Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The Day the Music Died

Larry Mitchell, a shining beacon in the darkness of legal education being swallowed in the sudden swift vortex of a trans-global economic catastromeltdown, has resigned.

You have won a skirmish, you oafs.  You will not win the war.
Mitchell, who had been dean since 2011, said in a letter to the university that "€œUpon thorough reflection, I have concluded that I cannot return to my job as dean with the same energy and enthusiasm that characterized my earlier service. At this point, it is in the best interest of the law school for me to step down as dean. I will retain my position as a tenured professor and continue to seek to serve the school however I can."
Uh, by serving as a tenured professor and sacrificing the $2M/year he'd make as an InstaPartner at Jones Day, he's already doing a great noble service.

And let us not forget Mitchell's Triumph:
For at least two years, the popular press, bloggers and a few sensationalist law professors have turned American law schools into the new investment banks. We entice bright young students into our academic clutches. Succubus-like, when we’ve taken what we want from them, we return them to the mean and barren streets to fend for themselves. 
The hysteria has masked some important realities and created an environment in which some of the brightest potential lawyers are, largely irrationally, forgoing the possibility of a rich, rewarding and, yes, profitable, career.
Emphasis added for those of you who question the silk-sheet reality in which most attorneys roll.  In certain parts of America, they pour a 40 oz. beverage out for a fallen comrade.  I learned that during the Wills and Estates week of Law and Urban Sociology.  As a filthy-rich lawyer, I don't have 40s; I just have bottles of triple-figure wine.  But I *can* pour on 40k of student loan debt.

Consider it done.  Godspeed, Dean Mitchell.

4 comments:

  1. I hope Larry starts writing fiction after his Year of Scholarship (but no contact with the kiddies at the law school!) is over. He's already off to a running start with the steaming pile of dung that the NYT was debased enough to publish. Enjoy the rest of your life Larry!

    In between that second and third Xanax it takes to get to sleep, contemplate all the lives you've destroyed with your lies. Also, burn in hell you creep.

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  2. Ku's complaint points out (at para 33) that the students "pay over $45,000 in annual tuition for the privilege of attending Case Western Reserve University School of Law".

    I think that he was quite right to report Mitchell to the university's administration and to carry on with this lawsuit, but "the privilege of attending Case Western Reserve University School of Law" is an awfully peculiar phrase outside an ironic context.

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  3. Yes if I were Larry, I would file a motion to strike the "privilege" language for misleading the court.

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  4. I think we all know what "energy and enthusiasm" means in this context. Mitchell can't get away with that stuff any more.

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