Barbara Boxer Challenges ABA Again!

What does the ABA need to come clean with law students?  A letter from President Obama? A letter from the Pope?

Barbara Boxer wrote a letter to the ABA with specific questions in the last year, and she does it again yesterday.  Apparently, she didn't write the letter just to appease constituents--she wants answers:

Defending Crooked Law Schools Pursuing Profit

"In my two previous letters to your predecessor, I indicated my strong belief that the ABA should ensure that post-graduation employment data provided to prospective law students is truthful and transparent," Boxer wrote. "His responses appeared to indicate a similar interest, but unfortunately it is difficult to square those previous statements with the section's recent decision." 

What decision? She's talking about the ABA's decision not collect data this year about the percentage of new graduates in jobs that require a J.D. and the percentage in part-time jobs.

She sees through your bullshit, suckers!  Answer her, and Senator Grassley's dag gone questions.  I posted Grassley's questions--and it seems that he and Sen. Boxer and tag teaming these bitches, but I will recap here:

1. Does the American Bar Association compile data on the number of schools which offer scholarships to more students than can statistically retain those scholarships?

2. If so, how many schools, and how many total scholarships are affected?

3. Does the American Bar Association take these “bait and switch” allegations into account in the accreditation process?

4. Does the American Bar Association maintain data on the dollar amount of merit based scholarships offered each year?

5. If not, does the American Bar Association plan to begin maintaining this information?

6. Does the American Bar Association maintain data on the dollar amount of merit based scholarships that are revoked after the offeree‟s first year of law school?

7. If not, does the American Bar Association plan to begin maintaining this information?

8. Does the American Bar Association publish data on the amount of first-year merit based scholarships in comparison to the amount of non-first-year merit based scholarships?

9. Does the American Bar Association plan to begin maintaining this information?

10. Has the American Bar Association raised concerns with law schools about the practice of awarding more first-year merit based scholarships than they plan to renew?

11. If so, how has the American Bar Association raised this concern?

12. Does the American Bar Association have any education programs that aid students in assessing whether or not they are borrowing more than they can reasonably expect to repay?

13. Does the American Bar Association have a program to ensure borrowers do not-default on their federally-backed student loans?

14. How many law schools has the American Bar Association provisionally accredited during the last 20 years?

15. Does the American Bar Association maintain this information in a publicly accessible database?

16. How many law schools has the American Bar Association fully accredited during the last 20 years?

17. Has the American Bar Association ever revoked provisional or full accreditation during the last 20 years?

18. If so, how many law schools lost their provisional or full accreditation?

19. From 1990 to the present, has the American Bar Association ever placed a law school on probation?

20. If so, which law schools were placed on probation? 23. Did any of these law schools regain full accreditation? 24. If so, within what time period?

21. When examining candidates for membership on the accreditation committee, what efforts does the American Bar Association make to ensure that membership is balanced between legal practitioners and academics?

22. Does the American Bar Association track the professional background of its committee membership?

23. If so, how does the professional background of committee membership break down in percentage format on committees related to the accreditation of law schools?

24. If not, why doesn‟t the American Bar Association track the professional background of committee membership?

25. Does the American Bar Association track the professional background of the officers that approve or revoke provisional or full law school accreditation?

26. If so, how does the professional background of officers that approve or revoke provisional or full law school accreditation break down in percentage format?

27. If not, why doesn‟t the American Bar Association track the professional background of officers that approve or revoke provisional or full law school accreditation.

No wonder they are avoiding the questions.  Obviously, they have to plead the 5th or incriminate themselves.

Enough fucking around.  Let's call for an investigation of the ABA for their complicity in RICO,  their anti-trust violations, consumer fraud, etc.  Heads need to roll before they come clean with their scam to fool our youth into pursuing the empty dream of a fruitful  adequate career as an attorney.

Email Senator Boxer to express your appreciation for her inquiry and to encourage her to keep on keeping on until she gets the answers that we all need to hear.

Let's Just Let EVERYONE Become an Attorney!

In case I didn't mention it before, the ABA is seriously, and I mean seriously, considering dropping the LSAT as a criteria for admission:

According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, the American Bar Association is currently looking at a proposal to make the oft-dreaded Law School Admission Test optional. If passed, this proposal would alter the system of law school admissions that has been in place since the first administration of the LSAT in 1948.

I'm tempted to go on a diatribe about how the ABA just doesn't fucking understand.  I think I will.  Like it or not, the LSAT is the great equalizer.  Everyone knows, or should know, that an "A" is easier to get at University of Phoenix than it is at Harvard.  But how can a law school determine who is the better candidate without some sort of equalizing criteria?  The LSAT, that's how.  The University of Phoenix Grad can perhaps usurp the Harvard grad's place with an awesome LSAT score of.... 179 or so.  I know, it's unlikely, but it can happen.

What the hell are law schools supposed to rely on, if not the LSATs?  Extra-curricular bullshit?  Maybe they will do interviews?  Charisma, charm, cleavage can be taken into account?

I can only think that the new plan is to inundate the market with flagrant idiots so that the costs of labor will be floor level and the PPP (Profits Per Partner) will be astronomical.  Let's not kid ourselves.  Anyone who has been a first year associate realizes that the work can be done by pygmy goats.  But that's not an indictment of the profession--once you get to a certain level, things are complicated.  Also, if you do real litigation in a mid-sized or small law firm, the work can be dizzying at times.  So, back to my point--they want to pay lawyers even less than Manmeat Patel in Bangladesh, so that the PPP can be astronomical.  So, part one of the plan: MORE and less competent people should go to law school.  Check!

Then, on the other side of the tunnel, à la the post about the indebted law school grad that can't pass the bar because of law school debt, they will prohibit people from passing the bar.  Then, part two of the plan.  I predict, the ABA will somehow say that bar passage is only required for attorneys that sign documents.  Ta-da!  Two class of lawyers, indentured slave servants who probably should not have gone to law school to begin with--and the Partners, the upper echelon of the legal profession.

That's my prediction.  What do you think?

The ABA can't possibly be considering the needs of lawyers as a whole when it considers dip shit moves like this one.  Since I know that they all took the LSATs and are moderately competent people, I can only assume that their goals for the legal industry are wholly divergent from ours.  The collect "ours" being that of recent, debt-laden grads who are without work or a loaf of bread upon which to spread Jiffy.  I know the LSAT sucks.  However, it's a test that you can master and you can distinguish yourself from the masses with that goddamn test.  In the article mentioned above, some  GT Hoya says:

"While I agree that the LSAT often discriminates against some students and that it may not be a fair assessment of a person's worth or talent, it is certainly the only measure we currently have to gage a student's ability to succeed in law school," Mehta said in an email. "Until a new, unbiased form of testing can be put into place, there is currently no better way to gauge a student's ability to perform in such a demanding profession."

I have to disagree with him wholeheartedly.  Once you get to a certain level, maybe 165, you're not more or less likely to do better than other students that score higher than you.  On the other hand, if you score <150, you have no business going to law school at all.  You don't have the aptitude for it... hell, maybe you had a bad day.  The point is, that law school will be bad day after bad day and you can't handle the pressure.  Stay home, cause you'll be living there after you complete law school anyway-your childhood home.  Let's end with what this idiot's quote regarding the "plus" side of eliminating the LSAT:

Evan Monod (COL '14), who is considering a career as an attorney, believes that the cost of the test itself, test preparation and the long hours of studying serve as a deterrent to students who might otherwise enter the legal profession.

"I would definitely support making it optional because I think it would increase the number of kids able to go to a good law school and participate in a profession that we desperately need bright people in," Monod said.

Exactly my point.  Lift the flood gates.  Where is Noah's ark when you need it?