Hide the Children: New York Times Blows Lid on Legal Education Scandal

As reported by the experts at Business Insider, the New York Times has reported that across the country there are people who take the bar examination without even having graduated law school!

The apprenticeships, available as an option in only several states, are referred to as law office study and the participants called law readers. Those who choose law office study avoid the debt burdening their counterparts who pay law school tuition to receive law degrees, reports The Times. They also gain valuable experience as members of law offices, where they get to work in courtrooms and with clients rather than studying in classrooms.

The elements of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress are:

1. An intentional or reckless act
2. That is extreme and outrageous
3. That causes actual damages 

WELL... they're doing it intentionally, it's obviously extreme and outrageous, and America's best law schools (now with over two hundred!) are losing revenue from these thieves.  Someone call Kurzon Strauss, I've got a red-hot lawsuit to file.

How in the hell can you learn to be a proper lawyer without studying in a classroom with law professors?  If you could learn the law by going to court every day, we'd just make the lemmings pay to take care of our traffic tickets.  But exploiting these other would-be legal scholars by making them to do office work under the guise of "reading" the law (where better to read the law than a classroom in a proper juris doctor curriculum?) is simply exploitative.

Even if only 0.1 percent of students take this course, that's still 45-50 students, which is like $1.5 - 2.0M in full-freight revenue being robbed from law schools.  In an age where the nation's future legal sector is threatened by declining interest by greedy charlatan millennials who may actually care about paying debt back (5th Commandment, people; 5th Commandment), having any course of action that deprives American law schools of students is a threat to the entire judicial branch of government, which is an essential safeguard of freedom and such.

Do you know anyone who wouldn't sue over $1.5M?  Me neither, and I'm networked.  Let's do it and go for punitive damages.

Suffolk is your Brethren in the Law. You Must Support It.

Suffolk Law has an advertising campaign boldly and proudly announcing that Suffolk has produced more members of the current Massachusetts state bench than Harvard, Yale, and Columbia combined.  "They offer tradition," the ad continues completely fairly and rationally and persuasively, "we offer results."

This is exactly the type of advertising that law schools need.  It's truthful, proud, and properly informs prospective students about the benefits of attending that particular college instead of more "prestigious" institutions.  You'll make a great trial court judge!

Of course, the cynics at Above the Law have a disdain for blue collar law schools and decided to take it out on the Sanctity of Law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

As our tipster put it: “Sure, the President, six of nine Supreme Court Justices, and the Governor may all have attended Harvard. But Suffolk Law has Worcester Probate Court on lock, bitches.”
...
No disrespect to the Massachusetts judicial system, but Harvard and Yale may not be competing with Suffolk over that plum.
...
Apologists will suggest that “maybe some students really want a school to provide regional opportunities,” which would be a fair statement if (a) you thought Harvard grads couldn’t get Massachusetts state judgeships...

INSOLENCE!  How dare they directly insult the hard working state court judges of Massachusetts who allow liberty to flow freely and who use their Suffolk law degree on a daily basis to serve justice on Constitutionally-sound imaginary plates.

Cue Paul Dacier, President of the Boston Bar Association:

ATL mocks the school for its pride in this achievement, suggesting that becoming a state judge is not a high honor. The vitriol in this editorial was a shock and made us think hard enough about the issue that we feel compelled to respond. Any attack on the judiciary is an attack on our society and the foundational structure of our government.
...
[T]ake a step back to think about whether we should be castigating a law school for trying to combat the declining law school application rates; consider whether sweeping assumptions about the caliber of its students and graduates are required or even accurate; and remember the landmark decisions and advancements in the law that our state court judges have made because their judgment carries great weight. We should not be spreading malice, but rather support for our brethren in the law.

In syllogism form:

Premise A.  State court judges are really important and worthy of respect.

Premise B.  Suffolk and schools like it can provide, and have produced, graduates who have done such stuff 

.-----------------------------------

Conclusion.  If you're criticizing Suffolk's advertising that includes the Massachusetts judiciary, you're assaulting the judiciary, being malicious, and insufficiently supporting your brethren in the law.

Please, scambloggers, consider the harm you do.  Suffolk law is only trying to reel in gullible mid-range LSAT scorers who are applying some logical fallacy to an incomplete factual scenario.  All they're trying to do is combat the declining application rate.  You should show more support for your brethren.

And, friends, Suffolk is your brethren.  Embrace it.  Love it.  Pay a tuition deposit for fall.

Arkansas Prefers its JD Advantage

A position in this category is one for which the employer sought an individual with a J.D., and perhaps ever required a J.D., or for which the J.D. provided a demonstrable advantage in obtaining or performing the job, but which does not itself require bar passage or an active law license or involve practicing law.  Examples of positions for which a J.D. is an advantage include a corporate contracts administrator, [ADR] specialist, government regulator analyst, FBI agent, and accountant.  Also included might be jobs in personnel or human resources, jobs with investment banks, jobs with consulting firms, jobs doing compliance work in business, jobs in law firm professional development, and jobs in law school career services offices...It is an indicator that a position does not fall into this category if a J.D. is uncommon among persons holding such a position.

ABA Standard 509 form language, 2013.

“We have so many students who graduate from our law school and stay in their current careers,” [Arkansas-Little Rock dean Schwartz] said [in response to the school's 51% employment percentage]. Or the UALR students might have gone to law school to advance their current careers and weren’t interested in becoming attorneys, he said.
...
At the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville, the employment percentage was 68.2 for the class of 2013, slightly lower than the class of 2012, which had 70.5 percent employed after nine months, according to the ABA. 

Stacy Leeds, law dean at UA, said she prefers to use the number of graduates who were employed in positions requiring bar passage and where having a Juris Doctor degree provides an advantage in obtaining or performing the job, which was 84 percent for UA’s class of 2013, down from 85.6 percent the prior year.

"Arkansas Law Grads Still Finding Tight Market."  (emphasis added).

Number of Arkansas graduates who found "JD Advantage" jobs from 2010 - 2013:  77
Number of Arkansas graduates who found lawyer jobs in 100+ attorney law firms from 2010-2013: 15
Number of Arkansas-LR graduates who found "JD Advantage" jobs from 2010-2013:  64
Number of Arkansas-LR graduates who found lawyer jobs in 100+ attorney law firms from 2010-2013: 0

Source:  Law School Transparency and a slide rule.

Now, there's only one conclusion to draw from these bits of information and that's as follows:  Arkansas has an awesome climate for the magic of the JD Advantage job.  Despite having a relatively small "BigLaw" presence and placing a very small percentage of the state's new lawyers in such jobs, its law schools still manage to place a high amount of graduates in jobs such as accountant, compliance officer, investment banks, and law firm professional development.

Just think of it, friends:  a place where there is little in the way of large law firms that still has a booming business climate such that the local law schools placed 141 students in such jobs over the last five years.  Little Rock, apparently, is a fount for consultants and FBI agents.  Or maybe they export them and people elsewhere love hiring Arkansas and Arkansas-Little Rock graduates for their JD Preferred/Advantage work.  Who knows?!  Regardless, it's impressive that such schools with such a small segment of BigLaw placement are stepping up and landing their graduates in "JD Preferred/Advantage" jobs at a comparable rate to states in much more favorable markets.

Bottom line is that if you're wanting to nab that law degree to make your career awesomer, but maybe don't want to work in a large law firm, move to Arkansas!  Plenty of analyst and consultant and similar jobs in Fort Smith and Jonesboro, and I would bet very few of them are where "a J.D. is uncommon among persons holding such a position."

Buffalo Roaming "Very Well" from Wall Street to Main Street

For a university named after a city named after a species of quadroped that proved incredibly endangerable in the face of technological change, University of/at Buffalo/SUNY/whatever graduates are tearing it up:

For all U.S. law schools, NALP reported that 84.5 percent of graduates from the Class of 2013 were either employed or enrolled in an academic degree program nine months after graduation.  The UB Law School’s figure is 84.1 percent, very close to the national average, with 190 of 233 UB Law School 2013 grads securing employment within nine months after graduating, says Lisa M. Patterson, UB Law School’s associate dean for career services.

Shoot that from a train, you cynics.  As the piece goes on to explain, Buffalo is even better than most law schools because it has more people employed in traditional law jobs (69% v. 64%) and doesn't hire its own graduates and places more people in further graduate study programs (almost double the national average!).  Doing very well, indeed.

“The quality of our educational program combined with our affordability enables our graduates to enter practices from Wall Street to Main Street.”

Ms. Patterson just may win a lifetime supply of Valvoline this year at the Christmas banquet.  That's a beautiful soundbite.  Poetry even.

The median reported salary at Buffalo for 2012 was around $50k.  With a 75% salary at $65k, they're obviously placing well on Wall Street.  As all right-thinking people know, the estimated debts (see LST's costs page) ranging in the 60 - 180k range can be easily paid back with the above-national-average employment prospects making that median $50k reported salary.  Investment in education is poetry, too.

This, too, is poetry:

Buffalo Soldier, Rockstar Barrister:
There was a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America,
Almost went to Cornell, instead he went to SUNY,
Learning on arrival, educated for survival.

Lawyers Still Making Bank; Numbers Show Loans of $600k+ Justified

A lot of people try to claim that lawyers aren't making much money these days.  In the words of Stewie the Stutterer, B-B-B-B-Bullshit.

The median lawyer salary in America is $62,000.

For those of you who live in dark and very fatuous clouds, that's significantly above what the typical American makes.  Ballpark middle ground is around $44,000, and that (probably - we can assume if it benefits the argument) includes the millionaire class, which skews the number higher.  And while we're running with nonsense numbers, that's an $18,000.00 surplus for the median law graduate.

As most of you know, there is no such thing as a median law graduate.  Everyone is clearly above the median.

In any event, assuming the $18,000 surplus remains constant (more likely, it will grow and grow and grow and grow and THE RUSSIAN MODEL IS TRIPPING BALLS IN THE BACK OF MY LAMBO...

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  With an $18,000 surplus aggregated without any basis whatsoever and departing from statistical principles over a 40-year working period, the lawyer is ahead $720,000 over the course of a career.

$720,000

So... you all are complaining about $200k in debt?  Fuck me running, law graduates could take out $600k and still be well in the black when the sun sets on their illustrious careers.  Ignoring time-value and interest (which is minimal), the excess over median would fully pay off a $600k loan in 33 years.  How grads with significantly less debt whine is beyond me; as the numbers clearly show, struggling with $200,000 in debt is little more than a function of greed.

It's math, folks.  Math.

Florida A&M is Accreditation-worthy & Majorly-popular

If you will recall, one of the worrying stories last year was that the anti-diversity folks were claiming Florida A&M wasn't meeting "standards," which, as we all know, is a code word for "wanting to stop minority advancement."

Thankfully, more level heads prevailed.

The American Bar Association in early 2013 raised questions about whether FAMU was doing enough to prepare students for the exam needed to get a law license.
...
But the ABA accreditation committee this week told the school it had answered questions and shown enough proof that it is addressing the concerns.

Excellent work, FAMU.  As we all know, the state of Florida would have been in a dire position indeed if one of its twelve (12) law schools were placed in peril.

And far from being in peril, FAMU is finding favor with the lemmings:

The news also comes at a good time since it appears that enrollment at the school is on the rise. Enrollment dropped during the last academic year to about 520 students but Pernell said applications for the fall have jumped up at least 20 percent.

Things the A&M might stand for:
Awesome & Motherfuckin' Awesome
Amazing & Motherfuckin' Amazing
Alcohol & Models (in your future)
Attitude & Money (also in your future)
Apex & Mountaintop (HT: Arizona Summit)

Does the sado-masochistic readership have any offerings?

Prominent Opponent of Nation's Number Two School Cowers, Withdraws Malicious Falsehoods

Hey, do you remember that muckrucking asshole who started a motherfucking weebly blog (who even does that?!?!) for the sole purpose of defaming the nation's second best law school?

Contrition time!

I have decided to remove all of my blog postings about Thomas M. Cooley Law School from the Internet. 

In particular, I did not intend the following statements to be interpreted as literally true when I made them, and I want to publicly retract and apologize for any confusion that I may have caused to anyone viewing them on my blog

For those of you who may still be confused:  Cooley does not commit any misrepresentations of any kind.  Cooley's admissions and retention policies are not, in any way, designed to profit from students or prevent them from transferring to whatever T-14 craves their awesome legal skills.  Cooley's business practices are not, in any respect, "unethical."

I must be at a baseball game, 'cause I'm seriously enjoying these concessions.

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Thomas M. Cooley Law School...

Nontraditional Applicants: Law School is for You!

Be like a law dean and listen to US News:

Dawud Amin . . . has been a firefighter since 1999 and hopes to retire within the next two or three years. Then he can start his second career.  

"I always wanted to be a lawyer," he says. After a family living in subpar housing conditions died in a fire, Amin says, their deaths encouraged him to renew his focus on academics and get to law school to help those that are disadvantaged.

Indeed.  Now, instead of helping people by putting out actual fires and saving real lives and property, he can put out imaginary fires lit by bitter clients and dickwad adversaries who use half-truths and self-righteousness as fuel in a cruel game of arson-by-semantics.

But US News isn't just providing anecdotes of people headed in a direction to improve society.  It also provides practical advice, such as:

• "Prospective students with a military background, [Taggart, associate dean of student affairs at Coastal] says, should ask, "Do they have student organizations for like peers?" and "Are there any local VA health centers?""
• Disabled students should contact career services.  "Prospective students can ask what the office will do to dispel the myth that because they are students with a disability, they can't do the work" says Paula Pearlman of Loyola.
• "Going to a school in a big metropolitan are can be helpful for students who will use law school to start a second career, says Sean Scott, associate dean at Loyola Law School."

With such unbiased experts as these providing such illuminating information, it's obvious that law school is a well-suited environment for nontraditional students.  Huh?  What's that you said?  Jobs?  Shit, that's on you, bro'.  Law school is all about the opportunity - not entitlement.  More seasoned students can easily understand this concept.

Also, you see what Mr. Scott did there?  That's gold medal shilling.  Gold medal.

"Scam" Lunatic Logic Assualting America's Second-Best Law School (EDIT: The 6th Circuit Joins In!)

Cooley law school is halting first-year admissions at its Ann Arbor campus and is cutting faculty and staff.

As you can see, there are now real people being hurt by the law school scam fallacy.  In stark contrast to the mythical Cooley law graduates who faced an allegedly-brutal employment market - when in fact they had the versatile yacht Juris Doctor that could guide them into any number of safe harbors - Cooley now has employees who will be cast into a deep ocean.  Either they do not have a JD and they will struggle with less versatile circumstances, or they will have a JD and they forwent six- and seven-figure salaries for the penury of educating tomorrow's attorneys.

Of course, we mustn't forget the law school applicants.  Cooley is now forced to decline enrollment at its Ann Arbor campus.  Now, because of the lies spread by selfish malcontents, a city of 110,000 is left with only one law school.  For students who unfortunately cannot make it into the University of Michigan - you know, the people who wind up representing the poor - now have to drive into Wayne State or Detroit-Mercy.

Keep the faith and scam on.

Note:  Now would be an ideal time to consider donating to America's second best law school.  If you have extra cash lying around as a result of your choice to pursue a legal education, please consider donating to Cooley Law School.  As America's second-best law school, Cooley is essential to maintaining a well-educated bar across America.  Cooley graduates a few thousand students each year, which is an abnormally-high percentage of America's legal education output.  Without their support, we risk greatly imperiling the future of the legal profession, if not America.  If you're not willing to donate and save America, go fuck yourself with the business end of a gavel. 

If that weren't enough, the 6th Circuit decided to fart one out today.