Her Name is Rio and She Wants a New Law School

So the Washington Post has put out yet another irresponsible article about law schools being in a "death spiral," written by Dorothy Brown of Emory, one of those turncoat professors.  Of course, they aren't, and even if they were, they'd be taking American justice with them.

Some particularly odoriferous bits of blahbity-blah inanity:

No law school has figured out how to handle the new normal of legal education: the lowest number of applicants in four decades; fewer legal jobs for graduates; and, according to Moody’s, “no relief in sight.”
...
Legal scholarship is in a terrible state...
...
Law schools are run by the faculty for the faculty. A former colleague once put it like this: “If we could run this law school without students, this place would be perfect.” [ed. - this sounds confidential to me; did these heretics manage to avoid learning about "hush-hush" in their paltry-compared-to-trustier-faculty legal careers?] He happened to be the dean.
...
But while faculty cannot be terminated, their summer research stipends can be. Other disciplines require faculty to obtain external funding to support their work. Law schools should take a similar approach.

This high-and-mighty Campos-lite charlatanism is devoid of the proper respect law schools deserve as a result of their existence guarding the pot o' gold at the end of justice's rainbow.  And because Ms. Brown is female, we can invoke gendered criticisms as well.  What a bitch!

THANKFULLY, not everyone listens to objective truth and sound reason.  There are - THANKFULLY - still leaders who understand the value of legal education: getting what you can while you can, and employing a well-dressed faculty.  Or should I say MUCHAS GRACIAS?

The allure of law school can be powerful.

Nowhere is that more clear than the Rio Grande Valley, whose leaders are persisting in efforts to win a new, state-subsidized law school despite declining enrollments nationally and double-digit unemployment for the graduates of some programs.

Those trends don't seem to apply in the port city of Brownsville, said Rep. Eddie Lucio III, a lawyer beginning his fifth term in office at the Capitol and making his third attempt to bring a law school back home.

“We’re still very underserved," Lucio said.

"Very underserved!"  That sounds critical to me.  Someone get this place the epinephrine of Pennoyer v. Neff, stat!

But there's more, of course.  There are real lawyers who had to leave the area to get a high-quality legal education.

“I had to leave to go to Miami to go to law school,” said Steven Tipton, a Brownsville immigration attorney who recently launched a solo practice. “If there would have been a law school here, I could have stayed closer to my family.”

With $300,000 in law-school debt, Tipton, 39, is still trying to get on his feet. He's just beginning to pay off the loans that financed his degree from St. Thomas University School of Law.

Mr. Tipton is, of course, downplaying the excellence of St. Thomas (Miami version), the incredible value it offers students, and its natural focus on immigration law.  But it's clear that if there were a law school even halfway to St. Thomas's caliber in Brownsville, Texas, budding lawyers like Mr. Tipton could hang out closer to home before hanging their shingles.

What, exactly, do you have against home-cooked meals, you domineering skeptics of new law school construction?

The article offers a number of other gems, like this remark from our state legislator:

“I have a hard time believing there are no jobs for attorneys out there," he said.

And this statement from our immigration attorney, supra:

“We are legally underserved in the valley when it comes to immigration law. I wish there was 100 more,” he said.

MAS ABOGADOS!  LET'S MAKE IT A REALITY, FRIENDS! 

With the simple act of writing a letter to the Texas state legislature to tell them that the law school "crisis" is little more than a hoax like global warming and that all the "proof" is smoke and mirrors, you can help flood southern Texas with a waves of sweet justice, not to mention bolstering the regional economy with a fresh influx of student loan money.  Just like Fort Wayne is now basking in the sunshine of having its own law school, so too can Brownsville.

Someone should set up a bilingual hotline for this bullshit.