Saturday, March 30, 2013

"Mr. Infinity" Has Nothing to Do With Us, Or, Proving One's Inability to Read

Some uneducated fool over at Outside the Law School Scam has accused The Law School Truth Center of being an alter ego of the so-called Mr. Infinity and/or The World Travelling Law Student. Your humble administrator knew very little about these entities, but after some research it appears that those pseudonyms have posted numerous comments and an entire blog to what is basically concern trolling the scambloggers and/or straight-up shilling for law school.

Part of me is flattered to be in such lofty company as an established author with a well-regarded, popular, established blog. On the other hand, I consider it a grievous libel - not upon me, but upon Him. For example, this is from WTLS's blog current blog header:

There are many negative sites about law school and this blog's purpose is to be positive and show that law school can lead one to great success, far beyond merely monetary gains.

Sadly, I cannot take credit for that man's excellent scamwork. This blog readily admits that law school is a scam and regularly praises people for scamming law students. To the extent that this blog ever appears to participate in showing that "law school can lead one to great success," we're either being hideously sarcastic or attempting to show how easy it is to sucker naive prospective law students in a form of elaborate performance art. But the real deal? That's a higher form of life to which our sophomoric entity can only aspire.

In one of this WTLS most recent entries, he publishes what I will classify as excellent fiction. Do you see Dickensian fiction here? Do you ever see me claim with a straight face that lawyering will make anyone rich? Have you ever seen me claim, obviously falsely, that law school developed my own personal ability to write and handle stress?

Christ on a bloody tampon! To compare me with such excellence; I am honored and embarrassed for the reader at the same time, much as a student admirer of Rembrandt's would have felt shame in being mistaken for the Old Master.

For anyone who's read THAT and who's read THIS, the difference should be clear. Sadly, the inability of certain people to distinguish between them suggests a startling lack of the ability to think like a lawyer. As you might be aware, thinking like a lawyer means "reasoning and analysis that is exemplified in the law section of appellate briefs and in judicial opinions... It encompasses, for example, the use of analogical reasoning to distinguish precedents or propose extensions or developments of existing doctrine, but also involves techniques of statutory and constitutional construction, the use of arguments from authority, facility with the law/fact distinctions, and so on." (Leiter, Brian. "Letter to Thomas R. Grover, Esq." Brian Leiter Anthology Vol 5: Correspondence to Insolents).

Distinguishing the most excellent product designed to scam law students and serve as self-aggrandizement for the author from this meager exercise in admiration would similarly take such "analogical reasoning." To claim that I am him merely because we sit on the same side of the table and use one common word? Why, that's not "analogical reasoning" at all. In fact, you're not even close to the anus of the truth, much less analogical.

And if you so fail at the basic precepts of thinking like a lawyer, why in the world would anyone ever take you seriously as a scamblogger and/or commentator? Because you tell the truth and have morality on your side? Laugh. As-if that cuts it in a courtroom looking for proper "lawyer thinking" like "arguments from authority" or "facility with the law/fact distinctions" (sic). You can't even distinguish between this meager effort and the smooth prose of Mr. Infinity. How the hell are going to be able to tell the difference between law and fact?

So, no, I am not Mr. Infinity a/k/a WTLS. I only wish I could be. If y'all could recognize that, maybe you wouldn't so damned hopeless.

The Greatness of Hiring Recent Graduates

If there is one rule of legal education, it's that prestige matters. Whatever Columbia is doing, Hofstra would be served to follow its path. And so with the recent release of the 2012 employment numbers (see LST here), we can get a closer look of what some law schools are doing to help their graduates excel.

NYU has an employment score of 91.9%.
Virginia has an employment score of 95.4%.

Meanwhile:

NYLS has an employment score of 39.4%.
Wash. & Lee has an employment score of 49.2%.

Know what the difference is? NYU and Virginia actually want to place their students. How do I know this?

NYU hired back 12% of its class.
Virginia hired back almost 15% of its class.
NYLS hired back only 0.7% of its class.
Wash. & Lee apparently hired back none of its class.

Is this not incredibly simple to figure out? No need to call Poirot on this one. Clearly, if a school is willing to hire back its own students, its sending a signal to the marketplace that the school's graduates are worth hiring. And consequentially, that school reaps an extra benefit in the employment market.

It follows logically, then, that if EVERY law school in the country hired on 12-15% of its class, there would likely be far more than the 12-15% increase in legal employment that would come naturally. There are a ton of firms right now who are unsure of whether to add on staff or not. As a result, if the law schools were to hire back their own graduates and put their money where their mouth is, those employers would certainly start to hire new graduates at the fullest rates possible.

As notorious scamblogger David Lat points out, a school hiring back its own graduates has a number of additional positive benefits and can even lead to things like Appellate Clerkships. They allow graduates to gain experience, which places them in a different class than the following year's graduates and therefore has no effect on the size of the entry-level employment market.

And so I'm absolutely befuddled when I hear people mock law schools hiring recent graduates. Literally, all they do is add full time long-term jobs. Of course, the schools will have to pay excellent wages to compete in a marketplace where 90% of graduates are already finding employment, but the differences in LST's "employment score" (whatever that means), suggest there is still plenty to be gained by paying whatever is necessary to employ some of the school's own graduates.

The people who criticize such things clearly have a vested interest in preventing additional job opportunities. Most likely, such objections come from other legal employers who want to get entry-level salaries much lower than their current 80-100k levels. And so, it is LSTC's official policy to encourage schools to hire back as many graduates as possible at competitive rates.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Yes, We're Reforming and Awesoming: Consider the 3+3 Program

When most people think of the Juris Doctor, they think of a degree that takes seven (7) years to complete. But what if I were to tell you about a wonderful innovation in law school technology that would allow you to complete an ABA-accredited legal education in only six (6) years?

Your skepticism sounds eerily familiar to what we encountered with the latest batch of employment stats: baseless incredulity.

Because that's right! Step right up, 18-year-old future Good Wives and Boston Legalists, because law schools have a deal for you that will cut your legal education by a whole year. Why, at just 24, you could be running your own law office. Even younger if you're an extra-special snowflake prodigy.

They're called 3 + 3 programs. Three years of undergrad, a year that double counts, after which you earn an undergraduate degree, and then two years to complete the law degree.

You can do it at Whitter. You can do it at AlbanyYou can do it at Hamline while majoring in communication studies with "no risk if you change your mind."

You can do it at a whole host of fine, fine colleges, but please note that you have to go to the right undergraduate school in order to take advantage of these special strategic partnerships. Cornell will not get you into Albany early, but the prestigious Russel Sage College will. Three years of Princeton are not good enough for Seton Hall; for that, you need to go to New Jersey Tech.

So be careful: if you go to one of those undergraduate institutions, you'll have to attend law school for the full seven years. As someone who did the full seven years, let me tell you, that last one is an expensive piece of boredom. I could have spent that money oh, I don't know, buying a brand new Toyota Camry.

That's what the law schools are basically doing by allowing for 3 + 3 programs when they pair with exceptional undergraduate institutions. They're giving you a Toyota Camry. And they're getting nothing in return except the gift of your presence on their campuses.

Everyone keeps clamoring about the need to reduce law school. Well, for certain high-minded students, the law schools have already done it, and you'd be a sucker not to consider the offer if you, like most people, KNOW you want to be a lawyer someday at the ripe old age of 18.

The latest school to offer such a bargain is the John Marshall Law School (Chicago branch), which has partnered with local Robert Morris college to offer exceptional students the opportunity to complete two educations in six years at "leaders in not-for-profit higher education in Illinois."

It's an exclusive offer, so students at the University of Chicago need not apply early. If you're an 18 year old who KNOWS (and who doesn't?) that you want to conduct exciting jury trials for a living, whether it's murder prosecutions or multi-million dollar environmental disputes or suing whalers on behalf of the Pacific Ocean, you would be a drunken idiot moron dope to not consider this outstanding deal.

Again, folks, they're offering you what is basically the price of a Toyota Camry. The next time someone tells you law school is a "scam," ask them bluntly when Publisher's Clearing House made such a deal.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

ScamMadness Round 2 Update

Welcome back to the Madness! For Round 2, scores and winners were determined by a simple equation: who charges more relative to the local economy? Adjusted tuition scores were determined by dividing the sticker-price tuition (which no one pays, except the people we make pay it) by the overall cost of living ratio found on http://www.bestplaces.net. For example, Texas Tech has a tuition of $32,148 in an area with a cost of living rated at 85, meaning they would have an adjusted tuition score of 378. Hamline has a tuition of $36,066 BUT Minneapolis as a cost of living score of 105 for an adjusted tuition score of 343. Thus, to the eyes of the Truth Center, even though Hamline has a higher nominal tuition Texas Tech is actually doing a better job of gouging students, which is, of course, what matters. It's an imperfect measure (very imperfect, but since when do law schools use precise stats?), of course, but we wanted to account for the differences in cost between professor's six-bedroom houses and gourmet dinners and whatnot.

You can throw out the seeds in ScamMadness, because it's upset city, baby!

SECOND ROUND RESULTS

EAST

WIDENER 374 (38160 / 102 (Wilmington))
PACE 238 (41950 / 176)

ROGER WILLIAMS 311 (40200 / 129 (Fall River))
BROOKLYN 295 (49,976 / 169))

BALTIMORE 406 (36570 / 90)
TOURO 359 (42810 / 119)

NEW ENGLAND 285 (42490 / 149)
W.NEW ENGLAND 356 (38116 / 107)

SOUTH

BARRY 381 (34300 / 90)
CHARLOTTE 400 (36882 / 92)

THOMAS COOLEY 451 (39,750 / 88)
TEXAS SOUTHERN 240 (21396 / 89)

REGENT 288 (32,850 / 114)
FLORIDA COASTAL 427 (37596 / 88)

LIBERTY 337 (30396 / 90)
AVE MARIA 226 (36490 / 161)

MIDWEST

THOMAS COOLEY 484 (39750 / 82)
JOHN MARSHALL 405 (42600 / 105)

WILLIAM MITCHELL 343 (36020 / 105)
VALPARAISO 358 (37980 / 106)

INDIANA TECH 343 (29500 / 86)
CHICAGO-KENT 408 (42900 / 105)

CREIGHTON 367 (31986 / 87)
CAPITAL 395 (34410 / 87)

WEST

THOMAS JEFFERSON 293 (42000 / 143)
PHOENIX 428 (37740 / 88)

WILLAMETTE 338 (34570 / 102)
LAVERNE 260 (39900 / 153)

WHITTIER 283 (40,310 / 142)
LOYOLA-LOS ANGELES 303 (43660 / 144)

SAN FRANCISCO 212 (42284 / 199)
MCGEORGE 397 (42972 / 108)

NOTES AND ANALYSIS

For the public schools, out-of-state tuition was used. For schools who list tuition by the credit hour, 30 hours of credit were assumed for a full year. Credit must be given to many schools who make their tuition numbers obscure and difficult to calculate without spending 10 minutes and reading the fine print. Also, thanks to Regent U. for listing out what seems to be an accurate list of private school tuitions.

Clearly, schools in expensive urban areas need to be charging more. Law school appears to be a relative bargain in NYC or San Francisco compared to other consumer goods. The reason the cost of living in San Fran is so high is because people actually want to live there. And Rule No. 187 of the Scammer Code is that if people want to live there, they want to go to law school there. If Cooley can charge that much AND get people to move to desolate wastlands like Lansing, Michigan, surely schools like San Francisco and Golden Gate can break the 60k barrier. It's all monopoly money to the students, anyway, so why not take more of it?

Unfortunately, for-profit schools do not have to release their tax returns, so I have no way to be thoroughly jealous of the profiteers running Phoenix and Charlotte. Charging that much in low-cost areas surely must yield a lot of square footage in the BMW District with enough fencing to never have to see a minority unless they're mowing the lawn or speaking at a diversity conference.

While some heavyweights like TJLS and Barry and Brooklyn went down this round, we have a very strong Sweet Sixteen. Florida Coastal and Thomas Cooley have looked downright unstoppable as usual, but it's nice to see schools like Willamette and Valpo and Roger Williams staking their claim to scam greatness.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

ScamMadness Round 1 Update

WOWZERS! What a weekend of ScamMadness Action!

For those who aren't privy to this (everyone except us!), each round the referees (us!) determine which one of 124 pre-set criteria will be used to determine the scores for that particular round. In this case, the referees (again, us!) chose to use 1L ATTRITION RATES as reported in the ABA Guide, multiplied by 10 for show. ScamMadness Ensues!

FIRST ROUND RESULTS

EAST

1 SETON HALL 100
16 WIDENER 309

8 VERMONT 69
9 PACE 105

4 NORTHEASTERN 23
13 ROGER WILLIAMS 127

5 BROOKLYN 79
12 SUFFOLK 55

2 RUTGERS-WHATEVER 108
15 BALTIMORE 110

7 VILLANOVA 79
10 TOURO 238

3 NEW ENGLAND 212
14 ST. JOHNS 32

6 PENN STATE 136
11 WESTERN NEW ENGLAND 241

SOUTH

1 BARRY 211
16 NORTH CAROLINA 51

8 CHARLOTTE 193
9 ARKANSAS 81

4 THOMAS COOLEY 163
13 STETSON 53

5 TEXAS SOUTHERN 142
12 JOHN MARSHALL (ATL) 59

2 AMERICAN U. 108
15 REGENT 167

7 TEXAS WESLEYAN 117
10 FLORIDA COASTAL 255

3 GEORGE WASHINGTON 59
14 LIBERTY 258

6 MISSISSIPPI COLL. 98
11 AVE MARIA 174

MIDWEST

1 THOMAS COOLEY 163
16 DUQUESNE 74

8 JOHN MARSHALL (CH.) 210
9 DEPAUL 106

4 ST. LOUIS 55
13 WILLIAM MITCHELL 96

5 VALPARAISO 184
12 ST. THOMAS (MN) 12

2 INDIANA TECH FORFEIT WIN
15 DETROIT MERCY

7 CHICAGO-KENT 116
10 DRAKE 75

3 CASE WESTERN 13
14 CREIGHTON 94

6 TULSA 84
11 CAPITAL 237

WEST

1 THOMAS JEFFERSON 280
16 SOUTHWESTERN 111

8 HASTINGS 16
9 PHOENIX 118

4 SANTA CLARA 156
13 WILLAMETTE 222

5 LAVERNE FORFEIT WIN
12 LEWIS AND CLARK

2 DENVER 47
15 LOYOLA-LOS ANGELES 103

7 IDAHO 69
10 WHITTIER 310

3 MCGEORGE 79
14 ARIZONA STATE 37

6 CONCORDIA 0
11 SAN FRANCISCO 223

NOTES AND ANALYSIS

-Three schools do not have a reported 1L attrition rate due to their recent launching or accreditation situation: LaVerne, Indiana Tech, and Concordia. In the case of the first two, their opponents graciously forfeited as a courtesy to allow them to participate in round two. San Francisco did not care and proceeded to crush Concordia.

-While it appears many law schools may be gaming the system with creative accounting to artificially lower their 1L attrition rates (e.g., Case Western, whose 2L attrition rate is 13.4%), we must take the ABA Official Guide results at face value, because it's official and no one, ever, lies to the ABA.

-Additionally, it is the Law School Truth Center's preferred standard and course of conduct to have as high of a 1L attrition rate as possible. Although the school may lose tuition on years 2 and 3, it allows the school to reap the benefits of most cost-effective 1L classes to gain roughly the same tuition dollars. Also, thinning out the herd is clearly good for the profession, something schools like Arizona State simply aren't doing enough of. Jerks.

-It's sad to see some real heavyweights with All-Star deans like Seton Hall and Denver drop out early, but that's why we call it Scam Madness! Lower your admission standards and do some more weeding, guys, and you'll be right back in the thick of it next season!

-Round Two results will be released later this week. Check back and see how your brackets are doing!

Friday, March 22, 2013

We Interrupt this Tournament to Call Out a Traitor

Comrades, many of you are likely still in shock over yesterday's surprise upset of William Mitchell over St. Louis, or by the audacity of the thumping Thomas Jefferson gave Southwestern (updates of all first round action coming...some day), but I must - MUST - interrupt the festivities to bring to light the recent actions of a treacherous dog:

Judge William Walls of the District Court of New Jersey.

Notice how close his name is to William Wallace? His treasonous nature is little different. With the security of lifetime tenure, Judge Walls has renounced the needs of his peers at the state level, as well as those who have chosen to serve legal education and America's largest law firms, and denied a motion to dismiss a fraud suit brought by graduates against the esteemed Widener University School of Law.

Your reactions to this news likely range from "Oh, no he di'n't!" to "crap, NOW how is Steve Diamond going to argue these points?" We understand your anger and concern. His actions are unacceptable and alarming and he we assure you he will NOT be getting his first choice of sandwich and cookies at the next banquet. Oh, how he'll regret his callous and thoughtless actions when he's stuck with turkey salad and oatmeal raisin. And his choices at the cocktail hour shall be limited to domestic beer and the cheap house white.

Here is a link to the opinion. It's full of half-truths and hippie liberal legal analysis, so tread carefully. Do not - I repeat, DO NOT - engage in discussion of this opinion with law students who resist outright indoctrination. For example, this is how the court rejected the reasoning of the New York courts:

Perception is often affected by location of the object. Here, we have data displayed above the category of “Full Time Legal Employers.” Why should a reasonable student looking to go to law school consider that data to include non law-related and part-time employment? Should that student think that going to Widener Law School would open employment as a public school teacher, full or part-time, or an administrative assistant, or a sales clerk, or a medical assistant?

The study of law is the learning of a profession. Widener’s website promotes a professional school. Its function is to persuade a prospective law student to attend Widener in order to receive a degree in law. The employment rate was disseminated to third-party evaluators to establish Widener’s standing among law schools. Within this context, it is not implausible that a prospective law student making the choice of whether or which law school to attend, would believe that the employment rate referred to law related employment.

Someone who is completely gullible and untrained in skilled legal analysis might read this and say "why, that's plausible." Of course, it's bogus sophistry. When a law school says "Full Time Legal Employers" they mean in its literal terms using common sense language: employers who comply with the law all the time. "Legal" is an adjective that modifies "Employers" to distinguish "legal employers" from "illegal employers." "Full time" is a modifying adjectival phrase of "legal" indicating the time of compliance. "Full time" doesn't modify "employers." That's word-hopping. Otherwise, there'd be a comma (that's this thing: ,).

This is basic textualism and for the court to go reading into the subjective mindset of the reader would surely infuriate Scalia and Garner. If Widener meant to imply "people working as lawyers," it would have said "people working as lawyers." Duh. The Law School Truth Center WILL be drafting an amicus brief to the Court of Appeals.

The judge also completely missed last year's memorandum on several other points:


Widener claims Plaintiffs allege their ascertainable loss is an “inability to obtain a fulltime legal job having their benchmark salary of $92,000.” Mot. to Dismiss 30. But this is a mischaracterization.

No it isn't! I mean, I know their complaint pleads the loss is the difference in tuition paid due to the fraud, but clearly the damage is the unemployment. I mean, those judges in New York and Chicago understood this, why couldn't he and his feeble federal court mind? He continued the lunacy on causation:

Again Widener mischaracterizes Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint. The claimed causal connection is between the allegedly misleading statements and Plaintiffs’ inducement to buy legal education from Widener, not whether Plaintiffs received a legal job.

This is tremendously unfair, as it clearly skews the complaint in complainants' favor by giving them credit for what they're actually arguing instead of what everyone in on the law school scam is claiming they're whining about. I mean, if these people had jobs, they wouldn't be filing these suits, right? I mean, can we all agree on that one, at least? Did they look for jobs? Did they broaden their horizons to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and pay their dues?

Okay, who would you rather listen to, some bozo federal judge in New Jersey (a lousy state), OR prestigious judges in New York City and Chicago (world-class cities)??!!????!!!?!??1111

I know who I'm listening to.

For attempting to charitably construe whiners' claims, for ignoring the many virtues of the current legal education system, and for applying sound legal principles in a manner that doesn't help my interests, you're a dick, Judge Walls. Like an IRS investigator dick. Like a cock-blocking girlfriend's dad dick. Like a deserving of Leiter treamtment dick.

Damn Clinton appointees.