LaVerne, Surely

Which school have I not thought about in a while, but epitomizes everything I love about legal education?  LaVerne.  LaVerne was in ABA accreditation dubiety before it was hip.  And it persisted.

In this Wall Street Journal article, we can see the type of leadership that has steered LaVerne like the PeQuod against the Moby Dickheads of law school reform.

“Nobody looks at what percentage of Ph.D.s end up as college professors, or what percentage of M.B.A.s achieve their goal,” said Gilbert Holmes, the dean of University of La Verne College of Law in California, who opposes the rule [re: minimum bar passage rates].

Gilbert should change his name to Sherlock, and obviously not because he's huffing snuff.

The article also features the classic "hey, that's racist!" argument, this time featuring Phyliss Craig-Taylor of N.C. Central.  But Holmes' argument, evaluating JDs against MBAs and PhDs in a totally mismatched, tone-deaf, and inapplicable comparison that discards any pretense of a control variable or uniform denominator, is inspired.

If we consider only the alleged failures, an un-barred JD is in much better shape than a "failed" PhD or MBA.  No one, to my knowledge, which is purposefully limited and not even bothering with a cursory Google search, has proven definitively that failed PhDs and MBAs still have a seat on the Million Dollar Express.  There's certainly no reason to think they would; how, one asks, would business acumen or advanced knowledge in a discrete area be even remotely as beneficial as learning the rule against perpetuities?

So regulators would be wise to not be so harsh on JD programs who can't get their graduates to pass the bar exam.  Sure, one could say that we need more oversight of worthless MBA and PhD programs or that JD programs should be evaluated on their own merits rather than to the paltry standards of other bogus educational ventures.  But that's fucking stupid.  People should be allowed to pursue whatever lottery-chance educational voyage they wish, be it JD, MBA, PhD, or something that the educational innovators make up in the future.

Announcing My Candidacy for Supreme Court Justice

With the apocalyptic election of Glorious Leader last week (if you can run a scam university, you can scam the electoral college!), I'm not only frantically scrubbing my internet footprint and spending significant amounts of time forming play-dough into consent-friendly penises (really, what else do you do with play-dough?) to soothe my millennial angst...

....I'm prepping my resume to apply for Supreme Court Justice.

Obviously, Judge Garland may as well go and hang with Harriet Miers at this point.  But beyond securing the Rule of Law by saving appointment of a new justice until 11 months after the vacancy was created, President-elect Trump has already announced that his Supreme Court will be more egalitarian.

In important ways, Mr. Trump’s candidates represent a sharp break from the current conservative justices, who all went to law school at Harvard or Yale and who all served on federal appeals courts in the Northeast or in California.

If the list has a main theme, it is that there are plenty of good judges who went to law school at places like Notre Dame, Marquette, the University of Georgia and the University of Miami.

That's right.  And some of you thought these were "second tier" schools!

In the context of this administration and this zany election, anyone has a chance and anything can happen.  That Trump is broadening the horizon of government isn't just an example of his Jacksonian populism, it's high time for the rest of us to grab life by the pussy.  As lawyers, we are a step ahead, already intimately familiar with getting gently pegged by the rousing boost of law school premiums.  But now, someone's finally found a bottle of lube and the keys to the handcuffs.

I'm announcing my candidacy for Supreme Court Justice.

No more is it about prestige or knowledge (was it ever?).  It's a circus contest sideshow, about as side-splitting as that satirical film where numerous moneyed interests are suddenly motivated to keep older Supreme Court  Justices functioning as long as possible until a Democrat can be reelected.  (Hilarity ensues).

So, to meet the Senate's concerns head-on here are my twitter opinions on the issues that matter as a Supreme Court Justice, in no particular order:

1.  The Constitution, love it!  But it was written by losers and shouldn't stop the Pres.from making great deals!
2.  Scam on.

That's my platform.  I look forward to donning the black robe - which, if my Facebook feed is any indication, we might all be doing soon anyway just before we drink the punch and board the mothership.

But until that time, I want to tell all the law school students of America not to despair at the President-Elect.  The worst case scenario is that he has opened up even bigger doors for 95% of you.  The best case scenario is that we've boldly launched into a brave new world of endless lawsuits over presidential authority, new slander legislation, mass deportations, media regulations, sexual assault sentencing guidelines, federal zoning law preemption, conflicts of interest, executive branch immunity, you name it.

If you thought Donald Trump was litigious as a private citizen, imagine the exponential increase when he's sitting atop the most important executive branch on the planet.

In any event, justice might have taken a bong hit, but the prospects for the legal field in general almost certainly have improved in the last week.  Don't let the pessimists drag your mind to their level. And if you value sound reasoning that gives appropriate deference to moneyed and exploitative interests, vote me, the LSTC, onto the Supreme Court.

Editorial: LSTC Endorses Hillary Clinton for President

Never before has the LSTC endorsed a candidate for President of the United States.  We may never do it again.  That's your trigger that this shit's serious.  A call to action.  What action?  Uh...deposit money in the box?

But today, November 9, 2016, we feel compelled to join almost every major media outlet on the planet by endorsing Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the next President of the United States.  The last polls before the election suggest that she will win in a relative landslide well before we have published this piece.  The media does not lead its consumers astray, and imagine by the time you read this piece, Donald Trump has politely conceded.  But please do not let that stop our endorsement.

Simply put, as we all know, legal education is the United States benefits from a continuation of the elitist status quo, an entrusting of the means of education and loan regulation to the existing moneyed parties and executive leaders.  Hillary Clinton, herself a lawyer married to a lawyer, politically embodies everything that has worked about the law school scam, including the gracious acceptance of wholesale, uncritical endorsement from media outlets such as this one.

Scandals?  Corruption?  Shit, who doesn't have a scandal or two?  Most of them are simply a distraction developed by hostile agents infected with the personality disorder of being an asshole.

Note that her primary rival, Donald Trump, is almost equally worthy of our nation's tenth-highest office (normally there are nine Supreme Court justices, although presently justice somehow functions with only eight).  In particular, the LSTC unequivocally praises his leadership with ventures such as Trump University.  That amoral siphoning of funds from hopeful lemmings portends an excellent tenure running the scam o' scams.  Likewise, his particular brand of capitalism - ostentatious self-aggrandizement, brash misogyny, aggressive defense litigation, strategic use of the tax and bankruptcy codes - would find allies on many a law school board.

Yet, when it comes to this particular race, we feel Secretary and - let's go ahead and say it - President-Elect Clinton has slightly more of what it takes to become the leader of the pseudo-free world and, therefore, enforcer of justice and profitable pedagogy.

Just as we jumped onto the law school bandwagon at the perfect time to continue supporting a fantastic and necessary venture as others started to become skeptical, we have chosen to throw our support behind Hillary at the precise moment that fringe elements of the media show signs of abandoning her.  Our timing and track record on this front is as unimpeachable as the decision to open a post-recession law school or acquire a legal education in 2016.

Regardless, we are proud to give Hillary the first endorsement in the history of the LSTC, and not a moment too soon.  You go get 'em, Ma'am, and scam on.

Accredited Law Schools Go Green: Opt Not to Create Necessary Compliance Paperwork Until Audited

It is a truth universally acknowledged that convoluted, expensive regulatory systems are designed not to protect consumers or market fairness, but rather to ensure that the larger, more shrewd companies - those able to selectively shave compliance as close to the bone as possible or, better yet, ignore it altogether - will thrive over more honest ones.  Competition on price, quality, or convenience simply isn't enough; the Game needed a new twist, and that twist was to implant an obstacle course of regulation.

So it's no surprise that a few prestigious ABA schools flunked an audit of employment reporting.  Shit, we should be looking skeptically - or giving ludicrously high praise - to the half that achieved 95% compliance.  The whole point of an audit is that entities fail them.  Why else would one go looking except to find something?  You don't see me showing a pan in the river just to say the water's clean; no, I want some fucking gold.

And gold is this, my friends:

Just five out of 10 reviewed schools posted compliance rates of 95 percent or more. A sixth school missed the mark by a hair, posting a compliance rate of 94.8 percent. Two more came in at 86 percent, and a final two were found to have compliance rates in the mid-50 percent range. One of the lowest scorers appeared to have created supporting documentation after it was told it had been chosen for audit, the memo said.

That's not poor compliance.  That's flaunting.

Holy hand grenades, ABA, these places aren't IBM or Monsanto.  They're in one industry and deal with a few hundred lines on a spreadsheet for each class.  Most of them have been voluntarily keeping such records for years. 

On the menu of difficulty for institutional compliance, the ABA's regulations are saccharine baby food.  Considering that it's incredibly easy for most law schools to hire highly skilled professionals collecting that lifetime lottery premium, one would think they could handle compliance questions over an after-work beer and that someone just wouldn't fucking ignore creating supporting documentation until after the notice of audit shows up.

"So, Carl, this isn't, like, legal advice or anything, but, I mean, really, you don't have to create any of this stuff until they're going to audit you.  I mean, otherwise you're just wasting energy and paper - let's try and run a green law school, you know?  If the ABA really wants us to have this shit, they'll ask for it."
"But what if we get busted?"
"One of two things will happen.  Either everyone else does it, too, if they're smart like us - then it's an industry problem and nothing happens.  Or we're it, and then we fire the temp who already left, pretend that we were confused about what we were supposed to have, we're a footnote in a memo, and next time around we're bound to improve." 
"Thinking like this is why we're one of the top 150 law schools in America."

Plus, the ABA is going out of its way to assist in developing defense arguments:

“Our documentation requirements are quite specific and some think complex, so it is reasonable that in the first year of this review, there may be confusion over what we require,” Adams wrote. “The two schools that appear to have created their documentation after the fact raise more serious problems, but they may also be able to explain that what we perceive is not accurate.”

Imagine a federal prosecutor putting that disclaimer in its press release on a murder or massive RICO case.  You could throw a textbook in a law school and hit ten people who understand ejusdem generis.  But suddenly it's herculean to check the right boxes and keep a file?

And there, too, is the redoubtable Barry C., opining that the issues were mostly minor, the underlying data appears accurate, we've always been at war with Eastasia, they're not expanding the scope of audits, and - to this blog's understanding chagrin - names will not released.

So, sadly, we will never know the institution or institutions that apparently didn't even bother to have supporting paperwork until after they learned of the audit. 

But know this:  you, John Doe Law School, are an inspiration to us all.  May the ABA bless you and keep you, and make its face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you, may it lift its countenance onto you, and grant you lemmings for all the days to come.

Amen, and scam on.

The Eerie Mathematics of Indiana Tech's Closure

Indiana Tech Law School graduated twenty students last year.  It has "lost" twenty million dollars from the University.  Accident?  Not in this clusterfuck of a world.

Because of the Million Dollar Premium(c), each graduate of Indiana Tech will reap an earnings premium of one million dollars.

Thus, the University, in its magnanimity and beneficence, has gifted the State of Indiana the benefits of a labor pool with an increased education, almost dollar for dollar.  Never before have we seen such a direct, unmistakable example of an investment by educational institutions translating into direct economic benefit by graduates.

Twenty million invested.  Twenty million benefit to society.  That's math.

But that's not all.  The graduates are not the only people who have benefited from Indiana Tech.  There are also current students who, while they have yet to graduate, have learned much from the professors who sacrificed lucrative practice salaries to teach the next generation.  They at least get partial premiums, valued conservatively at $666,666.66 and $333,333.33.  More math.

Those extra benefits come with no additional "loss."  More math.  Fort Wayne feelings of constitutional justice dropping precipitously.  Also math.  Graph math.  Graph make linear version of frowny face.

When people say that Indiana Tech's imminent closure cost lots of money, I call bullshit.  They're not quitting because they're behind.  They're quitting right about the moment they've made a net positive economic benefit to the world, regardless of what the balance sheet says.  They close solely because of calumny leading to low "enrollment," cost-benefit "analysis," and bar passage "statistics."

What's truly scary this Halloween is how callously people not only disregard the isolated economic benefits law schools bestow, but completely ignore the role law schools play in social life, like increasing diversity in the lily-white profession law schools created.  Why are you so damned racist?  I can hear you, cracker, claiming my interjection of racism is a suddenly shameless and disgusting red herring attempt to gloss over the "real numbers," but I would really prefer not to be told how to think by the legal field equivalent of a Klansmen, thank you very much, DW Griffith. We were only a few hundred law schools away from radically changing the Hoosier state from a Mike Pence-electing overalls grease stain to an enlightened center of global culture and legal thought.  *This close* you selfish assholes.

And if you think this blog posting reads like a Baghdad Bob rant while there's a line of M1 Abrams  tanks in the background and the fat lady is singing with a megaphone in his goddamned ear, you should know that right now I am so high on mescaline that I've gone Syd Barrett on the world.  I found the glassine baggie in this board room, Fort Wayne, Indiana, a few years back.  Next stop, gonna build me law schools in Myrtle Beach, Mobile, Reading, Shreveport, Anchorage, Peoria, Kalamazoo, Duluth, by gum, I'll put them all on the legal education map with unique and innovative models never heretofore seen.

Drink that South Texas Lemonade

Creative dispute resolution is a key gun in the lawyer's arsenal.  So who better than the Artists Formerly Known as South Texas to fire away?

As the astute reader will recall, South Texas was denied changing its name to the Houston College of Law.  Well, when life gets you lemons, maniacally shoot them until you've got a puddle of lead-tainted lemonade.

The law school is devising a new name that will honor a benefactor and include the word “Houston” at the end, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Dearest Benefactor: Congratulations!  You were clearly our second option, but now your name is forever associated with the greatness of a top three [tier] law school!  Also, while talking about things that totally aren't shit sandwiches, there's Whataburger coupons enclosed!

While obviously the LSTC is disappointed that Joe Schmoe Law School - Houston rejected its numerous options without even bothering to pay a reasonable hourly rate for top-notch consulting services, the ability to quickly pivot after getting one's clock cleaned in federal court is a high virtue, indeed.

It would be unbecoming for the law school to continue fighting, reconsidering, appealing, etc., all the while continuing to try and lure bait with the old South Texas name - while clearly the school is not in south Texas!  It may have worked for 90 years, but doggone it, times have changed for the law school industry.

You have to be innovative, and cooler heads prevailed in (not really) south Texas.  As various other law schools have proven, you can run the act with any range of names, including random people no one has heard of, particularly in a large city.

The shotgun lemonade may be sweet, but cashing student loan checks without worrying about paying lawyers absurd amounts that might actually justify student loan investment?  So sweet the coma from superhyperglycemic shock will leave a permanent smile on the face

Houston, I mean South Texas, We Have a Problem

Remember how South Texas College of Law was trying to change its name to Houston College of Law and the University of Houston threw a legalistic fit and filed for an "injunction" (whatever the fuck that is)?

As it turns out, sometimes courts can actually give fairly quick relief (federal judiciary shortage, my ass - although they should increase hiring of qualified law graduates!) and the Houston College of Law has been ordered to change its name back to South Texas College of Law in spite of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the First Law of Scam.  TaxProf has solid coverage and original sourcists like me can read the actual memorandum order here posted on UH's site in the fashion of exquisite braggarts. Good bedtime reading, particularly the following:

Finally,  the  Court  cannot  help  but  note  the  peculiar  context  of Defendant’s  contention that no irreparable harm will occur from their infringement.  Defendant insists that the findings of the Simpson Report were the impetus for its recent name change.  The Report found that “the most  frequently  mentioned  reason”  that  respondents  were  in  favor  of  a  name  change  was  that “‘South  Texas  College  of  Law’  is  often confused  with  other  schools,  particularly Texas Southern University.” It must be with a great sense of irony that Defendant now attempts to downplay the effects of the same type of affiliation confusion that prompted Defendant to spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebrand itself.

In other words, the Court praised STCL's zealous advocacy abilities.

Crucially, the Court did not find that STCL intentionally sought to infringe and create market confusion.  This is curious, because it's fairly clear to myself and most other law school sycophants that STCL knew exactly what it was doing and angled themselves to have an excellent excuse for their behavior.  That the judiciary resisted putting such a conclusion in print is a testament to STCL's abilities as a law school.

NOW the problem is what the fuck do we name STCL?  As STCL observes "South Texas" doesn't mean Houston (though they could open a branch in McAllen or Laredo!!!) to everyone and there's market confusion with Texas Southern, the HBCU also located in Houston for some reason.

It's like they didn't have complete maps of Texas all those years ago.

SO, let's re-name STCL!

My initial suggestions:

• Houston Texas College of Law 
• Houston Summit College of Law
• Houston Superlawyer Academy
• Houston Rocket College of Law
• Houston Astronomical College of Law
• Houston Oil Law College, Brought to You By [insert company here]
• Not the U. of Houston Law Center (parody account)
• John Marshall Law College - Houston
• Houston-[DONOR NAME HERE!] College of Law
• Texas Gulf Coast College of Law
• Southeast Texas College of Law
• Rice University Law School (if phone call successful for once)
• Rice College of Law ("No, no, we named it after Houston's history of rice consumption!")
• Southwestern Law School
• The Tom C. Clark College of Law - Houston
• The Sam Houston College of Law
• The John Adams College of Law
• Big Texas Lawyer Academy of Houston
• Houston Texas Ranger Law School
• Baker Botts Entry Level Hiring Program
• Apollo Legal Academy - Houston
• Houston Permanent Assurance
• Houston Justice Production Corporation
• Houston Educational Inter-Generational Holdings Transfer System, LLC ("HEIGHTS Law School")

But of course democracy is en vogue everywhere except the American electoral system.  C.f. Trump, Donald, Whatever He's Saying Today, [Today's Date].  What are YOUR suggestions, legal scholar readership?

Forget Nebraska: Meet These 25 Random Metro Areas Waiting to Make Lawyers Rich

Something called GoodCall ("What is law school, Alex?") has put out a delightfully quotable list of random metropolitan areas that seem pretty darned good landing spots for new lawyers.

GoodCall analyzed more than 900 metropolitan and "micropolitan" areas based on four criteria to come up with the rankings: average lawyer salary; job availability and competition; housing prices; and amenities, such as restaurants and arts and entertainment venues.

Four criteria for 900 separate geographic areas?  Sounds as infallible as US News and the Gospel of S & M.

I don't want to steal thunder and publish the whole list, but I would be remiss not to point out some highlights:

• Los Angeles.  Yes, that Los Angeles, the one with the museum-quality collection of law schools rivaling only that found in Boston, NYC, DC, and Chicago, indisputably the epitome of mass legal education west of the Mississippi and east of Tokyo and it's still a great place for new lawyers.
•  An inordinate amount of these locations appear to have super-affordable "third rate" law schools located right in the metro area: Orlando, LA, Nashville, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Houston, Tulsa, Charlotte, and Naples Motherfuckin' Florida, the home of Ave Maria, God's law school.
• The Number 1 slot goes to Hot Springs, Arkansas, the 35k hometown of Bill Clinton and Billy Bob Thornton, and no doubt completely open to lawyer tourists overstaying their welcome in the middle of Arkansas to compete with Arkansas and Arkansas-Little Rock grads.

Clearly, there's no law school scam if a major, prestigious economic publication can find twenty-five diverse areas where being a law graduate kicks ass among nine hundred.  Kids, if you're not going to get a JD, move to Great Falls, Stephenville, or Centralia, and swim in the vault of golden coins, someone else will.


You don't even have to use the imagination that you're missing.  They fucking made a list for you.  So, uh, "go to Fort Collins!"

Salesman Optimistic for Future of Product While Wanting Rivals to Die

From the ABA Journal:

Ninety-two percent of those responding to the survey said they are feeling more optimistic about the state of education than they did a year ago...

Ninety-two percent - just like how ninety-two percent of their recent graduates acquire high-paying jobs within months of graduation!  But:

Despite their optimism, 65 percent agreed it would be a good idea if at least a few law schools closed.

At first blush, this made me angry.  Law schools close?  Aren't they reading the newsletter?

When trying to spread the immaculate gospel in exchange for a small tithe of lifetime income streams to repay a third party after the church has spent the spoils on new organs and communion Cabernet, it's not a great idea to close churches.  And you're sure as shit not going to do it with ninety-two percent optimism and million-dollar JDs.

But then I remembered that law school admissions personnel thrive on being selfish Machiavellians with an inflated sense of their own institution's importance in the legal industry.  Naturally, they would want the competition to close a few other schools to increase their own profit margins.  These things are like Subways.  They're all necessary to fulfill the demand for $5 foot-long sandwiches that taste like something a school cafeteria made to remind the children of life's suckage, but surely the owners would love to close other branches down to broaden their own sphere of influence.

Totally makes sense.  But despite these admissions people being greedy capitalists, I'd like to remind everyone that they have the best interests of prospective students at heart.  Were they not so optimistic about the law's future, surely they would reduce spots or voluntarily vote to close their own institutions.

Also: while the LSTC's official policy is against sexual harassment and assault of all kinds, please feel free to grab law school by the pussy, 0Ls.  You're that special that she'll let you grip a hold and... well, where it goes from there is your own personal educational voyage.  Just make sure you sign the IOU on the night stand.  92% optimism for enterprising students who latch on to the genitals.  It's a non-scientific poll of a purely subjective measure, but we're not curing cancer here; we're making your life great again.

LSTC Pseudo-Live Blogging the VP Debate

The first edition was so popular, the LSTC is back with commentary on the VP Debate!

9:03 pm EST:  Debate is ON!

9:49 pm EST:  Life is empty and meaningless.  I am watching two milquetoast villains from poorly written 1980s comedies debate to find out which one might better fit in America's least-important important job behind an immediately unpopular President.  There's Mike Pence, the cold businessman secretly plotting to bulldoze Camp Racist Indian Name because he wants to build a squirrel slaughterhouse that produces cheaper, fraudulent hot dogs.  There's Tim Kaine, the hyper, pocket-protector guy who sits next to our hero on a sputtering Greyhound bus carrying him to his love just moments she marries Total Douche and Kaine just... keeps... talking...  There is no God.  There is only the bleak vacuum of dead space.  We are hurtling on a small, insignificant rock moving rapidly, accelerating, even, towards the still death of all life upon it.  This moderator is like a schoolteacher who realized five minutes after class started that she wasted years of her life studying for this particular profession and there are only two students in the room; futility is setting in and the ideals of youth are dying.  Values, morality, patriotism.  These things are illusions, phantoms of the mentally ill who refuse to see the universe as devoid of real knowledge or truth, a grand game of planetary charades.  This is where our spiraling, winding roller coaster of a pathetic existence has dumped us with terrible nausea.  Tim Kaine's eyebrows were produced in the laboratory that makes evil Muppets, Mike Pence's facial expressions were made by a renegade military unit. This cannot possibly be a rational, meaningful existence.  We are the aborted punchline of a cosmic joke abandoned halfway through and told with no timing. I just don't care if Mike Pence succeeds at ruining the childhood memories of Kurt Russell and Rick Moranis.  Part of me hopes Michael J. Fox is stuck listening to Tim Kaine forever blather about 9/11 and Russia and Donald Trump's tax returns while Elizabeth Shue goes ahead and marries Judge fucking Reinhold.  Does that make me a sadist instead of a nihilist?  Who gives a shit?  It just - it just doesn't matter.  I wish someone would have partial birth abortioned this debate, like five minutes beforehand the producer has an areligious epiphany and kills the power because the world has no intrinsic meaning and you might as well just get drunk on bumwine until the sweet solitude of dreamless sleep.  Instead, we get the height of spirited American pointlessness: two idiots chosen to be lukewarm sidekicks talking about policies they will have absolutely no control over unless someone dies or has to quit the most powerful job in the world.  They look quite dapper in their red and blue ties.  Millions of years ago, dinosaurs walked across what is now this country, and if they came up with anything this sociopolitically stupid, they deserved every flaming meteor that fell on their reptilian backs.  Millions of years hence, everything known now will hopefully turn to dust, perhaps maybe fossilized at best, but most certainly lost to contemporary memory, and likely for the better, because were this display to become some of lingering memorial to human existence on planet Earth, it would drive all intelligent life to instant suicide seconds after awakened consciousness, because fuck me this sucks.

9:51 pm EST:  Why not go to law school?  Law school can provide meaning to your otherwise dead and dreary life by opening the sacred rivers of justice and putting you in one bitchin' canoe!  Tim Kaine (Harvard) and Mike Pence (Indiana) once dipped their mighty oars in the sparkling water, and look where they are today!  Don't worry about the tuition being so high - that's only so we can give you massive savings savings savings!