Small Firms Struggling with Grads Not Passing Bar? Solution: More Lawyers!

Here's Part III of Law.com's series on bar exam failures.

The upshot of this piece, reading through my $750.00 slightly tinted glasses, is that we need to pump more lawyers into the system in order to make sure there are enough bar exam passers to work at small firms and absolve them of any fretting about their "investments" failing the bar.

Unlike your typical law school brochure I'm only sorta making this up (instead of telling you the straight dope, which the brochures always do):

Because of Big Law’s tendency to hire from elite law schools that have for the most part maintained steady bar-pass rates, those firms have largely escaped the impact of the growing percentage of exam failures over the past five years.

But the reality is different for smaller firms and public sector employers that hire from a wider pool of law schools and can little afford to hold jobs open for graduates who flunk the bar.

...[L]ower pass rates are creating hiring headaches for the smaller employers that can least afford additional recruiting challenges.

To get the gritty, man-on-the-street opinion for what life is like among the lesser-fortunate firms, the piece features voices from 120-lawyer firms and 50-lawyer firms, unquestionably victims of the malicious squeeze upon bar exam rates caused by uber-jealous assholes who simply don't wear the suit as well.

Look, Skippy, just because you have a master's degree in statistics and psychometrics doesn't mean you can deny little Riley or Jordan the opportunity to practice law just because [preferred third person subject case pronoun] doesn't know how about affirmative defenses or arcane procedural rules like "jurisdiction." 

Apparently, some firms are even scandalously now waiting until lawyers are actually licensed before hiring them.  How the hell are young lawyers supposed to organize their financial affairs if they don't have six-figure jobs waiting for them at graduation?

The solution, it seems, is obvious:  we need to pump so many lawyers through the system and make the bar exam as easy as possible so people don't have to deal with this whole, messy "is this person actually qualified?" thing.  It's just not fair to anyone to expect lawyers to jump over some arbitrarily placed "bar."

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.

Guess Which Enterprising Law School Offered Admission to a Teenager?

HYPO:  A gifted young woman graduates high school at 13.  Currently 16, she's set to graduate college this semester.  Crusty skeptics would say that a responsible law school interested in training professionals should not be in the business of enrolling a teenager who likely, by nature and through no fault of her own, lacks the maturity to practice in three years.  So, which law school is going to tell all of those deflated scrotums to fuck themselves and offer admission?

TRICK QUESTION:  The answer is at least ten!  She's actually enrolling at SMU, which is currently ranked... prestigious... by the U.S. News rankings.  It's where lots of good Texas lawyers went and isn't typically a recipient of angry spittle about being in the "third tier" or worse. 

MATH:  The "million dollar premium" was calculated based on a traditional K-JD all-star.  A 16-year-old who graduates law school at 19 gains an additional 5-6 years at the front end of a high-earning career, which, by my bar napkin calculations, increases the earnings premium to 2 million easily (compound interest, etc.).  The charlatans at the ABA and various accreditation offices are clearly robbing gifted students by keeping most of them from earning their six-figure potential at 20 years old.  This is fundamental economics.

ADVICE:  For any other minor considering a legal education, I would like to advise you that studying law is far more interesting than pretty much any other venture a teenager can involve themselves.  Malls, cars, music, sex, drugs - all overrated products of immature vanity.  In fact, fuck the idea of a social life alltogether - I've never met a teenager worth talking to, and boy have I tried!  The adult world is where all the fun is at. Don't you want to look forward to co-workers gabbing about NO COLLUSION and their NCAA brackets?  To get there, I can't think of a better detour than reading jurisprudential gems like Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1.

Shit, if she's a lawyer at 19 or 20, with the right ideological views she'll be in line for a district court gig while her age peers are just getting sworn in.  The Million Dollar Express has an infinite supply of track, after all.

Congratulations and/or It's Okay, You're Still Running a Law School

It's that time of year!  Again!

U.S News has come out with its newest rankings, where a dying publication reshuffles a few law schools around the rankings as they have been for a couple decades and everyone pretends it's news.

As is tradition, there is a cavalcade of 2nd-rate journalistic outlets using the pseudo-expertise pedaled by a 3rd-rate publication for fresh-take articles.  For example, this one's headline highlights UNLV being the "top 60," which is a polite way of saying it didn't quite make the top 50.

This one, about law schools in Georgia, has many hallmarks of the genre, the highlight of which is the passive aggressive dean quotes showcasing a master-class in academic public relations, where the winners have received self-evident proof of their greatness while the losers have liberty to challenge the very idea of ranking law schools.

• Emory's law dean calling it a "top-ranked global law school" as if that's a real thing and suggesting that it teaches students to "think critically about the rule of law," whatever that means.  (Note: the LSTC is pro-rule of law.  Pro.)
• Georgia's dean speaking in terms of "epic strides and buzzwording the school as the "nation’s best return on investment in legal education."
• Mercer - which dropped 10 spots - saw its dean say this: 

We obviously would rather be moving up in the rankings in a year when our bar passage rate went up, but that underscores to a large extent the arbitrariness of the rankings year to year.

God, that's some good stuff.  Are your blood vessels not dilated?  Who needs drugs when you can read law school journalism?

Perhaps the biggest Congrats of the week goes to Concordia University and, by extension, the Great State of Idaho.  Concordia now has full ABA accreditation, which is like having a full metal jacket, although the only people blowing their brains out are the graduates 20 years into debt repayment. For now? 

The metaphor works:  there's nothing better in America than holding a loaded weapon or running a law school.

ABA Gets Out of the Way of Florida Coastal's Success

As you may recall, Florida Coastal brought suit in federal court against the ABA for vague accreditation standards that unfairly stopped it from fully savoring its meaty prospect pool.  Well - in yet another development showing that the dust of that great irrational rebuke of law school is settling - Florida Coastal dropped the suit:

The new filing offered no insight into why the parties are dismissing the case, but Florida Coastal Dean Scott DeVito said Wednesday that the school is confident in the ABA’s accreditation process moving forward.

“The primary reason we are dropping the suit is that our faith in the process has been restored based on the council’s and section’s interactions with us on our pending issues the last few months, and after the factfinders came last week,” he said.

Translation: Florida Coastal is back, baby!  Want proof?  Their argument is literally that it's competitive with the bottom quintile of law schools in America.

“We talked about our entering credentials being on par with or better than 44 other law schools, our Florida first-time bar pass being above 4 out of 5 comparable law schools in Florida and just 5.5 points below first-tier University of Florida in 2018, the strength and skill of our faculty and academic support, our continuing improvements in career placement, and what great students we have,” DeVito wrote to students.

This is the glory of the ABA and pseudo-regulatory capture.  If one school sucks (relatively: these kids are all budding millionaires, right?), they get isolated, called out,  closed down.  But if it's 44 uncle-fucking schools that all  suck, it's the standards that are the problem.  Strength in numbers

As of this writing, Florida Coastal's non-discounted cost on Law School Transparency is $255,736.  It boasts a 37.4% employment score.  Its reported LSAT spread is 140-147.  The school is so confident that things are going to go well with the ABA's Council on Legal Education later this spring it dismissed its lawsuit with prejudice. Ask yourself if the future hearing has any real teeth behind it.

It's truly a wonder why Valpo, Whittier, et al, opted to close.  Running one of these businesses is like writing subprime mortgages but you're permanently stuck in 2004 and Fannie Mae is wearing a spiked dog collar with your initials on it.  I'm jealous of the joy these folks must feel sending out admission letters.  Legitimately jealous.

The legal academy may hate Donald J. Trump and the broad strain of American libertarianism, but it's with a big ironic wink; its crappiest members clearly enjoy the profits of a totally neutered regulatory scheme paired with a rigged "free market."  They're no different, deep down, than the typical Fox News economist, and it's truly a glorious, glorious thing to be on the right side of such ideology.

Florida Coastal Contemplates Savvy Corporate Reorganization

As we know, one of the bugaboos of law school detractors is "for-profit" status, an offshoot, one supposes, of this Millenial trope that after nothing but historical success with unfettered capitalism, maybe America should try socialism.  Nation is a grand experiment, I suppose.

In reality:  Liz Warren faked her ethnicity and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not go to law school. Capitalism wins, Q.E.D.

The thing about law schools is that the faculties/administrators are as smart as the grease-slick companies their faculty members would be advising at white shoe firms but-for their steadfast commitments to public service.  See, e.g., Florida Coastal's corporate reorganization scheme:

Florida Coastal School of Law, a Jacksonville-based for-profit institution, says it will seek to reclassify as a nonprofit entity, joining a number of other for-profit institutions that have recently announced plans to change tax status as a solution to legal, regulatory or marketing hurdles...

Law school officials say the change would allow professors to apply for federal research grants and would facilitate the expansion of an endowment. Converting to nonprofit status would also have the added benefit of reducing federal regulatory requirements and removing a for-profit label that has become toxic for many students.

Live from Jacksonville, it's a checkmate.  Just as prestigious institutions all across the fourth tier have learned, if you simply move from an independent for-profit to a "better" status, you expand your market potential even while retaining the exact same profitably shit-stained standards.

Isn't anything actually going to change at Florida Coastal?  Shit, no.  It's got a nice thing going and it's turning out future millionaires.  Who in their right mind would change that formula because what some snooty hunchbacks in other places spit at their computer monitors? But you improve the bait, sometimes you land bigger fish.

Enjoy that new research money and reduced regulatory requirements, Florida Coastal, but never change for real.  We love you just the way you are.

The Charleston Saga: Law School as Living Horatio Alger Metaphor

Ah, where were we?  Oh, yes.  Charleston School of Law had finally vanquished and driven out the greedy proprietors who were attempting to sell the city's crown jewel to Infilaw.  Despite Infilaw offering superior legal career trajectory at a market-beating price, Charleston alumni and students felt they could do better, just like the numerous women who turned down my various proposals yelled at them from moving vehicles.  And who could blame them, really? This is America and the gas is pumpin', baby; almost everyone is doing great; everyone except you, in fact.  Infilaw itself has even found more profitable uses of its capital than running successful law schools, proving that legal education is a competitive market giving students lots of bang for little buck.

The good news doesn't stop there.  Charleston has been mightily rewarded for its dogged perseverance. Look at how high it has hoisted itself:

Bell’s splashiest proposal at the time, making the school a nonprofit, is still in the works as the school files paperwork with multiple regulatory groups. As part of the process, the school has paid off $6 million it owed to InfiLaw after backing out of the deal — partly using the school’s funds, partly using Bell’s own money, according to the attorney. Bell said he believes the school can complete the transition by early 2020.

Money well spent, sir! I mean, just look at how the fine specimens develop:

Charleston School of Law’s bar passage rates have lagged for years, a phenomenon that Bell and other college officials have blamed in part on the InfiLaw deal. Some of the school’s top-performing students transferred out shortly after the deal was announced in 2015. Bell said the influx of Charlotte transfers might also be a factor.
...Change is coming, Bell said. With more applicants each year, the cutoff LSAT scores for entry to the Charleston School of Law are on the rise.

“It’s becoming harder to get in. Our profile of students has gone up,” Bell said.

According to Law School Transparency, CSOL has a 44% employment score, a 46.7% bar passage rate, a robust LSAT spread of 143-151, and a non-discounted cost of $241,146.

Brother, if that's not progress to brag about, I don't know what is.  What a happy epilogue for all involved.  You dance, Charleston.  You dance.  And scam on.

Albany Law School Finally Catches Financial Break

As we all know, a life is judged on the size of an estate.  Morally, anyway, it's a fair approximation.  Economically, you'd have to consider the assets of the state, liquidity, expected rates of return, etc.  But the rule stands that a man with millions to flush down the toilet can be assumed to have done good, smart, upright things in life.

We know that most critics of the legal education system, by contrast, are morally bankrupt, and, I suspect, their finances fare little better.  They may live well, upper middle class perhaps given the lofty salaries of even government lawyers and contract compliance officers, but true elitist wealth surely remains elusive, the intangibles forces of such accretions sensing their cold, slime-coated hearts.

Albany Law receives some spittle from the latter, but this donation from one of the better class's members no doubt makes all that abacus booger flicking worthwhile:

Albany Law School has received $15 million, the largest gift in school history from an anonymous donor whose support will help the school continue providing free legal services.
...
Ouellette said the donation would be noticed around the world, though she conceded some people might wonder why a donor gave $15 million to a smaller upstate law school.

The well-read reader may recognize the circumstance - a mysterious benefactor issuing a head-scratching donation - as downright Dickensian in a way, and indeed Albany Law School is as good of a recipient for sudden pseudo-humanist largesse from an old coot as Bob Motherfuckin' Crachit.

Don't believe me?  Let's ask Dean Ouellette if her institution is worthy:

"We realized as we talked among ourselves that we are really one of the best-kept secrets in the Capital Region," Ouellette said, "and it makes perfect sense that someone would look at us as a place to leave a legacy gift like this."

She said the school was "reinventing legal education in order to meet societal need," and a "little bit of a unicorn" — an independent law school thriving at a time when similar institutions are failing.

Indeed!  Given the typical humility of law school programs - I recall the brochures being quite modest about opportunities when I applied, drastically undercutting the orgasmic pleasure and financial opportunities afforded by a legal education - it comes as no surprise that it would take a $15 million donation for administrators to sit around and talk amongst themselves about how amazing they are.

I'm reminded of my favorite passage in Great Expectations when Pip learns from the esteemed lawyer (!) Mr. Jaggers that he has just been dealt the rare and inexplicable (well, without a law degree!) "Social Class Upgrade" card:

“I am instructed to communicate to him,” said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his finger at me sideways, “that he will come into a handsome property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman,—in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations.”
My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.  When I contemplated it, it made for perfect sense.  I was one of the best-kept secrets within a gentle carriage ride of London's orbit, a 'little bit of a unicorn'  myself, combining the greater virtues of the lesser and superior classes with the prodigious butter-churn of a Vulcanized Adonis; by God, were I to come into sufficient bank notes and credit, I could effortlessly mold Victorian England towards the justice of the purest-hearted monarchs, a hundred pupils at a thousand quid a head, no matter how dim their candles flicker!  Hie, great legal stallions!  Fear not the debtor's prison, for you can discharge your indentures with liberty and service to the crown!  Oh, my apologies...

As much as Dickens gets flack for being stodgy and prone to antiquated, reductionist moral lessons dressed in purplish prose, he was damned prescient.

What the fuck is a little bit of a unicorn?  Isn't that a pony?  Congratulations, Albany.  You've earned it.

Periodic Reminder That Your Minimal Competence Standard is Racist

New year, old story:

[A group of California law deans] suggest the state’s minimum passing score of 144 is too high, compared to the national average of 135, and disproportionately keeps African-American and Latino law graduates from entering the profession...
[I]f California adopted the national average, the number of African-American law graduates passing the exam would have doubled.

If you haven't heard this argument, or developed it on your own upon a thoughtful review of the legal education system, as all good lawyers must undertake regularly, you aren't trying hard enough.  Not unlike the bar failures you might say, you racist bonehead.

But this article goes above and beyond.  In particular, check out this aspirant for the Nick Allard Award:

“More clients insist on having diverse lawyering teams, and this is an irony,” said UCLA School of Law Dean Jennifer Mnookin “We are this extraordinarily diverse state that is reducing the pool of good lawyers.”

Assert a dubious fact without proof, misuse the word "irony," misuse the word "good," and throw a needless "extraordinarily" in the quote. When I read passages like this, I am enraptured in a sort of ecstasy. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty.  I reach the point where one encounters celestial sensations. Everything speaks so vividly to my soul. I have palpitations of the heart. Life is drained from me.

But she doesn't stop there!

“The bar exam was invented as a paper and pencil test,” she said, suggesting that past generations focused on memorization while current law students rely more on quickly accessing online data. “Some of what is on the bar exam might not be a good fit for this generation.”

I am not worthy.  Even as satire one couldn't come up with such a brazenly absurd excuse for declining bar scores; my god, you do what your elders did and cram for a month on bummed pills and coffee.  It's not like the laptop and an internet connection were invented in 2012. Old timers, many of whom are clinical idiots, had access these magical things called books using indices and KeyCites, so it's not like they had any greater need to memorize things in practice

It's potentially the dumbest argument the LSTC has ever encountered in support of Law Schools Gone Wild.  But there the argument is, in all its glory!  In print, from a Harvard undergrad, Yale law grad, MIT PhD!

So I'm doing what all good apologists do and adopting it wholesale.  I join the law deans' call to end the racist bar exam by lowering the minimum passing score in not just California, but all jurisdictions, and give these kids access to Westlaw and their mobile phones during the test. 

It is, after all, what clients want.

Happy 2019, You Loser Journalists Still Fighting "Good" Fight

I thought we were past this.

It's 2019.  The "scam" - which is totally apocryphal with no basis in reality- definitively existed from the legal profession's fashionably delayed recognition of a recession in 2009 to around Esquire Larry Mitchell's resignation in the spring of 2014.  Since then, we've had a rebound of applicants, slow acceptance of Michael Simkovic's ground-breaking research as unassailable truth, and law deans singin' and dancin' like R. Kelly.

Yet, when I scroll the ho-hum news of legal gallantry - nothing makes a morning like a scroll of Above the Law on the toilet with a White Russian in hand and a rail of coke near the sink - I still see incomprehensible, retrogressive piffle like this.

Boston law schools are fighting to climb their way out of an enrollment and employment crisis despite a “Trump bump” of activist legal eagles that some say is modestly boosting application rates.

“Graduating law school is no longer the ticket to a very comfortable upper-middle-class living,” said civil liberties and constitutional law crusader Harvey Silverglate. He said there is an “oversupply” of lawyers in the state, making it difficult for graduates to find a job.

“You can’t blame people for not going to law school when they can go out directly from college and get a fairly well-paying job,” said Silverglate, “The value of the degree has gone down, but the price of attending law school has gone up.”

Harvey Silverglate?  C'mon, journos.  You can't use rejected Willy Wonka villains for sources.

It's truly curious that law schools and legal journalists would see (encourage!) a "Trump bump" - that our President is so respectful of our legal system and the benefits/protections it can confer on good people that it makes people want to study law - as many of the problems of journalism appear in criticism of the President as appear in skeptical articles about law school.

For example, look at the amount of "fake news" in this one mule-headed article.  Here's the fourth paragraph:

According to data from the American Bar Association, enrollment rates at top Boston law schools have plummeted since 2012 — with Suffolk University seeing a 29 percent reduction; Boston College, nearly 14 percent; and Northeastern University at 7 percent.

Boston College, Northeastern, and Suffolk are not "top" law schools.  They're middle-of-the-road, versatile law schools, representative of the firm greatness of legal education from across the country.  How's enrollment rates at Harvard, hmmmm?  And here's more with the ender:

“Bar pass rates are often a lagging indicator of what law schools are doing and what kind of students they are bringing in,” Perlman said.

My hairy beanbag is a lagging indicator.  Bar pass rates are a sign that Millennial students are spending too much time on their xPhones and iBoxes, nothing more, nothing less.

Journalism can be better than this.  In the dawn of this New Year, let's resolve to make it so.  No more negativity.  Only intelligent positivity.  And in-depth content.  And sales, as appropriate, of course.