Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Hosting a Raiding Party on the Free Love Transfer Train

There's been some other articles around talking about the transfer antics in D.C.  Georgetown brings in 100+ transfers (13 from American), G.W. sends a raiding party! to American to carry off 54 well-bred legal beagles.  American nibbles 12 from DC and UB. 

Let's look at some other raiders and call it "Free Love Transfer Train!"  (All numbers hastily pulled from ABA Standard 509 forms).

1.   CALIFORNIA LOVE

A.  Cal-Berkeley responds to some mild losses by sending a raiding party! to Cal-Hastings to pick up 18 new partners.  They also grab 4 from San Fran, 2 from Santa Clara, and 1 each from Golden Gate and McGeorge.  All-in-all, Cal-Berkeley (a T14) is +46.

B.  Cal-Hastings now has an empty space in its heart to fill with love.  They grab 5 from Golden Gate, 4 from San Fran, and 2 from Santa Clara.  They even grab students from LA and San Diego schools, but still wind up being more prey than predator.

C.  Speaking of the Southern part of the state, UCLA, after losing 5 students to Cal-Berkeley's marauders, went balls-to-the-wall in its recoupment efforts and wound up +21 enrollment.   They turned and grabbed 5 from Cal-Davis, 3 from Southwestern, and 8 from Loyola-Marymount, among others.

D.  In that next group, Loyola lost 49 students by attrition, and tried their hardest to recover.  They definitely get effort points by taking 6 from Southwestern and a whopping 15 students from Whittier.

2.  BIG APPLE MUNCHING

A.  Columbia didn't gorge at one table, but rather enjoyed the whole buffet:  5 from Brooklyn, 4 from Cornell, 3 from Fordham, etc.  All in all Columbia (this is a T-14, okay?) brought in 46 students and only lost 9 to attrition.  Not to be outdone, NYU brought in 8 from Cornell, 4 from Brooklyn, 4 from Fordham, and a smattering of other transfers to bring their total to 50.

B.  While those three victims were surprisingly restrained in bringing in transfers, St. Johns caught the spirit and decided to nab 16 of Touro's students.  That's a raiding party!  Considering transfer attrition alone, Touro was -34.

3.  SUNSHINE DISINFECTS...WE HOPE

A.   As much as people rip on Florida Coastal, it's basically a strip mine operation for other law schools to come in and take what they want.  This class slut gave up 55 transfers:  10 to UF, 9 to FSU, 5 to Miami, 4 to St. Thomas, etc.

B.  In possibly the oddest swap around, FIU of all places sent a raiding party! to Nova Southeastern and brought home 16 choice specimens.  Nova lost 41 students to transfers altogether.

4.  WELCOME TO DOUBLE-A, SON

Michigan State took 31 new prospects from Thomas Cooley.  They rounded 3rd hard, and Lansing blew a lug nut.

5.  EATING THE GEORGIA PEACH

Emory took 20 transfers in from JMLSATL.  Overall, Emory brought in 56 transfer students and only lost 13 students total to attrition.  While we're on the topic of JMLSATL, Mercer nabbed 5 and Georgia State took 10.

Anyone got any other good stories from the transfer swap?

CONCLUSION

So basically, kids, if you want to go to a really good law school with a low LSAT or uGPA, it's okay to go to a crappier one.  Just doll yourself up and after a single solitary year, the bigger suitors will come knocking like you're on special.

An alternative title to this piece could be called Triumphs and Sacrifices.  Clearly, there are law schools that lose at this game, either by keeping their standards too high (Loyola) or simply by not scraping at the bottom of the barrel enough (American).

But hey, what kind of a law school shill would I be if I didn't wholly endorse exploitative capitalism?  It's a meat market out there, and the shrewdest butchers know how to play the game.

Has there been enough metaphor-mixing in this article?  I think not.  Here's some more metaphors:

Law students are like cars.  If you're at Yale, you're like a Bugati.  If you're at American, you're like a Toyota Avalon.  BUT with a stupendous first year, you could, like, pimp dat ride.  So much that G.W. wants to put you on its lot.  It's the one behind the fence where the LSAT people don't go, but DUDE that's where the hot buyers go.

Law students are like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're going to get.  Except you're pretty damned sure the Belgian artisan stuff at Harvard is better than the Russel Stover going stale at some Roadside InfiLaw Outlet.  But the hungry hungry hypo-law-deans at the Tier 2 and 3 schools have plenty of room in the bellies, so you need to be one of those candies with the nougat or salted caramel - none of that rubbery fake cherry shit.  And then they'll select you for their new assortment where you can be bought by all kinds of employers who won't care what box you used to be in.

Law students are like babies.  If you have a really cute and smart one, a nicer family may come along and take it.  But that's okay - what goes around comes around, and, frankly, that one was a little too perfect for your shit-stained cluttery house.  Go get a raiding party! and steal some poor family's baby.  It's not like they can nurture it the way you can.  You're a Tier 2 house.  Besides, if you wanted to keep the first kid, you wouldn't have made it so attractive to thieves.

Law students are like vodka.  At the start of the night, you can probably tell the difference between Belvedere (Georgetown), Grey Goose (GW), Absolut (American), watered-down mid-range Polish vodka (Catholic), and Skyy (D.C.).  After a while, you're drunk, you've run out of the real premium stuff and suddenly Absolut is lookin' really drinkable.  Plus, they've got slick marketing.  Look at those ads; you could do international law if you drink Absolut!  Shit, I'd take 54 shots of that, too, if my liver metabolized six-figure salaries and cirrhosis was only going to happen if Bartender Uncy Sam cuts me off.  Which he won't.

So, in closing, law students are drunk-driving babies eating chocolate.

4 comments:

  1. The ABA, US News and anyone else who publishes law school admissions information ought to wise up and have admissions statistics that include the LSATs and GPAs of the transfers. From the standpoint of the ratings, it should be the graduating class and not the first year class that is the most important because that is what represents the output of the law school.

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    1. Output,schmoutput. There's something wrong with the bar exam, haven't you heard? The questions are biased. Or tricky and the metrics are wrong. And the grading and associated scaling doesn't comply with accepted universal standards of fairness and equity and the bill of rights. Graduates can't be expected to find employment until the goddam bar exam is fixed. It'll take some time but until then, it's inappropriate to focus on, or really even mention the outputs.

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  2. There's something very sad about the transfer game, namely that almost those who transfer would be better off not going to law school at all. If you couldn't get into Emory or Geo Wash with your grades and LSAT, paying sticker a year later is hardly the answer.

    On the other hand, I see the transfer process as an outbreak of creative destruction that could eventually leave the world a better and safer place. Just imagine what it's doing to Florida Coastal or John Marshall when they lose a whole two years of revenue from these lemmings. First they trick these sophisticated future attorneys fair and square into signing their lives away, and then someone else gets the loan revenue for two years! That's got to hurt, and it should. We can hope that this acts as the only market discipline in the whole process, and drives the bottom feeders and InfiScam outlets out of business sooner rather than later.

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