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.

Ode to Sally May! A Story of Hope and Loss.

I enjoy reading the comments, more than you enjoy reading BIDER.  Especially when I find poetry from those that have been inspired by life circumstances.  An Anonymous comment blew me away this morning and I thought I should post it.  Thank you, Anonymous Commenter, for making me smile and reading our blog.  Enjoy:

Anonymous said...

Well, I'll just say this because it's a better day than most. Not because the sun is shining or because there is any hope that my law degree will get me a job, but, look, at this point, I'm sitting at the table, I'm on a losing streak, I'm down more money than I've ever had in my life, my wife/girlfriend has got pissed off and left the casino, I would be sleeping on the couch (if I had not lost it in the previous hand), and I've only got my car key to go all in, so, I'm throwing it on the pile. I'm all in, and I will be all in every hand after this because I'm a man with nothing to lose. It's the first bit of enthusiasm I've had for a couple of years now. You're going to have to forgive me.

I'll play fair. I'll be up-front. I'll be honest. I'll play by the rules. But, one rule no one can change is that when you've got nothing to lose, losing the next hand doesn't move you. You find yourself right back in the same place. it's funny, that. So, my law degree is staying on the wall. It's worthless. I know. But fuck me if it didn't suck trying to get it. It's staying to remind me that I work for myself. That was what it was supposed to represent at some point. Misled I was, but the fact is that the reason I thought I was going to law school was to chart my own course.

Forgive me if I haven't changed my mind about doing that. There are no debtors' prisons. What has been taken away from me, and I suppose from all of us, is nothing more than the incentive to live a lower middle-class life. The Sallie Mae death-zone makes me a slave, and quite frankly, she can go fuck herself. I'm not going to work for her, the harlot. I'll work to take care of what I need, but I'm not going to do 80-hour weeks at $15/hour so Ms Mae, the tart, can garnish 55 of them until I'm dead and gone.

So, get this: I'm gone. I'll tell you where when I get there, wherever it will be. I'm going to keep in touch. Don't you worry your pretty little head about that. But, I'm also going to take obscene career risk after obscene career risk until one of them banks. And, if it never happens for me, well, then, I guess, Sallie, you're just going to have to live on less, now aren't you.

Economically, is that not the rational, cold-blooded business decision? Tell me it's not. Tell me there is a reason I should live my life in your death-zone. Tell me this is not what some of the major banks just did when they walked away from mortgages and leases and then refused to let under-water homeowners do the same thing. Know what? I'm too big to fail. So go fuck [sic.] yourself. No, my debts won't be discharged in bankruptcy. No, I'm not going to disappear on you and the kids. And, yes, I'm going to try my best. But, look, one thing I learned in law school is that the interests and debtors and creditors are not always aligned, however much you say you really want to work "with" me. That tends to happen when you over-reach and when you create necessitous men. Maybe you should have thought of that before now, because I've only got so much money, and you can't starve me into a better job (though, no doubt, you'd try).