Monday, January 21, 2013

Further research confirms sky blue

 Updated below

Prof. Steven Diamond, Santa Clara Law School, disputing the claim that law schools in general, and his own in particular, advertised misleading 90+% employment rates for their graduates, and asking for further research assistance on the matter:

When I went back and looked, as one example, at what my own law school disclosed as employment statistics in 2008 and 2009 I was unable to find a 90% statement or anything close to it on SCU’s website. I was able to find, however, a breakdown of employment there that, in my view, gave law students an honest and accurate picture of what was happening – at that point – to a significant number of our law school graduates. . .
Thus, it is not a surprise to me that only a handful of law schools have been sued for their alleged role in inducing students to go to law school in a declining economy, that several of these law suits have been thrown out of court. In fact, the only one I know of to survive a motion to dismiss includes allegations or actual fraud and shredding of documents. No lawyer has been able, as of yet, in other words, to make the allegations of Campos or Tamanaha [that law schools were exaggerating employment outcomes by quoting misleading 90%+ employment rates] stick.
Here is what SCU posted in the summer of 2010 about employment of Class of 2008 graduates as opposed to what was posted in the fall of 2008. Here is what SCU posted in fall of 2008 about the  2007 graduating class. . . . The alleged “90%” statement is nowhere to be found, although someone better at using the Wayback machine may beable to do a more thorough search and find it. If they do, please let me know.
PDF of Santa Clara Law School "Viewbook" for prospective students, captured from the web on June 20, 2009, p. 11:

OUR GRADUATES ARE IN HIGH DEMAND.  MORE THAN 95 PERCENT OF SANTA CLARA LAW GRADUATES ARE EMPLOYED WITHIN NINE MONTHS

Whether you aspire to be a trial lawyer, specialize in tax or business law, or serve the underserved, Santa Clara Law’s excellent reputation and our Career Services staff will help pave the way to your new career.

Typically more than 80 firms, companies, and public and government agencies interview on campus, and hundreds of other firms request resumes from our students. In addition, Law Career Services offers numerous workshops, presentations, and services to help you launch your career, including Law Career Day, “Meet the Employers” receptions, mock interviews, diversity receptions, speed networking, and more.

(Caps in original).

Meanwhile this page from the school's web site claims that 263 of the 280 graduates of the class of 2007 were employed, and describes this as a 97% employment rate (Apparently this percentage was derived by excluding the four graduates who were enrolled in degree programs and the seven whose status was unknown from the calculation. The school listed just seven graduates as being unemployed, a total which included both those who were seeking and not seeking employment.  Remarkably, just three years later Santa Clara would graduate 55 people who purportedly were not seeking employment nine months after graduation).

Update:   This is getting embarrassing.  A commenter mentions that Diamond has posted on this subject again, and his new post makes it even clearer that he doesn't have the slightest idea what he's talking about on this subject:

The fact is that SCU, perhaps as did many schools, made a reasonable effort to determine who is employed upon graduation and where. Not every student replies but of course 100% of the students who do report back, sure enough, adds up to 100% of the students who report back. And that’s why the school created a chart that has a column labeled “% of reported.”

The actual number who report back is on the same page and includes a heading that says “44% reported” and, two clicks away, is the number of actual students in the new entering class (233 day, 77 evening/part-time).

As I suggested in the original post it is fairly clear, if one wants to put together these kinds of numbers in deciding on whether to pursue a law degree, what percentage of the entering class at SCU, nearly four years later, “reported” back that they were employed (approximately 122/233 = 52% [not including the part timers and not adjusting for minor variations in entering class size]). Before the crisis, of course, the numbers were presumably much stronger. That number is also compiled relatively soon after graduation and might not reflect post-bar passage employment gains. In addition, presumably, a school may have more success over time, and after the bar results, in increasing response rates. This might go some way to explaining the higher percentages reported by UNSWR that presumably Tamanaha was relying on at the Cato Institute. But it is precisely these qualifications that must be taken into account when dealing with these numbers.
This is complete nonsense from top to bottom. Here are some of things Diamond obviously doesn't understand:

(1)  The statistics Santa Clara threw up on its web site are those it reported to NALP and the ABA in regard to the employment status of the classes of 2007 and 2008 on February 15 2008 and 2009 respectively.   Diamond's suggestion that these statistics would be much better if they reflected post-bar results, and maybe that's why the USN numbers quoted by Tamanaha are much better, is the sort of assertion that only someone who doesn't know the first thing about how law graduate employment figures are collected and reported could make.

(2) Diamond also doesn't understand that these statistics are gathered by SCU using a variety of information sources. SCU, like other law schools, doesn't rely exclusively on graduate self-reporting, as huge percentages of graduates, especially at lower-ranked schools, provide no employment status information to their schools.

(3)  Diamond claims that "the actual number who report back is on the same page and includes a heading that says '44% reported' and, two clicks away, is the number of actual students in the new entering class (233 day, 77 evening/part-time)," and that by combining these various numbers one can properly conclude that 52% of the class was employed "relatively soon" after graduation.

I'm trying not to rant here but this is sheer idiocy.  The 44% figure has nothing whatsoever to do with the percentage of graduates of the class of 2007 whose employment status was reported by the school.  That percentage is actually 97.5%, as the school managed to determine the employment status of 273 of the class's 280 graduates. Furthermore the school claimed that 263 of those 273 graduates were "employed," while another four were enrolled in full-time degree programs, yielding an impressive employment percentage of 97.8%.  (Diamond fails to realize that the 44% figure refers to the percentage of the class of 2007 who had their salaries reported by the school.)

(4) Diamond also fails to comprehend that the class of 2007 had, at the national level, the best employment statistics of any graduating class in at least the last decade (the financial crisis hit several months after the class graduated, and of course large firms hired the class of 2007 on the basis of fall 2005 OCI), so his statement that "before the crisis, of course, the [employment] numbers were presumably much stronger" is as wrongheaded as the rest of the assertions in this astonishing display of apparently invincible ignorance.



91 comments:

  1. YES!!!

    FIRST! I WIN!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I thought readers of this blog mght enjoy this story:

    http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/alleged-robber-with-bucky-badger-hat-needed-money-for-debt/article_90e71ea0-61ab-11e2-9390-001a4bcf887a.html

    Sadly, three hots and a cot may be a better option for this guy. Madison is an awfully cold place to be homeless.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One news story said that he was working at UW as a custodian - 8 years after he graduated from their LAW school.

      Delete
    2. LawProf wrote about this already. Def worth checking out.

      http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/01/the-versatile-law-degree-university-of-wisconsin-edition

      Delete
    3. I'm a '12 law grad of UW-Madison and can confirm that the school is tier 1 in name only. We had only 32 employers for 2L OCI - a total that includes many nonprofits and unpaid internships. Reportedly, only 20% of the '12 class was employed at graduation and the final 9 month number won't be much more than 50% [including non-legal jobs]. This school has been on the decline for some time and our graduates are frequently outpaced by those from Marquette - a Tier 3 private school that charges around $40,000 per year. I would advise you avoid this TTT dumpster at all costs!

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    4. Again, Tier 1 is properly just Harvard, Yale, and Stanford—at most. The U of Wisconsin is near the top of Tier 4.

      Delete
  3. He really needs to stop these postings. He has an even newer post attacking LP & Tamanaha. Just digging deeper and deeper.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree that Diamond is making things worse with each subsequent post.

      But for that reason, I don't think he should stop posting.

      Delete
    2. I agree with this. He should say, that LST and LP have made schools more careful with their data, and then quietly go back to his position within the scam.

      Defending it by rewriting history has no effect.

      Delete
  4. The defense should call LAWPROF as an expert witness to explain why he lacked the mens rea to commit robbery.


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  5. Diamond needs to go back and read the complaint and the trial court order denying summary judgment. I'm not sure why he thinks it's materially relevant that the complaint included allegations of "shredding of documents." The trial court did not mention that allegation once in denying the motion for summary judgment.

    I'm also not sure what he thinks "actual fraud" is. Plaintiff alleges that TJSL reported puffed up and misleading employment statistics. It's right there in the complaint and the very first paragraph of TJSL's MSJ. Replace TJSL with NYLS and you get the same result.

    http://www.abajournal.com/files/Minute_Order_%282%29.pdf

    http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/lawsuits/Alaburda_v_TJSL-MSJ-by-TJSL-filed-08-31-12.pdf

    I'm actually starting to feel bad for the guy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Be quiet BoredJD! With each post, Diamond is digging himself and SCU into a deeper hole. You're exposing the trap.

      As much as I love your posts, I have to ask LP to delete this post before Diamond sees it.

      Delete
  6. This is very damning. There is no way to view the Viewbook as stating anything other than an attempt to suggest that the "law graduates" were in high demand as lawyers and that "more than 95 percent" were employed 9 months after graduation.

    I hope that Stephen Diamond admits that he was mistaken. I doubt that he will.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. that view book is just fraud, I don't know how you can view it any other way.

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    2. Leave to a trial judge to see it differently!

      Delete
  7. Lying isn’t misleading because everyone, by now, expects law schools to put out nothing but lies. On the other hand, if law schools deans actually starting speaking the truth that would be very misleading. Who would ever expect deans to conduct themselves honestly?

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  8. From the Steven Diamond article: “The much vaunted “bi-modal” distribution was clearly visible back then [in 2008] as was the fact that only about half the class reported salaries (from which any rational individual could conclude that only half had employment at that point).**”

    The latter part of this statement simply doesn’t make any rational sense. Rather than concluding that individual graduates didn’t report salary numbers because they were all unemployed, a more plausible conclusion (at least at the time I entered law school in 2005) would have been one or more of the following: that the school was having trouble locating graduates who had moved out of the area or out of state since graduation, a general low response rate attributable to written surveys (I conducted survey research as an undergraduate, and a response rate of about 50% on written surveys of any kind would generally be considered excellent, even with a very specific, narrowly defined group like “2008 SCU Law Graduates”), a general fear of salary disclosure (in my first job as an attorney, for instance, we were explicitly told by our managing partners NOT to discuss our salaries with co-workers), or perhaps embarrassment over making a low salary as an attorney (NOT that these presumably underpaid graduates may, in fact, be completely unemployed). Due to my background in survey research, I DID take note of the low salary reporting rates at the time I applied to law school, but I chalked them up to the factors mentioned above. Based on how the data was presented (i.e. in the Diamond article's link to the 2007 employment numbers as displayed on 10/9/08), I would NOT have assumed that the 44% reporting salaries would represent 100% of the employed graduates, but rather that the 44% reporting salaries was a more or less representative sample of the class as a whole (within a reasonable margin of error).

    ReplyDelete
  9. If real bankruptcy (and I don;t mean the IBR or PAYE sham) were allowed for student loan debt, the law school scam would come to an end very quickly and everything discussed in this post would be moot.

    BTW, law grads are not the only ones with impossible student loan debt burdens.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "BTW, law grads are not the only ones with impossible student loan debt burdens."

      Who has ever said that they are?

      Delete
  10. This is the text of page 11:

    [begin quote]
    OUR GRADUATES ARE IN HIGH DEMAND. MORE
    THAN 95 PERCENT OF SANTA CLARA LAW GRADUATES ARE EMPLOYED WITHIN 9 MONTHS.

    Whether you aspire to be a trial lawyer, specialize in tax or business law, or serve the underserved, Santa Clara Law’s excellent reputation and our Career Services staff will help pave the way to your new career.

    Typically more than 80 firms, companies, and public and government agencies interview on campus, and hundreds of other firms request resumes from our students. In addition, Law Career Services offers numerous workshops, presentations, and services to help you launch your career, including Law Career Day, “Meet the Employers” receptions, mock interviews, diversity receptions, speed networking, and more.
    [end]

    Virtually every law school in American was pumping out piffle like this in the pre-LST days. Every. Single. One. And almost every single one was lying when doing it.

    How in the hell can anyone read that and think that "employed" means something other than "in a capacity necessitating a JD to excel?" There is no reasonable interpretation of that page that would have the reader believe that "employed at 9 months" includes McDonalds fry cooks and retail rotation lackeys.

    The fact that fraud was widespread and accepted in the industry does not mean it wasn't fraud. "Puffery" is saying a car will nab you a model. "Puffery" is NOT suggesting 95% of your graduates are employed in hunky-dory capacities when it's more like 50%. The former is vague and preys on naieve emotion. The latter is specific and preys on unreasonable semantic technicalities.

    They're all scoundrels, and I'm loving the fact that the pirate ship is getting smaller and running low on provisions. Steve Diamond is merely ensuring that he'll be first to walk the plank off the good ship Tenureville when the 1%ers start saving themselves by throwing the lessers overboard.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Why would he post this without doing more research? He sounds like an Internet troll who lives in his Moms basement.

    Professor diamond- you need to check your facts and make sure they are correct before you post. You probably don't understand that you are building the plaintiffs case for them. You may not understand that these words on the Internet will never go away.

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  12. The clearest example of Sinclair's Law, cited frequently on this blog.

    ReplyDelete
  13. These people flat LIED. Plain and simple. There is no other way to spin it.

    This is just institutional fraud with enough blame to go around that it's impossible to pin on any single entity/law school.

    I hope they all lose their jobs.

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  14. Well I think I know tomorrow's headline--"Local Man Is Liar."

    Hey, that is a good headline!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Why is Diamond still only an Associate Prof after 12 years there?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The associate/assistant/full professor thingie is confusing and not really that relevant. Plenty of things to criticize Diamond on, not making full professor is not one of them. I've known real academics (lifelong scientists) at respected (not law schools) institutions who are still "associate" profs after 20+ years.

      Delete
    2. beg to differ -with his educational credentials, the presumption has to be that he is a true failed academic. in my 35+ years of law school teaching i saw no (zero) examples of truly successful academics who remained at lower rank for such a long time.

      Delete
    3. He'll soon be elevated to tenure for his yeoman service to the law-$chool racket.

      Delete
  16. at what point do the professors and deans at that school pull Diamond into a meeting and start screaming at him, "shut the fuck up! every time you open your mouth our bs gets more exposed, more obvious, and more embarrassing! lay low, keep quiet, and do not argue about any facts, statistics, or our marketing materials!"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's my question exactly.

      And any SCU Law students reading this--how disheartening is all of this to you?

      Delete
    2. How much do you think Leiter regrets defending this fool?

      Delete
    3. Not at all. He's the sort of person who isn't capable of admitting error. He's chosen his position and dug himself in on the wrong side of history. All he can do is rant about LP being a 'failed academic' and claim that 'scam bloggers' can't 'see reason'. The point is that 95% of all law profs are 'failed academics', and whether or not this is true doesn't detract at all from the just nature of what LP is doing.

      Leiter's made himself out to be a clown, a very petty, nasty clown.

      Delete
    4. There are very few true academicians in law schools. Brainerd Currie, Ronald Coase, Louis Brandeis, and a mere handful of others actually changed law with their scholarship (in conflicts of law, approach to economics/externalities, and privacy rights, respectively).

      There are 10 (maybe 25 tops) true legal thinkers in America today. Everyone else is a fake. These bozos are law faculty, but not "scholars" and these phonies certainly don't contribute to the development or understanding of law and the legal system.

      Campos and Tamanaha and Henderson actually have changed the debate and challenged the "Landellian" model of law schools. How can they be dismissed as failed academicians?

      Delete
    5. The dean has probably been away all weekend and is unaware of the storm that is brewing.

      Or diamond was elected to carry the flag for the defending law school movement .

      I'm not sure the dean could stop diamond from voicing his opinion anyway.

      Delete
    6. you are probably on the mark here. diamond is likely trying to boost his standing with those who can advance his career.

      Delete
  17. I think that this post hits on a larger issue in legal academia. Education in this context is a one-way street: Expert wisdom is passed down from master to pupil based in large part on.. wait for it.. the master's status as a learned expert. There really isn't much of an exchange of new ideas or an openness to questioning old ones or finding new or different ways of looking at a given issue.

    I have been working with a tier-4 law prof as part of a post-grad program that I am participating in. It's more of the same - the law school lawsuits are all 'frivolous,' and everything must be done according to a book which was apparently written about 80 years ago. Any questioning of same is taken as a direct assault on the professor's inherent authority.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Boomers love this nonsense. Appeals to authority rather than reason, and a disturbing admiration of conventional wisdom.

      Delete
    2. "Boomers love this nonsense. Appeals to authority rather than reason, and a disturbing admiration of conventional wisdom."

      Which is why the 60's and 70's were so tranquil.

      Delete
    3. Boomers love to point out things that happened 50 years ago- as if Woodstock was enough to prove they were great.

      Well, look around buddy at what you have done with the past 50 years. It isn't pretty and you get no credit for spending a few years self- indulgently mucking around.

      Delete
    4. The turbulent 60s and 70s being the embodiment of reason? Boomers spent that era appealing to different authorities (e.g. Marx) and adopting new, unquestioned, conventional wisdom (e.g. make love not war). When that didn't work out they retreated right back into the world they rebelled against. But oh how they love to regale others with their stories of the muddy trenches at Woodstock.

      Delete
    5. That was the era of "do your own thing". The person who called it self-indulgent hit the nail on the head.

      Delete
    6. I don't really thing of it as a boomer v. younger generations kind of thing. I do however think that the younger generations will have considerably more empathy for their common man than the boomers do.

      Delete
    7. Boomers grew up in a world where everything was handed to them. Thus when they see someone unemployed, struggling, etc., all they can conclude is that the person is lazy.

      Delete
    8. 8:20 p.m. nailed it.

      Delete
  18. At what point is Professor Diamond part of an ongoing criminal enterprise?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Perhaps getting the US attorney to investigate this massive and pervasive fraud would be the next step.

      Delete
  19. Just waiting for that update about SCU now having to deal with the fraudulent claim that ~50 of their graduates are not looking for employment. If this results in another blatant example of lying via statistics we will have Prof. Diamond to thank.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Guys, guys, calm down. He was told there would be no math in Law Proffing.

    ReplyDelete
  21. If SCU has such a huge number in that category, isn't that something the ABA Section should inquire about?

    Is there some way we can ask the ABA to ask SCU to explain that 50 student category?

    Who to we write to?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can write to the ABA here:

      http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/contact_us.html

      You can ask them to look into why SCU had at most seven 2007 graduates who were unemployed but not seeking work in February 2008 (this assumes every unemployed 2007 graduate was not seeking work), while just three years later the school produced 55 graduates not seeking work in February 2011 (and 47 in February 2012).

      Delete
    2. I will try to find support later, but I believe that high "unemployed not seeking" is a trigger for the ABA to investigate.

      I may be mistaking this for a high response rate (which is definitely a trigger). This might also only be for site visits (though I do not think so, as I believe it's a questionnaire committee trigger).

      Delete
    3. And I mean a high unknown rate...

      Delete
    4. LST should ask the ABA to investigate such a glaring discrepancy. LST should write to the dean there and cc Professor Diamond, asking about the stat.

      Delete
    5. Dean Polden is already on my list of people to call this week, regardless of Diamond...but I will be bringing it up.

      Delete
  22. who gives a fuck what a top100 (lol!!) law shill thinks.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Professor Diamond is now claiming that the 95% figure should be treated as "puffery."

    Holy freaking shyte.

    A tenured faculty member is now in print admitting that they were using "puffery" on their stats?

    Somebody do a screen capture before he realizes the admission he just made!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. we got him up against a wall. SCU students should be confronting this liar. If they don't they are cowards.

      Delete
  24. Oh man, Campos kicked the living shit out of this guy.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Just underneath the "OUR GRADUATES ARE IN HIGH DEMAND. MORE THAN 95 PERCENT OF SANTA CLARA LAW GRADUATES ARE EMPLOYED WITHIN 9 MONTHS."

    you find:

    "Whether you aspire to be a trial lawyer, specialize in tax or business law, or serve the underserved, Santa Clara Law’s excellent reputation and our Career Services staff will help pave the way to your new career."

    strictly speaking, this is true since, among "serv[ing] the underserved" includes Starbucks barista.

    So shame on you LawProf and Brian Tamanaha for your failure to closely read the fact pattern.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There's no reason to think that Starbucks customers are anything but fully served. Now, Applebee's, on the other hand....

      Delete
  26. I am SO HAPPY this is the second year in a row I don't qualify for food stamps anymore after law school.

    Wait, is that puffery?

    ReplyDelete
  27. A decent job at last!

    http://johnnypainterguysblog.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "This story to be continued."

      Are you f-ing kidding me??

      Delete
    2. Don't go to his blog. He has been known to post the IP addresses of people who do for some strange reason.

      Delete
    3. So since you got a decent job, are you going to start making payments on your student loan?

      Delete
    4. @559,

      That deadbeat wouldn't pay the lenders back if someone gave him a TRILLION dollars.

      Delete
    5. @Paintroach,

      I just hope to God that your job isn't for the government like I suggested. If you work for them for ten years, your loan balance automatically doubles.

      Delete
    6. Good going Seabiscuit.

      "You know, you don't throw a whole life away just 'cause its banged up a little."

      Delete
    7. @Paintroach,

      If YOUR life is "a little banged up," then your parents' lives have been absolutely DEMOLISHED by your shameful mooching.

      Now for the love of God, keep your promise and stop posting here!

      Delete
  28. Prof. Steve Diamond is a troll. Please eo not engaging him. He is a no name prof from a no name school attempting to get publicity by trolling.

    ReplyDelete
  29. F**k you Steve Diamond for helping ruin the lives of many SCU Law grads.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Steve Diamond is now arguing that reforming law schools is akin to restoring Jim Crow laws:
    http://stephen-diamond.com/?p=4425

    He also claims that the market for legal education in its current form is not a cartel system, that legal scholarship is an "unqualified human good" and that schools led by actual practicioners would lead to the establishment of "diploma mills."

    At this point, he's gotta be joking around.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Comments are closed."

      Delete
    2. My favorite line:

      "That balance would be lost in an environment where schools were not just allowed but encouraged to engage solely in teaching. In fact, teaching would soon become training."

      Law schools would have to... gasp... train lawyers!

      Delete
    3. Just about no one reads legal scholarshit (spelling deliberate). Most of it is utterly worthless and never should have been produced in the first place. Law schools would be better off without it.

      Delete
    4. If you think that a law school like Santa Clara is outrageous for charging $41,790 a year in tuition, then you hate black people.

      Delete
    5. That post was unbelievable. To pick one of many problems with it, and not even nearly the biggest (that would be the aggregious comparison between Campos/Tamanaha and Jim Crow), he says:

      "The market has recovered somewhat, stronger in a few areas like IP, but remains far from robust."

      This claim is backed up by the Hildebrandt report, which shows a 2% drop in demand for IP litigation services over the first 9 month of 2012 (see Chart 3 here: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/CitiHildebrandt2013ClientAdvisory.pdf ) and flat-lining or ~1% growth in general. Obviously IP litigation is not the whole of IP, but there's no reason to believe the picture would be different for all of IP from the sources Diamond relies on. Overall, as the report says in Chart 1, the compound annual growth in demand 2008-12 is still negative (-0.4%). I have no idea where he gets the idea that IP is a strong area except that this is a somewhat truthy idea that seems to circulate perpetually in the legal industry.

      Delete
    6. @9.34 - Diamond is the Kanye of legal academics . . .

      Delete
    7. MY favorite portion of his foaming was

      ***A key goal of the “fail/scam” group appears to be the return of the law school to the era when these schools were not subject to modern regulatory standards and accreditation,***

      Uh, no, Professor. One of the complaints is that the "modern regulatory standards and accreditation" have failed miserably -- having become overrun by the likes of Professor Diamond . Of course law schools have LIED to the ABA, but the ABA hasn't been exactly stellar in its attempts either to find out accurate information or punish the liars.

      It's hard to believe Diamond went to Yale. His words are big, but his reasoning is, well, "Santa Clara-like."

      Delete
  31. I find the collapse of the law school bubble fascinating, because it really indicates the power of the Internet.

    Information used to be expensive, so institutions could control what was said about them.

    That is no longer true, and the availability of non-official information is utterly revolutionizing the market for law schools (along with much else).

    Take Santa Clara:

    http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=197231

    Applicants are communicating with each other, and a number of people are getting offers of substantial "scholarships" (i.e. discounts) in the 10K-20K range, but noted that you have to stay in the 25% of the class to keep them. Useful information for potential applicants...

    However, my favorite post from the thread:

    "AHHH first acceptance of this cycle!! This is one of my top 2 schools so I am absolutely thrilled!!

    Early Action
    Received 11/09
    Complete 11/19 (LORs)
    Status Updated 11/30--Admitted

    One of my relatives just graduated from this program, passed the bar, and got a great job a few months after graduation. He had an amazing experience at SCU-- great social scene and in-class experience. The campus is stunning. I AM SO EXCITED!!

    Good luck to you all in your application process (smileyface)

    Edit:
    GPA: 3.3
    LSAT: 159"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...on the other hand, there was this post:


      "If you're dead set on going to this school make sure you hold out for a lot of scholarship money. Last cycle I was initially offered 8.5K a year and tried to negotiate with other offers and was shot down. First deposit deadline passed and I didn't deposit with them and they sent me an email soon after basically saying "We know the deadline passed, just kidding, take your time! And if you think more money would make your decision easier just let us know!" I did nothing. Then like two months later they sent me another email basically saying I could have more if I just asked. They also accepted people that they had already rejected that cycle. They were super desperate.

      Whether this school should even exist I will leave up to you to decide after you do your own research but if you decide to go then make sure you squeeze every last drop of money out of them."

      Delete
    2. ...and from last year:

      "So I was officially dinged back in late March, no wait-list, just a flat out rejection letter. Now, I just received an email from Admissions today telling me that they reconsidered my app and offering me $13k/year (not sure what the stips are). Anyone else have anything similar happen? I was very surprised and not sure what to think of it since I'm committed to attending U Oregon right now. I'm assuming a bunch of people that were originally offered admission didn't end up matriculating."

      Delete
    3. that is the credited response. do not let the law schools get the upper hand. communicate early and often on teh internets.

      Delete
    4. +1. The spreading of accurate information is the true enemy of fraudsters.

      Delete
  32. Wasn't a scholarship traditionally a cash grant or stipend? To call a discount which takes the cost from extremely overpriced to just overpriced a "scholarship" seems to be a misnomer.

    And its not like most of these discounts would last past the first year anyhow.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Oh dear - is Diamond losing it, or has his personal vanity caused him to b unable to see how daft he sounds. First (and my sympathies to those who do fall into this category), I am not an "out of work lawyers who think many law schools should be shut down in order to reduce the training of more competitors" I am a partner in a pretty successful firm, a boutique that does not want for clients and our firm has a very healthy balance sheet and no debt. Nonetheless I think that 50% of law schools should close.

    Moreover, I am not an advocate of:

    "A key goal of the “fail/scam” group appears to be the return of the law school to the era when these schools were not subject to modern regulatory standards and accreditation, or at least to the point where the heart of such standards are weakened so that an entire new class of schools can appear.

    What I want is much tougher "modern" accreditation standards and regulation - one that for example says that the schools cannot be the agents for lending large amounts of taxpayer guaranteed money, or benefit from the exclusion from bankruptcy of student loans - will face very tough regulation. Those regulations should say that Santa Clara cannot for example imitate Lincoln Tech's exploitation of minorities to line the pockets of its faculty.

    I am offended at the Jim Crow argument because a white male like Steve Diamond is in fact using the student loan system to ruthlessly exploit those law school candidates who are marginal, and in reality disproportionately black or asian . Remember, black sharecroppers in the deep south were obliged to spend what little money they made at the company store. Moreover, when they borrowed money for seed and living expenses from the landlord or owner of the company store, they were obliged to spend that scrip in the company store, on goods sold at inflated prices. Steve Diamond in fact is just like one of the landlords/company store owner, arguing that he was doing the black sharecropper a favor by making them spend their money on the heavily marked up goods in his shop. In effect, if anything the law schools like Diamond's are closer to an implementation of Jim Crow than what reformers are seeking.

    In any event, I suspect that the Dean of Santa Clara will pull his hair out when he sees Diamond's posting on his blog - and if Diamond thinks it makes him more employable at another law school he is delusional.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Since Massa Diamond chose to raise the argument:

      "A practice that emerged following the emancipation of African-American slaves, sharecropping came to define the method of land lease that would eventually become a new form of slavery. Without land of their own, many blacks were drawn into schemes where they worked a portion of the land owned by whites for a share of the profit from the crops. They would get all the seeds, food, and equipment they needed from the company store, which allowed them to run a tab throughout the year and to settle up once the crops, usually cotton, were gathered. When accounting time came, the black farmer was always a few dollars short of what he owed the landowner, so he invariably began the new year with a deficit. As that deficit grew, he found it impossible to escape from his situation by legal means. The hard, backbreaking work led to stooped, physically destroyed, and mentally blighted black people who could seldom envision escape for themselves or their children; their lives were an endless round of poor diet, fickle weather, and the unbeatable figures at the company store."

      http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brown/sharecropping.htm

      The analogies to what his law school and he are doing to marginal law school candidates, disproportionately black and brown, are inescapable.

      Delete
  34. Please stop giving Diamond airtimeJanuary 22, 2013 at 6:22 AM

    He's obviously just trolling for attention but does not want to engage in any rational discussion of issue.

    Please stop advertising for him. If he really wanted fruitful discussion on these issues he'd still be over there arguing with Bernie et al. But it's clear he just wants to spout nonsense unchallenged.

    Ignore him.

    ReplyDelete

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