Thursday, April 25, 2013

Brookyln - DISMISSED; ABA - INEFFECTUAL

Oh my good gravy, what a day. I don't know what stars are visible in your hemisphere this fine spring night, but in mine, the constellation DOLLARZ is visible just off the western horizon, while the constellation GRADUATE WAH-WAH can clearly be seen to the southeast.

FIRST, in a surprise to no one, the lawsuit against Joan Wexler's Most Glorious Academy, Brooklyn Law School, has been DISMISSED. Oh, how the little ones will feel crushing disappointment to find out disgorgement of profits will NOT be in their stockings this year! From the WSJ:

In an opinion earlier this week, New York State Supreme Court Justice David J. Schmidt in Brooklyn noted the school’s own data was sufficient to “enable a reasonable person to determine that most graduates were earning modest incomes.”

Uh, yeah, bitchez, we told y'all you was gonna be poor! When we give a median salary around six figures, that doesn't mean half the graduates make more. Be a reasonable person and assume the school is hoodwinking you!

Oh, and you'll never guess what law school David Schmidt apparently went to...

POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME

SECOND - and you reformers are going to love this one - the ABA is rockin' its rudder and laying the foundation nicely for a hung jury. Check this awesomeness out:

The lack of consensus about what ails law schools and how to fix them was on display Wednesday during a daylong conference hosted by the American Bar Association's Task Force on the Future of Education.

Participants in the forum struggled for agreement about what is driving the rising costs of legal education—or about how schools and regulators should respond to declining job prospects for new lawyers and flagging interest in law degrees.
...
The attendees also appeared to struggle with whether the task force's mission lies with the needs of law schools, the larger profession or the broader society. When asked specifically what should be done, the responses fell across the board. 

Go, ABA, go! This is exactly what we predicted would happen and it's exactly what the law schools need and want. If the ABA is good for anything, it's good for getting a group of blockheads together with enough diversity of interests to stall any real change to the $tatu$ quo.

I mean, look at these people, they can't even agree on why they're there. The ABA is such an ineffectual organization a group of its Most Worthy Delegates cannot reach a formidable consensus on what the task force's mission is.

The one thing essential to all true lawyer work is that there's a client. They don't have one, and some of these people think their goal should be to help "the broader society." You think one bit of good is going to come out of this "task force?" If you do, you're so dumb you probably applied to Brooklyn Law School and thought you'd have a livable salary, you unreasonable person who can't interpret numbers right in front of you.

Also, get a load of this, same article:

"What the task force is doing is very difficult politically. It's very difficult conceptually. And its very difficult pragmatically," said Valparaiso University School of Law dean Jay Conison, the task force's reporter.

Holy shit, Jay Conison? The guy who wrote one of the scammiest articles ever on the versatility of the JD, that Jay Conison? The one who's jumping ship to go run an even bigger dead-end diploma mill than the one he's at? Wow!

Reform is "very difficult conceptually." Good one, Jay! I mean, any scamblogger worth his web account could have a legal education system that works better than the current one drawn up in 5 minutes. But I love the idea of claiming it's difficult to conceive of reform, sort of like how string theory is "very difficult conceptually." What Jay probably meant deep down is that it's difficult to conceive of ways to exploit for profit a system that hasn't been developed yet; to that end, he's correct.

Predictably, and admirably, this task force was designed to fail from the get-go. You put a large group of law deans, BigLaw partners, judges, and bar representatives in a room - most of whom have resisted stepping on any toes in the same system they're critiquing to get where they are - and you expect anything to get done? Please. If you really had any interest in reform, your task force would be something like "Deborah Rhode, David Yellen, and [judge whose clerk didn't hang up immediately]."

Color me shocked, and incredibly happy.

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