Thursday, October 20, 2011

ABA addresses the law student debt crisis

Via its Facebook page for law students.  (BTW for the purposes of this sweepstakes I am, as a tribute to Andy Bernard, a Cornell law student, Class of 2013. Right now the grand prize is only $828.50 so I'm not overly excited, although my students would probably tell you I could surely use that Brooks Brothers gift certificate.)

In all seriousness, this kind of thing in its own small way signals the extent to which many of the profession's authority figures remain clueless regarding the nature of the crisis current law students and recent grads face.

33 comments:

  1. The ABA -- what kind-hearted folks they are.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just what every law student/graduate needs: a nice 3-piece suit from Brooks Brothers for an interview that they will never be able to go on. I'm certain that the good folks in the men's suit's section at Macy's, however, will applaud the style choices of their most recent hire though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My brain hurt from this. It oscillated from the thought of "Well this is nice because they didn't have to do this" to "My future is ruined because of these guys and they're making a FACEBOOK SWEEPSTAKES OUT OF IT" so quickly it felt like a rail spike.
    Then I entered. It's no joke how much I could use that 10k.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great. Now I have a .01% percent chance of winning a prize that will lower my law school debt from $190,000 to $180,000 and for the next thirty years I'll save $15 off my monthly debt payments!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm not advocating violence against the ABA, ...but I am going to say that my student loan repayment program involves a series of life insurance policies taken out against ABA admins and law school deans...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow the ABA are a bunch of assholes. How anyone can view that as anything but them messing with students is beyond me. Wow. That's a mind-f*ck.

    ReplyDelete
  7. 1. Create a fraudulent product that charges a fortune for a degree that you claim is worth $100,000 or so on the job market, but that, in reality, is worth no more than a liberal arts degree (i.e. nothing).

    2. Mock those very people who you defrauded by telling them that if they "like" your facebook page, you will enroll them in a lottery through which ONE of them can get back 1/20th of the amount of money you stole from him/her.

    3. Laugh your ass off at the losers you took advantage of.

    If the law school scam crowd had any ability to mobilize a protest, the ABA would have hell to pay for this. 1,000, or just even 100, student at the ABA headquarters making life hell for every one of those scamming cretins would teach them a damn good lesson about this.

    Or at least calling and bugging the hell out of your professors to (a) remind them that your life is f'd up because of their scam and (b) asking them to sign the law school petition would do something.

    The bottom line is that you need to start changing the equation in the minds of the ABA and their constituent law school Deans. Right now there is absolutely no fear of any kind. They view you as do-nothings who they can trod on mercilessly. You have the power to change, by doing something.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I mean, why don't we have a website listing every professor, at every law school, with entries for whether (a) they have been called and (b) whether they agreed to sign the petition?

    Something as simple as that! Why can't you organize at least that?

    There shouldn't be a damn professor who wakes up in the morning without dread of all the phone calls he/she is going to get from angry and unemployed law grads.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I bet if students started calling professors, the professors would jump on the students' side and it would create a groundswell of internal demand for change. Say what you want about the Deans, but I doubt most professors entered the field with the intention of scamming students.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I just read where the Louisville football coach has received a raise in his base salary from 1.6 mil to 2.3 mil. He will also receive 3.25 mil if he stays until 2016. Why is no one complaining about this?

    ReplyDelete
  11. There is a post over at the Legal Skills Prof Blog that says law firms are having trouble hiring experienced associates in certain areas. Why are so many attorneys out of work if firms are having problems hiring attorneys in some areas?

    ReplyDelete
  12. 11:16: The firms are looking for people with 5-7 years experience in a firm, and because they laid off all those people three years ago there is a gaping black hole in that class. Now the survivors find themselves a hot commodity and are moving up the ranks, so the middle-tier national firms are getting squeezed. They ate their young and it is coming back to bite them in the ass.

    ReplyDelete
  13. "I just read where the Louisville football coach has received a raise in his base salary from 1.6 mil to 2.3 mil. He will also receive 3.25 mil if he stays until 2016. Why is no one complaining about this?"

    Because he deserves it. The Louisville football program brings in a ton of revenue via ticket sales and such. And unlike the produce law schools sell, the people who buy those tickets get what was promised and so they are not ripped off.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "There is a post over at the Legal Skills Prof Blog that says law firms are having trouble hiring experienced associates in certain areas. Why are so many attorneys out of work if firms are having problems hiring attorneys in some areas?"

    Good question that highlights how useless a JD is. There are jobs out there for lawyers, but they require a knowledge set that is not taught in law school. Trying to get that job with a JD is like trying to get it with a degree in french literature.

    ReplyDelete
  15. There's something about Facebook that reminds me of the Borg Collective.

    ReplyDelete
  16. "Also referred to as the "hive mind" or "collective consciousness", this is the term used to describe the group mind of the Borg civilization. Each Borg individual, or drone, is linked to the collective by a sophisticated subspace network that ensures each member is given constant supervision and guidance. The collective is broadcast over a subspace domain similar to that utilized by the transporter. Being part of the collective offers significant biomedical advantages to the individual drones. The mental energy of the group consciousness can help an injured or damaged drone heal or regenerate damaged body parts or technology. The collective consciousness not only gives them the ability to "share the same thoughts", but also to adapt with great speed to defensive tactics used against them."

    If only facebook were this useful.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I am a law prof. I can tell you that most law profs have never heard of the Petition. I asked my Dean about it yesterday, and he and his staff knew nothing about it, nor had they received anything from Campos. If you want law professors to sign it, every law prof needs to receive it in writing and by email. Otherwise they won't even know it exists.

    ReplyDelete
  18. 12:47: The dean's office of every ABA law school received the petition three to four weeks ago now. It was often sent straight to the school's dean, although in some cases it went to other dean's office administrators. I've received acknowledgements of this fact from about a dozen out of 200 schools. A few schools circulated it to their faculty, a few others refused, and I haven't heard from 95% of them.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Lawprof. Maybe, once you determine that the Deans are blocking your access to the professors, you should send it to each professor directly, perhaps ask for assistance from the blog readers in accomplishing this goal.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Law Prof.,

    Maybe you need to be a little more aggressive.

    If you need a list of the email address of every Brooklyn Law School full-time faculty, I can do that 30-40 mins of admin work for you. (hell, with that list I could paper their email in boxes myself).

    Most law schools list the email contact of full time professors on their website bios.

    ReplyDelete
  21. One thing about email is that they could claim to have not received it so we may want to follow up with a VM to eliminate that excuse.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Terry,

    I wanted to give law school administrators a reasonable amount of time to respond before contacting individual faculty directly. I think that point has been reached, so the question is what to do next.

    ReplyDelete
  23. I'm willing to provide email addresses for all of the full time faculty at U of Pittsburgh (where I got my degree).

    C'mon everyone "Adopt A School" and we can at least move this forward a bit...

    Avor

    ReplyDelete
  24. Law Prof-

    Organize/facilitate a student protest at your school. Students will follow you.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Oh! Can I please have a whole $500 off a BARBRI course?

    ReplyDelete
  26. Wait a minute. It's fucking scam just like everything else. You have to LIKE the ABA.

    ReplyDelete
  27. "Organize/facilitate a student protest at your school. Students will follow you."

    I wouldn't go this far yet because no one will show up and LawProf will be humiliated. The idea of calling or talking to all the professors face to face and getting a hard yes/no on the petition, though, is a godo start.

    ReplyDelete
  28. None, the number of people who like the ABA doesn't make clear how many like them on a part-time or temporary basis, and how many of the likes come from non-lawyers.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Is there perhaps a facebook policy requiring all "Likes" to be sincere? I mean, should you be allowed to just buy likes in this fashion, from people who most likely hate you?

    ReplyDelete
  30. I heard Cooley sued someone for saying that no one really likes them.

    ReplyDelete
  31. im surprised the page isn't filled with post mocking and ridiculing the ABA for its mealy mouthed handling of student debt

    ReplyDelete
  32. Mr. Campos,

    Just wanted to commend you for an excellent, well-written piece in The Daily Beast: "Occupy Wall Street's Age Divide."

    Thank-you for the work you do. You are a voice for so many...

    You are appreciated.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.