More Brilliant Thoughts from Dean Chemerinsky

The pioneer has two main thoughts on the Supreme Court in his latest book.  First:

The Supreme Court has been, on balance, a more negative than positive influence on our country throughout its history

Thank goodness lower-quality law schools have not been, on balance, a more negative than positive influence on our country.  And second:

The idea that justices bring neutral, objective legal principles to the task of “divining” the true meaning and purpose of the language in the statutes and the Constitution is bunk.

Thank goodness lower-quality law schools have promoted the idea that they bring non-profit, public service principles to the task of "educating" America's lawyers.  Because that's totally not bunk.  Or something.  If you can come up with a better parallel analogy thingamajig, fill it in for me.

Such observations aside, it's obvious that Chemerinsky has earned his place as a top scholar of constitutional law.  Take this observation about the heinous group of Supreme Court cases that seem vile in retrospect, such as Plessy or Korematsu:

 For years, Chemerinsky said, he had taught these cases, which are all understood in retrospect to have been miscarriages of justice, as if they were anomalies. But by explaining them that way, he said, “I realized I had been making excuses for the Supreme Court.”

Because this totally isn't the type of conclusion one could come to after a mere semester of Con law.  It takes years of studious inquiry during ten-hour work weeks poring over the 4500 words of the Constitution, treating each one the way PhDs treat War and Peace subplots.

Well, I'm off to hit the open road with two strippers and a crack pipe.  Remember, I'll make a great DA some day.

An Open Letter to Hamline and William Mitchell

Dear Co-Best Law Schools in Minneapolis:

It's my understanding that you are seeking to merge.  As you both know, running a law school can not only be joyous, splendid fun, but also serve the public interest and provide a landing spot for BigLaw's better-credentialed rejects.  You two have been independently ensuring an ongoing win in the war for social justice in Minneapolis for over a century, and I have no doubt you will continue in your new union.

It is my understanding that despite the obviously-cyclical nature of this "recession" in the legal education sector (how many times does Professor Diamond have to say it until it sinks in?), you have thought it in your "financial interests" to join forces and create one super-badass law school where previously there were two.

This wedding shall be a bittersweet moment.  On one hand, when you two combine your awesome forces, you are going to build an arsenal of frostbite flim-flam, a legion's worth of law school lemming larceny, churning and burning through tons of fine students who couldn't quite make it into Minnesota.  When you combine resources, I have no doubt that your legal scholarship output will quadruple the amount of justice you're currently distributing.

But I give you a word of caution:  mergers can be fraught with risk.  I speak, most importantly, of "efficiencies."  Some cost-cutting soulless bureaucrats may try to talk you into "staff reductions" or "buy-outs of overpriced faculty members" or say things like "you don't really need six international entertainment law scholars."

To hell with these people.  Protected tenure for all is as important as a newlywed couple buying a McMansion in the suburbs as soon as they can get a loan.  It is the bulwark of academic liberty, and essential to letting law professors keep their inflated salaries and senses of self-worth.  Every tenured faculty member of either Hamline or Mitchell must be allowed to keep their position, with full liberty to publish as much navel-gazing lucubration as their curricula vitae can handle.  The only way to ensure that Minneapolis does not have a legal scholarship shortage is to continue to provide a supportive environment for each and every one of these superlative scholars.

Furthermore, what will happen when the demand for legal services and particularly legal education rebounds to lofty new heights?  Previously, demand easily supported four law schools in the twin cities.  Please don't be so naive as to think demand will not return, particularly after the current crop of graduates begin making bank when the pending lawyer shortage hits.  You currently have the capacity to handle that demand.  Downsizing would only mean having to upsize in a few years, or, in the alternative, having to open up a whole new law school to ensure that the Twin Cities remains at maximum JD advantage.

I'm happy for you, but you must take these responsibilities seriously.  I implore you to keep full tenured faculties at both institutions and resist any efforts to "improve efficiency" or other corporate non-speak from people who simply don't understand the legal industry and how easy it is to take $200k from 23-year-olds who are on their way to making great district attorneys.

Bless you, whatever you call yourself:  Hamiam Mitchline.  Willline Mitchamill.  Hammy Wilmitch.  Minnesota Summit.  Really, let the creative juices flow.

Just know that I hope you've merged for the right reasons, and that I look forward to your reproducing numerous satellite campuses in Duluth, Rochester, Moorhead, etc. 

If you've married for the wrong reasons, well, the total lack of divorce lawyers to handle the aftermath will, frankly, be your own damned fault.  So pump 'em out, baby.  Pump 'em out.

With love this scammertine's day,

Law School Truth Center.

P.S. - I know the ABA still has to approve this union.  Please don't let cause you any stress.  You could three-way merge with a horse college and a barber college and the ABA would likely acquiesce and feature y'all in a video on social justice.

The California Model; or, the LSTC: Where Great Comments Inspire Great Ideas

The Law School Truth Center isn't just a place for me to post love letters to my intangible paramour, the Law School Industrial Complex.  It's also a think tank where the masses can inspire innovations in legal education.  From a comment on my last post:

Being 16 of 203 [law schools] is more prestigious than being 16 of 16.

From this Newtonian observation by Anonymous, we can derive a simple theory:  A greater number of law schools total makes every school except the bottom of the bottom ("PD academies") more prestigious.   Conversely, if law schools unfortunately close, suddenly otherwise-reputable schools like Florida, Arizona State, and Brooklyn may find themselves in the fourth tier.

We must prevent that from happening.  Do you really want to live in a world where a fine school like American is a bottom-feeder?  Of course not!  Those who bemoan schools like Thomas Cooley simply don't understand how the prestige pyramid works.  You have a whole bunch of drones at the bottom, and they buoy up everyone else to ever-greater heights.  Cooley didn't destroy legal education; it was trying to establish yet another base in the pyramid to make schools like Wayne State and Detroit look like sparkling rays of sunshine shooting from a unicorn's eyes.


Lest you think this theorem indefensible and reckless, I give you the Great State of California.  There are dozens of unaccredited schools in California; yet, their role, educating high-quality lawyers, has done nothing to stop the prestige of Stanford and Cal-Berkley.  Indeed, California is only one of three states to have multiple T-14s (to say nothing of the surplus of T2s like UCLA, USC, Pepperdine, UC-Irvine, Loyola, etc.).   And of course, relatively, those type of unaccredited "blue collar" institutions make places like UC-Hastings or Cal-Western look like Harvard.

Previously, I've explored potential other locations for law schools.  I have realized that this might have too restricting of a view on my part.  What we need is for the rest of the nation to implant the California model.  According to crack research by the LSTC, California has sixty (60) law schools and a population of only thirty-nine (39) million.


So California's ratio - which is obviously a successful number to generate fine schools like Stanford - would be roughly 1 law school for every  630,000 people.  Current US Population is 319 million, so our actual number of law schools to achieve California-quality prestige and legal representation nationwide would be around 506.

Examples of the severe shortfall of law schools to achieve this ideal abound.  Washington only has three law schools.  It should have 11 or 12.  Wisconsin has 2 law schools. It should have 9 or 10.  Ohio, with 9 law schools, is underlawschooled by 10.

When folks like Professor Seto talk about an impending lawyer shortage, it's not a great revelation to figure it out; we simply haven't considered that maybe the legal education industrial complex's problem isn't too many law schools, but too few.   Plus, as everyone knows, more competition always means a better result for consumers.

It's not just a matter of running out of lawyers.  

It's a matter of running out of prestige.

Study: Paying Deans Millions as Effective - if not Moreso - Than "Experiental Education"

As most devoted readers know, law schools have been under a lot of pressure by certain irrational folks to reform - this despite the fact that law schools have historically done exceptionally well at educating America's lawyers, such that American justice has never been in better shape.

One of the popular reform "ideas" is adding more "experiential" "learning," things like clinics and externships, expensive do-hickeys that are less fun and lucrative than letting Professor McAncient dust off his UCC or Crim Pro outline each year, while profit margins soar and the lounge gets a new cappuccino machine with silver plating...drool...

The problem is that those expensive clunker clinics don't help employment outcomes.  Look, it's science!

To summarize the paper’s key finding: there is no statistical relationship between law school opportunities for skills training and JD employment outcomes. In contrast, employment outcomes do seem to be strongly related to law school prestige.

Wah-wah.

If prestige is what truly matters, why spend ridiculous amounts of money on clinics?  Everyone knows that clinics are associated with law schools where the 98% employed are most likely to work for government, small firms, or public interest firms; noble deeds, but far from the importance of appellate clerks and law professorships.  On the other hand, schools like Stanford, Yale, and Emory have no need for such things.

So what should the "lesser" law schools do?  How about instead of dumping cash in the sinkhole of training stupid practical lawyers, you instead pay out the bazooka bucks to land a worthy seven-figure dean?

There is literally no evidence that a domestic violence clinic is a pubic hair better than paying buying Erwin Chemerinsky his own private island.  But there IS evidence that having Erwin Chemerinsky as your dean can take prestige from zero to mid-level hero with a good chance at a federal court gig.

And that's what we call logic.  Letting your all-star professors backstroke in Scrooge McDuck's gold silo is literally as worthwhile as teaching (well, trying to teach) anyone to actually practice law.

Viva la profession.

Pirate Law Deans Far from the Caribbean

A few weeks back, I celebrated the transfer game, where law deans send raiding parties to other law schools to swoop in, appropriately pillage, and leave the remainder to enjoy mid-law jobs instead of big law riches.

Today, Inside Higher Ed has an article honoring our favorite pirate captains.  Here's Georgetown's Andy Cornblatt (great pirate name!):

Cornblatt said it would violate antitrust laws and be "paternalistic to the extreme" to try to curb transfers.

“These are not elementary school kids, these are adults who are in the middle of or finished their first year of law school,” he said.

Ay, the fear of antitrust argument coupled with the "sophisticated consumers of free choice" argument, coupled with a giant straw man, to the extreme.  That's some nice piratin' on the good ship Georgetown.  I mean, the way he sails past the implicit questions of why transfers may be a bad thing and goes straight to refuting arguments no one's making is some excellent verbal maneuvering.  To the extreme.

But shiver me timbers, look at what the Arizona State Raiders can do:

“The LSAT is a good predictor of first-year performance, but it’s nowhere near as good a predictor as first-year performance,” said Douglas Sylvester, the dean of Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.

Give that man a parrot and call him Captain Sly!  And why is he being interviewed?

Arizona State accepted 66 transfer students last year, the second most in the country, behind Georgetown. Nearly a third of ASU’s second-year students are now transfer students. Forty-four of those transfers came from Arizona Summit Law School.

Yes, first-year performance at an InfiLaw school IS better than either an LSAT.  After all, who would YOU rather hire as a lawyer:  the 43rd-best 1L at Arizona Summit or a random 157 LSAT? 

You know what the number-one sign of some great piratin' is?  Butt-hurt.  Cue the victimhood:

“I do believe it to be poaching,” [Arizona Summit Dean Shirley] Mays said of ASU, “and I do wonder if the ranking system were changed so that the LSAT scores of transfer students were included whether or not the poaching of students from the lower-tiered schools would continue.”

While one has to admire her "my precious!" attitude towards her top students, I can't help but agree with Captain Sly:

"Give your students reasons to stay and we wouldn’t be able to take them,” Sylvester said.

Ahoy!  Sounds to me like a dare!

Obviously, Arizona Summit's promises of future career riches and JD-Advantage(c) thinking skills aren't enough to retain top talent.  They should set up a foundation or something that gives out extra scholarships and can be used as kick-backs to hot professors and forgivable loans to deans.  They should also build a swimming pool and tack on a billiard room.  And maybe sponsor a minor league baseball stadium.

Or better yet, they could build their own pirate ship and send out a raiding party of their own.  California has plenty of state-accredited schools.  Mexico probably has law schools.  Take laterals from nursing schools or something.  Seriously, get creative.  The ABA isn't going to stop you.  It's, like, an antitrust violation or something.

Former SMU Dean Arrested, Possibly for Giving Novel Form of Scholarship

I know, I know, prostitution is still technically illegal.  So is marijuana.  But let's be serious.  If you're young and stupid and like rock and/or roll and/or hip and/or hop, it's okay to light up a "doobie."  And if you're a refined white man of means with a cufflink collection, fashion-forward socks, and a Rolodex of dudes who are on wife number three and Lexus number four, you're entitled to stick your dick wherever you want if you've paid fair market value for the privilege.  It's as American as buying GE stock and golfing at a club where minorities are rarer than holes in one.

In any event, former SMU dean John Attanasio was arrested recently on vague prostitution-related charges.  Remember that everyone is innocent until proven guilty (or, you know, forced to plead with a chandelier of Damocles's knives hanging over one's head by a single thread).  I know in modern media times, we're like a digital lynch mob, but I'm going to take the high road and assume that - just like Paul Pless - he's innocent and was framed or duped by some fraudulent scheme.

After all, no sophisticated consumer could get caught picking up a hooker, right?

Here's a hypothetical that explains how many of these things might happen with an upstanding law dean:

FEMALE:  Oh!  Hi, law dean!
DEAN:  Hello, future empress of dynastic legal change.
FEMALE:  Oh, you!  I prefer guillotine in the coming doctrinal revolution.
DEAN:  I would love to accept you in my school, which is a spring training ground for legal shortstops who want to turn two and then hit a triple in the bottom half.
FEMALE:  That sounds great!  Can I pay you full tuition so you can teach me to be an eloquent flamethrower of jurisprudential burns in the arid courtroom climate?
DEAN:  Perhaps.  I can't help but notice you're practically naked standing on this street corner.  You can't be a pioneering trailblazer leading the wagons of justice wearing lingerie.
FEMALE:  I know!
DEAN:  Let me make you a deal.  If you come to my law school, I'll give you a scholarship of half-off so you can start being a courtroom Eskimo building persuasive igloos with ice blocks of truth and diversity.
FEMALE:  Really?!
DEAN:  $20k a year, an excellent price to become a walking blowjob of  sublime justice wearing the immortal lipstick of Constitutionality.
POLICE:  Up against the wall, everyone!
FEMALE:  Oh, I wish I were already a legal lyricist crafting the grand libretto in the opera of truth!  Mr. Law Dean, O capeless crusader, use your magical powers!
 DEAN:  Shut up, ho, I'm calling a friend who knows what he's doing.

I have no idea what happened with the former SMU dean and the above is wildly made-up, but making stuff up and presenting it as some version of the truth is a tradition we in the legal industry hold quite dear.

More Potshots at Former Texas Dean Larry Sager...Yawn

Will they ever lay off Larry Sager and the University of Texas?

If you'll recall, there were some silly allegations thrown about against Larry Sager, former Dean of the University of Texas' Top 17ish law school.  Well, even though the UT thoroughly investigated the matter and the state legislature tried to impeach the muckraker for his "unreasonable and burdensome requests for records and information from UT Austin", the Texas attorney general got in on the fun and issued a "damning" report.

This is infuriating.  Sager and the University of Texas had a good thing going: scurrilous behavior, a well-done cover-up, and politicians and media who think investigation and transparency is a form of harassment, if not treason.  Then a god-damned UVA grad attorney general and his cabal of mischievous underling investigators have to play spoilsport.

I mean, look at this scandalous nonsense:

The report concludes that former law school Dean Lawrence Sager "supported a lack of transparency."

Like a prestigious law school would lack transparency!

[Investigators] found that the UT Law School maintained a set of double books for its so-called "forgivable loan" program...

Who wouldn't keep double books?  What if one gets lost?  Or this non-story:

The squirreliest chapter of the report deals with a lawsuit brought by law school Professor Linda S. Mullenix accusing Sager of running a secret good-old-boy pay scheme in violation of university bylaws and of state and federal law....

Sager denied to investigators that he was worried about the suit's potential for taking the off-the-books compensation scheme public, but the investigators found Sager's own notes in which he said just that...

Instead of reporting the lawsuit first to the university's general counsel, Sager took the matter to the law firm Vinson & Elkins. Out of that process came a lucrative settlement with Mullenix including "a forgivable loan from the foundation, a state-funded permanent pay increase and reimbursement of attorney's fees," all tossed together without proper signatures and in a way the investigators said "did not follow required internal approval processes for settlements."  

"Squirreliest" can't be a real word.  Besides, how is he a bad guy for paying a fair settlement to an injured party?  Remember, it can't be hush money (particularly to a law professor steeped in the highest virtues of social justice) unless it's a really good deal!

My favorite part of this "journalism" about an "attorney general report" (seriously, it must be a political ploy, right?) is this:

The investigators say they found records showing that within two months of being denied a raise from the university [for frozen salaries and such] Sager was using Vinson & Elkins again to put together the half million dollar forgivable loan for himself from the private foundation. The report, again with Sager's name redacted but obviously describing him, says Sager, "denies that the loan was sought after President Powers rejected (Sager) for a pay increase."

But the report says Sager's recollection of the facts is "not consistent with the emails and other evidence obtained during the course of this office's investigation."

Again, why is Sager a bad guy for seeking alternative funding for his swank lifestyle?  He was already sacrificing a lucrative private sector salary, just as everyone in legal academia does.  If the university stupidly wants to put a salary freeze in place, he's got to make an even greater killing somehow.  Now, years later, you're going to ask him questions about this stuff and expect him to tell the truth?  Give me a break.  UT is still highly ranked by all reputable publications, so I don't see what the problem is with his tenure.

The point of all of this, prospective law students, is that you can still trust your law schools.  Their leaders may cover up questionable payment schemes, watch their truth-telling enemies get witch-hunted, and slightly fudge the truth when speaking with official investigators...

But damn it, when they tell you you're going to make a great decision going to law school, or reporting unaudited jobs outcomes, they're telling the God's honest truth.  

That's the straight dope, yo. 

"Four Questions" Game Lets New Albany Leader Spread the "Good News"

Here is the Albany Business Review's recent article asking new Albany Law dean (and soon to be President) Alicia Oullette "Four Questions."  For the pea-brained demon dogs at OTLSS, the four questions might be something like this:

1.  The class of 2013 reported 17.3% of your graduates were totally unemployed after 9 months.  Would you agree that the entry-level hiring market thinks you pumped out too many JDs that year?
2.  How many of your graduates landed positions paying more than $150,000, the expected cost of an Albany J.D. with a 50% tuition discount?
3.  A recent report indicated that New York is the 9th most saturated state, with a 3.1-1 graduate-to-job ratio.  Do you agree that New York does not need fifteen law schools to meet market demand?
4.  Will you agree to an independent third-party audit of Albany's employment statistics?  If not, what is the basis of denying consumers transparency?

Instead, thankfully, this is righteous, good, industry-supporting journalism, that asks these four questions:

1.  How will the new position impact the remainder of the academic year?
2.  What else has been a focus?
3.  What is the status of the discussions with Albany Law School [sic]?
4.  What will be a main focus as you undertake the role of president?

And to these softballs, she hits home run after home run, or really just this one:

Admissions across the county are down and Albany Law is no different. We really believe we have terrific offerings for students and the faculty have gotten engaged and the trustees have gotten engaged in getting the good news out to counter the narrative that's out there. We see that our students are getting jobs and they're happy. Because we're the only law school in the capital of New York and because we have an incredible alumni system, our students have been able to get jobs.

Narrative countered!  God knows someone has to sell these kids on making awesome career moves that will begin a 40-year voyage of milk and honey.  They're not going to do it themselves, people.  Get the faculty and trustees involved; these kids are sophisticated and it's going to take a team effort.

Again, a scamblogger might read that paragraph and be like "what the fuck?"  But they probably didn't think through their decision to attend law school, as this current crop of students no doubt has.

The State of the Scam

The following was written by frequent (?) contributor Dean Satan as an exclusive to the Law School Truth Center.

Greetings, my fellow mountebanks.  I, Dean Satan, am proud to update you on the State of the Scam.

We are fifteen years into this new century. Fifteen years that dawned with glorious boom times; that unfolded with a new generation benefiting from glorious boom times; that saw a vicious recession almost threaten our glorious boom times. It has been, and still is, a hard time for only a few of our laziest, blame-the-world graduates, that has been amplified, like, way out of proportion.

But tonight, we turn the page.  Like Bob Seger.

Tonight, after a breakthrough year for law deans, our legal economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our graduates are getting some type of jobs than ever before; more of our graduates are insured to pay their loans than ever before; we are as free from the grip of financial responsibility as we’ve been in almost 30 years.

Law deans, for all that we’ve endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back; for all the tasks that lie ahead, know this:

The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Scam is strong.

At this moment – with growing tuition, shrinking oversight, bustling legal industry, and still-booming scholarship production – we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other law deans on Earth. It’s now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next fifteen years, and for decades to come.

Will we continue to accept a legal economy where only a deserving few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we listen to the pinko scambloggers and give participation medals for everyone who makes the effort?

Will we approach the applicant pool fearful and reactive, dragged into costly conflicts that strain our greatest minds and set back our standing? Or will we lead wisely, using all elements of our power to defeat new threats and protect our summer research stipends?

Will we allow ourselves to listen to these diseased factions and turn against one another – or will we recapture the sense of common purpose that allowed us to to model and bottle at the AALS conventions? 

And if we can't do that, will the right law deans have the courage to jump under the bus voluntarily?

And now I'd like to tell you a story about Rebekah and Ben.  Seven years ago, she waited tables. He worked construction.  As the crisis worsened, Ben’s business dried up, so he took what jobs he could find, even if they kept him on the road for long stretches of time. Rebekah took out student loans, enrolled in community college, and retrained for a new career. They sacrificed for each other. And slowly, it paid off, but, of course, not enough. They bought their first home. They had a second son. Rebekah got a better job, and then a raise, but not nearly enough to be super well off and such. Ben is back in construction – and home for dinner every night - how quaint.

Law deans, Rebekah and Ben’s story is our story. They represent the millions of prospective students who have worked hard, and scrimped, and sacrificed, and retooled, and are a good place, but maybe could want a little more, rewarding us with satisfactory salaries and 20-hour workweeks. They are the reason I sacrificed the chance to have a corner office at Latham and swim in the swill of high-class hookers and top-shelf scotch.

But students and Rebekah and their sweet, succulent families still need our help. She and Ben are working as hard as ever, but have to forgo vacations and a new car so they can pay off student loans and save for retirement.  That's where we step in.  See, Rebekah and Ben's biggest mistake is that neither of them ever went to law school.  With a legal education, one or both of them could easily get a job paying $160,000 in salary each year, with plenty of vacations and new cars even after paying modest student loan payments.

My fellow law deans, we are a strong, tight-knit family. We have made it through some hard times. Fifteen years into this new century, we have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and begun again the work of continuing our beautiful exploitation like nothing bad as ever happened. We’ve laid a new foundation that looks remarkably similar to the old one as we prattle on about "experiential learning" and other hogwash. A brighter future is ours to write, particularly with slick brochures and subway ads targeted to minorities. Let’s begin this new chapter – together – and let’s start the work after having a round of pina coladas and cigars in Havana, since it looks like men of our class can do that again fairly soon.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless this industry.  Scam on.

Hosting a Raiding Party on the Free Love Transfer Train

There's been some other articles around talking about the transfer antics in D.C.  Georgetown brings in 100+ transfers (13 from American), G.W. sends a raiding party! to American to carry off 54 well-bred legal beagles.  American nibbles 12 from DC and UB. 

Let's look at some other raiders and call it "Free Love Transfer Train!"  (All numbers hastily pulled from ABA Standard 509 forms).

1.   CALIFORNIA LOVE

A.  Cal-Berkeley responds to some mild losses by sending a raiding party! to Cal-Hastings to pick up 18 new partners.  They also grab 4 from San Fran, 2 from Santa Clara, and 1 each from Golden Gate and McGeorge.  All-in-all, Cal-Berkeley (a T14) is +46.

B.  Cal-Hastings now has an empty space in its heart to fill with love.  They grab 5 from Golden Gate, 4 from San Fran, and 2 from Santa Clara.  They even grab students from LA and San Diego schools, but still wind up being more prey than predator.

C.  Speaking of the Southern part of the state, UCLA, after losing 5 students to Cal-Berkeley's marauders, went balls-to-the-wall in its recoupment efforts and wound up +21 enrollment.   They turned and grabbed 5 from Cal-Davis, 3 from Southwestern, and 8 from Loyola-Marymount, among others.

D.  In that next group, Loyola lost 49 students by attrition, and tried their hardest to recover.  They definitely get effort points by taking 6 from Southwestern and a whopping 15 students from Whittier.

2.  BIG APPLE MUNCHING

A.  Columbia didn't gorge at one table, but rather enjoyed the whole buffet:  5 from Brooklyn, 4 from Cornell, 3 from Fordham, etc.  All in all Columbia (this is a T-14, okay?) brought in 46 students and only lost 9 to attrition.  Not to be outdone, NYU brought in 8 from Cornell, 4 from Brooklyn, 4 from Fordham, and a smattering of other transfers to bring their total to 50.

B.  While those three victims were surprisingly restrained in bringing in transfers, St. Johns caught the spirit and decided to nab 16 of Touro's students.  That's a raiding party!  Considering transfer attrition alone, Touro was -34.

3.  SUNSHINE DISINFECTS...WE HOPE

A.   As much as people rip on Florida Coastal, it's basically a strip mine operation for other law schools to come in and take what they want.  This class slut gave up 55 transfers:  10 to UF, 9 to FSU, 5 to Miami, 4 to St. Thomas, etc.

B.  In possibly the oddest swap around, FIU of all places sent a raiding party! to Nova Southeastern and brought home 16 choice specimens.  Nova lost 41 students to transfers altogether.

4.  WELCOME TO DOUBLE-A, SON

Michigan State took 31 new prospects from Thomas Cooley.  They rounded 3rd hard, and Lansing blew a lug nut.

5.  EATING THE GEORGIA PEACH

Emory took 20 transfers in from JMLSATL.  Overall, Emory brought in 56 transfer students and only lost 13 students total to attrition.  While we're on the topic of JMLSATL, Mercer nabbed 5 and Georgia State took 10.

Anyone got any other good stories from the transfer swap?

CONCLUSION

So basically, kids, if you want to go to a really good law school with a low LSAT or uGPA, it's okay to go to a crappier one.  Just doll yourself up and after a single solitary year, the bigger suitors will come knocking like you're on special.

An alternative title to this piece could be called Triumphs and Sacrifices.  Clearly, there are law schools that lose at this game, either by keeping their standards too high (Loyola) or simply by not scraping at the bottom of the barrel enough (American).

But hey, what kind of a law school shill would I be if I didn't wholly endorse exploitative capitalism?  It's a meat market out there, and the shrewdest butchers know how to play the game.

Has there been enough metaphor-mixing in this article?  I think not.  Here's some more metaphors:

Law students are like cars.  If you're at Yale, you're like a Bugati.  If you're at American, you're like a Toyota Avalon.  BUT with a stupendous first year, you could, like, pimp dat ride.  So much that G.W. wants to put you on its lot.  It's the one behind the fence where the LSAT people don't go, but DUDE that's where the hot buyers go.

Law students are like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're going to get.  Except you're pretty damned sure the Belgian artisan stuff at Harvard is better than the Russel Stover going stale at some Roadside InfiLaw Outlet.  But the hungry hungry hypo-law-deans at the Tier 2 and 3 schools have plenty of room in the bellies, so you need to be one of those candies with the nougat or salted caramel - none of that rubbery fake cherry shit.  And then they'll select you for their new assortment where you can be bought by all kinds of employers who won't care what box you used to be in.

Law students are like babies.  If you have a really cute and smart one, a nicer family may come along and take it.  But that's okay - what goes around comes around, and, frankly, that one was a little too perfect for your shit-stained cluttery house.  Go get a raiding party! and steal some poor family's baby.  It's not like they can nurture it the way you can.  You're a Tier 2 house.  Besides, if you wanted to keep the first kid, you wouldn't have made it so attractive to thieves.

Law students are like vodka.  At the start of the night, you can probably tell the difference between Belvedere (Georgetown), Grey Goose (GW), Absolut (American), watered-down mid-range Polish vodka (Catholic), and Skyy (D.C.).  After a while, you're drunk, you've run out of the real premium stuff and suddenly Absolut is lookin' really drinkable.  Plus, they've got slick marketing.  Look at those ads; you could do international law if you drink Absolut!  Shit, I'd take 54 shots of that, too, if my liver metabolized six-figure salaries and cirrhosis was only going to happen if Bartender Uncy Sam cuts me off.  Which he won't.

So, in closing, law students are drunk-driving babies eating chocolate.