Double Pennsylvanitration, or, Go, Nittany Fatcats

Where once there were three public law schools in Pennsylvania, there soon will be four.  Collapsing bubble?  I think not.  That's a 33.3% increase, for you math-less law graduates out there (i.e., all of you who think paying $200k for the prestige of the J.D. is a "rip off").

Penn State is going for double the fun:

The American Bar Association has granted Penn State’s request for separate accreditations for its two law school campuses, starting with classes entering in fall 2015, the university said Wednesday. 

The name Dickinson School of Law will remain as an umbrella, but the independent campuses will now be known as Penn State Law at University Park and Dickinson Law in Carlisle.

Remember how New Jersey's state public university is called Rutgers, and they decided to have separate law school campuses and it worked flawlessly and the benefits have been worth it long-term?  It's become the envy of other states, I guess, and the craze of having two public law schools under the state public flagship is sweeping westward.

Let me put on my Nostradamus hat and tell you all where this is going:

The Ohio State Moritz College of Law (Columbus)
The Ohio State Moritz College of Law (Cleveland)
Indiana-Mauer
Indiana-McKinney
Indiana-Fort Wayne Art District
University of Illinois-Urbana
University of Illinois-Chicago
University of Illinois-East St. Louis
Iowa College of Law (Iowa City)
Iowa College of Law (Sioux City)
Iowa College of Law (Quad Cities)
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis)
University of Minnesota (Crookston)
University of Minnesota (Morris)
University of Minnesota (Rochester)
University of Minnesota (Duluth)
University of Minnesota (Frostbite Falls)

If there's one thing Minnesota needs, it's five more law school campuses outside of the Minneapolis St. Paul area.  Also, Rocky and Bullwinkle references.  You and your negativity are fracturing your own fairy tale of JD riches.  Get in your damned wayback machine and go back to a time when schoolchildren understood Soviet villains and lousy whiny lawyers could make bank.

“Penn State is very serious about the law school business,” James Houck, who is serving as interim dean for Penn State Law, said Wednesday. “Penn State has had a full opportunity to look at this and decide they are all in. They want to have two terrific law schools.”

Quinnipiac Officials Showcasing the Art

Oh, Quinnipiac.  You're one of those schools whose frivolousness often gets overlooked in the greater scam.  Your relative neighbors Vermont and Albany have gained more attention in recent times, and likely never reach the lofty heights of the lemming abattoirs in the large urban areas, like NESL or Touro.

But you can hold your own.  Cue Ed Wilkes, associate vice president and dean of admissions:

"The legal job market has suffered, and it hasn't quite fully rebounded yet," said Ed Wilkes... 

"No one predicted there would be this kind of huge drop in applications," Wilkes said. 

The decline in applications is linked to the perception of withering job prospects, school officials said. As in other industries, technology advances and outsourcing have disrupted the legal job market. The economic downturn forced firms small and large to reduce the number of summer associates and new hires, Wilkes said....

Emphasis added to showcase the expertise in word choice.  "Yet," meaning it's going to fully rebound?  "Perception," as in there's some subjectivity to the lousy job market and he's unsure about it?  "Small," meaning that small firms were once taking on summer associates?

The drop in applications came out of nowhere?!?!?!

Behold the product of the master craftsman.

Enjoy the new campus, schlubs.

Your ABA Looking Out for You, Blocks Student-Debtor Pay; UC-Irvine Worth It, One of Nation's Best

The ABA recently affirmed the already-standing ban on students getting both pay and credit for performing externships.  As they say in LawLand, they reached the correct result.  Let's get some legal reasoning for the more intellectually-minded:

But a majority of the council sided with critics of the proposed change, who fear that allowing students to be paid for a field placement program for which they receive academic credit would undermine the academic focus of the experience. 

“If this is about the educational experience, it shouldn’t be turned into a job,” said Edwin J. Butterfoss, a professor at Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, one of nine council members who voted the proposal down.

Seriously.  Academics and money should be separated.  You can't be educated on something while being paid for it.  Everyone knows that once you receive fair compensation for something, you stop learning anything.  That's why corporate America sucks at training people.  Only through the alchemy of signing a master promissory note and sitting with professors like Mr. Butterfoss - or working for free, of course - can one truly clear their mind and learn.

Otherwise, lawyers would be able to learn most of their trade while on the job the first few years.  As we all know, that does not currently happen, as law schools are the exclusive educational source for students, and a complete one at that.  Besides, the companies who choose to have externs instead of hiring law clerks or young attorneys should be rewarded for their affiliation with law schools and the nation's educational mission.  Everyone deserves to get some free labor.

Meanwhile, elsewhere right-minded peoples have found additional reasons to reject such changes:

The Clinical Legal Education Association also opposed dropping the pay ban, fearing creation of a system of unequal access as employers accepted only students they deemed worthy of long-term employment.

Egads.  A system where employers bring on the best potential candidates?  Unheard of.  Thank goodness firms now have the freedom to continue bringing on completely unworthy students.

That was a fun meal, wasn't it?

Here's desert:

As you'll see from the links after the jump, we've written since the UC Irvine School of Law's opening in 2009 about critics who felt California did not need another law school and the world certainly did not need more lawyers. But the law school has soldiered on, becoming among the most respected in the nation.

Yummy yummy.  Take that, critics.  Cali obviously needed a new law school, and you are wrong.  Case closed.

Viva la Innovacion! LSAT Less Mandatory Than Yesterday

Innovation.  You asked for it.  You got it.

The [ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar], which met Friday in Cleveland, approved five of the six remaining proposed changes in the standards, including one that would permit schools to admit up to 10 percent of their entering class with students who haven’t taken the LSAT...

See?  You all bitch that law schools don't try to save students money.  Now a tenth of the class doesn't have to pay the LSAT administration fee!  Also, now law schools can be more flexible about, like, bringing in diverse candidates who just don't test well.

If you're in a state like Wisconsin, you can now go to law school without taking the LSAT and waive into the bar.  The eradication of the severe oppression of taking standardized tests after the SAT may well have begun.  That's progress you can eat for breakfast.

When did this whole "scamblog" nonsense begin?  Last year?  Look at the progress the ABA is already making.  Up yours, naysayers.

Congratulations, UC-Irvine!

UC-Irvine is now fully-accredited!  Congratulations to Dean Chemerinsky and his insta-prestigious vanity law school for clearing the ABA's arduous hurdles and joining the prestigious ranks of such schools as Thomas Jefferson, Touro, and the multi-campus John Marshall Experience.

It's refreshing that California understands the need to continually replenish the ranks of law schools, even while running headlong into a recession and legal industry collapse with naysayers babbling blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, Louisianans COULD have built a law school four years ago, but some have their heads up their butts.

Amid the accreditation and forged signature scandals, it is time Louisiana College’s new leadership abandons the law school project and focuses on the real problem on the campus.

Please.  Look at UC-Irvine.  They have a shiny, sterling law school placing 64% of is graduates long term, bar passage required jobs.  They've increased enrollment by 37 students since 2010 while other law schools are declining.  Maybe you could even build a public law school that charges $44k.  Who knows?!  The sky's the limit, and with a lot of hard work and innovation, you, too, can have an ABA accredited school working wonders in legal education.

Hey, Louisiana, remember the civil war?  Yeah, you're wrong on this one, too.

Build it and they will come, or, well, someone comes.  Scam on.

Ohio State Professor Strikes Back for InfiLaw

If there's one thing I have to tell you about InfiLaw, it's that empires don't fall easily.  Yesterday afternoon, Prof. Steven Davidoff (Ohio State/Moritz) struck a blow for InfiLaw in the New York Times.  Put on your shades, kids, 'cause these gems are brilliant:

The complaints that InfiLaw operates schools of lower quality than Charleston seem overheated. 

In fact, InfiLaw’s statistics for its students are largely comparable to Charleston’s for tuition, salaries, jobs, low loan default rates and passage of the bar. Not only that, but InfiLaw has a track record of improving schools....
...
With everyone looking to profit, the private equity accusation may be shorthand for a more real fear about the acquisition — that a private equity firm will lower standards. InfiLaw has a broader focus and appears much more willing to admit students with lower scores on the Law School Admission Test.
...
Lost among the dispute is the fact that a lower-tier law school like Charleston — whoever owns it — can not only produce capable graduates but help students start careers they couldn’t have without a law degree.
...
InfiLaw will not be Harvard, but for those who go in with open eyes, it may be a path to being a lawyer. The point is really to make sure that students know the costs and benefits before they matriculate so they can make a sound judgment about whether to attend. In other words, if InfiLaw or Charleston cannot provide an education that helps students obtain jobs, then presumably students will know and not attend. 

TOUCHDOWN, BUCKEYES!!1!!!11!

As Professor Davidoff eloquently points out, Charleston Law School was doing just fine in terms of training lawyers, EXCEPT that its owners were making too much money at the expense of students.  InfiLaw can add more bang for the buck while improving the law school and allowing for easier access to justice, all while operating in a free market of caveat emptor-minded, sharp consumers.

InfiLaw may have withdrawn its application, but the war is hardly over.  Read Sun Tzu, people.

A lesser writer may have argued that Charleston Law School has no reason for continued existence and that the school should fold while having the legislature seek reciprocal in-state perks at Georgia and North Carolina schools to satisfy any demand that USC cannot meet.  A lesser writer may have pointed out that neither Charleston nor InfiLaw's slate of schools are reasonable options for anyone, for-profit or non-profit or whatever.  A lesser writer may have raised the actual market demand for lower-tier law graduates.

Thankfully, Prof. Davidoff hasn't bought into the cynicism.  While he sees that students may have been paying too much, he understands the need for large secondary law schools in a small state and encourages a market-driven, caveat emptor approach.  Why, if the judges could profit handsomely, InfiLaw should get a turn.  Heck, InfiLaw could make it better.

Look, I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum it put them on the map!

'Merica.  Free Market.  Diversity.  Openness.  Think of the students.  Scam on.

Law Deans Ripe to Tap It

Jumping over the "Texas law schools cost too much" hysteria, this piece caught my eye for this quote:

The rush to cut costs is a healthy response to the shrinking market, said Marc Miller, the dean at the University of Arizona's law school. And with the smaller applicant pool, some schools just might need to look elsewhere for the best students, he said. 

"I still think that being a lawyer is one of the great things that people can do. It's a service profession," Miller said. "I think the global demand for American legal education is untapped."

You stupid dicks think legal education is doomy gloomy because the American consuming public has balked?  I see your American millions and raise you Chinese and Indian BILLIONS.  There's no law that says our finest law schools cannot educate sophisticated foreigners in the twists and turns of the Rule in Shelley's Case.  After all, given that the versatility of a legal education is unmatched in its application to countless fields in our domestic marketplace, it surely is an invaluable commodity on the international marketplace.

Why, if you go to Peru and network with an American JD, you're 47% more likely to get hired.  It's a fact.(1)

If there's one thing law deans are good at, it's tapping the available graduate pool.  If there's extraterritorial warm bodies who want to fill seats, our finest law deans will connect starving ass to polymer desk chair.

The article has other merits as well.  Second prize in noble scamdom goes to the author, who relayed this information:

Of the 258 graduates from [Houston law]'s class of 2013 who sought jobs after graduation, 225 of them - or about 87 percent - found one. UH does not yet have salary information for all of those graduates, but among the 125 the center knows about, the average salary is $109,210.

Average salaries on limited data doubly-self-reported data?  "Yet?"  A claim that a law school only "knows about" 50% of its graduates one year out uncritically reprinted?  Ignoring that UH's 225 "employed" includes 46 who are not in bar required jobs?  Beautiful.

Miss Congeniality goes to Dean Farnsworth at Texas, who has not pulled a Sager-bomb(c) yet, but there's still time:

Farnsworth pointed to UT's success in recent U.S. News rankings - which said law students there get the biggest return on their investment of any law school in the country - as evidence that the school has remained competitive. 

UT law students graduated with an average debt load of $86,312 in 2012 and earned a median starting private sector salary of $155,000 in 2011, according to the rankings. The average law school graduate in 2012 was $108,293 in debt, and the median starting private sector salary for all 2011 graduates was $76,125, according to U.S. News.

The only thing better than U.S. News and its whack methods is watching people blindly quote U.S. News and its whack methods.  With UT, we can verify that 79 students or so reported a salary of $150k or more.  Out of 382.  That's 20% or so being used to calculate a purported return on investment for a whole population that is almost certainly not sharing this subgroup's characteristics.

Gosh darn, I love statistics.  The numbers are transparent, open, free, in plain sight.  And yet our scamtastic alchemy can still make them murky, misleading, and used for devlish lemming trolling of a highly amusing order.

What a beautiful world.  Scam on.

(1) Disclaimer:  Not actually a fact.  Go to law school, kids.

Good Things Happening to Good People: Charleston Profiteers and Indiana Tech's Newest Leader

1.   The Charleston Saga, Cont'd

In this edition of The InfiLaw Triumph:  The Charleston Saga, I give you this piece of muckrucking, capitalist-envy journalism:

Five respected judges and lawyers started the Charleston School of Law a decade ago with the lofty goal of training attorneys committed to public service.

But beginning in 2010, the well-connected founders and owners with deep South Carolina roots began draining money from the school, withdrawing $25 million in profits by 2013 that they split among themselves.
...
Their taking out the profits instead of re-investing in the school has left it in such financial shambles its future remains uncertain.

Jealousy is quite ugly.  It is particularly distasteful when it manifests itself in nasty hypocrisy.  The state had no problem licensing Charleston as a for-profit school and allowing these elite lawyers to peddle legal education for noble purposes as a way of enhancing their own investment portfolios and raking in a few million each in that sweet, sweet delicious and easy student loan-backed revenues.  That form of dragon-chasing was perfectly cool.

But now InfiLaw wants to show up and do basically the same thing, only with more opportunity for diversity and access to education, and suddenly a bunch of pseudo-employed jackwads decide to cry foul.

2.  The Lower Case Law Dean

In bittersweet news, Dean Peter Alexander suddenly resigned from Indiana Tech on the Friday before a holiday weekend.  Dean Alexander's tenure is to be commended.  Although naysayers said a law school in Fort Wayne would not work, Dean Alexander kept it going strong for a year.  In a time when most law schools were cutting back on enrollment, Indiana Tech went up +28 students or so.  And of course, let us not forget that Dean Alexander went head-to-head with the ignominious Paul Campos.

We wish him well in whatever BigLaw partner, elite foundation chair, judgeship, or other employment capacity to which he is moving.

But out of the burnt pit of sadness and despair rises of the phoenix of eloquent flame-throwing:

Indiana Tech announced andré douglas pond cummings, who does not use capital letters in his name, will serve as the interim dean at the school. 

Cummings is the associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of law at the fledgling law school.

Andre Douglas Pond Cummings, d/b/a andre douglas pond cummings, has risen from being a leading scholar in hip-hop and the law and serving youth in the Chicago ghetto to being a prestigious law dean in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Those of you who doubt there is karma and justice in the world, your faith, I'm sure, is restored.

The InfiLaw Triumph Story, Cont'd: A Temporary Set-Back

Uh...just...

The sale of the Charleston School of Law to a private, Florida-based company should be stopped, as the company's lower academic standards and lawsuits against it provide concerns about the company's health and the direction it would take the school, a majority of members on a state higher education panel said Monday. 

The Committee on Academic Affairs and Licensing, part of the state's Commission on Higher Education, voted 3-1 to reject recommending a license for InfiLaw to operate the law school.

Up yours, South Carolina.  In honor of the Memorial Day and the countless soldiers who have fallen so that YOU may enjoy world-class legal education at a rock-bottom price, I am going to provide a picture response:

I think the last time that meme was popular was like 2009, which is the last time there was any rationality in law school discussions.

Scam on, friends.  Still time to sign up for summer early entry programs and PLENTY of time to get the lemmings in for fall!

The InfiLaw Manifest Destiny: The Charleston Saga, Cont'd

As previously reported, InfiLaw is fighting tooth and nail to expand its justice-wielding arms into South Carolina with the purchase of Charleston College of Law.

Unfortunately, a certain insolent minority dislikes InfiLaw and their practices of making law accessible to the 135 LSAT at a bargain rate.  Remember, these anti-progressive monopolists were also the first people to break away from The Union.  Like they can be trusted when it comes to evaluating positive changes.

ANYWAY, the present finds our heroes facing a penultimate hurdle in getting license approval from the state.  You may recall that the villains delayed the earlier rubber-stamping and NOW the commission will hold hearings TOMORROW and MONDAY and then vote afterwards.

And of course, the damning stain of villainy has sneaked into the Prestigious ranks of the faculty:

Last week, nine other faculty members joined Bridwell and Finkel in sending a letter to the commission, encouraging members not to support a license for InfiLaw. 

In the letter, faculty members said under InfiLaw, the school's sense of community would be replaced with "a culture of intimidation and fear." They also said InfiLaw schools had lower standards than those of the Charleston school. "We do not wish to see the Charleston School of Law mirror the admissions practices, attrition rates, transfer rates, or educational programs at the InfiLaw consortium schools," the letter stated.

Lies!  Misrepresentation!  Ignorantly Ironic Hypocrisy!  

As if that act of bastardry weren't enough, GET A LOAD OF THIS:

Charleston lawyer Capers Barr also sent a similar letter to the commission last week on behalf of a group of faculty members who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution. Barr did not specify how many faculty members he represented, but stated that a "super majority" of faculty members were opposed to a sale to InfiLaw.

WELL WELL WELL, if it's not anonymous speech from a bunch of cowards!  As we all know, anonymous criticism has absolutely no bearing whatsoever, particularly when it has no grounding in rationality or is not supported by proper credentials.  I bet they're adjuncts.

Who the hell hires a lawyer named "Capers," anyway?!  Was Mr. Shallots not taking clients?!

It's a public hearing.  If you're in Charleston and a friend of law school progress, please go and encourage members to vote YES on InfiLaw.