Merry Christmas, You Barely Successful Non-Victims

As the Gospel of Mark says, blessed if you do; blessed if you don't. 

The Trump Administration hasn't just brought back Merry Christmas.  They've also undercut core principles of basic fraud jurisprudence dating back years with breathlessly under-cooked rationale.  Aunt Betsy isn't just giving you a half-knit scarf this year!

DeVos said under the new standards, forgiveness will now be tied to students’ income as a way of measuring whether they did enjoy some benefit from their educations—even if they were deceived about the worth of their diplomas.
...
The DOE said students who currently earn less than half the income of their peers from a "passing gainful employment program" will get full relief. Those earning half as much or more than students who completed similar schooling, however, will get "proportionally tiered relief.” According to the government table released Wednesday, an affected student making 70 percent of a peer's income would get just 30 percent loan relief.

While this delightfully asinine and senselessly puerile policy appears to apply only to Corinthian College students, why wouldn't it apply to so-called "victims" of for-profit - or for-profit non-profit - law schools?

As an example, using these tables, let's say you, Skippy, graduate from Charlotte Law and get a job as a public defender in Appalachia making $49k/year.  You owe $250k.  The "peers" are deemed to make like $70k/year - which is artificially low, as we all know, but the government low-balls these things. Despite being gainfully employed in a prestigious position, you are going to get a THIRTY PERCENT DISCOUNT! on your loans.

Your $250k loan just shrank to $175k.  At 6.8% interest, you'll owe only $1,140.87 per month on a 30-year repayment plan with your lush public defender salary.  Makin' America Great Again, indeed!

If there's one thing that's true about federal government policies, it's that they really work their best when they encourage beneficiaries to sandbag by redefining core concepts.  It's been true forever that no one who succeeds in life has been defrauded; we just needed Betsy Devos to deliver us the Good News, so come ye faithful, the herald angel's singing, they have opened heaven's door and we are blest forevermore.

Merry Christmas, you chestnut-crusted yule logs.

Making Law School Great(er) Again

This one's behind a pay wall - and I prefer to donate money to legal education and/or pay student loans to helping what is otherwise fake news - but like an iceberg, the visible stuff's pretty enough:

After years of plummeting enrollment and hand-wringing over the value of a law degree, interest in law school is starting to rebound. The number of people applying to law school for next fall is up nearly 12% compared with the same period a year earlier, and around 14% more applications have been submitted, according to the Law School Admission Council.

The title hints that politics has triggered a new wave of snowflakes to study law.  As we all know, the supple droids that graduate law school in 2021 will have the tools and authority to correct the political problems of 2016.  They just will.

Why didn't we think of this sooner?

For years, legal academics have marched in lock-step with hippies, lesbians, and socialists, taking far-flung progressive positions to form a vital part of the mythical intellectual vanguard.  That stereotype surely attracted a certain number of like-minded students (members of Antifa, you know), but not nearly enough recently to make up for the slanderous national conspiracy against premium lawyering and keep several schools from closing.

Instead, law professors should have gone full-hilt theocratic libertarian alt-right Nazi.  Millenials, it seems, are more motivated by Twitter-fueled disgruntlement than the promise of untold riches.  Demented weirdos, sure, but indubitably exploitable.

In the ignorant Obama years, no one had yet learned that the only way to keep America from descending into hyperbolic fascism is to send our youth to study West Coast Hotel v. Parrish.  The biggest advertisement for law school isn't becoming a skilled professional making easy money.  It's stoking the illusion of needed reform by letting the nation be run by barely competent alt-right goons for a few years.

It's one thing if you try telling students that motions in limine are important for parties to keep out problematic evidence.  Yawn.

Instead, why don't you nominate a lifetime federal judge who doesn't know what a motion in limine is?  That will outrage the little fuckers, plus everyone will think there's a shortage of trained experts who know what these complex and incredibly rare motions are.  Now we need a Jedi army of thousands to learn about pre-trial motion practice and strike back.

12-14% is a good start, but we can do better.  25%?  50%?  Let's make America great again by getting our law school output back to 2005.

#MeToo: The Prosper Act

I've been touched inappropriately and it's called the Prosper Act.

 $28,500.

$28,500?

How the holy fuck can we profit mightily shilling these little shitbags for a measly $28,500?  It costs like $25k just to live in New York with three roommates and a sugar daddy.  Where's St. Johns' and NYLS' cut? 

You know how much money it costs to run a law school?  It's really not much, but it's at least $50k a head for reasonable expenses, particularly with this newer technology the kids demand like white boards and digital projectors. Plus the legal education sector has to compete with the Cravaths and Sullivans of the world for staff.

If these assholes actually kept up with the economic literature instead of the fake news, they would know that every year of legal education yields a lifetime earings premium of $333,333.33.  Minimum.  That's not just phony, mythical money some economic scholars and law school sycophants pulled out of their asses.  It's totally real money in a totally real economy once you get past Marven Gardens.

You think with that sort of premium these butt monkeys can't pay back a meager $75k loan at 7%?  That's easy passive income for Uncle Sam.

With limiting it to $28,500, they're not just morons in Washington D.C., they're abusive.  I'm not going to analogize to a specific sexual predator because that would be somewhat offensive, but I know some law deans would much rather have a dude jack off in their face than be limited to only $28,500 in loans.   About 195 or so.

Cardozo Accepts GRE to Get In on Bitcoin Law Bubble

Pinch me, baby, it's Bitcoin law. 

Not to be outdone by its metropolitan peers, Cardozo will also be accepting the GRE in addition to, or instead of, the LSAT.

Cardozo gets double points for connecting this move to red-hot Bitcoin law, one of the hottest new trends in legal services.

“We are on the cutting edge of law and technology with expanded programs in bitcoin, cybersecurity, data law and more,” said Dean Melanie Leslie. “The opportunity to accept both the GRE and the LSAT could not come at a better time for applicants and for Cardozo.”

I'd say.   Bitcoin prices have created millionaires all over the place.  They've got to put that new easy money somewhere, and why not into extremely niche, fad boutique law practices, to wit: Bitcoin law?

It's just like the space law rush of a few years ago.  1998 we didn't have space law.  Now we've got space lawyers from Poughkeepsie to Monterey Bay ready for the Mars invasion and disputes over asteroid mining trusts.

Now it's Bitcoin law. Bitcoin needs lots of lawyers ready to tackle its problems.  It's international.  Computer-y.  Financial.  People are going to want to know how to use Bitcoin as collateral, pass Bitcoins to their next of kin, and use Bitcoins to decorate the lavatory.

Cardozo's way ahead of the curve on this one.  Accepting the GRE means you'll pull in all those genius-mopes, would-be scientists and economists, who can't be bothered to take the proper test.  Because, you know, lots of people unwilling to spend three figures and a spare Saturday are willing to spend three years and six figures growing older and fatter, but super-wiser with a more refined liver.

Just think.  In the fall of 2015 if you'd invested $150,000 in Bitcoin it would now be worth over $4 million even after the recent pull-back.  But if you'd invested it in Bitcoin law, you'd be positioned in a few months to be the leading Bitcoin lawyer in America, which is worth way more than $4 million.

Bitcoin law!  Tell me Bitcoin law is a search term.  It's it not, Bitcoin law should be.

By accepting the GRE, Cardozo is taking a splendid step towards not discriminating against those people simply because they don't have a second free Saturday for some ludicrous standardized test, particularly one so discriminatory against the lawyers of tomorrow.  His Honor would be proud.

Brooklyn to Accept GRE

Brooklyn Law School is now going to accept the GRE.

Let's cut through the propaganda, the convoluted weeds, the honeyed bullshit, and go to Nick Allard, a straight-talk dean so intimate with the unprotected truth that he ought to get tested (thankfully there's multiple good tests!).

"The decision to accept the GRE in addition to the LSAT for application to our Law School is yet another way we are seeking to attract talented students from diverse education and career backgrounds—including in the sciences, engineering, medicine, and technology—who wish to pursue legal education," said Allard. "As we prepare the next generation of lawyers for a rapidly changing marketplace, the way in which we attract and comprehensively evaluate our prospective law students must change as well. The GRE will give us another objective measure that is widely used in graduate education by which we can assess an applicant's potential to succeed in both law school and professionally."

The LSTC will now host a question and answer session.

Question:  Doesn't the phrase "another objective measure" cause an alarm to go off?  What was wrong with the first objective measure?  Is this just another way to shoe-horn more people over a minimum?
LSTC:  No.

Question:  If the GRE can actually gauge the potential to succeed professionally post-law degree, why wasn't it used years ago?
LSTC:  Young lawyers would have less debt if they all lived in vans.

Question:  What kind of a law dean quoted in a press release uses four prepositional phrases in a row that are completely superfluous to the meaning of the sentence and should just be omitted?
LSTC:  Nick Allard was named as a SuperLawyer in Washington D.C. for 2012-2015.

Question:  Are science nerds unable to take - or do well - on the LSAT?
 LSTC:  Probably not, as they obviously would do well in law school but cannot even complete the LSAT application, much less show up at the test site.

Question:  What in the world does accepting the GRE have to do with meeting the demands of a changing marketplace save maybe the hollow, cynical market for prospective students?
LSTC:  That's it, this press conference is over.  Scam on.