Friday, December 9, 2011

I can't believe it's a law dean

If I were the dean of a law school that was getting sued for luring students to my school via wildly misleading employment and salary figures, here's what Item One on my day planner would not be: "Publish op-ed full of wildly misleading employment figures in legal employment magazine."


But I'm not Nelson Miller, dean of the Thomas M. Cooley School of Law's Grand Rapids campus.  The charitable interpretation of Miller's defense of legal education as a "value proposition," as they say in the B-school literature, is that he is a profoundly stupid man who is incapable of understanding even the simplest statistical arguments. The realistic interpretation is that he is a profoundly dishonest man, who is quite capable of making what he fully realizes are utterly misleading arguments, if doing so is necessary, in his calculated view, to preserve his salary.

But again, even leaving the ethics of lying your ass off in public aside, I don't believe a prudential calculation regarding present circumstances would lead to the conclusion that it's wise for Cooley administrators, of all people, to publish "arguments" of this sort:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, lawyer unemployment rose from 1.1 percent in 2007 to 1.9 percent in 2008 and 2.3 percent in 2009 but fell to 1.5 percent in 2010. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of unemployed lawyers grew from 9,000 to 16,000, but only from 12,000 to 16,000 between 2007 and 2010 during the depth of the recession. Contrast these small numbers to 1,040,000 employed lawyers and to much greater job losses in other fields. New law jobs arose even in the teeth of recession. From 2000 to 2010, the economy created another 123,000 lawyer jobs while adding only 7,000 unemployed lawyers. Employed lawyers grew by 39,000 from 2007 to 2010 across the recession.
Dean Miller's argument is that there are more than one million employed lawyers in America, and only 16,000 unemployed attorneys in our fair nation, so going to law school right now, especially a law school like Cooley that prepares its graduates to practice law, is a wise investment.  I actually laughed out loud typing that sentence.  Seriously, why is this guy wasting his talents as a law school dean when he should be arguing that his client has a constitutional right to pave over Lake Tahoe, or that the victim of this so-called crime stabbed himself in the back repeatedly?

I'm not going to bother pointing out what's so absurd about this "analysis," since Matt Leichter has already thoroughly trashed Miller's preposterous claims (twice!).  Instead I'm going to touch briefly on a couple of related issues.

First, what exactly is the ABA accreditation process good for if it lets a place like Cooley rip off nearly 4000 law students per year?  Yes, you read that right: Cooley currently has 3,931 J.D. candidates: one out of every 38 law students at an ABA law school currently goes to one of Cooley's four campuses.  Right now it appears the ABA accreditation machine is giving both lawyers and the public the worst of both worlds: the extra costs associated with regulatory barriers to entry, without the benefits -- to lawyers obviously -- of cartel-level prices, or of higher quality legal services to the public. (In terms of the latter, how much "quality control" is being maintained by a system that allows Cooley to accept 84.4% of its full-time applicants, as it did last year?).

Second, what is the matter with these people?  By "these people" I mean legal administrators, not naive young people in a lemming-like race to get ripped off by supposedly respectable authority figures at the top of a supposedly respectable profession.   I guess the answer could be as simple as that some people will do anything for money.


The dean of the University of Texas School of Law was forced to step down Thursday amid criticism by some faculty members about his allocation of donated funds to professors.


Larry Sager had planned to conclude his deanship at the end of the 2011-12 academic year. But UT President William Powers Jr., a former law dean who named Sager his successor in 2006, told the American-Statesman that the faculty had become so divided over Sager's leadership that an immediate change was needed.
Apparently, Sager's "leadership" included extracting a half million dollar "forgivable loan" for himself from the law school's  private funds. (Jurisprudential puzzler for you soon-to-be unemployed UT law students: if you take out a loan that doesn't have to be repaid, is that really a loan, or more of a gift to yourself?)  But Sagar's generosity didn't just extend to himself:

UT records obtained by the American-Statesman under the Texas Public Information Act show that a number of law professors received sizable funds from the foundation, in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars. Powers and Sager said those outlays are made on the dean's recommendation. Jon Newton, president of the foundation, confirmed that.
 "Every member of the faculty with a named professorship or chair gets summer support and/or a salary supplement from the foundation," Powers said. "Sometimes we help people with mortgage loans and things of that sort."  
Hmmmm.  Exactly how much "help" do these people need? (According to public records the average salary of UT law professors is north of $200K a year, not including fringe benefits, loans that don't have to be repaid, and things of that sort. It appears these "loans" were actually retention payments, which wouldn't have to be repaid as long as the faculty members given them didn't leave during the term of the "loan." So Sagar appears to have paid himself $100,000 per year, on top of his annual $380,000 salary, not to quit his job).

The foundation outlays and other compensation information were originally requested by three law professors. One of them, Jack Sampson, said the records speak for themselves.
"This is above my pay grade," Sampson said. "I don't need to comment, and I don't think I should comment."

The records show that some faculty and staff members at the law school have complained of being underpaid or discriminated against because of their gender, age or ethnicity. In some of those cases, sizable settlements resulted.
Linda Mullenix , a law professor who complained of "pay discrimination," received a $20,000 raise and a $250,000 forgivable loan. Laura Castro, who had been a spokeswoman for the law school, received $101,292, the honorific title of "visiting scholar" and use of an office for a year.

Maybe Dean Miller should use these inspiring examples for another article how well getting a JD can pay off these days, so to speak.

O tempora! O mores!

57 comments:

  1. I can't believe Vivia Chen, who claims to be a reporter, let him get away with using her column as a mouthpiece without asking him A SINGLE question about the nonsense he wrote. Imagine if all reporters did that. Is anyone here going to call or write Mr. Miller and ask him the questions we all demand?

    1. If the employment statistics are so good, then why is Cooley fighting to dismiss the lawsuits before the audit that would occur in discovery? Why not let the suit go to discovery so plaintiffs can have egg on their face when they realize

    2. Mr. Miller states, "Employed lawyers grew by 39,000 from 2007 to 2010." How does he reconcile this with the fact that law schools (accredited and unaccredited) graduated over 200,000 students in that period - 200,000 students that Mr. Miller claims found work? Keep in mind the total number of lawyers in 2007, according to the BLS, was about 500,000.

    3. Mr. Miller wrote, "Bureau of Labor Statistics excludes those not seeking employment." Did he investigate to see how BLS categorizes an unemployed law grad as "not seeking employment?" Is that what happens to anyone who does not find a legal job after some number of months? Does Mr. Miller have the numbers without that do not exclude unemployed graduates because they are "not seeking employment?"

    4. Will he - using his own $350,000 salary - guarantee every Cooley graduate a legal job? Will any percentage of Cooley graduates will be guaranteed a legal job? Seems like a safe bet on his part.

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  2. continuing question #1 . . . *when they realize that Cooley was telling the truth all along.

    (Not sure why that was deleted from my post. Maybe Blogger has some sort of internal bullshit filter)

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  3. Lawprof,

    Great post. Thanks for posting information about the unfolding issue at Texas - I was unaware of this until you posted it.

    Not to get too off topic, but how do these dishelved legal academics rise to such levels of prominence and compensation? Have you see Larry Sager's picture? WTF? He's competing with Michael Olivas in the most disheveled legal academic category.

    I always laugh when guys with wild, unkempt beards like Olivas and Sager justify their obscene compensation packages by claiming the "sacrifice" they make as academics by forgoing the riches of private practice. What a crock! Could anyone realistically see unkempt, swarthy characters like Olivas and Sager making partner at an AM Law 25 firm? Not on planet Earth at least.

    Are these gripes about appearance petty? Perhaps, but I think their slovely appearance also belies an intellectual laziness and comfort with the status quo of legal education. Not stupidity mind you, just indifference.

    In closing, has anyone seen the documents cited in this article? I would be fascinated to see if one Brian Leiter was the recipient of this slush fund for faculty in endowed chairs. After all, he had two endowed law chairs at UT:

    - Hines H. Baker and Thelma Kelley Baker Chair in Law and Professor of Philosophy (2006-2008)

    - Joseph D. Jamail Centennial Chair in Law and Professor of Philosophy (2002-2006)

    Professor Leiter has been one of the biggest proponents of the status quo and defenders of esoteric legal academics. Wouldn't it be just desserts if he were neck deep in this ethical swamp?

    Brian Leiter is one of the nastiest, most vicious and mean spirited bullies in the academic blogosphere. He has ruined countless lives and reputations with his hate. The schadenfreude would be sweet!

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  4. Lawprof:

    I read the Dean's article yesterday and knew you would be writing a response today.

    A few things:

    1. Miller is not stupid, he just falls under the Sinclair saying that, "A person will never understand something when their pay is directly linked to them not understanding it."

    2. If number one is accepted as fact, than transparency (law school variety) is largely an exercise in futility. Transparency is good, but even transparent data can be spun and sold to mouth breathing future student loan debtors by guys like Miller.

    My suggestion(s): Law school transparency should be a goal but not the ultimate goal. The access to easy credit needs to be abolished...or at least lessened.

    Look at the housing market: lack of demand did not cause the crash, tightened credit caused it. People were restricted in their access to cash and in turn mouth breathing morons who had no business buying homes were estopped. The demand for housing (liked education) will always be there regardless of transparency.

    If student loans are limited, schools will become more efficient. I read an article that suggested the individual schools should be the guarantors of federal loans when it comes to student loans. Not a bad idea when you really think about it.

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  5. Cooley deserves some criticism, but a few isolated excesses don't imply that the whole industry is crooked.

    Generally speaking, junior faculty members are well compensated for the hoops we must junp through. But this is qualitatively different from getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in mortgage payments.

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  6. "Transparency is good, but even transparent data can be spun and sold to mouth breathing future student loan debtors by guys like Miller."

    That proves that you don't understand the notion of transparency.

    In general I am sick and tired of coming onto this blog to hear some lunatic obsessively tell us that transparency does not matter. It is ***the*** battleground for law schools, as demonstrated by the lawsuits, the coopting of the ABA committee on statistics and the law schools' marketing campaigns. They lie about jobs to get students - that's the game.

    Since the blog has accepted the fact that transparency matters, I recommend deleting all the troll "transparency is irrelevant" posts because they are obviously not there for any reason other than annoyance.

    If you want to troll people with a ridiculous message, please take your "transparency doesn't matter" insanity to the SEC rules making committee, or some investment fraud blog.

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  7. Transparency doesn't matter lunatic on an investment blog:

    Look people, balance sheets, income statements, earnings to profit ratios -- none of those things matter! What we need to do is to stop investing in the stock market. Just cut all the companies out completely. No more money for any of them, and then they will sort the mess out themselves!

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  8. "Yes, you read that right: Cooley currently has 3,931 J.D. candidates: one out of every 38 law students at an ABA law school currently goes to one of Cooley's four campuses."

    Holy shit that's like ten law schools.

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  9. I mean more like 4 law schools.

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  10. What a coincidence that "transparency doesn't matter" troll and "nyc" troll posted at the exact same time.

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  11. Question about Cooley:

    Do they operate as a "for profit" university?

    I know they are private but I was wondering if they operate ala University of Phoenix.

    I only ask because they seem to operate in a manner similar to the University of Phoenix's of the world (live off federal student loans, dubious claims of the economic value of their degrees, essentially offer admission to anyone with a pulse, etc.).

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  12. 7:28: The comment you're criticizing doesn't say transparency doesn't matter (it explicitly says transparency is desirable). It says it's not enough. Your obsession with this subject is interfering with your ability to read. Don't clutter up this thread with inaccurate comments of this sort or I'll start deleting your comments.

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  13. It says exactly that in a talk out of the side of your mouth sort of way (the way people who don't understand the truth i.e. transparency communicate). Here are two direct quotes that together can only be interpreted as saying transparency doesn't matter:

    " . . . transparency (law school variety) is largely an exercise in futility. Transparency is good, but even transparent data can be spun and sold to mouth breathing future student loan debtors by guys like Miller."

    "My suggestion(s): Law school transparency should be a goal but not the ultimate goal. The access to easy credit needs to be abolished...or at least lessened."

    This is an insane as saying that we should no longer demand honest, audited financial statements from public companies and instead we should just pull all of our money out of the stock market. It's completely incoherent and I can't be the only person sick of hearing this message on here.

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  14. Dude, calm down. I have been a strong supporter of the transparency movement on this blog and have come to agree with some of the other commenters' criticisms of transparency alone. There will likely be unintended consequences of transparency such as less qualified but more desperate 0Ls taking the place of better informed and better prepared students in law school seats. Transparency is VITAL to any reform so that we as a profession have an accurate idea of where we are and what needs to change. It is also required of a profession that seeks the public's trust. Other commenters have convinced me that we need to focus on transparency both as a moral imperative and as a first step of information-gathering to use in tailoring additional reforms. That does not mean that we in the transparency-plus crowd are giving up on reform, just that we seek additional changes once 0Ls cease being defrauded. Please stop being so shrill and assume good faith in other commenters, we're all friends here....Except Steroid Boy.

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  15. I don't how a person goes from calling something "an exercise in futility" to calling it "VITAL" just a second later. That sort of simultaneous and contradictory thinking is only found in a schizophrenic mind.

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  16. Dude, I am the 8:00 commenter. I am a different person than the 7:22 commenter. Remember what I said about assuming good faith? Please stop being so shrill.

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  17. Wow (and wow again):

    I posted the comment about transparency at 7:22. I am not the troll you all speak of. I am for transparency, not against it I just think that having transparency will not solve the problem by itself. More is needed. I guess stating transparency as a futile act was misleading. Not my intention.

    I think some of you need to sit back, calm down, and BREATHE. Your anger crowds your better judgment.

    At 7:44: If this is how you read my comments, then my mistake. No, it is not as "insane as saying that we should no longer demand honest, audited financial statements from public companies and instead we should just pull all of our money out of the stock market"

    All companies (including law schools) should have transparency required. All should be honest and truthful. However, these acts are JUST A START. In other words, transparency is necessary but not sufficient (LSAT concept). Got it?

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  18. These examples of blatant deceit on one hand (reminds us of Hitler's coinage of the propaganda technique "the bigger the lie the more believable it is") and corruption and fraud on the other hand among legal academia brings me to a question that I have pondered for years, "What is the collective guilt?" or "How much do the administration and faculty of law schools know about their students' short term and long term outcome?" How culpable are they? How does one understand the collective guilt?

    Some, if they are longstanding academicians maybe don't fully appreciate the reality, the totality of the misery wrought. Many, particularly if they have worked as a lawyer for a substantial time definitely do know. (http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/06/wake-up-fellow-law-professors-to.html)

    I know from my own experience that a handful of professors who had worked in private practice for years two decades ago admitted publicly that the practice of law was awful. I personally had another profession before going to law school, and I remember the looks of wonder from multiple professors and the repeated comment "you left that for this!" They knew.

    My own query is akin to the questions asked by succeeding generations in view of the national socialist crimes and the questions that our own society must ask in view of the financial meltdown and financial institutions mortgage fraud. How can it continue? What is the collective guilt? Clearly, ignorance is not an excuse anymore. Denial is not a credible moral defense. I personally refused a job as an adjunct faculty of a top 50 law school to teach a course in my own field because I will not participate in the scam. I know my own field is completely glutted, and thousands now take a class in an area of practice for which there is no need at all for new entrants currently and room for only a handful of entrants per year for decades to come absent another bubble economy, and even then there would be thousands of casualties from the current glut. As a society, we give lip service to finding repugnant such excuses as I just followed orders.

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  19. I agree with steroid boy that people need to do more than comment here. I've done at least a dozen other things myself. Anyone whose contribution is limited to comments on this blog is a disinterested party using this site for his or her own entertainment.

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  20. 8:19, I like your Hitler analogy. One issue I have with this blog is that it attributes an innocent mens rea to law professors and law school administrators. In fact they do what they do as part of a very carefully crafted design, with full criminal intent. Recall the Illinois Dean who boasted of his fraud with the line "we'll trap these bastards."

    These people are blatant and opportunistic thieves who purposefully and intentionally steal from students and taxpayers. We should start calling them that. No more of this "they don't know" nonsense.

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  21. Does anyone know where Miller got the "1,040,000 employed lawyers" statistic?

    I checked on the BLS website and it lists 561,350
    http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes231011.htm

    Does anyone know of another source putting the number at 1,040,000? That's a pretty big discrepancy.

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  22. The two US government estimates on how many lawyers are currently "employed" as lawyers are from the Current Population Survey, which estimates 759,000, and the Occupational Outlook Handbook, which estimates 1.04 million. I don't know what methodological differences produce the different estimates.

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  23. That's very troubling. Mr. Miller cited his source as BLS, but he ignored the BLS's count of 561,350 lawyers and instead chose to cite to a much higher number from another source.

    Did Mr. Miller literally just sit down and pick his sources based on which gave the best results?

    Legal unemployment rate? BLS has the lowest number for that so I'll use them.

    Total number of lawyers? The BLS has a low number. That must be why they have such a low unemployment rate, because they have a narrow definition of "lawyer." No problem, But look here, the OOH has a number twice that of BLS. OK I'll use that.

    He did not even disclose that he used a different source for the second number, making it seem like he got all of his data from the BLS.

    Jesus that's just disgusting. Is he licensed in Michigan? In my state that's arguably a "false letter" and worthy of a bar complaint. I am really sad that someone like Mr. Miller practices in my profession.

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  24. The problem with law schools and their debt laden graduates not being able to find work in a flooded market is only part of the problem. I see it in the eyes of my relatives when I complain about my high debt and low prospects. They still think to themselves, "yes, but you are still a lawyer." It does not compute with the general public that most people who went to law school from about 1990 forward were fed a bill of goods that turned out to be a pot of lies. This crappy economy only exposed the problem so many lawyers have experienced prior to it being crappy.

    The fundamental problem with the scambloggers (I am lumping them all together) is that the discussion becomes a discussion amongst themselves. This discussion amounts to a bunch of disgruntled lawyers venting about what happened to them. The public does not care because they think all lawyers are rich and that we are spoiled for complaining. We all know this to be untrue.

    After transparency is achieved (at all schools not just law schools) there needs to be a serious discussion about the predatory nature of ALL student loans. The problems lawyers face are just the tip of the spear. Why? Doctors aside, lawyers taken on the most student debt as a group. I think all schools puff in general about outcomes, but law schools are at the extreme end of that "puffery" spectrum. In essence, it is no longer puffery but outright lies. As result, lawyers have high debt, low job prospects, and were lied to by their schools. As a group, lawyers are in the worst-case scenario of all educated people yet seem to just talk about it amongst themselves rather than joining up with guys like Alan Collinge and becoming a part of the larger discussion about higher education in America. I blame myself as well. I think lawyers are a risk-adverse group by nature and nurture (look at the cases we studied-real people, real facts, and in many cases it does not work out too well for them).

    Law school transparency is a start but if you want to see real reform, attack the money stream as well. Make the schools responsible for the $$$ dolled out to students. If they go below a certain threshold of lawyer employment (real lawyer employment per new transparency rules) they would be shut down. Watch reform happen overnight. Watch law schools become efficient models of lawyer-education. Watch them monitor graduate progress. Watch crappy schools close down. These are just ideas being thrown out nothing more. Make this a requirement for all universities. Reform the student loan system.

    Speaking for myself, I am willing to accept the fact that I chose poorly when it came to deciding to go to law school. I will not accept 100% of that responsibility because I believed I was duped by the law school stats (I went before there were scambloggers). However, I would feel a whole lot better about the whole thing if 1) I could have my debt waived and/or the ability to refinance what I actually borrowed, bk protections, etc. or 2) a chance at a second career. Both of these ideas seem downright impossible in today's world.

    I find it interesting that many of us may be using our law degrees to help ourselves out of this mess. After all, we are lawyers.

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  25. Investigate Leiter!

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  26. Cooley publishes its own set of law school rankings which put Cooley in the Top 5 along with Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. The decisive factor in generating this statistic if I recall correctly is Law Library Square Footage.

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  27. I applaud Dean Miller for his radical stance to put his money where his mouth is by offering to guarantee dischargeable, low-interest private loans for all students enrolled in Cooley to demonstrate his faith in their favorable employment prospects upon graduation!

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  28. Even a Dean at Georgetown or Virginia wouldn't be dumb enough to do that.

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  29. How dare you insult Cooley! You obviously are just biased. Don't you know they're the number 2 law school in America?

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  30. FYI, BL1Y couldn't get that job at Target

    http://www.jdunderground.com/jdu/thread.php?threadId=22386#post318416

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  31. Only active members are eligible to practice law in Michigan.


    Nelson P. Miller—P40513 (active and in good standing)

    Associate Dean and Professor
    Thomas M. Cooley Law School
    111 Commerce Ave SW
    Grand Rapids, MI 49503

    Phone: (616) 301-6800 x6963
    Fax: (616) 301-6840
    e-Mail: millern@cooley.edu


    vCard Electronic Business Card

    Michigan Licensed: 11/20/1987

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  32. Did LawProf go to school with Miller by any chance? They graduated around the same time from Michigan Law.

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  33. He was two classes ahead of me so I didn't know him.

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  34. If LP doesn't mind a little bit of immature humor...

    If you use a vCard, you probably still have yours.

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  35. Transparency Boy's act is getting old, eh? Hate to say I told you so...

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  36. I am a graduate of UT law school, class of 1996. Back during one of our orientation sessions for new law students before the beginning of classes in the fall of 1993 it was then law professor William Powers Jr. who gave the "law is such a noble profession" speech to the entering class.

    Apparently being the professor to volunteer to keep herding the sheep through the law school scam has had its rewards.

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  37. Can we please add "troll detective" to the list of moderated trolls? His posts do nothing but attempt to instigate arguments.

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  38. Did anyone commenting in this thread write Dean Miller to complain to him in person?

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  39. "I don't think Cooley should hold all his e-mail addresses and be able to go around and see what he has talked to the other people (sic) without coming to the court," said Ingham County, Mich., Circuit Judge Clinton Canady III, according to a transcript of the hearing. "I think that's clearly an invasion of his privacy. I don't think anybody would want that."
    http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jspid=1202518943064&Ripping_a_critics_mask_off&slreturn=1

    We can imagine how this school would train its JDs and how these JDs would contribute to our society.

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  40. As a junior faculty member who has "got mine," I support transparency.

    First of all, the job market will come back. Perhaps too late for the unfortunate souls who are graduating now, but things will turn around. When that happens, people will be able to clearly see that for many people (not all!), law school is still a good investment.

    Secondly, even if law school were a complete sucker bet (which it is not) there would still be plenty of suckers willing to sign on the dotted line. My law school could easily double its current acceptance rate thereby doubling its revenue. Incidentally, the fact that we do not do so should give pause to those who wish to write off law school faculty as a bunch of scam artists.

    The bottom line is that this is not a zero-sum game.

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  41. There are in fact many schools, namely Cooley, that have tried to enroll as many students as they can. And many other schools have done the same.

    What stops some schools from doing so is the fear of making their 1L stats plummet in terms of GPA, LSAT scores as well as eventual bar passage rates. It has nothing to do with schools not being complete scam artists which most are outside the top schools.

    The bottom line is that for MOST students, attending law school was SO not worth the cost in money/debt and time spent. While law jobs are not constant, the supply of JDs >>> amount of renumerative work needing JDs that would make the JD worthwhile in the first place. And full and complete transparency would reveal this very clearly.

    Its true that transparency won't stop all the suckers from attending but it will at least stop a significant number. And those that attend knowing its a sucker's bet get what they deserve.

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  42. "There are in fact many schools, namely Cooley, that have tried to enroll as many students as they can."

    And there are many financial professionals who are incompetent or dishonest. It doesn't mean that nobody should invest in the stock market.

    Learn to do some logical thinking already.

    P.S. For what it's worth, Cooley is highly ranked in its admittedly self-published ratings.

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  43. I admit to genuine confusion whether "NYC" is performance art or an exceptionally clueless law professor.

    No one, as far as I know, is arguing that law school is a bad idea for everyone. NYC's argument that it's not zero sum appears to assume it's not negative sum for current law students as a group. That assumption is to put it mildly extremely questionable. At many individual schools it's clearly false.

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  44. Actually, very few people should invest in the stock market, as equities are very risky instruments by nature. Unfortunately, the government, though (a) programs such as the 401K, and (b) the federal reserve keeping bond yields artificially low, has forced individual retirement funds into the equity space to chase yields. Then, opportunistic financial professionals and institutions feast on the information asymmetry between chumps with 401Ks and Lloyd Blankfein.

    Basically, the government is forcing individuals to take on more risk than they should, and funneling money to the financial sector, who charges rent for the privilege of them taking your money.

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  45. I second LawProf's thoughts on NYC. If you're going to troll, go all in. I also wonder if NYC is the same prof bragging about receiving a sex act from a student many posts ago with the line "I got mine Jack." -- a troll if there ever was one.

    I, for one, sincerely appreciate the Simpsons reference in the title. And this post kicked *ss.

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  46. This is the post I'm talking about:

    http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2011/10/law-professor-solicits-fraud-as.html#c5858734881010170895

    The guy identifies himself as a junior faculty member in that comment. He also uses the same "got mine" and "hoops" terms that he's used here. LawProf, you can see IP addresses as the admin, if there's anyone you should ban from this site it's a vainglorious dullard making puerile comments. If I were you I'd put this guy on ice.

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  47. "No one, as far as I know, is arguing that law school is a bad idea for everyone. "

    With all due respect, you kind of imply it with the tone of the blog, even down the the name you chose. One can imagine that the chap who publishes "Jewwatch.com" occasionally concedes that not all Jews are bad.

    And by the way, I really enjoyed the shots you took at Mr. Leiter.

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  48. 2:27, Vivia Chen could have at least asked him why he is suing people who criticize his school when he wants to be able to vomit all of that intellectually dishonest bs on her column. Vivia Chen is a disgrace. Earlier she wrote an article about how asians are too nerdy to make partner, and about how to get ahead in biglaw you need to act like Newt Gingrich.

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  49. terry malloy, you're an admitted loser, a delusional one too - you look nothing like Marlon Brando and you don't have 1% of his courage - in other words you're a loser's loser. Yet you want to give people investment advice on big issues.

    Why?

    This drives me nuts. Why is it that every inept, nothing loser you meet in life wants to tell you this and that about the stock market? Do you not see who you are? Do you not see your place in the world? People wouldn't trust you to make their sandwich. Why do you think they would want investment advice from you?

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  50. "No one, as far as I know, is arguing that law school is a bad idea for everyone. "

    It's definitely not. No one doubts that we need at an absolute minimum 50-100 law schools to supply society with the lawyers it needs to function.

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  51. RE: Zero Sum Game
    No, law school is not a bad investment for absolutely everyone. But for whom, pray tell, has it historically over the last c. 3 decades been a good investment? We simply don't know. We don't even know with reasonable precision how many lawyers are working in jobs as lawyers. The best data from the government varies by c. 25-40% depending upon the cited source alleging how many lawyers are working as lawyers...is it c. 760K? c. 1,000,000+? alongside the c. 575K holding a JD who are not working as lawyers? Is it a good investment for that historically c. 15% of graduates who land a biglaw job? Was it a good investment for those 80% of the 15% who will not have that biglaw job after 5 years according to the Q3 2010 Citi accounting report? Was it a good investment for those 10 or so once junior partners that I know who are not currently working? Was it a good investment for the 5 or 6 partners who once offered me a job who are not currently working? Was it a good investment for the graduate with 150K in non-dischargeable student debt who landed a 40K or 50K or 60K first job? Was it a good investment for that HR employee who "uses his or her knowledge of employment law on the job" who would have the same salary without that small amount of employment law knowledge gained in law school?
    Was it a good investment for those countless lawyers who find themselves unemployed after even many years of a decent job who now are too old to train for something else and have no affordable health insurance? Was it even a good investment for that tiny percentage, the handful of successful partners, who are still making 300K or 400K a year as a litigator by dragging out discovery and fighting over every single procedural point in big litigations that go on as he or she hopes for years? Depending upon what encompasses "good investment," I submit that from an economic cost benefit analysis law school is a good investment for a shockingly small percentage of graduates.

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  52. @ nyc_troll

    Yes there are SOME students who attend law school where it ends up being a good choice. No one denies this. But for MOST students, based on costs and returns, it is NOT. If you agree, then clearly there are a significant number of JD grads who are going to get screwed.

    Or are you really going to insist that it pays off for MOST students??? If so just outright say it and make it explicit that you are a full-on troll.

    There are many people that win the lottery or win in Vegas too. Doesn't mean it is a good choice on "average".

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  53. @ 7:59,

    Why?

    Turning off my persona for a moment:

    I get paid seven figures base to do regulatory/compliance work in the equities sector, and I am under 30.

    If you'd like, I can meet you at the corner of wall and broad street, half a block from my office, I'll give you my card. Plenty of cops there. You don't have to worry about me giving you the right hand cross you deserve.

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  54. six figures. seven figures for compliance work is absurd. just got the bump last year. sill getting used to saying it.

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  55. "Swarthy?" SWARTHY?

    Criticize Olivas or Sager on the merits..... your racism is showing.

    ReplyDelete
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  57. This drives me nuts. Why is it that every inept, nothing loser you meet in life wants to tell you this and that about the stock market? Do you not see who you are? Do you not see your place in the world? People wouldn't trust you to make their sandwich. Why do you think they would want investment advice from you?
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    ReplyDelete

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