The Most Delicious Soup

Karen Sloan over at law.com has posted a rather intriguing, comprehensive examination of declining bar exam pass rates.  As a long-time proponent of big colorful graphs to assist leading superficial readers to obvious conclusions, I'm a fan.  As a bootlicker of the drug-induced American dream, I wish she would have focused a bit more on the 40-year marathon that ends in a full-body collapse at the finish line into a large pot of gold.

I particularly take issue with the tone, e.g.:

Law.com analyzed the bar pass rates reported by schools to the American Bar Association between 2013 and 2017—the 2018 results aren’t yet available—and found that 42 out of 203 ABA-accredited law schools saw their pass rate fall anywhere from 10 to 20 percent. Thirty-five schools had pass-rate declines of more than 20 percent in those four years.

While their circumstances vary somewhat, most of those schools with pass-rate declines larger than 20 percent have experienced significant drops in their enrollment and applicants, as well as difficulties in helping graduates find legal jobs—making for a toxic stew of challenges.

Emphasis added - a toxic stew?!  That's a terribly inartful way to describe the delectable treats served in the cafe of the Million Dollar Express.  I would prefer it described as a playful but mysterious little dish.

It strikes me as particularly interesting that Ms. Sloan would select a soupy metaphor to describe the regulatory-challenged law school environment.  Searching my archives of Excellence in Law School Propaganda, I recall now-Chancellor and President of Syracuse Kent Syverud - while cresting the post-recession roller coaster - using a soup-adjacent metaphor to explain how the applicant pool had actually improved back in 2011:

Kent Syverud, dean of the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, where applications this year declined more than 11%, said it was a good thing prospective students now were more “clear eyed” about the risks and rewards of a law degree.“The froth in the applicant pool—those who were just going to law school because they didn’t know what else to do and everyone told them it was a safe bet—is pretty well gone,” he said.

For those unfamiliar with fine meal preparation, when you make a soup or stock with almost any kind of meat, bones, or beans, a froth or "scum" develops on the soup's surface that contains less-desired broken-down proteins and substances, so traditional cooking methods suggest to skim the froth and dump it on your most obnoxious child.  The recession, in other words, removed the least pure, least tasty law applicants, and in no way removed seasoning and vegetables, and in absolutely no way is the pot a giant crock of shit.

Perhaps, then, it is improper to call the current offerings to some lower-tier law schools a "toxic stew," but rather we should say "a much improved stew."  For imagine how insulting the dish would be to holier-than-thou palettes were the froth left in all this time.  The froth would now be lawyers instead of, one supposes, running tech start-ups or community organizing.  So if the soup somehow isn't to your particular taste, just be thankful you're not living in that dreary alternate reality where the only comfort to the bitter, radioactive soup is the extra thousands of lawyers floating around meting out justice like pills at one of those concerts the youths attend long before they have to pass character and fitness.

I, of course, find this soup absolutely delicious, not at all like the broth served in the soup kitchens of my mythical youth, and no one would dare to serve it cold as far as I can see.  So slurp it up, buckos.  Slurp it up and feel no guilt in asking for thirds.