Rutgers-1 and Rutgers-2 to Combine Forces to make Rutgers-Awesome

Remember Captain Planet, when the kids with the rings combined forces to have the guy show up and save the environment?

Well, Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Whatever are apparently joining up to fight the forces of evil and keep recycling lemmings together.

As long as the Valvoline Dean and Seton Hall are still getting theirs and Rutgers doesn't actually lay anybody off, I don't care. If anything, it might help boost the prestige of The State University of New Jersey to have one unified law school. I don't even remember which Rutgers it was that Paul Campos exposed as committing fraud of some silly, negligible kind and Kyle McEntee filed one of his bitchy little schoolgirl complaints against. Of course, one must ask why they ever had two law schools to begin with, but the important thing is that everyone remains well-fed and that they keep spitting out toileteers to represent every indigent person in the garden state, and there's a lot of them.

The dean of Rutgers-Newark seemed to imply that faculty cuts would not happen and that cost savings will be in areas that won't really save a dime:

A merger could provide cost savings such as by eliminating redundancies in library holdings or journal subscriptions. Pooled resources could lower tuitions or increase scholarship funding, said John J. Farmer Jr., dean of Rutgers School of Law–Newark.

Thank god. There's no way this unified school could dare function without two Law and Cardboard teachers!

South Carolina looking at building new law school building

Downsize? Like I've told you before, law schools DO NOT CARE. They are cash machines that cannot turn off the spending of the lemming winnings (I got rhymes, bro).

From The State (not the comedy troupe):

USC hopes to open the new law school by 2016 — a year before its 150th anniversary — in the block bounded by Gervais, Pickens, Senate and Bull streets, officials said.

Trustees are expected to vote on a financial package for the new law school at a meeting at USC Aiken today.

The school has raised $17 million in donations through the end of 2012 and received $15 million from state funding and bonds. USC projects seeking $35 million in additional state revenue bonds.

Oh, and let's not forget another fun source of funding - alums in positions of government authority!

The law school is set to receive $2 million from a legal settlement announced earlier this month by S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson, a USC law alum.

How refreshingly Valvoline Dean of this southern public!

Of course, South Carolina is the only public law school in the state, and the only school that isn't flagrantly bogus, so I guess they figure they can spend forever and not have to worry about ever losing their natural market. On the flipside, the school is in debt and South Carolina has no need for more lawyers.

Know how this ends up? Hint: the law school wins and winds up with a $100 million building.

VICTORY! Goodbye, Paul Campos

For those who still haven't heard the last faint cries of death of the scamblog movement, Paul Campos has QUIT Inside the Law School Scam. He was the most notable detractor from our efforts to indenture every liberal arts graduate with easy-peasy federal debt that helps us buy caviar, but now he has realized the futility of his ways and retreated back into the relative obscure silence of academia.

Paul, at next year's convention, no lobster for you. You've been a very bad boy these last two years, making it easy as possible for lemmings to find a reason to say no to the ever-versatile (snicker) law degree. But we'll welcome you back to the club, guy.

Now someone just has to get Brian Tamanaha to stop acting so damn intellectually superior. 

A high-five again to UberThug a/k/a Brian Leiter for his efforts at discrediting the Colorado Bozo, andthe happy little barn elf is dancing at his foe's slaughtered corpse. A ditty in his honor, h/t to the Barenaked Ladies:

"Brian Leiter"
Surfed the internet plain
Nine-thirty on a tuesday night, 
Just to check out the late-night 
Scambloggin'. 
Call it impulsive 
Call it compulsive, 
Call it insane; 
But when I'm indebted
I just can't 
Stop. 

It's a matter of instinct 
It's a matter of conditioning 
It's a matter of fact. 

You can call me Pavlov's 
Dog, 
Ring a bell and I'll enroll - 
How'd you like that? 
Mr. Campos, I believe
He's a worthless demagogue

'cause right now I'm 
Callin' him out
Just like Brian Leiter did 
Well I am 
Callin' him out 
Just like Brian Leiter did.

Utah Law Impervious To Economic Forces. Go Mormons!

Tim Anderson is a Utah lawyer who serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Utah. Unlike many wealthy practicing attorneys who serve on such things, Tim isn't oblivious to the scam. Oh, no, he's familiar with the spate of law school criticism. But this stalwart shiller has no problems setting it aside and shilling for his Utes: 

The University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law has introduced innovations that have allowed it to avoid many of the pitfalls detailed in [critical] articles....

In the last six months, the college of law’s efforts have resulted in four top 20 rankings....

Utah law students contributed 47,375 hours of formal public service through a nearly unlimited array of pro bono, clinical and think tank opportunities....

[T]he college of law has increased scholarship funding in the last seven years by an astounding 288 percent....

The graduating class of 2011 was 28th in the country in long-term, J.D.-required employment....

We are committed to helping our graduates address a wide variety of unmet legal needs....

All that economoic mumbo jumbo about the American legal market being saturated and there being fundamental changes? Well, that don't apply to us Utah people because LOOK AT THE PRO BONO HOURS AND SCHOLARSHIP MONEY.

As a real working lawyer at a mid-sized firm, Mr. Anderson likely has many superior uses for his time. To spend it penning brochure propaganda is a task necessitating a thanks from anyone who cares about bilking the next generation of schmoes. Mr. Anderson is likely an intelligent man and I highly doubt he actually believes the University of Utah is "above" all that nasty-wasty behavior that's enriches the Lord class, especially based on slapping some new programs on the roster and throwing statistics and bogus rankings at the wall.

Utah projects to have 300 job openings for lawyers every year with 400+ people passing the Utah bar exam, while Utah still charges 18k/36k for instate/out-of-state respectively. So...Utah's doingsomething right.

Why New Rankings Kick Ass

So, you know how the National Jurist had these new rankings come out, and it turned out that the rankings were, well:

in academic speak: unreliable/lacking sound methodology
in common sense speak: horseshit

??

Well, it turns out that doesn't stop our nation's Finest Academic Institutions from citing them in marketing material. Cue the Norman (Ok.) Transcript:

The University of Oklahoma College of Law has been recognized in the top 15 percent of “Best Law Schools” in the nation by National Jurist magazine.

“We are extremely proud of this recent report naming OU as one of the nation’s premier law schools based on the objective criteria used in the study,” said OU President David Boren. 

Date of the article? February 23, long after it became an open secret that the rankings were bogus and not based on objective criteria.

But will the lemmings dig deeper and look under the hood? Nope, daddy-o, they're not critical thinkers yet; they're merely out to find belief reinforcement and seek out reasons to actually attend a dump like OU. They seek and they shall find. Any belief OU and its peers have in the pursuit of truth goes flying out the window faster than a gentleman's belongings when The Wife discovers The Truth. Thankfully, The Lemmings don't find out The Truth until the checks have been cashed as it's "CAVEAT EMPTOR!"

Bottom line, the more "objective" rankings, the better for the scammers, as they can cherry pick which ones they trumpet, knowing students are too dumb to go poking around.

ABA Solicits Proposals, Not Publicized Until After the Unsolicited Deadline Passes

What if you wanted to "change" something, but forgot to tell anyone until after an internal deadline passed?

That's exactly what the ABA did with their recent call for proposals to find a new way to "audit" post-grad employment numbers. From the National Law Journal:

The American Bar Association is in the market for a law school data cop.

The organization's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has put out a request for proposals for a process by which it can better police the postgraduate employment data that law schools release. 

Later:

The request for proposals went out in early February, but the ABA hasn't yet had any takers, Currier said. 

Uh, oops, it appears they forgot to publicize it. There are dozens of places they could have advertised this call for proposals, including Law School Transparency, ITLSS, the NLJ, the Wall St. Journal, or on a prominent location associated with the ABA's Task Force on the Future of Legal Education (which has seen a slew of comments after being publicized). Instead, it's just been sitting on a random spot on the ABA's website.

If you look at the call for proposals, a possible motivation for waiting comes up:

Deadline for unsolicited bidders who
located this RFP on the ABA website to
submit qualifying information.

Unsolicited
Bidders

February 19, 2013

The same page says they sent it to "selected bidders" on the date of issue (February 1, 2013).

This is faux democracy 101: open a process to the public at large, don't bother telling anyone, and later on claim that no one did anything about it. They now have a ready excuse to reject superior proposals for data auditing so that there's "change" instead of legitimate change.

Remember, kids, the ABA and the law schools always win. They are experts at making sure the common lawyer has no voice and the law school elitists continue to profit off you and your precious student loan dollars, and experts at pre-generating responses to future criticism. "But see, look, we put out a call for proposals for checking the bogus stats and no one submitted anything."

God, shit like this makes a toady's weekend.