Saturday, August 11, 2012

Character and fitness

If anybody cares, the ABA announced Thursday that so far 13 schools have submitted corrections to their reports of the average level of total law school loans taken out by 2011 graduates (incorrectly referred to by the ABA, US News, and media sources as average debt data -- average graduate law school debt is actually 11% to 15% higher, since schools don't report interest accrued on loans), although according to a spokesman "some" of these corrections are "minor."

Some of the non-minor ones include:

Rutgers-Camden

Reported average loans: $27,423

Actual:  $80,446

Barry

Reported average loans: $41,190

Actual loans: $137,680

Kansas

Reported average loans: $41,574

Actual loans:  $67,598

It will be interesting to see what the final law school loan totals look like if and when US News gets around to updating its website (the ABA doesn't publish this data, but its estimate that public law school grads took out loan averages of $75K obviously needs to be revised upwards).

Other schools whose average graduate law school loan totals almost certainly are going to end up being multiplied by roughly three: Georgia State, Southern, Texas Southern, and one I haven't mentioned before, Drexel. 

When first covering this story I rather negligently ignored Drexel's extraordinarily low reported 2011 average graduate loan total of $33,562 because I had a vague memory that the school's first few classes got very big scholarships (the school opened in 2006).  But then I checked the numbers and, after accounting for tuition discounts, the 2011 class still paid an average of nearly $20,000 per year in tuition. Plus the school estimates the nine-month cost of attendance as more than $23,000 per year.  Given that the real cost of attendance at Temple is the same, and that Temple reported an average law school loan total of nearly $81,000 for its 2011 class, Drexel's real numbers are no doubt similar.

Rutgers-Camden and Drexel have done the same thing for at least three straight years, but the ABA (which actually means John O'Brien, et. al.) has already said it's going to take no action against any of these schools, since "sanctions are reserved for schools that make 'persistent and substantial misrepresentations,'" and apparently reporting egregiously fake data to the ABA for at least three straight years doesn't count.

BTW for all you law students and applicants out there, don't think for a moment this means you can "forget" to mention that minor in possession citation you got three years ago. You can be sure your character and what it reveals about your fitness for bar membership will continue to receive the most scrupulous attention from John O'Brien et. al.


68 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. So the people who do this "first" thing are basically the gunners in law school who sat down front with their hands up, right?

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    2. This was the best thing he or she could find to do on a Saturday morning.

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  2. Only one comment after half an hour. Paul Ryan is sucking the oxygen out of the internet this morning.

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    Replies
    1. Now you don't have to worry about your social security checks being levied for your student loans...because you won't be getting social security checks.

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  3. Odd that you forgot this quote from O'Brien:

    “We will admit that the requests that we make can sometimes be interpreted in various ways,” the spokesman for the ABA. “Because of that complexity, that’s why we are okay with schools contacting us and allowing them to revise.”

    http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/08/law-schools-misreported-debt-figures-to-us-news-aba/

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  4. The guys on top think this is small potatoes.

    Total housing debt is about 25 times larger than the $1 Trillion in student loan debt out there (Of which $850+ Billion is federal Stafford, Plus)

    Of that Trillion, an infinitesimally small amount has been apportioned to Law students, it's just that average Debt-per-grad is quite high, making it sting that much worse

    The Bankster regime that actually runs this country finds this micro minority to be quite amusing with their calls for justice. They tossed out a bone called IBR just to see who would bite.

    So yeah, O'Brien is smart enough to know that he can call any bluffs, and the Federal Loan program will keep on trucking. No school is going under by way of ABA regulation, and the Gov't loan program is not stopping any time soon, even if Romney is elected.

    Vote with your feet folks, stop attending law school unless someone else can pay it for you.

    I hate to say it, but for every Law Grad that deserved a better outcome, there's a mouth breather that got admitted to a TTT and was blinded by their own visions of grandeur, instead of seeing the folly for what it really is. Living to owe someone else for the rest of their lives may be their greatest achievement, as long as it was in exchange for a Law Degree. (And I get the point about fraudulent data, but people that know better avoid getting fooled by damn lies and statistics)

    In America, anyone can get what they want, but be careful what you wish for.

    This is coming from someone whose Parent entered this terrible industry in the 90's, and exited in the early 2000's, a shell of their potential self, and with a shattered family.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, the pride of being admitted to law school gives way to broken families down the road.

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  5. Schools should get this information right (and should realize when they have gotten it wrong), and one can suspect their motives here given the publicity, rankings, etc. Corrections should be publicized.

    But could someone explain to me why a student would give any weight to this -- beyond perhaps being led to consider a school in the first place because of it -- as opposed to their own projected debt load? I mean, are they looking at this rather than tuition and other cost data, and their own ability to pay? I honestly don't get it.

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    Replies
    1. Because the kids are rubes. They have spent their entire lives in the education incubator all warm and cozy and not questioning institutions.

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  6. Election is over. Obama landslide.

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    Replies
    1. Not if the Boomers decide taking away Social Security and Medicare for the next generation is a good thing.

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  7. Here's the relevant part of the ABA questionnaire to which schools respond:

    For Question 17, only include information for:

    1. J.D. students who graduated in 2009-2010

    2. Only law school debt (e.g. not including undergraduate debt)

    3. Total loans for law school processed through the university or law school financial aid office.

    4. Do not include post J.D. loans (i.e. bar loans) even if distributed prior to graduation.

    It's beyond me how anyone could read those instructions and conclude it meant just report the loans 3Ls took out in their third year.

    As for why it matters, it matters mainly because we need accurate numbers on how much law school is actually costing people in terms of indebtedness. A relatively minor reason is that some students will be drawn to apply because they'll assume the school must give out much more in grants than it actually does.

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    Replies
    1. Probably one school did it then the others did it to keep their numbers low too and no one was calling them on it. Think subprime lending. Those numbers in the boxes don't mean a thing.

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  8. Holy scienter, Batman! Look at those numbers!

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  9. "...the ABA (which actually means John O'Brien, et. al.)...."

    Nice. The C&F tie-in is also brilliant.

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  10. "The Bankster regime that actually runs this country finds this micro minority to be quite amusing with their calls for justice."

    Yep.

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  11. John O'Brien, Dean of a law school in which, discounting solos, managed to secure full-time, JD-required jobs for only 29.5% of it's 2011 graduating class of over 300 people.

    They charge 43,000 per year in tuition and send 100 more "attorneys" lol out into the world than Duke.

    This is the guy in charge.

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  12. There's a nice comment on this situation posted after the ABA story. I'll quote here:

    "You can easily understand how Rutgers and Barry made the mistake? I love how everyone on this board bashes current students and recent grads (individuals who, at the time they made the decision to go to law school, hadn’t yet been legally educated) for not knowing thoroughly before going to law school the ins and outs of the financial situation of actually practicing the law. And yet, we are soooooo forgiving when administrators of law schools misinterpret a question about the debt load of their students upon graduation to mysteriously only refer to the last year of school, resulting in reporting figures that in one case was off by almost $100,000.

    If I operated under the standards that apparently law schools are allowed to operate under, I would have been disbarred by now. I guess it’s OK for law schools to make ‘mistakes’ that induce non-lawyers into going into law school and incurring 6 figures of debt. But if I mispell a word in a brief, God forbid."

    Hear, hear. See this site (also linked in the OP) for other comments: http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_schools_misreported_student_debt_figures_to_aba_us_news/

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  13. Uhm, that article makes it sound like the USNEWS and the schools themselves were doing all the digging and pointing-out.

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  14. Why was Villanova publicly censured by the ABA for misreporting admissions data, but schools such as Rutgers and Drexel are receiving no punishment for misreporting financial aid data?

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  15. Not really in point to law schools lying about debt, but very much in point as to the ability of law students to pay that debt-

    It is very easy for a lawyer to be long-term unemployed because the job market is much less forgiving to lawyers with any level of experience than any 0L or non-lawyer could possibly imagine.

    Non-legal employers will generally not look at a lawyer for a non-legal job, even if the lawyer's past duties involved most of what is involved in the non-legal job. Lawyers generally cannot get jobs outside of their narrow areas of experience. Since areas of legal practice wax and wane over time, this means that if a lawyer is practicing in an area that is either cyclical or in decline, the lawyer is likely to be out of work. No one else will hire that lawyer. There is limited demand for many types of legal experience, especially when one is too old to be an associate.

    The law degree is anything but versatile. Computer programs that screen job applications will knock most lawyers out of the box not only for most non-legal jobs but also for most legal jobs because the lawyer's experience is not an absolutely exact fit to the job description. Even 95% fit is not good enough, and with a 95% fit the lawyer may well permanently be out of work and in solo practice or eat-what-you-kill.

    The 45% that cannot get entry level jobs say the law degree is a negative at that point. It really does not get better for many lawyers unless one practices litigation or corporate law that is general enough so that the work can easily be done as a solo or in a tiny shop. Even then, the lawyer is left with an eat-what-you-kill situation.

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  16. @10:10 So true, and something that cannot be emphasized enough. A law degree/license is a key that fits a very limited number of doors, and the number keeps getting smaller the further you are past graduation.

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  17. Just to put it differently, the one mistake 0Ls and junior level lawyers make is to think that if I work hard and do my work, I can stay in the job. That is not true about 85% of the time with legal jobs. They tend to have very high turnover. One reason is the up or out policies at the top law firms. The several thousand top lawyers on the job market each year from top law firms have a drastic impact on the job market in the legal profession. Lawyers who have jobs and do them well often cannot stay on those jobs because there is a sense that someone younger and more talented is right around the corner. Lawyers are probably more fungible to employers and more likely to be fired than any other kind of white collar worker. With the huge surplus of lawyers, they are less likely to be hired than any other white collar workers. Again, goes to the ability of lawyers to pay off this huge level of law school debt.

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  18. "The Bankster regime that actually runs this country finds this micro minority to be quite amusing with their calls for justice."

    Do they have names? Can anyone name the members of the "Bankster regime?"

    The name Albert Lord is obviously well known, but who are these phantom banksters?

    They are human and not machines obviously.

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  19. The post at 10:10 is directed at corporate, employment law, estate and tax planning, private equity, real estate, or any other type of law that would be useful in a business context. It is very difficult if not impossible to move to a business job as a corporate manager, human resource manager, tax planner on salary, private equity or real estate executive from a legal job. It might not have been as hard to move years ago. Now with the surplus of lawyers, the reaction of many hiring managers is too look at them like swarming ants, and refuse to consider them for a non-legal job at all. Maybe if you are in a big law firm and you are placed with a client, you will be able to move. However, that would be an exceptional situation. Most big law firms do not send many of their lawyers to clients, as their clients have limited job openings in the first place.

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  20. The Blackest Crow

    I heard this on Fiona Ritchie's Thistle and Shamrock show.

    This is for all that have had their marriages and lives shattered by the boomers and the law school scam:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4KBWlyV5cc

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  21. the ABA, the NALP, US News and the law schools are all parts of a machine engineered to exploit the young and naive.

    Disgusting filth that in any civilized nation would be in jail right now.

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  22. People don't get it. Many of the boomers who are lawyers have had their lives shattered by the Law School Scam. The law schools cannot keep graduating twice the number of lawyers as there are jobs without a dire effect on the profession. Maybe not so many boomers follow this website, but anecdotally, the carnage at the boomer level in the legal profession is huge. They may not have the same level of debt from law school as the current generation, but by and large very few boomer lawyers can today make a living that is adequate to support themselves. The rising price of law school is a function of the federal government, the law schools and the ABA. This is beyond the control of most boomers. Most boomers are just as hurt and just as unable to do anything about the scam as the recent grads. If you lose your ability to earn a living and have to work at Walmart to make ends meet even though you have a degree from a top law school, I don't see how you are to blame for the law school scam just because you are a boomer.

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  23. 12:02 Most boomers could not agree with you more. The scam is a straight ride to structural unemployment for all but a very small percentage of the people who graduate from law school each year. Those of us who looked carefully and went into a profession where we rightly believed that we could earn some sort of decent living have been just as scammed as the current generation of young lawyers. We have had our livlihoods taken from us by the law school scam. There is no other way to say this. The government needs to stop the flow of money in a way that benefits institutions who are milking the system and puts a large number of people, including mostly experienced lawyers, into long-term structural unemployment. THe only thing I can say is that if you are young enough, even if you have a lot of law school debt, you at least have the time to try to start all over again and do something else where there may be a demand for what you do.

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  24. Relax, the boomer bashing is just a goof and supposed to poke fun and at the same time maintian a healthy distrust of the boomer motives.

    But still, the horrible rolling in the dirt woodstock era generation (creators of Obamacare and death panels for the elderly) that disobeyed one of the 10 commandments in not honoring their elders, is never to be trusted.

    Everyone knows the old story about the half blanket. But here it is again:

    Once there was a young and very kind hearted and good Millenial Generation boy that was called to his fathers library. (The father was a bad by nature, baby boomer person ;)

    "Son," the father said:

    "Go to the closet, take out the big blanket and give it to your Greatest Generation grandfather."

    "Why papa?" asked the boy.

    "Son, your grandfather who has been living here with us for many years has become a heavy burden, He is old and infirm, stubborn and unreasonable. We have problems to feed him, clean him and move him. For this reason, and for the sake of the family I have decided to send him out of this house and into a public nursing home. However I do not wish him to go with empty hands."

    The boy did as he was told, and after a while the father called the boy back to his library and asked him if he had carried out his order.
    The boy said "Yes papa I did", but I only gave grandpa half of the blanket.

    "Why?, asked the father. The boy answered: "I saved the other half of the blanket for the time when you become old, infirm, stubborn and unreasonable, and for the sake of the family I will have to send you out of my house and into an Obamacare nursing home with a death panel, and I will not want to send you away with empty hands Papa."

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  25. @12:09 and 12:15:

    True, but the fact that the Boomer generation was all to gleeful to fuck each other over, too, is not a defense of the generation as a whole. I'm glad you, personally, are on the right side of things. But responsibility must still be set at the feet of those who had positions of responsibility, no?

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  26. Tiny Tim and Timothy Leary. Great Boomer stuff.

    Great stuff.

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  27. I've got to say, as well, that recently I've had a number of informal/informational sit-downs with people who have jobs I would like to have, and I'm pretty convinced that their only qualification for their position is that they currently have it. I can't tell you how unimpressive they are. They have easy jobs, and they all talk about it like they show up to work and split the fucking atom every day. Basically, they're the piece of shit salesman who somehow gets into your family Christmas party and tries to talk up the entire place with words like "pro-active" and "re-inventing". It's as if no one did these jobs or did them as well before they started staffing them with MBAs from University of Phoenix or some shit. It's like the more devalued a professional degree became, the harder the job these guys became. It's not as if someone 50 years ago did the same thing with a high school education or anything.

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  28. The only thing that can be done is to ask employers that have jobs that are not exactly a fit for lawyers to have flexibility. The problem is that most lawyers will not even pass the computer screening for these jobs. I don't know how you convince all of the employers that have job openings that a lawyer has some familiarity with to hire the lawyer as opposed to the 50 applicants for that job with exactly the right experience. Maybe this idea only works at the entry level. The problem is there are so many applicants for each skilled job, no employer has to take anyone who does not have the exact experience the employer wants.

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  29. I sat down with the Long Island Cablevision News last fall and looked right at the camera and asked ALL employers within the viewing audience of one million viewers to please give a law grad a chance.

    That portion of the interview was edited out and never made it to TV.

    So what chance does 12:53PM's blog comment and idea have, which says:

    "The only thing that can be done is to ask employers that have jobs that are not exactly a fit for lawyers to have flexibility.:

    But maybe in time. Maybe it is all a matter of time.

    Painterguy

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  30. @10:59
    "Can anyone name the members of the 'Bankster regime?'
    The name Albert Lord is obviously well known, but who are these phantom banksters?"

    Sure, we can name them:
    Timothy Geithner
    Larry Summers
    Henry Paulson
    Jon Corzine
    Jaime Dimon
    Ben Bernanke
    Alan Greenspan
    et al

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  31. Does anyone here have a link to data which breaks down the number of first-year matriculants by school for 2011? (last year's entering class)

    I've found a pdf for 37 out of the 200 schools which shows changes in class sizes and GPA/LSAT from 2010 to 2011, but I cannot find the full data set.

    I've looked at the aba website and can only find files which show TOTAL first-year enrollment (not broken down by each school's class size).

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  32. No, the boomer generation is not "just as scammed as the current generation of young lawyers." That's positively insulting.

    Your generation, 12:15, went to law school for 1/3 of today's cost. You graduated essentially debt-free. You were able to find a job and earn a living for at least some amount of time.

    I shouldn't expect anything else from a boomer. Naturally, your problems are as bad or worse as everyone else's. The world revolves around you, after all.

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    Replies
    1. Boomer lawyers are screwed. The profession was never what it was billed to be. Your generation is screwed squared.

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  33. The problem is that the legal profession is one with long-term structural unemployment built in. The problem will befall on most people who enter this profession. The world does not revolve around any particular lawyer. However, if you enter this profession now, given these statistics, even if you are in the 55% who get a job, do not expect to be employed long-term. In fact, most people can expect continuous periods of unemployment that will recur again and again. That is what structural unemployment means. It is a function of vast oversupply of lawyers. Legal jobs disappear at the drop of a hat now because employers can fire lawyers at whim and replace them easily. Same concept as Columbia jacking up tuition by over 30% in the last three years. They did it because they can. This is not about boomers. It is about a profession that has failed its members very very badly and a governmental system that feeds failure and widespread unemployment at all levels of the legal profession.

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    Replies
    1. Right. You can't be unemployed every third or fourth year of your career and have a stable family life and save for retirement. Hanging a shingle is even more insecure.

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  34. Have any unemployed and desperate students thought of just lying about their class rank on their resume? Call yourself top 2%, and if anyone asks says that you were top 2% of a subset of students (it's technically a true statement if you pick the right subset). Same with your GPA.

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  35. If you lie and you are caught, it is curtains for doing anything decent with your life. If you read this blog, what people with some experience are suggesting is that the legal profession is so overcrowded that maybe you should look at doing something else. Maybe your class rank is a blessing in disguise. You can better tackle the problem of too many lawyers now than later in your career when your options are more limited.

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  36. Who the fuck is this piece of shit "Anon" who comments over at Taxprof? Why won't that tiny dick piece of shit try spouting his crap over here?

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  37. I see what you mean about Anon. From some other world. I guess if you are in the 5% that can make a good living in the legal profession and can work until you are ready to retire on your comfortable pension, you can ignore the problems of the legal profession. Unfortunately, the other 95% and almost all recent grads for the sake of planning their futures while they are young enough to have options, need to worry about the law school scam, the lawyer oversupply, the lack of long-term employment in the profession and whether they will end up working at Walmart to supplement their eat-what-you-kill income from their small law practice out of their home office.

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    Replies
    1. Walmart does not hire lawyers.

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  38. This whole generational warfare is comical.

    The Millenial generation of law students and recent grads is too stupid to realize it was being ripped off for a largely pointless education.

    The Boomer generation is too stupid (or smart enough???) to see that the Millenial generation is too stupid to realize it was being ripped off for a largely pointless education.

    The Xers, myself included, who don't give a shit about anything, just sit around and laugh at them all.

    The blame game goes round in circles.

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  39. no, 7:43, i wasn't blaming anyone for anything. i was getting into a misery pissing contest. totally different.

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  40. The ABA ought to start an add campaign encouraging employers to hire a lawyer and train a lawyer for a different job. The ad should explain that there are far more lawyers than legal jobs and many strong workers from the lawyer ranks out there that can make a difference in another area. That might help unemployed lawyers get work as opposed to automatic rejections from non-legal jobs.

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  41. I don't see the mis-reporting of debt as anything larger than trying to improve US News Rankings.

    These numbers would not coax any students (except the ones that should be too damn stupid to get in in the first place) to attend the schools, if they're basing it on the debt numbers.

    Someone explain to me how the reporting of an "average debt number" can confuse an individual student about what he/she is going to owe. Each individual student knows A) the price of tuition B) rough living expenses/fees/etc., and C) amounts of grants/scholarships/etc. they are going to get for each semester before it is time to pay the bill.

    Why wouldn't each student look at their own bill rather than go by a number in a magazine?

    I get that the schools need to be exposed for this practice, but you (LawProf) are overstating the alleged effects of the practice.

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  42. 5:11 I asked this question back when this problem was originally discussed. The response was vitriolic. Of course the average debt load is a serious part of your decision about law school! It emerged that it could affect someone's decision whether to apply to the school. If I thought a school was right for me by measures more important and personal to me, I would not decide to forego applying to the school based upon its average debt load. I would at least see what deal I could get, and try to get more information about how scholarships were handled.

    That said, no school should lie or mislead about its numbers. Period.

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  43. As someone who lives in a neighborhood populated by wealthy lawyers, doctors and bankers, I can tell you what the lawyers all have in common:
    - they gradated before 2006

    That's pretty much it. Obviously it helps that they had wealthy parents, knew people and went to good schools. But the most important part was getting a job before there weren't any. These are all Gen Xers by the way. The successful boomer lawyers live in MUCH higher end neighborhoods on the lake or private waterways.

    So chin up - as soon as they invent a time machine you can go back and graduate when there were still jobs and then sit around and high five yourself over how smart you were to be born before the collapse!

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  44. ^ 53 whiny do-nothing bums who want to blame law school for their inherent laziness.

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  45. @7:16 I hope that wasn't aimed at me. I'm one of the lucky ones. I worked at a six figure BigCorp nonlaw job while attending law school on a full ride merit scholarship to a TTTT school and on top of that got paid via GI Bill to attend. Graduated top 10 and interned at the most prestigious boutique IP law shop in town. My only complaint is that there are no jobs for those of us who graduated after 2006, so I have to be content making a very good living in my original non-legal profession.

    I practice law as a hobby now like most people golf, learn basketweaving, etc... Good times, good times.

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  46. I'm an inherently lazy, do-nothing bum, but I still feel okay criticizing law schools because the very first page of their glossy marketing materials reads "Hey inherently lazy, do-nothing bums, here's a great opportunity for you!"

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  47. I'm a proud lazy do-nothing bum, that graduated before 2006. I got medicore grades in law school. Now, I don't do shit for my six figure fed job. Life is great...can't wait to pull in a pension in my mid forties and retire to some Carribean island.

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  48. The law schools think it's pretty
    and neat
    to gobble on the lending teat;
    to know that half the student body
    ne'er will buy
    a pissin' potty.

    To ride the lending gravy train
    on tracks
    across young trusting debtor's backs.

    And every academic huffer
    and every self important puffer
    sucks upon on the Federal Tit
    and not one
    nor all
    cares a whit

    as suicidal debtor's suffer.

    Crimes against humanity
    surely these must be.
    Twas the Boomers made the institutions
    irresponsibly.

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  49. "Of the monstrous neglect of Higher Education in America, and the disregard of it as a means of forming good or bad citizens, and miserable or happy men and women, the law school cartel has, for the last twenty years, afforded a noteable example."

    Law school academics and personnel are ignorant, sordid, and brutal people, to whom few considerate persons would have trusted the education of a horse or a dog.

    As for absurdidy and magnificent laissez-aller neglect, the criminal negligence of the baby bommer generation of key law school people has rarely been exceeded in the history of the world.


    Charles Dickens
    Nicholas Nickleby

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  50. The dividing line in the legal profession vis-à-vis job security is around the class of 1988-89. The first real sign of the crash was in 1991-2 and those that were safely into their 3rd year of practice did ok, but the classes of '91, '91 and '93 were the first to see mass layoffs, empty OCI and evaporating job offers. There have been some spurts of recovery (hence the briefly lived Greedy Associate phenomenon), but the recovery has always run smack into the growing number of law graduates even from the top tier schools.

    Before 1991 you did not see the boiler rooms of contract attorneys, there were a good few public jobs to get trained in as well as the firms. After 1991 ... The growth has been dramatic of 203 law schools - 20 law schools were accredited 2000, 18 in the 90s, 13 in the 80s, 29 in the 70s, 18 in the 60s. Fully half the law schools in the US opened in the last 50 years. Some 35,000 JDs were awarded in 1980 - almost 50,000 are awarded per year now.

    It took from about 1980-1991 for the lawyer over-production to really begin to hit the profession - by 1991 there were about 100,000 surplus JDs extant - i.e., people of working age who had qualified in the last decade. Since then things have just gotten steadily worse.

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  51. The Counterculture Icons, The Jefferson Airplane Band, sang:

    "All of your private property is the target for your enemy. And you know the enemy is we."

    Jefferson Airplane sang at the dirty rolling in the dirt and rocks or stones of the Boomer Religious festival also known as woodstock.

    And what better way to take away all hope of owning private property than by placing all the generations after the dirty hippies deep in debt, and to a government and for life?

    The selfish and mean spirited Liberals and the Counterculture want to enslave people, if not kill them all off by abortion, one way or another.

    Of course the hippie communists do have property, which is what they intended all along: to be a communistic elite class and to dominate everyone else.

    Woodstock was Social Marxism and a means towards turning America into a Socialist if not Communistic country.

    And Janis Joplin sang about wanting to own a Mercedes Benz. Well, in retrospect, she was damn serious.

    Imagine there are no countries, just a lot of cruel boomers pulling all the strings.

    It isn't hard to do.

    Boomers are really bad in a moral sense. They disrespected their parents and have no respect for the generations that came after them.

    All satire BTW :)

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  52. 3:19 on 11 Aug, "Naturally, your problems are as bad or worse as everyone else's. The world revolves around you, after all."

    Wow, pot/kettle, eh?

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  53. "Have any unemployed and desperate students thought of just lying about their class rank on their resume? "

    To what end? If it gets you in the door, you'll still have to supply transcripts prior to beginning employ. One glance at your transcript will give the lie to your resume, and now you're out the door - with prejudice.

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  54. @6.09 - If they bother to check. I happen to know of someone who goes around China, Mongolia, and a few other countries telling people he's a lawyer (or accountatn depending on the situation) when actually he never even finished high school.

    It's amazing how many people fail to do the most basic DD on him. All they need to do is just Google the guy's name and you can know all about him. But time after time they fail to do this.

    Since he isn't a member of any professional organisation he's not subject to sanction from them. Within reason the authorities don't care - all he's doing is taking business and then funneling it to local attorneys and accountants whilst taking a healthy slice off the top for doing exactly nothing. If he does mess up, he stays mobile enough to prevent people catching up with him, so he's pretty much invulnerable.

    I was sure that the guy was toast a few years back when he published a faked interview with the head of the Chinese banking and regulatory commission. He was openly offering clients the opportunity to give him questions to ask officials in confidence, then showing up at meet-'n-greets to have his photo taken with the relevant officials as 'evidence' of his exculsive contacts.

    Nope. He announced his resignation as president of his company to settle official ire, and then didn't, you know, resign. Somehow he still keeps ahead of things - I don't know how.

    Basically, done correctly, straight-up resume fraud pays - but if you're going to fake, you've got to fake big.

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  55. Sigh.

    I go out of my way to be a straight shooter with my clients, and I lose out to bullshit artists all the time.

    Clients hire the person who tells them what they want to hear.

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  56. @ FOARP - Thanks. Okay, maybe in outer Mongolia it works (and I don't doubt it does).

    But does any US law firm or company hiring a lawyer fail to require transcripts?

    P.S. Always wondered why your handle tends to indicate fear of Mars?

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  57. @7.03 - They may require, but requiring and reading properly are two different things. At any rate, the instances where it becomes publicly known are usually where there's resume fraud AND the hiree turns out to be a lemon. Example -

    http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2009/04/transcript-lies.html

    Note that the fraud here would apparently have been obvious had anyone looked closely (at least, I think I'd spot a whited-out typed-in figure), that he only got caught due to lying and then telling the truth, that apparently everything would be gravy if he had simply passed the bar.

    PS - the guy I discussed above has a long list of former customers, including some pretty big ones which were a bit naive when they first entered China, none of whom seem to have done proper DD before hiring him.

    RE: the handle, it's a reference to the Public Enemy tune, something that came up in a conversation with an artist friend back in my China days.

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