Are We Unprofessional? Do You Give a Shit?

In arguing a point, when statistics and logic are not on your side, what do you resort to?  An ad hominem attack.   Many people may disagree with my points, and the points that are made by other scam bloggers.  But very few, if any, have resorted to attacking the scam bloggers as people.  Not if they have any sense.  After all, none of our readers have a clue as to how we compose ourselves in our personal and professional lives.  Most realize that this is our outlet, but we don't appear rabid in person.  I'm telling you right now, I'm not frothing at the mouth.  Now, one little lemming, has resorted to the lowly last resort in arguing that we, the scambloggers, should shut the hell up.  He states:

The main problem I have with scam blogging lies in their decorum.  These scam bloggers are future lawyers.  When the economy picks up, they will be drafting wills and contracts and complaints, arguing about truth and justice to judges and juries, and advising individuals and businesses on how to comply with a multi-faceted legal system.  It reflects poorly on future lawyers—members of a profession that prides itself for critical thinking and searching below the surface for the truth—that they would so quickly say that even they, the next generation or lawyers, would be so easily fooled by employment statistics.  And when many of the legal profession’s future caretakers can be seen in public on the Internet throwing tantrums about their job prospects and debt, however valid those concerns are in their own right, what does that say about the future of the legal profession as a whole?  What of the legal community’s sense of exceptionalism?  Of being special?  Of being held to a higher standard?

Of being professionals?

Let me get this straight, by calling attention to the fact that so many lawyers are idiots (in the financial, cost-benefit analysis sense, of course) we are making lawyers look like idiots?  Oh, so we have to make sure to maintain the pristine image of lawyers among laypeople by not pointing out the scam.  Gimme a break!  The "sense of exceptionalism,"  i.e. elitism, went out the window when 200+ law schools opened up and started churning out attorneys like widgets.  There is no exceptionalism, or "being special" in the law.  I will not stop blogging until people are flatly unimpressed with my profession.  It's not impressive.  Frankly, it was easy to become a lawyer.  The hard part starts when you begin paying for it.  As for our sense of decorum, we would not have been as successful as we have been in drawing attention to the white elephant sitting in the middle of the room without blogs like Nando's Third Tier Reality.  How many people would take the time to read his shocking facts and stats if not for the picture of steaming shit in toilets?  His writing style, more so than my own, is of the "shock jock" type--which has been widely successful in drawing the victims in--as well as significant media attention.  This is what Andrew Spillane, i.e. Marquette Lemming, has to say about the content of the scam blogs:

These blogs are dripping with anger and vitriol.  Some are littered with curse words.  One website even refers to law schools not as schools but with various names for toilets, restrooms, and garbage cans and will even post piles of fecal matter and vomit to begin a rage-fueled rant about a particular legal academic institution.  And what of professionalism? Not for us, says one scam blogger, for that is a concept imposed by the elites in the legal profession upon the rest of the bar.

The "anger and vitriol" may be penned by Nando, myself and other scambloggers--but we are just reflecting the general consensus of our readers.  If you read the comments on many of the scamblog posts, they can be more dirty and "low" than the original post.  More than once, I've taken a comment and made it a post--because it was just that good (or bad, according to Spillane).  We are bringing the feelings of the community to the forefront.  Why should attorneys, victims of a Ponzi scheme, feel alone in their victimization?

Let's go back to the day that I started blogging.  I want you to know how I felt.  I lost my big law job.  I felt like a loser.  I did everything that one is supposed to do to succeed in life and as an attorney (I know some of you disagree, but no one would have pictured me so down and out).  I was a failure and I felt like a bigger loser because I didn't know anyone else who felt scammed by my profession.  I started the blog in the hopes that someone would reassure me that I wasn't alone.  I may have been an idiot for going to a Tier 1 law school on a partial scholarship, but I wasn't alone in that my efforts didn't lead to the intended result.  As it turns out, there are thousands of others who regret their decision as much as I.  So, whether I was unprofessional in whining about it, or calling attention to the scam, or reaching out to others who are similarly situated--I don't care.  My alleged unprofessionalism does not extend to my courtroom behavior or to my decorum with clients.  I am still an excellent lawyer--but this is not an excellent or exceptional career.

We are trying to clean house from the basement up.  Maybe being a lawyer will be exceptional one day--but not until being a lawyer is an exception to the rule--and not the natural fall back option for all of the college grads in the country.

Here's a pic of vomit for shits and giggles.

  If you find it offense, there are a couple of arrows at the top of the screen that you can use to navigate away from this page.

The Slow Down.

"The message" has resonated with law schools who are slowing down the rapid expansion of past decades past because they now realize that law schools may not be so profitable. University of Delaware has put the kibosh on opening a law school after consulting..... drum roll, please!  

The ABA.

Delaware acted after talking to American Bar Association officials, who have noted a drop in both student interest and law-firm placement. Delaware also reviewed state plans to cut back higher-education subsidies.

Wow.  Truth Serum?  What happened?  I guess they've gotten the message loud and clear.

Also, if you went to school in the 90s as I did, you may already know a new building has always been a traditional and surefire way to join the first tier.  Not anymore it seems.  Drexel has decided against building a new facility:

The university concluded a law school would initially lose $160 million a year.

"We are not prepared to ask the Board for approval to incur that kind of deficit," according to a report by a committee assembled by UD president Patrick Harker that studied the proposal.

Did anyone here know that universities were rated, the same way that mortgage backed securities were? A lot of good that did us, by the way.  That Moody's... they are so honest!  
I didn't know they were rated, but I guess it makes sense, since Universities are primarily money making machines.  Never mind that most don't have shareholders--we all know that there are investors who are interested in the likelihood of a good return on the investment.  Well, now that you know, what do you think the rating for Drexel is?  It went from AAA to AA last week.  Still a better investment that most junk bonds, but worth noting.  Moody's reasons for the downward slide?

The university, which grew rapidly and raised academic standards under then-president Constantine 'Taki' Papadakis, faces "escalating" debt and "tepid financial resource growth," Moody's says. While Drexel's tuition income is "solid," other high-rated schools have "stronger cash flow."

Anyone willing to wager bets as to when this over-valued behemoth will go under?  Let's hope it's soon.

USNWR: Don't Overemphasize Ranking When Choosing Law School

Kaplan did a study to determine what dumb lemmings use to choose a law school.  The report revealed:

30 percent of test takers say that a law school's ranking is the most critical factor, followed by geographic location at 24 percent; academic programming at 19 percent; and affordability at 12 percent. Only 8 percent of respondents consider a law school's job placement statistics to be the most important factor.

USNWR isn't happy with the overemphasis on their rankings stating:
The U.S. News Best Law Schools rankings spotlight the country's academically excellent law school programs in many areas. However, they should be used by prospective students as just one tool in the process for picking the best school for them. Many other factors that cannot be measured need to go into such an important decision, including the overall cost, location, course offerings, school culture, job prospects, advising or mentoring opportunities, and campus life.

I read this tidbit as follows:  give all law schools a chance!

Yah right.  Ranking is the only thing that matters to Big Law--arguably the ultimate end result for many law students.  Let's go through the factors that USNWR focuses on:

overall cost: important.  But one must note that the cost has no correlation whatsoever of cost with quality of education.  So you could pay out the ass for a TTTT education and pay less for a T25 education.  Or you could pay very little for an unaccredited school, which is definitely worse than paying for Harvard or Yale.

location: important, but no so much if you go to a T14.  A T14 degree will travel all over the United States.  However, a TTTT education is arguably a regional degree--if that.  Case in point, New York Law School.  Probably not worth it in New York, and worth less outside of New York.

course offerings: Not important at all.  Law school is boring and bland, whatever class you take.  Furthermore, many of the classes listed in the catalog are not offered EVER.  Or they are offered so infrequently, that you will never get into the class.  Also, although your GPA is supremely important--employers don't give two shits what classes you take.  If you take many classes on entertainment law or labor law, that does not equate a job in entertainment law or labor law--because no one cares.

school culture:  Who cares and how are you to figure that out without going?  My Tier One school advertises itself as being a small and intimate law school environment with friendly professors.  I even spoke to hired guns (students) that lied about the school's culture.  It was small, but that's where the description ended.  I never met so many snobby students and professors in my life.

job prospects:  Once again, with law schools lying through their teeth about employment stats, how are you to know.  The only way you can be certain that you have job prospects is by going to a T14 or, arguably, a T8 school.

advising or mentoring opportunities:  Once again, who the hell cares.  Even the shittiest of the shit law schools will claim to have mentoring opportunities.  After all, there is no shortage of graduates.  It's dumb to make a decision based on this.  If you go to a T14, it may be unnecessary--because you'll have something better, a well-connected alumnae base.

campus life:  You already went to college.  Grow the fuck up.  I don't care if Harvard or Yale have the lamest student life out there--that is the appropriate law school to go to.  This should not be the basis of any adult decision.

Maybe USNWR is trying to take the heat off of their roll in the demise of tens of thousands of people every year.  Maybe they feel badly that TTTT schools get the shaft.  This is a load of bull honky and is to be disregarded.

Yale of fail.

What the hell is this snake thing?

55,000 Victims Took the LSAT Last Weekend...

Yes, that is 55,000 more people buying into the Ponzi Scheme that is called the American law school system. It took AOL News - not the New York Times - to reiterate everything Angel and I along with the usual folks like Professor Brian Tamanaha and Ellie Mystal have warned our readers about the pitfalls of law school for nearly two years:

You don't need a law degree to know that false advertising is against the law. So why is it that so many law schools appear to be doing just that: inflating job prospects for graduates while jacking up tuition rates?

Last weekend, about 55,000 students took the LSAT -- the standardized test for law school. That's the second highest tally ever, according to exam officials.

Most of these students are aiming for a law degree to get rich. In a 2008 Kaplan survey, 73 percent cited high income potential as a reason for attending law school.

But the legal job market, decimated by the recession, isn't the golden ticket it used to be -- and some legal scholars believe the calamity may be permanent. Law schools are releasing an army of young professionals who will start off with $150,000-plus in non-dischargeable debt and not be able to find work as attorneys and repay their loans.

"Many graduates can't get jobs," Brian Tamanaha, professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis, told The National Jurist. "Many graduates end up as temp attorneys working for $15 to $20 an hour on two-week gigs, with no benefits. The luckier graduates land jobs in government or small firms for maybe $45,000, with limited prospects for improvement. A handful of lottery winners score big firm jobs."

The New York Daily News recently profiled one young lawyer from a good school who is cleaning toilets in Manhattan.

But don't expect to get any of this news from laws schools. They're too busy scamming applicants by advertising deceptively high rates of employment and misleading income figures, critics contend.

"This data is entirely self-reported by schools and should be treated as essentially fiction," said University of Chicago law professor Brian Leiter, a well-known expert on law school rankings. "In addition, we know nothing about the nature of the employment -- it could simply be as a research assistant, which is what Northwestern did a few years ago for its unemployed grads."

Law School Transparency, a nonprofit organization hoping to shed light on the real employment situation, asked law schools in July to provide more detailed job statistics than they now report to the American Bar Association, which regulates law schools, or U.S. News & World Report, which ranks law schools.

Their deadline for committing to cooperate passed last month and only one school out of 199 agreed to provide the information, said executive director Kyle McEntee.

"Everybody is up in arms about Goldman Sachs allegedly selling products it expected to fail," lawyer Elie Mystal wrote in popular law blog Above the Law. "How is that any different than the scam being run by some law schools where the tuition keeps going up while the job prospects disappear?"

t's time to send in auditors to examine what law schools advertise and ensure numbers are being reported accurately, so customers can make an informed decision about whether a law degree will really be a good investment of money, time and energy.

In the meantime, potential law school students need to do their research, temper their expectations and weigh the opportunity costs. Sure, law school is a smart decision for some people, especially if you can get into a top school, attend school for free or are so passionate about law that you don't care how much you earn. It's also a profession with one of the lowest job satisfaction rates and highest depression rates.

But far too many who get their JD will find themselves three years down the road with a mountain of debt, few job prospects and doubts that their law school has any idea what truth in advertising means.

If there is any good news to report, it is that the number of LSAT takers actually dropped from last October. A whopping 61,000 people took the LSAT in October 2009 as reported by the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC). That is about a 10 percent drop in people taking the LSAT. I have no idea what this means. Is it possible that more people are reading the scamblogs and discovering that going to a law school other than Yale no longer ensures a 160k biglaw job or a comfy position with the government? Who knows. Nonetheless, 55k is still too large a number. Clearly, thousands of people aren't doing their research on the law school scam. With every person who enters law school, it makes the legal job market that much more difficult for the rest of us. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight. If you are one of a handful of these test takers who are still in doubt about going to law school, do the smart thing and let go of the law school myth dream. You will only be out of the $136 LSAT fee and maybe a few hundred more for study aids and LSAT courses. That is much better than being out of $136k and unemployed or unhappy in your shitlaw job three years from now. I pray that someone out there is listening.

Thanks to reader A.S. for the tip.

Wall of FAME: Is Scott Summers a BIDER Reader?

Thanks for the tip, "guest"!

Scott Summers, an Northern Illinois University School of Law graduate, is running for Treasurer of Illinois.  What's the first item on his Green Party Agenda?  Shutting down two of the three public law schools in Illinois--including his alma mater.  It's not out of pure spite, either. He has Green Party motivations for this radical move--saving money:

We have three public law schools: University of Illinois (U of I), Southern Illinois University (SIU), and Northern Illinois University (NIU).  And we have a glut of unemployed lawyers.  Has the time finally come to slim down to just U of I for public law?  (Full disclosure: I’m an NIU law graduate. And I remain very grateful for the tip-top legal education I received there. Personally, I’d hate to see the place close. But I’m counting beans today, not wallowing in sentiment.) 

Ditto medical schools.  U of I has four campuses and additional satellites.  SIU has two campuses.  They do wonderful work.  They are cherished assets of their host communities. But — but — but — can we afford them all?  So how do we make these horribly difficult — and, I freely admit, politically dead-on-arrival (at least for the present) — public policy choices? We have to develop assessment and implementation mechanisms where we carefully evaluate our public needs — and then collectively/figuratively hold hands and jump.

Bravo, Scott!

"Up until 35 years ago, he pointed out, the state had a single public law school at the University of Illinois. We got by just fine with that," he said.

And how does SIU feel about Mr. Summers' plans?  

 Its spokesman said that eliminating a law school would result in "a lot of other students applying to the U of I," which could be problematic. 

Problematic, why?  Because U of I will only admit highly qualified and motivated students to become future Illinois lawyers?  Oh, and as a result, there will be fewer attorneys?  And because there are fewer attorneys, they might stand a chance of finding employment in their home state?   Darn.  That blows, SIU.  Blows for you.

I am not sure how many Illinois BIDER readers there are out there, but for what it's worth, I fully endorse Mr. Summers' candidacy for treasurer.  I don't even care what other items he has on his agenda, I can tell he has his head on straight.

SCOTT SUMMERS FOR TREASURER OF ILLINOIS!  GOOOOOOOOOOOO GREEN PARTY!

I'm actually not a card carrying member, but may consider it now.