You Can't Reason With a Law Lemming

This is hilarious because this is exactly how the law lemmings of today sound like.

I'm really excited about becoming a lawyer. I want to help people. I love the Constitution. I want to try criminal defense too. I'm not doing this for the money. I can't wait to make new friends in law school.

Ha. Good luck finding that time machine.

I Want to Go to Law School Because I Was On the Debate Team. Sound Familiar?

We've all come across that person who goes straight from college to law school because they think four years in College Toastmasters and winning the best debater award on the high school debate team is sufficient experience to do well in law school. As you all know, good grades and success in law school has very little to do with oratory skills. Other than optional extra-curricular activities such as moot court and clinical programs, law school has nearly nothing to do with debating and public speaking ability.

A former high school debater asked Law.com whether he should start law school immediately after college:

Q: I'm a college senior and wonder what you think about my going to law school right away, after I graduate next year. I've been interested in becoming a lawyer since high school, when I was in the debate club. My friends who are planning to get their MBA are going to work for a couple of years first. Is that something I should do, or should I stick to my plan of starting next fall, assuming I'm accepted?

Also, any thoughts of where I should apply?

And here is a portion of the B.S. response from Law.com:

A: Dear Sooner or Later,

Some individuals find it beneficial to obtain work experience for a year or two, or more, before they attend law school. Others continue their education without a break. Their choice of whether to jump right in or wait, like yours, may be influenced by many different issues.

Ask yourself, first, whether you are ready for law school. Take into account not only your state of mind or eagerness to start on your career, but also your skills. Think about your abilities in all areas including research, writing, oral communication, analysis, judgment, leadership, negotiation, project management and organization. Assess whether they are at the level expected of law students. Consider, too, potential benefits of work experience that enables you to refine those skills.

Working may have other advantages. If you work and can save a portion of your earnings, you can defray some of the cost of law school or, at least, cut back on the amount of financial assistance that you may need. You may also start repaying any loans that you may have received for your undergraduate education. Leaving law school with less debt would be a plus.

Being shy certainly won't help you in the classroom when the professor uses the Socratic Method, but that doesn't mean you can't get the best grade in the class. A friend from law school was a poor public speaker and still graduated law review and cum laude while many of the slick, Billy Flynn wannabes had mediocre and poor grades.

Here is a word of advice. Don't worry about the loud mouths in class who try to intimidate everyone. It is usually the people who don't say anything and quietly go back to their rooms to study instead of running their mouths on campus who graduate at the top of their class. Law school does not prepare you to become a lawyer or argue in court. The only thing law school tests you on is your test taking ability on one exam at the end of the semester, not how well you can speak to an audience. Most lawyers will never argue in court, so the only reason I can come up with as to why law lemmings continue to believe that success in law school is strongly correlated to the debate team is due to the glamorization of the legal profession by shows like The Good Wife, Law & Order, and The Defenders.

Where to apply should be a no-brainer to anyone who reads BIDER. Simple answers to simple questions: Yale or Fail or full scholarship to a T14.

Wall of Shame: Above the Law and David Lat

Above the Law brings on the dumb while leading the lambs to slaughter. Can't say I'm surprised.

Thank you to First Tier Toilet and Rose Colored Glasses for bringing our attention to a shameful post at Above The Law entitled “In Defense of Going to Law School” written by Yale Law grad and BigLaw lover David Lat. No, I will not link to the post. I didn’t bother visiting Above the Law to read the original post in its entirety because I’m already too disgusted by what is apparently going on over there. Here is what David Lat wrote according to Knut at First Tier Toilet.

David Lat makes the following five points for the defense of going to law school:
1) "If a law degree is like a Biglaw lottery ticket, remember: some people still win."
2) "There are many great career options in law outside of large law firms." He includes "midsize or small law firms, federal government (e.g., the DOJ Honors Program), state government, clerkships (federal and state), fellowships, non-profits / public interest, and in-house (yes, even for new graduates). And that’s without even touching upon the many career alternatives for attorneys — all the things you can do with a law degree that don’t involve practicing law" after looking at placement data from Cornell Law, of all places (a school whose graduates are hurting badly).
3) "What else are you going to do with yourself?"
4) "Not everyone graduates with debt (or with as much debt as some people think)."
5) You get to put “Esq.” after your name.

Knut has an excellent take down of Lat’s law school apologist piece, so go over to First Tier Reality to read all of it. I really have nothing more to add to Knut’s rebuttal. The only thing I disagree with is that Knut believes Lat and Crittendon at the National Jurist have good intentions. No. No, they do not. Crittendon is a shill whose legal rag depends on the sponsorship and advertising of disgraceful toilets such as Seton Hall and Cooley. David Lat lives in a privileged world built on superficial factors such as the knowing the who’s who in Biglaw, rankings, and being able to put “Esq.” next to his name. These guys are too ignorant and elitist to have any good intentions besides self-serving their huge egos.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am not a fan of Above the Law and rarely stop by the site unless another scam blog or BIDER reader alerts me to an interesting post. I have never been a fan of Above The Law because the site has always been nothing more than an elitist Biglaw gossip and rumor mill ready to humiliate the next law student or lawyer who sends a tactless email. Laughing at other people’s misfortunes has never really been my thing, even when my life seemed pretty good at a T14. Above the Law encompasses everything that I’ve ever disliked about law school and the legal profession. As Knut pointed out in his post and many times before, Above the Law is completely out of touch with the majority of law school graduates and lawyers. They have their heads too far deep into the insignificant daily dramas of Biglaw to care about anything else.

Above the Law’s saving grace is Elie Mystal who continues to have his wages garnished to pay back the $150k he owes to Harvard Law. He occasionally reports on the law school scam and is the most sympathetic of the Above the Law writers to unemployed graduates and student loan victims.

I could care less with most of the gossip Above the Law publishes daily. I just think it’s a shame that one of the most widely read legal publications on the web is filled with so much immaturity, elitist (oftentimes racist) comments, and posts that aren’t based in reality for the majority of the legal profession or the world for that matter. It makes me very thankful that the scamblogging community exists as a much needed reality based legal community to counter all the lies and false hope out there being peddled by the mainstream legal media.

HuffPo Comments on Law Degree More Interesting Than the Article

Hattip to Exposing the Law School Scam and Homeless Lawyer Posting From Library for posting a link to a Huffington Post article, Is The Foolproof Law Degree Becoming an Endangered Species?. I'll post the article in its entirety since it is fairly brief:

What if law school is no longer as lucrative as it used to be? And what if procuring funding to obtain a juris doctorate is akin to taking out a subprime loan?

Law firms are cutting salaries and hiring fewer graduates, reports Ameet Sachdev in the Chicago Tribune, which means that a law degree may not be a foolproof way to get a high-paying job after graduation. In addition, ongoing tuition hikes on already-overpriced law school degrees make the prospect of unemployment (and loan repayment) after graduation even more dire. Sachdev writes:

With large numbers of unemployed or underemployed lawyers who borrowed heavily to pay for their educations, legal educators face growing skepticism about the value of a law degree.

Law schools are seeing more applicants than ever before, which only exacerbates the situation. Northwestern Law, for example, only sent 55.9 percent of its graduating class to the largest firms in 2009. As its dean David Van Zandt tells Sachdev, "big law firms will never go back to hiring graduates in droves."

What do you think? If you have gone to/are in law school, what has your experience been?

I recommend that all of our readers comment on the post if you have a HuffPo account, and even recommend to the other commenters to visit the law school scam blogs or create one of their own. Here are some of the comments that I'm totally copying from Exposing the Law School Scam, but you can go to HuffPo to read more. The comments are great and I wish more of these people would create blogs of their own to spread the word. We're the only ones causing the media to start asking questions about the value of a law degree.

colariz 51 minutes ago

T5 or Bust?

According to one of our readers who has worked as a lawyer for nearly 15 years, in the new jobless era, even being in the T14 means getting your resume thrown in the trash. The comment belonged in "comments that should have been posts" category so I'm posting it here for all to read.

I have been a lawyer for about 15 years. The landscape of this profession has changed enormously and there is no elastic effect from the current economic recession. When the economy recovers (5-7 years from now), most of the legal jobs that have been lost won't be coming back. I graduated from a T30 school and today I am a partner at a boutique firm. I can tell you that many firms will not be hiring entry level associates in these times. I receive dozens of resumes from T14 grads and they all wind up in the trash can. If you are applying to law school, DO NOT attend any school outside of T5. Attending a school ranked outside the T5 will be a terrible gamble of your life and future. If you are a college graduate reading this, I know you will be too arrogant to heed my warning and you believe you will be the lone exception to the doom that awaits you. A few years ago, I would feel sorry for you. With the proliferation of these lawscam blogs, you have been warned. I personally will not pity any buffoon that attends law school in the past 2 years or next decade.

Thank you for your honest and astute observations. The very few who benefit from the system will never admit that thousands have wasted their youth and what could have been their life savings on a useless degree. Some of us had to learn the hard way but at least we have the excuse of not being warned before the economy tanked. I also want to remind readers that plenty of my classmates who found biglaw jobs were laid off in less than a year and haven't been able to find any type of employment since and will probably never be able to reenter biglaw again. Job security no longer exists for our generation and there is no reason for companies to employ entry-level graduates who will expect a higher wage because of their useless degree when there is an endless line of new college graduates, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers waiting to be rehired at slave wages.

Another reader made this comment:

Heres some food for thought.

My roommate is a 1L at a tier 2, well respected local school in California. He is in the top 2% of his class. He did not get an interview for an unpaid internship with the local city attorney's office. He received a form letter rejection.

I am a militant scam blog follower and member of the movement, and even I was blown away by this. Please spread the word......

Thank you for your support and kind words. Unfortunately for your friend, he will likely remain unemployed until he finds an entry-level job unrelated to the law. I've mentioned this in a post several months ago, but a close friend of mine graduated from a T14 in the top 25% of his class, has several published law review articles, and has been unemployed for nearly a year. There is no room for Tier 2 graduates when there are top legal scholars from the best schools living on welfare.

Grade Inflation Won't Help Students Find Jobs

The new trend of grade inflation is just another desperate move by law school scam artists to appease a growing number of law students who are visiting our blogs and demanding change in what will likely be a very long jobless era. Inflating grades is another way of pulling the wool over students' eyes because it allows law schools to ignore bigger problems like tuition inflation, its existence as a third tier law school in an oversaturated legal market, and law school teaching methods by academics rather than trained and experienced lawyers. It also pits third tier law students against each other in an imaginary battle for jobs that do not exist for them or the other 99 percent of today's law school graduates. Making a B-minus into a B doesn't change any third tier law students' dire situation in this economy.

Chapman is the latest law school where students have become so frantic about their job prospects that they are petitioning to increase the mandatory median gpa from 2.8 to 3.0. Orange County Register columnist and law student Frank Mickadeit tells us more:

Loyola Law School in L.A. recently announced it was automatically bumping up student GPAs roughly 0.3 (on a 4.0 scale) across the board, immediately drawing criticism, from academic circles. Loyola's reason: the previous mandatory median of a B- (or what would be about 2.8) was excluding students from jobs where a 3.0, or a B, was required.

Loyola law grads also were less competitive with grads from USC and UCLA, which seem to be racing each other to the heights of absurdity. There, as at UCI, the median GPA is already 3.3 on a 4.3 scale. Did I mention that Loyola's bump would be retroactive to as far back as 2007?

Not to be left behind, students at my law school, Chapman, have petitioned to increase the mandatory median from 2.8 to 3.0, essentially keeping pace with Loyola, but moving ahead of Whittier Law, which maxes out the median grade at 2.875.

I signed the petition because I didn't want to be the only weasel in my class not to – which I was assured I would be – but I don't feel good about adding to the nonsense. The national average GPA has increased from 2.93 to 3.11 since 1992. The "Gentleman's C" has become the "Delinquent's D."

It's hard to know what any employer can really make of a GPA. This rather forces them to rely on the tried-but-not-always-so-true method of evaluating a graduate based on his or her school's reputation, as evidenced by the quality (or lack thereof) of recent graduates. In other words, the prospective lawyer is being evaluated on others' performance.


Some elite schools, such as Harvard and Yale, have done away with grades. Last year I made my own deal with a grading structure that seems impossibly flawed: I simply don't look at my grades. And if, in the back of my mind, I know it's possible that I'm just one-tenth of a point above the academic probation line, well, that makes me study harder.

Elite schools like Harvard and Yale have never needed a grading system. When you're someone like George W. Bush, is your future really dependent on whether or not you fail a class at Yale? Of course not. Many students at top tier schools and even not so top tier schools have the connections to obtain prestigious positions independent of their grades. I know of someone who attended an Ivy League college and a Tier 1 (not T14) law school. This person, through personal East Coast connections that were developed long before law school, was able to obtain a mid-sized law firm job during the recession without even having to show any grades from law school. This person had never worked for a law firm prior to receiving this offer. That is how things have always worked within elite circles. It's just that the inequality is more glaringly obvious now that everyone else has to fight tooth and nail for even an interview. A slight bump will not help law students nearly as much as someone who received a C in Contracts but didn't have to show their grades because they are the son or daughter of an influential person. Not even law school rank, as I and many other T14 grads who have shown up here to attest, will guarantee you a job if your family does not belong to the town's elite.

I can understand why students would believe that grade inflation will give them an edge. A decade ago maybe it would work in helping lower tier graduates or students from poor and middle class families find good jobs. Those days no longer exist. If anything this recession and the bailouts to the rich should make it crystal clear to the majority of us that the gap between rich and poor in this country will only grow wider. A degree and a glowing transcript from a third tier school won't change that.

Kaplan: Law School Expert and Big Fat Lying Company

Wow!  This press release summarizes so many of the themes that have come up in our blog.  It's press release that is put out by Kaplan, and probably a paid-for advertisement, about how law students are flocking to law school because of the recession.  Ironically, they feel great about their prospects, but not the prospects of their classmates. Doesn't the term "press release" connote NEWS of some sort?  Correct me if I'm wrong...

So, we've got the following themes covered:

• Lawyers are narcissists.  The reason why they do not heed our advise is because they always say, "That may have been what happened to you, but I will work harder and that won't happen to me." or "Somehow, I'm different, better, smarter than you are--so I will find a job."  They are such narcissists that individual law students are willing to say that people who are similarly situated will end up in a vastly different position than themselves.  This is an irrational, pompous attitude--that has no relation to real life.  If you jump of a bridge and die, can I expect to fly if I do the same thing?
• The Educational Industrial Complex pays for newspaper articles and reputable press such as "Market Watch" publish these articles without so much as a disclaimer.  Kaplan is not a law school expert--but a profiteer of college graduates' misfortunes.  They perch like eagles outside of college graduation ceremonies and offer students who majored in enjoyable, but useless, topics like literature and sociology a "great way to become marketable."  Hogwash.  I wouldn't trust an article put out by Pro-Lifers about how happy mothers are to have had a baby. Nor would I believe the accuracy of an article put out by NOW about how women who choice to have an abortion were so much better off without a child.  The irony is, if a reputable publication decided to put out one of the above articles, it would lose its' credibility. It would be considered one-sided.  But somehow, the Educational Industrial Complex is given different treatment. It's okay to put out lies that fool the most vulnerable of our society, the young, into being shackled with a lifetime of debt.   Look at this prize quote: "If given the choice of submitting as part of their law school application a perfect 180 on the LSAT, a perfect 4.0 GPA or a letter of recommendation from a Supreme Court justice, 80% would opt for a perfect LSAT score."  This can also be read as follow:  "Take Kaplan so you can score a perfect LSAT score." Or, it can read as follows:  "You can still go to law school although you had nothing close to a perfect GPA."  OR, "You can be a no one and know nobody and go to great law school."  BULL!  You must have an excellent GPA, a great LSAT and know someone of importance in the legal industry to make it as a lawyer.  Anything short of that, will park you in your parents' basement until you're 35.
• Most pro-law school press has no real facts regarding the legal industry.  This article is filled with great little tidbits of hope for future law students that causes them to heard into TTThird TTTier TTToilets like cattle such as:  "Pre-law students' attitudes are in keeping with research showing that students aged 18-29 are more optimistic about their economic future -- despite a sluggish job market -- than past generations."  It also states: "52% report that they are 'very confident' that they will find a job in the legal field after graduating law school and passing the bar..." Of course, what the article fails to state, which seems to be standard modus operandi, is what the reality of the legal job market is. It even alludes to finding a non-legal job. Why aren't there any cold and hard numbers relating to the post-law school job search instead of what a bunch of lemmings think, feel and hope.  Am I the only person that finds it ironic that people would attend law school to not work in the law?  Would I go through the trouble of medical school to be in HR? 

I am angry now and never reading Market Watch again.