Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Farmer John, Esq., to Reap Harvest of New North Star Scholarship

As we all know, it's an indisputable fact that rural America is desperate for the type of lawyer and law firm saturation found in more metropolitan areas.  It's also an indisputable fact that when there's a crisis in legal education, America's law schools are bound to swoop in and save the day.

Introducing William Mitchell's North Star Scholarship:
The new North Star Scholarship will provide $10,000 a year to students who enroll in the law school's new part-time hybrid program, which allows students to earn their J.D.s through a combination of week-long, on-campus trainings and online coursework—with much of the doctrinal studies being completed using web-based learning tools.
As the article notes, only 2% of the nation's law practices are in rural areas.  Yet, "[a]ttorneys are critical to the fabric of life in rural America."  How is our fabric to survive with no threads?  GIVE THAT SMALL TOWN SOME THREADS, YO.

Assuming a part-time program takes four (4) years, that's a $40,000 bargain.  And since you can work at the same time, you won't be incurring any living expenses debt!  My goodness, you'll be going to an ABA-accredited law school for only, like, $70k, which is easy to pay back with the salary you'll be garnering in such lawyer-starved areas.

If stupid law students can't figure out where the money is, we'll just have to give it to them until they can understand.  And if rural America isn't going to lawyer itself properly, we're going to incentivize them until they justice themselves properly.  The market will work, if we just force it to.

2 comments:

  1. Is William Mitchell even going to be around four years from now? It has been laying people off.

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  2. I notice that this is NOT a program to retrain current JD's for rural practice. Oh no, there's no money in that. This is simply a program to add to the attorney surplus by offering marginal discounts to local people.

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