Thursday, November 22, 2018

This Thanksgiving, Toss Some Buzzwords Into Your Potatoes!

Perhaps more than any other holiday, Thanksgiving creates a golden opportunity for benign-appearing law school recruitment.  Other relatives think it's a good time to casually snipe at Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi. Reject that superficial nonsense and play 5-D chess by conning the next generation while smirking and throwing a whipped cream-shot on that hot warm pumpkin pie.

'Merica.

Here, for example, are just some classics for those ripe relatives.  Bonus points if you rope someone's tag-along significant other into applying and then they break up, and double bonus points if you work in a tasteless reference to current events (e.g., Pepperdine being a hot choice).
  • "The LSAT is way easier than the MCAT or GRE.  It's not even curved or anything, and law schools are now taking people who score like a 150."
  • "The time to buy is when other people are selling, and people have been selling law school for years."
  • "My friend is in Brooklyn and can't find a lawyer to take a definitely good and viable case.  Brooklyn!" 
  • "I saw on the news the other day, you won't believe this, but apparently so many law schools have closed that the lawyer shortage is expected to increase dramatically in the next few years."
  • "Rural places are so desperate for lawyers that they're actually paying people to practice law there now!"
  •  "The only good thing about all that regulation that Bay-rack O'bummer put in is that there's got to be a demand for all sorts of lawyers now gettin' rich off it."
  • "My lawyer friend just bought a 7500 square foot house."
  • "My lawyer friend just bought a Porsche."
  • "My lawyer friend's kids won't speak to him because he's banging his smokeshow secretary."
  • "My lawyer friend says it's exactly like Law & Order."
 But if you really want some inspiration for your script, check out this hooker thong of an article and get drunk on self-righteous buzzwordin':
  • "Law is entering the age of the consumer and bidding adieu to the guild that enshrined lawyers and the myth of legal exceptionalism."
  • "Law is no longer solely about lawyers; law firms are not  the default provider of legal services; legal practice is no longer synonymous with legal delivery; the legal buy/sell balance of power has shifted from lawyers to legal buyers; lawyers do not  control both sides of legal buy/sell; and the function and role of most lawyers is changing as digital transformation has made legal consumers—not lawyers—the arbiters of value."
  • ""Knowing the law” is now a baseline that must be augmented by new skills that are seldom taught by law schools—data analytics, business basics, project management, risk management, and "people skills" to cite a few."
  •  "There is enormous opportunity to train students to better serve law’s “retail” segment. Tens of millions of new legal consumers would enter the market if there were more new, efficient delivery models that better leverage lawyer time utilizing technology, process, data, metrics, and a client-centric business structure."
It's like when you find a politician who agrees with you on a pet issue and then he keeps going and you try to get out of the room but some jackass has barricaded doors and you've found your own private hell.

In other words, it's perfect for law school persuasion.  Remember: these kids haven't gone through the process yet.  They still believe in fairness and that money-making systems can change because they morally should.  Dumb Millennials.

And what's really great about this multi-sided naivete is that the law school industrial complex can milk the fuck out of this fat cow. New faculty specialists in legal technology.  Hybrid, Frankenstein-spawned law/business management degrees.  Certificate programs in SQL and the Law.

But of course, nothing is more crucial to this "new" lawyering than experiential learning.  And what better way is there to learn the methods of venture capitalism than torching three years of time and a stack of cash on a risky venture?  Which brings me to my final selling point at the o' holiday table:
  • "And if it doesn't work out, it's not like Chapter 13 is the end of the world."

4 comments:

  1. —— The LSAT is way easier than the MCAT or GRE. It's not even curved or anything, and law schools are now taking people who score like a 150.

    A 130 is more like it. At least a quarter of the "students" at Cooley scored below 140. And most law schools draw at least a quarter of their students from the bottom half on the LSAT (http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2017/08/will-valparaiso-be-next-to-close.html).

    —— Rural places are so desperate for lawyers that they're actually paying people to practice law there now!

    Actually, there is some truth to this. A tiny town in North Dakota tried that a few years ago. I don't know whether it succeeded in attracting a lawyer. South Dakota also offers the Rural Attorney Recruitment Program, which may pay as much as $12k per year in exchange for a five-year commitment to work in a county with fewer than 10,000 people. There are lots of strings attached.

    —— Tens of millions of new legal consumers would enter the market if there were more new, efficient delivery models that better leverage lawyer time utilizing technology, process, data, metrics, and a client-centric business structure.

    Why, if I could charge $100 to each of ten million people, I'd have a billion dollars in a hurry! I'm going to enrol right away in the Appalachian School of Law!

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  2. "And if it doesn't work out, it's not like Chapter 13 can discharge your student debt."

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  3. "There is enormous opportunity to train students to better serve law’s “retail” segment..."

    Absolutely friggin' hilarious. My, my, my what a difference a few years makes. And the internet.

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  4. Law school deans have been over-promising and under-delivering for many, many decades. We all know the sell "Some of our graduates start jobs at big firms making over 150K per year!" and the truth behind the sales pitch: 90 percent of the class won't even be allowed to interview for those positions. That's just for the top ten percent. As for the rest of you, thanks for 150,000 dollars of tuition over three years, good bye and good luck. . .

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