--Swift --
When one of my brothers was getting a PhD in chemistry back in the day, he had fellowship offers from a Midwestern university famous for its adjacent cornfields, and an Ivy League school famous for being famous. He chose the former. I was just getting into the law racket at the time and this choice naturally surprised me. He explained that Moo U happened to have a better chemistry department than World Famous University.
A glance at the current USNWR rankings of such things reveals that Illinois has a higher-ranked chemistry department than Yale, Princeton, Chicago, or Columbia. Of course this could never happen in law, for the simple reason that chemistry is a real academic field, while law is basically a bunch of prestige-obsessed bullshit resting upon enormous piles of money and power.
In law, the same three schools are always The Top Three, the same six schools are always The Top Six, and the same fourteen schools are always the T-14, ab aeterno, world without end amen. Law is all about maintaining hierarchy, and hierarchy is self-replicating and self-reinforcing. This makes reputation "sticky," as a social scientist would say, and since reputation drives everything else that affects the rankings, the rankings always stay the same, with two exceptions:
(1) There are ever-so tiny movements within the elite micro-tiers described above.
(2) There are comparatively large movements within the Outer Systems lying beyond the magic circle of the elites.
For example, this year in the Top Three Stanford jumped Harvard. Incredibly, people at these institutions actually care about this. They may, and they do, excoriate these imbecile rankings, which as many people have pointed out are based on a methodology which is absurd on its face (schools are rewarded for spending more money, i.e., for achieving maximum inefficiency; reputation is measured by surveying people who know nothing about the putative metrics etc etc), but you can bet your rising tuition dollar that this ever-so slight Disturbance in the Force has caused rejoicing in Palo Alto and much rending of garments in Cambridge. This would be merely amusing if it were not for the all-but inevitable fact that this meaningless event will cause all too meaningful amounts of money to be spent by those who deplore the metaphorically bankrupt proclamations of a literally bankrupt news magazine, while continuing to prostrate themselves before it.
Meanwhile, out in the provinces, one school this year fell from 23 to 35, while another rose from 30 to 20 (or something -- I'm not looking it up). Potential law students pay close attention to such movements, even though there's almost no evidence that this kind of thing makes any difference in regard to acquiring the jobs of which there are not nearly enough, especially the tiny percentage of jobs that pay enough to justifying going to any law school period. And because 0Ls pay attention to this nonsense, law school administrators and their university superiors do as well. (Although the former factor seems to be changing slowly. Even at a
A student at a Top Two law school makes the following observations:
Yes it is.The numbers are quite depressing. The top 6 have gotten closer and closer to each other, which seemingly suggests two possibilities (or some combo):
(1) Schools have been rat-racing based on the USN criteria to the extent that they're all pushing towards *precisely* the same goal.
(2) USNews is changing its formula to create greater parity at the top, arguably raising the incentive for (1).
One would hope that different law deans have their own independent thoughts/objectives [about what legal education ought to be]...but...oy. While we joke that it is a conspiracy, I sadly think it really, really is. And it's so, so wrong.
Law school is mostly an inter-institutional sorting mechanism, and the importance of rankings that mostly incorporate "institutional reputation" (or something) reflects that.
ReplyDeleteThe more important question is, why are the losers of the sorting test stupid enough to flush their money down the Cooley toilet?
Of course it's a conspiracy. The organic Constitution is what is taught at most law schools (a blank document to interpret). Relativism has infected the body politic. This ends badly.
ReplyDelete"Of course this could never happen in law, for the simple reason that chemistry is a real academic field, while law is basically a bunch of prestige-obsessed bullshit resting upon enormous piles of money and power."
ReplyDeleteEpic.
It is not unusual to see a relatively unknown medical school - to the general public - be ranked above "elite" institutions. Perhaps, employers and medical schools care more about one's competence with a scalpel than the name brand of his degree. When I go to my dentist, I don't give a damn that he graduated from an accredited dental school in Oklahoma. I do care about his ability and skills.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, law school ratings come down to prestige chasing. Then again, the schools don't teach one how to practice law, file a motion in limine, the local rules of court, how to interview witnesses, or how to argue a motion to produce in court.
You are correct: law is built on hierarchy, and the law school rankings are a microcosm of that reality. You will never see a lower-ranked law school that teaches solid practical skills leapfrog into the "top 14." (I tend to eschew this term, since this is 2012 - and not 1994. Now, plenty of students from these institutions are joining the ranks of the unemployed and under-employed.) Other deans and "professors" would certainly look down on such a development. We already know that most legal academics frown on such practice-based teaching. Perhaps, this is due to the fact that many legal "educators" did not practice law, for more than 8 minutes.
Those who teach legal research and writing often make MUCH less than those who teach the main doctrinal courses. Those who run clinical programs make peanuts, in comparison to tenured "professors." By the way, some of my finest instructors at Third Tier Drake were adjuncts who still practiced law 20 or 30 years later. Many of my former classmates felt the same. For $ome rea$on, the administrators still lavish huge salaries on the tenured "profs" with little practical experience.
I had one teacher - a very nice man - who graduated from Harvard Law, and he sometimes asked the students in clinic how court rules worked in practice!
I really hate it when you call students lemmings. It is demeaning to them and makes it seems that it isn't worth trying to educate them.
ReplyDeleteWe have better information and are immersed in this subject. Most 0Ls are still basing decisions off old and bad information and public opinion.
@ 6:59:
ReplyDeleteAgreed! Didn't you read about that Disney documentary, Campos? All that lemming footage was staged. Lemmings actually behave in perfectly rational ways even though occasionally some of them will die during migrations.
0Ls, on the other hand... well, I'm not sure there's much hope for them. ;-)
Professor,
ReplyDeleteSince language can have such a powerful effect on how subjects are viewed and discussed, have you thought of coming up with a term to define a person who has more educational debt than he or she can make the minimum payments on while still maintaining the basic necessities of life? Something along the lines of "School Poor" or "The New Education Poor" might be ideas.
Thanks for all your good work.
It is sad that the rankings matter so much. They are meaningless.
ReplyDeleteIvy Wilson
ReplyDeleteWe also need a term for 0Ls who have been mislead about law schools and their chance for employment, but haven't yet signed the loan papers. Something along the lines of "irrationally exuberant"
And then there are the people who won't be dissuaded no matter what evidence they are given, they need a name as well.
Something along the line of "stubbornly suicidal."
Plus, lemmings are cute and fluffy, and I don't think a law student has ever been described with either of those words.
ReplyDeleteIvy Wilson, there's also the issue of people who are chained to jobs/careers they hate so they can make the minimum payments on their debt, and remain chained to that debt for 30 years because of the constantly accruing interest and the fact that their salary does not enable them to make more than the minimum payments. But I guess "debt peons" works just as well for that.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting whenever these rankings come out how much attention is paid to the overall ranking number and relative movements among schools, and how little attention is paid to the employment statistics themselves.
ReplyDeleteMaybe employment statistics are not that important a part of 0L decision-making. Maybe 0Ls just go to the highest ranked school to which they are admitted or the one that gives them the best scholarship. Sure, there may be an exception here or there.
When 0Ls stop making decisions based on the rankings, schools will stop caring about them. When 0Ls stop making decisions based on the rankings, schools will stop changing their priorities based on them. It's a vicious cycle - students make decisions based on them, and student decisions influence the rankings themselves. That's why Yale has always been number 1 - because so long as they are number 1, their yield will be miles better than anyone else's, thus cementing their place at the top, world without end, amen.
ReplyDeleteAnd, by the way, faculty make decisions based on the rankings too. They're always trying to move up, and what do you think "moving up" is based on?
You can laugh at the schools all you want, but their behavior is rational. There is no benefit whatsoever to opting out of playing the game.
I don't have the rankings for either this or last year, but how have schools been doing generally since last year? Have LSAT/GPA medians been falling or rising- perhaps indicating the drop in applications has been concentrated among higher scoring applicants? What about employment rates?
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is that people want change but they’re going to have to go through courts and politicians to do it and they are all lawyers...
ReplyDeleteI am an 0L. I read TLS. I also read this blog, as many do on TLS.
ReplyDeleteI am not a lemming.
Millions of Americans are on the brink of losing their homes to foreclosure, even though the alleged owners of their mortgages may not be the true owners, given the widespread practice of securitizing such debts. It would be nice if every American facing foreclosure was represented by counsel. The need is there, and lord knows we have lawyers galore.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that newbee lawyers don't know how to handle foreclosure defense because it wasn't taught in law school. And, even if they do know, they can't afford to represent such clients at rates the clients can afford because of the burden of law school student debt.
I say: junk the whole law school model and return to a modified and updated version of the kind of apprenticeship model that produced Abraham Lincoln and Clarence Darrow. First year doctrine courses can be replaced with a recorded bar-review-like crash course. The remainder of law school would consist of externships and clinics, supervised by practitioners, not by professors, to train students to try a case, write an appeal, run an office, and represent clients in several practice areas of the student's choice.
It is an obscenity that law students will be spending a lifetime in debt servitude so that, say, Professor Paul Horwitz of Alabama can make 170K per year teaching constitutional law, even though Horwitz has minimal practice experience and his voluminous "scholarship" has never been cited even once by any reviewing court or administrative agency. What does Horwitz have to offer to students that couldn't be provided by a recorded series of lectures by genuine constitution experts--the kind who argue in court and whose scholarship gets cited?
As someone on ATL pointed out, all the talk in the comments on the site was about overall ranking--which is what people care about. No one was looking at employment stats at all.
ReplyDelete@ 8:32 -
ReplyDeleteIf you read this blog and are still planning on matriculating to ANY non-HYS law school then yes you are, in fact, a lemming.
Take LawProf's advice. The man is a genius and could not be more clear: the degree is useless and WILL NOT MAKE YOU BETTER OFF.
When the bubble pops in this industry it's going to be something to watch.
ReplyDeleteKind of like Walmart shoppers crashing the gates on Black Friday, except they'll be wearing less hoodies and sweats.
As a recent graduate of Villanova House of Pancakes and School of Law, I have to say the rankings matter a lot to me.
ReplyDeleteTrue, Nova's drop from 50 to 101 (with a brief rest in tier 2) isn't making me more unemployed than I already am. But here's the problem: I was above the median LSAT and GPA of the school, even their fictitious version. Had I known what their true position was, I could have negotiated more scholarship money from them. I could have gone to a similarly ranked school that ideally isn't lying about their stats - maybe they could have placed me better. I could've, well, not gone to law school.
I can't even talk about where I graduated from with any sense of pride anymore. Each interview I've been to in the past year (all 3 of them, hooray opportunities) have asked me about the scandal. And even though it shouldn't matter, it still stings to see all those schools that are now "better than mine."
I apologize but I needed a place to vent these feelings out.
What about the 'landellian bargain' where law schools give 25-30% of their tuition to their university so that the law faculty will be left alone. This means that if your tuition is 40k the university is taking about 10k for itself.
ReplyDelete9:13, same boat, same rough seas.
ReplyDelete"I am an 0L."
ReplyDeleteTo be a 0L is to be a lemming.
At least I have the excuse of enrolling pre-2008. It will be hard to have pity for you when your life is swirling in the toilet.
May God have mercy on your soon to be debt-ridden and unemployed soul.*
*(Won't happen to you, right? You're a Special Snowflake, amirght?).
My law school - Villanova - has dropped like a stone from 67 to 101 in two years. The Dean sent out an e-mail to all alumni this morning with the bad news. Twenty years out and working in a government job where it doesn’t matter whether you went to Harvard or Cooley once you get hired, its no skin off my back. But I feel bad for the students and recent grads.
ReplyDelete@9:45--You do not know enough about "I am an 0L" to make that judgment.
ReplyDeleteWow. Can someone who works for a school ranked 49th (with everything that means for his students low employment and high debt prospects in 2012) honestly be celebrating his school's "first tier" status, even though said status will have changed nothing for his students' miserable prospects? What a disappointing human being.
ReplyDeletehttp://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2012/03/the-rankings-are-here-the-rankings-are-here.html#comments
Apologies for the typo: should have been "students'"
ReplyDeleteWhy do universities take 25% of our tuition? What do we get for it?
ReplyDelete@9:45 You do not know enough about "I am a 0L" to make that judgment.
ReplyDelete@10:06-- you got part of your undergraduate program paid for.
ReplyDelete10:15 You mean we are paying to support undergraduate programs? I went to an undergrad that didn't have a law school. Who paid for me?
ReplyDeleteYou, the rest of your classmates, and the government--i.e. taxpayers.
ReplyDelete10:06,
ReplyDeleteIt pays for the facilities maintenance (parking lots, sidewalks) and some of the administrative services the law school shares with the university (registrar, etc.). Clearly a flat per student charge would be more fair than a percentage.
I posted a comment at Prawfsblog that the authors mother must be so proud that Pepperdine is 49.
ReplyDeleteThis apparently offended the delicate sensibilities of the Good Professor, who then deleted the comment and closed comments.
What a bunch of thin skinned pansies. These pansies wouldn't last 15 minutes in litigation practice.
Go write another bullshit law review article, Professor. Maybe you could write on on "LAW AND feelings." The rest of us will get the real work done in the real world.
At 10:41-- Yes, and in some places it helps pay for programs as well, graduate and undergraduate. The money is the university's to spend as is best for all the students and the school.
ReplyDeleteI also posted on the now closed prawfslaw cheer about pepperdine.
ReplyDeleteI wrote something like: "only 35 more spots and Pepperdine still will not be worth $43,000 per year."
Too on the nose?
"I am a 0L" here.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, the criticism here of 0Ls relying on rankings. And hypocritical. When I commented here some time ago mentioning that I was a 0L and thanking Professor Campos for writing this blog, folks immediately wanted to know the ranking of the schools I was considering and implied that I was crazy to consider anything but a well-ranked school given the legal economy. And yet here we are, criticizing 0Ls for focusing on rankings when everyone, including those in this comments section and LawProf, knows they are a critical (if incomplete) indicator of future employment prospects. Stop blaming the 0Ls for trying to make rational judgments with limited information, especially when so many people on in this forum seem happy to judge schools based on tiers and rankings when commenting on other blog posts.
(Also, once I explained that I got a 179 on the LSAT and was considering several T14s, everyone seemed assured that I was not making a bad decision. I. Am. Not. A. Lemming.)
Lawprof how do you calculate the number of jobs that make it worthwhile? I am curious about which jobs to include and where to find the data.
ReplyDeleteAnybody going to law school today is a lemming, the rest doesn't matter.
ReplyDelete0L, what makes you want to enter this profession? Given your high score, you will be able to go to a top school, but even that does not guarantee you a good career. (Anything below Harvard/Yale does not guarantee you a career at all these days.) If you have the capabilities to score that high on the LSAT, you probably have numerous other abilities that you could use to enter a better, more satisfying career. I graduated from a "T14" and had a high LSAT as well (not as high as you, though!). I graduated 10 years ago and have been employed with the federal government ever since. Yet, right now I am trapped in a job I hate, doing a lot of relatively mindless work with only the occasional interesting case. Most of it is doing the same thing over and over again, at a rapid pace, and getting blamed every time something goes wrong. I can't even get an interview anywhere else that I would want to work, and I still have massive debt because I only recently started making enough money to pay it down in any kind of realistic way. If I had it to do over again I would have gone to grad school in another field. Most legal jobs are boring, stressful, and meaningless. I know you won't listen and will write me off as bitter and a loser or whatever, but I am actually one of the "winners" in this sad state of affairs and I still hate it!
ReplyDelete0L is a Special Snowflake. S/he will find a satisfying, rewarding job. Certainly!
ReplyDeleteHere's why anybody going to law school today is a lemming:
ReplyDeleteLaw school only produces genuinely GOOD outcomes for a very few people and there is no way for anybody to have anything more than a small chance at one.
So even if you have 179 and get accepted into Yale, there are still major risks:
1. you'll have a huge debt
2. you may decide you don't like being a lawyer
3. you may get drummed out of your biglaw job
Yes, some people will make partner, some people will get nice jobs in the government, some people will have great careers, but none of those things can be taken for granted, they all require a great deal of luck on top of the impressive credentials.
I suppose I'll hold nothing against the 0Ls who are going to top schools for free. But anybody else is taking much too big a risk.
Alas, little grasshopper, all university programs/departments/chools pay overhead to the central administration to support common expenses like those outlined by 10:41. How much cross subsidization goes on is a subject on which I have seen no reliable data; if you have some it would be interesting to see it. This I know, however: all academics, virtually without exception, grouse about how our grant/program/department/school is overcharged overhead to support those bums in the [insert program/department/school the speaker does not like]. Law schools are particularly vocal. Unless you have some data I'd be very cautious taking this grousing at face value. This I also know: compared to their mother universities law schools are tiny. My alma mater has fewer than 1000 students and 100 faculty and is part of a university with 10,000 undergrads, 10,000 grad & professional students and an academic health system that employs 20,000 people. Whether the overhead charged to the law school is fair or not I doubt it is more than a rounding error in the health system budget.
ReplyDeleteRPL
I don't think any 0L is a lemming. If you go to a cheap school, or get a full ride, and you genuinely want to be a lawyer, what's the harm?
ReplyDeleteMaybe there's only a 50% chance that you'll get a decent-paying job at the end, but are those odds really so bad when all you'll be spending is opportunity cost?
0L here. 11:29, Your sarcasm and unfounded assumptions undermine whatever ambitions for a productive conversation you might harbor beneath your apparent need to lash out at strangers.
ReplyDelete11:25, I don't think you're bitter at all. I appreciate your perspective and experience, and I know that even many people who do well at good schools do not end up with a career they find satisfying. However, I feel my decision is well-informed. I am married to a lawyer (a young biglaw associate in a major market), many of our close friends are lawyers, my parents are lawyers, and I currently work on criminal justice policy at a non-profit where I am the only non-lawyer. I have broad exposure to many legal careers, including biglaw, smalllaw, policy advocacy, legislative work (I worked on Capitol Hill), in-house positions, and even academia. I also know unemployed and unhappily-employed JDs, and I appreciate the risks of choosing law school. Even so, it is the best choice for me for many reasons, including that the careers I'm interested in all require JDs, that I enjoy reading cases and legal reasoning (it's been a big part of several jobs I've had), and that I'm already well-connected, due to my years of work experience, in the fields where I plan to seek legal work once I graduate. All that to say, yes, I know what I'm doing.
I realize I'm an outlier among 0Ls. But generalized insults about people in my position is neither fair nor conducive to us being open to the important message of LP and of others writing about the law school scam.
The big consideration in this list is No. 1. You write as if everyone else is in a job or profession that they love. Sure, some professions have greater job satisfaction than others. But no profession has 100 percent job satisfaction,and there is no reason to think that you are going to be in that percentage of people who are satisfied with their job. There are no guarantees.
ReplyDeleteThat goes to even the type of law you practice. One of my classmates and close friends swore up and down when we were in law school that he could never be a prosecutor. After going to a US Attorney's office, he felt completely at home and has had (is having) a great career. You can only make decisions on the best information you have at the moment-- about yourself, the schools you are looking at, about the economic lay of the land.
11:57 here, I was directing my comments to 11:38.
ReplyDelete11:16: That's a good question, which deserves its own post.
ReplyDeleteIt will be a good post, especially to see how "worthwhile" is defined.
ReplyDeleteLawProf,
ReplyDeleteCould you do a post on scholarships and their impact on rankings and cost? It seems to me ridiculous that anyone gets a scholarship to go to law school. After all, nobody would argue that we don't have enough lawyers and anybody with a college degree who pursues law is probably a net loss for society versus doing something else.
But that is really not the point. Scholarships are used extensively to booster the profile for a school. If scholarships were "banned" (if that is possible), then the impact would be positive in a number of ways. Tuition would decline for most as everyone payed full freight. These ridiculous rankings would probably stay the same since more people would just go to the best ranked school without regards to money. I'm sure you have more brilliant insights.
"Volpe pointed to President Obama and former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa as examples of law graduates who went on to successful careers outside the law."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202545308707&Judge_skeptical_of_both_sides_in_law_school_jobs_data_litigation&slreturn=1
RPL,
ReplyDeleteAgreed regarding the need for more data. I think the part that makes me a little suspicious is that the charge is a percentage rather than a fixed charge per student.
10:41
@12:15 re: scholarships
ReplyDeleteYou're misunderstanding the business proposition here. Almost all of these scholarships are not actually gifts of money; they are coupons. You're cross-subsidizing, but even on a 75% or 85% scholarship, the marginal cost of adding another student to the class is less than the tuition paid by the subsidized student. Sunkist isn't giving you money when they sell you discounted orange juice; neither is a law school giving you money when you pay a discounted tuition (excluding for full-ride folks).
There is actually a pretty extensive consulting industry in Higher Ed generally that figures out exactly how much (or how little) of a coupon needs to be offered to different students in order to entice them to come and thereby maximize revenue for the school. (Non-profit doesn't mean not-revenue-maximizing, only that it never pays dividends; we're all run by b-school bean counters now...)
Of course a lot of the class shaping would probably go away if schools weren't trying to hit certain LSAT target averages; but law schools would still try to appeal to the students most likely to pass the Bar and to get jobs, to improve the relevant statistics (which are actually relevant!) and to reduce the work on Career Services' shoulders...
what really confuses me is why (aside from selectivity concerns) these schools don't expand their class sizes. They'd make more money that way -- though I suppose most administrations aren't *that* self-aware about their role.
You have to consider the possibility that many people in law schools are serious about what they are doing. They would not see endlessly expanding the size of their classes as a good thing.
ReplyDeleteTo all the trolls and law school apologists: fuck you.
ReplyDelete0L, it does sound like you know a lot of lawyers, but I really believe that until you have actually practiced law, in a real lawyer job, you still have no idea what the practice of law is like. I enjoyed legal reasoning and reading cases, too (still do, sometimes). Lawyers don't get to sit around enjoying reading cases. They have to "produce." And that production is much like a repetitive factory job much of the time. Sure, I like reading the new cases the Supremes hand down. I like reading news articles about stuff going on in the law. I like reading books about law. I do all of those things on my own time, because to earn my living, I have to write essentially the same brief over and over again, at a fast pace, to very little appreciation. And I'm lucky to have a job.
ReplyDeleteThere are some good jobs in law, it's just such a scant possibility that any one grad is going to land and keep any of these jobs nowadays that it seems a crazy gamble to go to law school. The Boomers are holding on to what they have with their customary deathgrip, there are waves upon waves of unemployed grads still chomping at the bit for their first opportunity, and there are tons of currently employed lawyers who want to move elsewhere and have not been able to due to Depression II: Electric Boogaloo. It's just a terrible time to be thinking about entering the profession. I would so much rather be the only non-J.D. in my office, doing something I like, than be a lawyer right now.
Ah yes, Tony La Russa! Surely it's his JD that has proven successful in his career path, not his six years of MLB service.
ReplyDeleteJesus, that's even worse than the Steelers' president as a data point.
From a pure rankings perspective, increasing class size would probably lower selectivity, would require more student spending (the metric is spending per student), decrease employment rates, and might even lead to lower peer reputation scores (what do professors fear more than students? More students!)
ReplyDeleteHow does that work? If everyone raised class sizes, wouldn't the standards change, too?
ReplyDeleteThe challenge is how to break the social-psychological feedback loop that maintains the importance of the rankings. The Deans care because their students and alumni care. I remember when the school I attended dropped from the "top 25" (a meaningless distinction if ever there was one) to 27. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Grovelingly apologetic yet defensive emails went out to the entire student body. Alumni were in an uproar. The dean was eventually, after failing to bring the rankings back up, forced into ignominious resignation. Faced with that kind of nonsense how could law school administrators not be obsessed with the USN rankings? Their jobs depend on those rankings. No Dean is going to disregard the rankings until we can convince a critical mass of former and prospective students to disregard the rankings. And how, exactly, are we going to do that?
ReplyDelete@1:14
ReplyDeleteStart our own arbitrary ranking system?
The only shot would be a rival ranking. Saying that you are ignoring something that everyone else is taking very seriously does not work, is not working.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI am eagerly awaiting Erwin Chemerinsky's vision of change to come to fruition. He was going to change legal education at the new UC Irvine law school, remember?
ReplyDeleteIn the mean time, it sure appears that Irvine is doing the same exact same thing everyone else is, and charging the same over-inflated tuition to do so.
Way to go! California taxpayers, and the rest of the U.C. system, (particularly U.C. Riverside, which is trying to open its much NEEDED medical school, but lacks sufficient state funds to do so) thank you for wasting their scarce resources to bring a bunch of overpaid faculty to Irvine for a clearly unjustifiable 5th U.C. law school.
What a complete waste!
Law school ranking is right up there with what kind of car you drive. Really. Who cares.
ReplyDeleteUnless you have both solid employment prospects (yes, plural) lined up and have negotiated a really good deal on tuition (a big discount/sponsorship/scholly/lottery winnings) I cannot see how law school in 2012 (or '13 or '14, etc) is a good investment.
As for the feigned outrage at the "lemming" phrase, c'mon already. It's just a name folks knock around for a serious 0L, a potential law student. It implies voluntary suicide. Which, of course, is predicated upon an erroneous belief in the behavior of lemmings. It is ironic because the lemming were launched over the cliff. In this instance, law school is the turntable. It is joke. Get over it.
"Really. Who cares."
ReplyDeleteWell, losers with shitty cars certainly don't.
Yeah. My 2012 Subaru is so clapped out. I should be totally ashamed of myself. And that 27 miles per gallon I get in the city, yeah, that's just shameful.
ReplyDelete@Crux "that 27 miles per gallon I get in the city, yeah, that's just shameful."
ReplyDeleteIt is, actually, seeing as how my old '87 Accord got more like 35 (and I once measured it at around mpg 42 highway). Of course it was stick.
There's a direct parallel to law schools here -- you're paying a lot more for ultimately less value than you were in the '80s. But I'm sure that the price of a brand-new Subaru is only the minimum necessary to purchase top-quality legal, um, transportation today.
@ 2:05 I understand that it's a joke. It's not funny, it adds no value to the conversation, and it's actually counterproductive. Insulting/dismissing the very audience whose minds you need to change (or, at the very least, inform) is hardly conducive to the goals of blogs like this. It doesn't give much incentive for folks like me, the people who you all are supposedly trying to influence, to get involved in the discussion. I seem to be the only 0L who thinks it worthwhile to share some of our perspective on this blog (ever notice how 0Ls don't appear here?), but y'all mostly don't seem interested in engaging. So I'll just sign off, since (with the exception of 11:25) folks seem to prefer talking amongst yourselves.
ReplyDelete-0L
0L,
ReplyDeleteWe did engage you. You just didn't like what you heard. You can avoid the truth that we tried to share with you, but come May 2015, you won't be able to avoid us anymore.
Fault us for decorum, fine. But the substance of what you've been told here is for your own good. Just because you have a 179 doesn't mean its a good idea to go to law school or that you'll have a renumerative career in law. Even if you were to have one, why waste that kind of gifted brain power on law?
Go over to TopLawSchools. They'll be sincerely impressed by your 179. And they'll give you the feedback and advice that you want to hear.
oL, they have shared a version of the truth with you: not "the truth". It is their truth, not yours. You sound as if you have gone as far as can be gone to assess whether you are making the right choice for you. There is no surefire way to know that you will be forever happy as a lawyer, just as there is no surefire way for anyone to know that they will always be happy with the choices they have made about a career, a spouse-- anything. The uncertainty about whether you will live happily ever after cannot be the test, or no one would do anything. You are surrounded by lawyers, have lived with them all your life. You know how much it costs. I am sure with your background you know about schools. You have worked in the field. You know yourself and your circumstances. There is no reason at all to substitute the judgment of people on this site for your own. None. Not one.
ReplyDeleteI agree with 3:06. People should avoid getting drunk on their own whiskey, but there's no call to be labelling everyone a lush.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, this has been bouncing around today: http://denver.craigslist.org/lgl/2896882058.html
Maybe some CU grad will fit the description?
I don't know, if you know a field and know people who practice in it and are interested in it...AND you also know that field does not have enough jobs, is it a smart choice to go into that field? Well, I guess people try to become actors every year too; they just have to know that they will probably end up spending their lives waitressing instead. A few make it, and I guess that's good enough.
ReplyDeleteThat only works if no one is getting hired. The idea that no one should ever go to law school again is childish. People are getting jobs. Depending upon where 0L goes to school, OL will have a good chance at getting a job. You cannot pretend that everyone is in the same boat, no matter what school they go to. Even with the bad effects of the recession, graduates from top schools are getting jobs.
ReplyDelete@0L
ReplyDeleteIn case you're still listening.
I'm also of the opinion where I don't know if law school is a good idea - I'm not going to say you should or shouldn't. Your LSAT is awesome, you can probably get into a highly ranked school, but what happens from there is up to chance and the worst part is I can't even tell you what they are.
I will give this advice/exercise though that might be helpful. Whatever school you think you want to go to - look up the classlists of recent grads, 2011, 2010, 2009. You should be able to find them. Pick a few names at random - then look them up on LinkedIn or whatever. If they're working, write them a short letter and ask them a simple question: do they think it was a good idea to go.
It's probably better feedback than here.
In terms on relying on the rankings, I think as a 0L the one thing you should be paying attention to is the average student statistics - with those you can try to bargain for scholarships to minimize the debts in case the worst happens and you can't find work when you're out.
Also, the one thing you probably can't imagine at this point, and I think is coloring the commentary here, is how bitter it is to work really hard for three years, to do well (and in some cases excel) and still not be able to find paying work. I hope you don't have to learn it.
Best of luck.
It will soon be very hard for anyone to make an argument that they had no knowledge of the misrepresentation of employment statistics by law schools. Curious as to the drop rate in applications to law school next year. I enjoyed my legal experience but that was at 50% current sticker. Price assuredly is a function of all attributes [including job placement] or at least, it should be.
ReplyDelete@ 5:19 "It will soon be very hard for anyone to make an argument that they had no knowledge of the misrepresentation of employment statistics by law schools."
ReplyDeleteI think we've already reached that point. CBS news and the NY POST have covered this. It's already filtering into the mainstream. Those interested in law school no longer have an excuse for being mislead.
5:12, it's true that SOME graduates of top schools are still getting jobs. But the fact is that every legal job is a lot more competitive than it used to be, and that makes for a lot less opportunity for everyone. 0L needs to consider whether she wants to go into a field that has very restricted opportunities and mobility. I posted above - I'm the 10 years old fed employee who went to a top school, has 10 years of practice, and is still stuck. Before 2007 it was easy for me to get interviews. Now, it is almost impossible. Nothing about my qualifications changed. The opportunities just dried up.
ReplyDeleteShould say "10 years out," not "10 years old," ha.
ReplyDeleteIf 0L grades are as good as the LSAT score, 0L can be at one of the very top schools, and more than just "some" of those students are getting jobs. They have way more opportunities for alternative paths-- half of Yale's class goes to Article III clerkships, as do a large number of HLS grads. A good number of HLS students go to consulting firms or financial institutions.
ReplyDeleteThe point is that we have someone here who has all the attributes that people say one should have before going to law school: as intimate a knowledge of the profession as one can have without being in it (parents are lawyers, is now living with a lawyer, friends are lawyers, has worked in field with lawyers), apparently has tip top credentials, has contacts that may be helpful in a career, is well aware of the costs and the current state of the profession. Unless you take the untenable position that no one should ever again go to law school, 0L sounds like a good candidate.
Unless 0L is going to go for free, then I still think the risk is too high. Even though many people are getting jobs, each of them as individuals face a significant risk that they could be among the 10% or 20% or 50% of graduates who ends up with a huge debt and no job to allow them to pay it back. Why would anybody risk that at even a 10% or 20% chance? What is so great about a legal career that makes it worth such a risk? Nothing, 0L should apply his smarts elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteGetting a clerkship is not a guarantee of lifetime employment in a fulfilling job. If 0L lucks out and gets a great job right after her clerkship, and manages to keep it forever, that could be a great career. If she ever gets tired of it or wants to do something else, she will be in the same boat as the rest of us. I work with multiple top 14 and top 5 grads. I even work with one Harvard grad. We are all stuck in the same sweatshoppy government job. The majority of us are unhappy with it and would prefer to be elsewhere, but there is nowhere to go, even for "top" grads.
ReplyDeleteNope, not too high if this is what 0L wants to do after really considered judgment, and 0L gets into the kind of school that it appears 0L can get into. I know people who are ten years out, more than ten years out, who are happy in their careers as lawyers. Others are not. There are no guarantees, ever. I, my spouse, relatives, and several friends enjoy(ed) being lawyers. Others I know hate(d) it. We cannot know where 0L will fall on this scale. We didn't know going in either.
ReplyDeleteDJM-- don't get Bruh and MacK started!
ReplyDeleteOn rival ranking systems: Various groups have tried that over the years, without success. The time could be right now, but the whole idea of rankings (I think) tends to feed the negative aspects of the legal education.
ReplyDeleteI have thought about a slightly different approach, and wonder what others think. In law practice, some clients and firms now talk about a "value proposition" in law. Law firms and corporate clients use this phrase to refer to new billing techniques, promises of efficiency, and other measures that focus on value to the client.
I wonder if a group of law schools could withdraw from US News (i.e., refuse to supply any info) and establish themselves as "value proposition" schools. The value proposition group would do things like reduce tuition; adopt total transparency on placement information; commit to certain types/amounts of clinical, legal writing, and other skills training; and cultivate ongoing, mutually respectful relationships with legal employers. (I say mutually respectful because, over the years I've worked on legal education issues, I've seen serious faults on both sides of the school/practice divide. More about that available upon inquiry. The bottom line is that it's time to put all of that behind us and do things that make sense for students, clients, and the professions.)
The value prop group would eschew rankings among themselves because of the way in which rankings seem to drive up prices and diminish value. We would look for other ways to convey information about the schools--and to show how much more value they offer than the "US News" schools. Perhaps NLJ or another publication would take the Value Proposition Schools under its wing. If not, there's plenty of space on the internet.
This would be very difficult to do, but it might not be impossible. Deans do feel a lot of pressure from their universities, faculty members, and alumni to move their schools up in the rankings, but I wonder if some might welcome the chance to give up that rat race. If we could establish a set of value proposition schools, that might confer a different type of honor--not to mention the good feeling of allowing students to get a good education at a good price and go on to serve clients who value their services.
For the record, these value proposition schools would not reject scholarship or "law and" classes completely. Both are valuable up to a point, and both can be supported at 1980-era prices. Could there be a place for law schools that give real value in all of those areas?
I need advice. My law school dropped out of the T14. Should I commit suicide? William Ockham
ReplyDelete6:59 here, don't quite know how my comment on your post, DJM, ended up ahead of your post...
ReplyDeleteDJM: That's a very intriguing proposal. Last week I suggested that Stanford do something along those lines (cut tuition and simply refuse to cooperate with USN) but of course a collective effort along those lines would have a better chance of success.
ReplyDeleteHarvard was charging $26K a year 20 years ago (in present dollars) and $15K a year in present dollars 30 years ago, so there's no reason why a "value proposition" school couldn't be high quality, unless one believes there were no high quality law schools a couple of decades ago (indeed technology should make it possible to deliver the same quality of education that was provided a generation ago at a far cheaper price).
LawProf: The idea definitely draws upon your Stanford concept. Gaining leadership from one of the top schools might be ideal--but now that Stanford is no. 2, they probably won't give up US News. If only you'd had a contract for them to sign last week :)
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this idea would work particularly well for a group of state schools. I think the public schools have always struggled especially hard to win the US News formula. The things that should count in our favor (lower tuition, some commitment to the good of the state) don't matter there--or even work against us.
Plus, with the contraction in BigLaw, more T14 grads are seeking the smaller firm, regional, and government jobs that used to attract many Tier 1-2 public law grads. Maybe this would be an opportune time for those public schools to solidify relationships with regional employers through a value proposition? A group of public schools might also make a good alliance because their grads tend to compete in different markets (except here in Ohio, where we seem to have more public and private law schools than any state needs).
@6:59, I wondered about your ESP as well! But I posted, then the post disappeared (maybe into the spam filter) and I reposted. You must have been reading for that flash of initial post. I am definitely waiting to hear from Bruh and MacK!
Oh, dear!
ReplyDelete@ 0L MARCH 13, 2012 2:29 PM:
ReplyDeleteYour point of it being counter-productive to marginalize the target audience is well made. I should have mentioned in the comment I posted above that I don't think I have ever used the term myself. I don't plan on incorporating it into my speech in the future. Law school has not worked out yet for me as I had hoped it would. That may change, it may not. But that's my issue. I wish you the best in whatever course of action you choose.
(I've been away from the interwebs for a bit, so this comment I'm writing 5.5 hours later for 0L is a day late and a dollar short in internet terms. And therefore most likely a waste of time. But, whatever. I wanted to say it.)
DJM: I believe your basic concept could well work. The first step might be to put together a critical mass of like-minded faculty at schools that would be good candidates for such an association. As you say public schools would be the obvious choice, based on the novel idea that public legal education should be affordable for people from a variety of social backgrounds.
ReplyDelete@6:57 "I work with multiple top 14 and top 5 grads. I even work with one Harvard grad. We are all stuck in the same sweatshoppy government job. The majority of us are unhappy with it and would prefer to be elsewhere, but there is nowhere to go, even for "top" grads."
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate your honesty. Would you feel comfortable elaborating just a bit more on the type of office you work in and the nature of your work? Thanks.
I like DJM's idea. I attended the University of Nebraska, and I believe it is exactly the type of school you're talking about. Strong regional placement, low tuition at a public (Big Ten) University.
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder whether our current administration would be interested, however. They seem very interested in US News rankings right now. (Currently we're tied for the 84th most amazing law school in America - as an alum, this is a very impressive conversation piece at cocktail parties I attend). In fact, the administration from Nebraska Law sent out a letter a few months ago asking for $10 donations from all the alumni who had never given anything. As I recall, according to the letter nearly 90% of alumni had never donated anything (could not believe that they mentioned that). Anyway, they didn't want my $10 because they needed $10, they wanted it because it would increase the percentage of alumni who give, apparently a factor in the US News rankings. Pretty sad.
To quote the great helmsman "Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."
ReplyDeleteWell maybe. USNWR report originated and continues as a marketing effort that seeks to maintain credibility and not challenge the readers need for "confirmation bias." Realistically, if you asked a broad swathe of people to name the top 5 US law schools, they would almost all name one of the T-14 with probably Harvard as number 1. Outside the US, if you asked foreign lawyers the list would probably put at the top 3 Harvard, Georgetown and Columbia (with Yale fairly far down pace the Clintons.) That does not mean that these are better law schools, just that these are the most familiar names. Within the top 20 or so I doubt that there is much if any difference in the quality of the education available to its students, though there may be a small (very small) ability spectrum in their intake. But if USNWR failed to put the same schools in the T14 and Harvard and Yale in the top 3 readers would not take it seriously because that is their perception and confirmation bias validates in their minds the USNWR ranking - it must be right because the top schools they expect are in the ranking as top schools.
I personally and viscerally object to the idea of a two tier profession or two tiers of education. However, law schools are professional schools - they train their students in part to pass a licensing exam - accreditation was introduced in the early 20th century and accredited law schools. The origin of accreditation was the founding of Suffolk law school in Boston - with an evening program targeting the poor and lower middle class taught mostly by judges and practitioners with few if any full time faculty. Suffolk was very successful and trained good lawyers and soon was joined in Boston by the YMCA Law School George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Chicago-Kent, and the University of Buffalo. Many of these schools were independent of universities and almost all had part-time and evening programs.
This was regarded as a disaster by Yale, Harvard and the other white-shoe upper middle class law schools - not only were these schools letting in to the law the lower orders, but they were often graduating better lawyers. So the AALS and ABA fought to impose the requirement that law school be accredited - and the professoriate made sure that the accreditation standards required a mostly full time faculty, finally winning that battle in the 1950s when even Suffolk sought accreditation.
The result is an absolute uniformity in law school design which, by its nature, makes that education extremely expensive. Notably the ABA Law School accreditation standards are not like other accreditation standards in that they are almost totally process and plant orientated - how big is you library, how many full time professors do you have - and eschew any real attention to results - how qualified are your graduate. If you look at other accreditation standard - they are outcome focussed - are your final exams tough enough, sending externs to examine degree awarding standards, etc.
So to be clear - I do not believe in a two tier education system, but I do believe in competition and the idea that we can have a variety in law schools not prohibited by a self interested AALS, ABA and professoriate.
MacK
When the ABA visits law schools they read exams for quality, visit classes to observe teaching, meet with professors (sometimes dropping in) study the curriculum, report on bar passage rates (an important, though not the only,way to judge results) and do a whole host of things besides noting the size of libraries and the other things you mention. Your characterization is incorrect.
ReplyDeleteWe already have a two-tier profession. We always have, and there is no reason to think that will ever change. But right now people are paying large amounts to enter the profession, regardless of the "tier" in which they end up practicing.
@3:57
ReplyDeleteWhen did you last hear of an extern taking part in the examination of law students, in dreaded "comprehensives" common in many science departments?
Sorry, law school accreditation is "plant" orientated - it looks at the number of law professors that are full time - the full time professor to faculty ratio - the size of the library - all cost drivers. It is a lot less focussed on outcomes - because if it was many of the third tier would not be accredited - one of these schools has a bar pass rate of 26.4% (Western State) while six are in the 50 percent range and a further nine in the 60 percent range and 28 in the less than 80% range - to me, that is 59 law schools that ought to lose their accreditation or have it put under review. The "proof" as they say "is in the pudding."
MacK
You said that the accreditation process only looks at the size of libraries and the number of faculty. That is not true. You can quarrel with some of the
ReplyDeletedecisions, and I do, too. But it is not correct to say that size of the faculty and library are the only aspects of a school that receive scrutiny.
I am all for tougher standards, but they should be promulgated within a system of education that trains students without subjecting them all to crushing debt. I am willing to experiment. But, I think it facile to simply invoke practices from other disciplines without considering the different histories, purposes, and cultures of those disciplines. In that vein, it is past the time to rethink the purposes of legal education, and to open up the ways we do it; not just in terms of classes within schools, but in terms of the types of schools that are available.
6:57 here. I work in the NYC office of a large federal agency. Due to the GOP's continual budget cutting, we've been reduced to a skeleton crew (we currently have 7 attorney openings in our office and might be able to fill half of those) and the workload has also skyrocketed because I work for a social welfare agency and, well, everyone is poor now. My office only hires people with at least a few years of experience, and mostly hires people from top schools - the lowest-ranked school anyone there comes from is Fordham I think, although there might be a couple older people from slightly lower-ranked schools. In this recent hiring attempt, the office received 300 applications before the job was even posted on USA jobs. Then, they only posted it for a week to control the number of applications. But, this is not a fun job! It consists mostly of writing the same brief over and over (the law is copied and pasted and the facts are usually very similar). And because of the workload, you get about 2-3 days to write one brief (25 page federal court brief with large transcript). Whenever the paralegals screw something up or a judge gets mad, the attorney gets blamed. There's no real opportunity for advancement. Salary freeze for the past 2 years, probably to be extended, and you only get a "step increase" every three years. It's dismal. But, in the market right now, it's a steady job that pays ok and has benefits, and there aren't any of those out there, so we get tons of applications. I know for a fact that most of my younger coworkers would rather be doing something else and are just rationalizing this job as "experience" because they want to stay in NYC for family or other reasons and there are no other jobs in NYC. I've been there almost 4 years, and I knew I hated it and started looking for something else almost immediately. I've had exactly one real interview for an open position since I started looking.
ReplyDeleteA few days ago I posted that it was starting to be too late for people to claim they have been misled. Someone argued that I was wrong because the need to is focus on the system and the great need for reform.
ReplyDeleteI changed my mind. I don't blame the 0Ls for wanting to go to law school and hope to have a rewarding professional career. I do blame the schools for continuing to manipulate statistics and charging as much tuition as they do. Lower tier schools that charge the same as Harvard are particularly heinous.
Let's keep the focus on the bad actors who created and continue to drain the students of every penny they can get. The 0Ls are gradually figuring it out and more information is getting out to them. But the schools are the problem here. The students are victims being bled to death by the avarice of the deans of the law schools.
Deans don't tie people up and make them come to law school. The word has to get out, and it is getting out, that the decision to go to law schools is a very serious one. It is not for everyone. No one should do it unless they have investigated the schools, the profession, and the economy over time. Money (how much it costs) is an object, and has to be a major part of the consideration.
ReplyDeleteOne ironic thing about the DJM/ Law Prof proposal is that it might actually make Deans earn their high salaries. If a third of all law schools are going to close but it is unclear based on what criteria they are going to shake out, deciding whether to become a "value proposition" law school or to continue to pursue a high US News rating may literally be a bet-the-firm decision. Making those decisions is why they pay CEO's the big bucks.
ReplyDeleteDJM: I like your idea regarding state schools. The notion any but two or three state schools exist in a national marketplace at all is, well, silly. I looked at the USN ratings for a few state schools this morning: Alabama 29, Georgia 34, Ohio State 39, Colorado 44, Temple 58, Rutgers Newark 82. Speaking from the perspective of having practiced in the mid-Atlantic region for thirty years, interviewed God knows how many law students and served on the hiring committee a time or two the notion that one who intends to practice there should attend highed ranker Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State or Colorado in preference to lower ranked Temple or Rutgers is not just irrational but delusional. Those four higher ranked schools don't exist in the Philadelphia or New Jersey marketplace, both of which are thickly sown with Temple and Rutgers alums. It is fair to assume that all of these schools would retain their state and regional reputations, which is what is important to them, if they fell out of USN altogether. The fact that your school outranks LawProfs is relevant only in that it gives you bragging rights.
ReplyDeleteRPL
I remember reading recently (can't remember if it was a news article or just a comment online somewhere) something about how the USN&WR rankings were tweaked and modified until they got Harvard and Yale at the top, because the original formula didn't do that.
ReplyDeleteIf true, any Harvard or Yale administrator complaining about them should be rightly mocked, considering they were gamed from the beginning.
(would be interesting if the plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits currently pending could get discovery from USN&WR or depose the people who originally came up with the rankings).
ReplyDeleteIt is kind of silly that we have rankings at all, given that people really do have their own perceptions of which schools are more prestigious, and that combined with alumni placement is pretty much the thing that matters. I remember when I was applying and trying to explain to people that NYU was number 6 and Georgetown was only number 14, and people were like, "what? Georgetown is way more prestigious than NYU!" I was like, "but...US News..." Ultimately, I don't think there was much of a difference, so I chose the one that gave me some money instead of purely loans (guess which one that was!)
ReplyDelete@5:39
ReplyDeleteI think you are missing the point. Academic accreditation is primarily about outcomes - does the row awarding school have the right to confer the degree - does the graduate have the requisite knowledge to be a BSc, BA, MSc in the field. However, law school accreditation standards from the ABA are unusual in that they primarily focus on inputs and plant - is the school spending enough on full time professors, etc. In short the ABA and AALS engineered the accreditation standards from the beginning to force up cost - and have slowly even over the last decade dialled up the cost component further by trying to have full time faculty teach less (leading to more full time faculty.) As is apparent to anyone who looks at say the bar passage rates - the ABA barely skims outcome as an accreditation issue, which makes its whole accreditation standard suspect.
Western State has a 26% bar passage rate but: "Western State College of Law is fully accredited by the American Bar Association (321 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60610, (312) 988-5000)."
Appalachian School of Law has a bar passage rate of less than 50% yet charges $30k in tuition and has an anula cost of attendance it puts at $50k. Nonetheless:
"ASL is fully accredited by the American Bar Association. As such, ASL graduates are eligible to sit for the bar examination in any U.S. state or the District of Columbia.
"The Appalachian School of Law has been fully approved by the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association since 2006. The Section of Legal Education may be contacted at 321 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60610 or by phone at 312-988-6738."
QED
MacK
MacK
My problem with the rankings is perhaps driven by the fact that I practice international law (and I mean international - I'm in Europe this week, Asia next week, the US the next week) and so I get a long range view of what the reputation of US law schools are - or to put it another way what law schools people have heard of outside the US - and for the most part that comes out as Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, Stanford. Other New York schools like NYU and Cornell are not that well known outside the US and that goes for most of the rest of the T14. Why the four I mentioned beyond Harvard are known outside the US is a function of their location and the number of international people they produce - so Columbia is in New York and its graduates get around, Georgetown in DC - ditto and Stanford is well known around the Pacific Rim. Yalies don't get noticed outside the US a lot (and most foreigner don't care where judges and professors went to school.)
ReplyDeleteMacK
I do understand what you are saying, but reject the notion that templates from other disciplines should just be laid over legal education.
ReplyDeleteYou remind me of that character Kristin Wiig plays on SNL. Whenever anyone mentions something they have done, she sidles up to try to upstage them. No matter what it is, she's the expert, or the one who has the deepest, most personal engagement with the topic. "I had an ice cream sundae last night." KW's character,'Well, I had SEVEN ice cream sundaes. Matter of fact, I invented ice cream..." "I rewired my apartment." KW's character " I rewired my entire office building. Actually, I invented electricity." Or one of those stock British characters in movies who are always saying thinks like "When I was station chief in Istanbul..."
Thanks very much for your reply, 6:57. Sounds pretty dismal. Hang in there.
ReplyDeleteTo OL-
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't do it again. I went to a top law school and top college. If if you have a job as a lawyer, and even if it pays well and is satisfying, you simply have to work too hard to stay at the top of the game. I haven't made millions, but I do make a few hundred thousand dollars a year in all. There are many lawyers who are hugely more successful than I am though. I spend all my spare time working. I am never done. Vacations involve CLE or current reading of new developments. My kids largely grew up seeing very little of me. This is not a family-friendly profession. Yes, in spite of all the hard, hard work, I have lost jobs and spent time not working because I could not get a satisfactory job.
Go to a career where there is a better balance between supply of people and demand for those people if you want to have a good life.
What about law schools who have lazy student advisors and cranky egotistical law professors (cranky even though they are excellently compensated and receive many other "benefits,") Suffolk Univ Law School comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteAlumnus - unfortunately