correct major deficiencies in essential skills. Perhaps two or three years of intensive study would prepare them for law school, but that's not on the cards at North Carolina Central or anywhere else.

North Carolina Central must have strict standards of skill (not to mention size, gender, and age) for its undergraduate football team, and Old Guy wouldn't come close to qualifying. Yet for its law school it cheerfully throws meaningful standards out the window. Cherchez l'erreur.

As a historically Black institution, North Carolina Central has done much to right the wrongs of racism and afford opportunities to people who could not have had them in white-dominated universities. (Nearby Duke didn't have a Black law student until 1961, nor a Black female law student until 1974.) Today, however, the opportunities that they afford in the legal profession are merely illusory. People of whatever color who can't attain the high 150s on the LSAT don't belong in law school: even if they graduate and pass the bar exams, they're unlikely to find work that pays enough to cover their student loans.

Law School Applicants - Final Tally 2018

Well, here we are at the end of another exciting application cycle.  The model predictions made around week 22 continued to hold strong, almost like clockwork.  With 98% of precincts reporting in, it appears that there will be slightly over 60,000 applicants for 2017-2018,  a 6% increase over last year.

(LSAC says it's 8%, but apples-to-apples and all that.)

 

Whether the increase is 6%, 8%, or 25%, any increase outside the noise range is that many law students too many.  One has to ask why applications are essentially back to 2013 levels this year.  Some say it is the Trump-bump, which could be.  My personal opinion is that we have a whole new cadre applying who have not seen the horror stories, or paid that much attention to the ones they did see.  Perhaps snowflake-syndrome still runs strong.

However, all is not well in cartel-land.  While the clinking of champagne glasses most likely continues unabated, there is one nagging doubt that remains.  Has the low-hanging fruit actually been plucked?  According to BusinessWire:

Data in the 58-page report [concerning undergraduates] is broken out by 18 individual and college institutional variables including gender, race/ethnicity, financial background, sexual orientation, regional origins, expected student debt load, SAT/ACT scores, college grades, college major and other variables for individuals, and public/private status, and college/university type/Carnegie class for institutions. 

Key Findings

• A shade more than 84% of those sampled thought it was highly unlikely or unlikely that they would ever apply to law school.
• Women were much more likely than men to feel that they were highly likely to apply to law school though men were more optimistic about the economic outlook for the legal profession.
• The population of students who were pretty sure or very sure of what they wanted to do post college were more likely than those who were not too sure of what they wanted to believe that the economic outlook for the legal profession was good.
• The more population intense the area in which the survey participant grew up, the more likely that they were to say that they were highly likely to apply to law school.

So, outside of gunners and snowflakes, who have already made up their minds prior to considering alternate data, perhaps the message is sinking in for those who are not already pot-commited.  One can only hope.