Monday, February 25, 2013

This is not my beautiful house

This thread on TFL provides a sobering glimpse into what's happening to both the legal academic hiring market and the market for high-status and otherwise desirable non-entry level lawyer jobs (BigLaw  mid-level or senior associate, DOJ/USA/Federal agency jobs, cush in-house gigs with big companies, and so forth).

Long story short: lots of people with golden credentials are doing Visiting Assistant Professor gigs, striking out in the increasingly brutal academic market, and finding that they don't have the option to return to their old jobs or indeed anything similar to their old jobs.  The reasons will come as no surprise to anyone who has had much in the way of contact with the contemporary market for lawyers: openings for the kinds of jobs most VAPs had are scarce, and it's an extreme buyer's market.

Hiring partners are generally suspicious of people who tried to bail for academia, are often openly contemptuous of the law school world, and usually have little interest in taking on expensive senior associates with no book of business.  Government hiring is either completely frozen or extraordinarily selective at both the federal and state level, and if anything desirable government jobs are now even harder to get than big firm positions.  Good in-house positions are coveted by top associates at elite firms, who are in a far better position to get them than itinerant quasi-academics on the lam from BigLaw. Etc.

All this produces But I Did Everything Right syndrome on steroids: people with HYS law degrees, appellate court clerkships, several years of experience at V-10 firms, etc. etc., are finding themselves looking at flat-out unemployment, and are coming to the horrifying realization that, in this business of ours, a formerly golden resume starts spoiling faster than a plate of sashimi left out in a tropical sun.  (Some current law professors will be finding this out first-hand soon enough).

Adding to the angst in the VAP world are the realization that taking a job with a low-ranked school may well be a prelude to even more intractable unemployment a few years down the line; that, leaving aside the inherent risk of such jobs, lots of low-ranked law schools shouldn't exist anyway; that some VAP programs are functionally exploitative, in that they produce very little chance of getting a tenure-track job anywhere while extracting cheap teaching resources for academic hopefuls; that it's routine for people in the latter circumstance to have vastly superior entry-level credentials to those the senior faculty at the schools they're at had when they were hired in the palmy days when the Police were the hot new band; and that a career dedicated to successfully crafting a perfect resume can easily crash and burn for reasons completely beyond one's control.

Needless to say this spectacle is producing waves of schadenfreude among the legal precariat, and a growing sense of dread among all but the most purblind law professors, who realize we are increasingly becoming this generation's version of what a 50-year-old autoworker with an upper middle class salary and great benefits was back when the Police were a hot new band.

242 comments:

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    1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R23otpYzFCA

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  2. A lot of VAPs may find themselves living in a shotgun shack.

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  3. The fact that law professors and administrators may get their come-uppance when this whole system comes crashing down does not make me feel better. As much as I dislike these two categories of people, the thought of them having to go through what I did over the course of 14 months (unemployment, night sweats, worrying, etc.) does not really help anyone. Many attorneys (me included) are still underemployed or unemployed with this fucked up debt hanging over our heads. Watching other people squirm foe some of the same reasons makes me a little sick to my stomach. A little.

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    1. I was just thinking the same thing as I read this. I don't want to see professors or mid-career professionals suffer any more than I want to see my fellow recent grads suffer.

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    2. "chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad."

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    3. I don't mind seeing them suffer . Too bad you didn't want to practice law! Bye bye!

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    4. "I was just thinking the same thing as I read this. I don't want to see professors or mid-career professionals suffer any more than I want to see my fellow recent grads suffer."

      WTF are you on? These are the people RESPONSIBLE for the scam and VAPs desperately want to be tenured, completely ignoring all that this blog has discussed. F them. Glad this is happening to them and they deserve it. They played a large role in creating the situation.

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    5. Exactly, These people are rats. Rats that are attempting to flee onto a sinking ship.

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  4. Most law professors I talk to think this is a temporary hiccup. They still don't believe that there are serious structural changes coming.

    Denial is a strong force.

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    1. Nor is denial just a river in Egypt.

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    2. ^ I always loved that expression!

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    3. But it reminds me about a bad joke re John Tower -

      "Senator it's 'harass' not 'her ass'"

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    4. On what basis can they possibly believe this is temporary?

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  5. Should we feel anything but schadenfreude for those who sought to benefit from the scam only to become its latest "victims"?

    *I don't think these people are victims in any way. Ok they won't be able to get a big law job, very sad very sad. But hey I bet they could get a shitlaw job. Or better yet hang their own shingle. Their outcomes will still be spectacular compared to the students they lectured too.

    Profs don't deserve anything better than the students they help swindle. It's good this concept is becoming a reality.

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    1. And think of the "networking opportunities" the professors will have, with all their former students now in high level, BigLaw and other jobs!!!

      For them, finding new employment should be a snap.

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  6. This post about 'catching the VAP' makes me think of lyrics from a different Talking Heads song: "And we're having fun. With no money."

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  7. "All this produces But I Did Everything Right syndrome on steroids: people with HYS law degrees, appellate court clerkships, several years of experience at V-10 firms, etc. etc., are finding themselves looking at flat-out unemployment, and are coming to the horrifying realization that, in this business of ours, a formerly golden resume starts spoiling faster than a plate of sashimi left out in a tropical sun. (Some current law professors will be finding this out first-hand soon enough)."

    I don't have any sympathy for these guys. While some "law professors" will be tossed out on their ass - or slapped down to associate "professor" status - the old cockroaches who taught law school for 30-40 years will not be affected. In the end, those bastards are the equivalent of a child molester who was never caught or punished.

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    1. Dude, take it down a notch.

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    2. Saying silly stuff like this doesn't help your cause.

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    3. Nando has earned the right to say whatever the fuck he wants. He has saved countless lives from debt slavery.

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    4. Comments like this just prevent him from being taken seriously, at least in this case. Preventing some people from going to law school doesn't give you the "right " to say whatever you want (you can still look foolish).

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    5. Nando is like Shirley Bassey on the Oscars last night. A has-been who is wheeled out once in a while to sing (badly) an old classic, then everyone claps, and she goes away again until next time.

      Or Eastwood at the Republican convention. A has-been, wheeled out for a bit of light relief. Says something crazy to get attention, then disappears while the big boys do the work.

      Same with our piggy little bud, Nando. He shows up here once every time, posts some boring bullshit about pigs and cockroaches and stuff like that, the same old same old, then he disappears after a few posters pat him on the back and occasionally thank him for all his hard work in the past.

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    6. Ladies, they pay homage, but haters say Nando fell off
      How nigga? His last posting was "Fourth Tier Toxic Superfund Site: Southern University Law Center"

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    7. "Comments like this just prevent him from being taken seriously, at least in this case."

      And idiots like you were saying the same thing about people criticizing law schools and the scam two years ago. Go clutch your pearls in the law library, whiner. This place is for realists.

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  8. I feel about as bad for these guys as I do for other unemployed biglaw associates or people with good pedigrees. They're victims of a broken system. Of course I also feel bad for the administrative assistants and low level staffers who will be laid off well before Tenured Professor Boomer Progressive lets go of his research stipend, or god forbid the law school should dip into its endowment to pay salaries until people find other work.

    It's another blow to the rational applicant theory that even the most well-pedigreed of the bunch could not see this coming, even though they "should have known" that applications were dropping, schools were cutting back hiring, anecdotal evidence about people being placed are no substitute for hard statistics, the people who run law schools are bullshitting when they say they're looking out for younger members of the profession, and the numbers just don't add up anymore.

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  9. The VAPs need to work harder and network more.

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    1. "Hi, Joan King!"

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    2. When I was at DePaul in the late 1990s, the CSO showed me two wonderful things: a) the miraculous Sullivan's Law Directory, and b) Guerrilla Tactics for Getting the Legal Job of Your Dreams.

      I eventually got a job with two DePaul alum partners paying around $35k a year for only 2,000 billable hours a year!

      I am so glad I took her advice and networked my ass off.

      I still have $150 k+ in student loans.

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    3. Is Guerrilla Tactics that nauseating book whose author condescendingly calls herself "Auntie" or similar? I wouldn't wipe my ass on it.

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    4. 841: beautifully droll. Never forget "information interviews"--that's a gold mine for ya.

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    5. No, you forget. They must not get jobs because they are terrible interviewers. It can't possibly be the market.

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  10. BoredJD -- keep in mind that most VAPs on the market in 2012-13 applied in fall 2010 or early 2011 at the latest, and most were probably prepping to go on the VAP market (writing articles, reconnecting with profs) for a year or so prior to that. So definitely before the application crash, and probably before the ITLSS became as well-publicized as it is now.

    And also keep in mind that most of the VAPs went to schools that didn't really experience the law school crisis (and certainly not in the mid 2000s when they would have been in school). They didn't have any problem getting clerkships and first year assocate jobs, nor did most of their classmates. I'm not saying that they weren't negligent in looking past HYS to see how the vast majority of law grads were faring, but it is a question of negligence and not malicious intent, if that makes sense.

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    1. I should have been more clear in my post. I'm saying that it's unreasonable to hold a VAP to such an exacting hindsight = 20/20 standard, just like it would be wrong to hold an applicant in 2008/2009 to that same standard. Just because I can look back and think up questions the VAPs/law applicants coulda/shoulda asked or inferences they coulda/shoulda drawn does not mean it was reasonable for them to think that way in 2008 or 2011 or whenever.

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  11. They deserve it.

    For decades now, the tenured legal professoriate has decreed that:

    -- Teaching practical skills is beneath them.

    -- Students who want to spend their law school time learning how to practice law are sadly mislead.

    -- Writing practical treatises or articles is for second-raters.

    -- Anyone with more than a few years of practice experience is presumptively unqualified for a tenure-track teaching position.

    -- The only people worthy of being lawprofs are those who fit into a tiny standardized cubbyhole (T14, LR, clerk, 1-2 years "practice").

    -- And all of this was done with unconcealed condescension and hauteur.

    Fuck these people.

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  12. Anyone who has worked in BigLaw can tell you stories about people with golden credentials who came from academia or were hoping to move to academia and were completely, often hilariously, unsuited to the practice of law. I don't just mean that many of these people don't thrive in BigLaw. I mean that many of them can never finish a project because they see so many sides to every issue, can never be allowed to talk to clients because they come across as so unworldly and unbusinesslike, can never seem to arrive at a reasonable time in the morning or stay late at night, etc. BigLaw hiring partners have all been burned by this type of job candidate and have learned to be cautious about them.

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  13. Why would you expect someone who spent 2 years in as a VAP to be competitive for law jobs? They've not been practicing for 2 years and their skill set for practicing law has probably dulled. Most importantly, what client deserves to be represented by someone who has been off the field for 2 years?

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    1. Also, not that I blame them for not liking Biglaw as we all make choices but they've clearly indicated that they aren't interested in practicing law so why would you even want to hire someone like that?

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  14. VAPs should be held to 20/20 hindsight.

    For twenty years (starting arbitrarily from the publication of Judge Edwards' famous essay), people have been making the argument that legal teaching and scholarship were divorced from legal practice to a degree that was unhealthy for the profession as a whole.

    These people cast their lot with the academy. They choose prestigious federal appellate clerkships instead of a stint in a smelly state trial court where they would learn a hell of a lot more. They schmoozed recommendations out of their schools' star professors, none of whom had run a case or corporate acquisition from start to finish.

    At multiple points in their career, they choose meaningless but "prestigious" classes/specializations/topics/goals over realistic/practical ones.

    These people decided to reproduce the heirarchy of the tenured profs -- their ideas, their values, their idiosyncracies, their disdains.

    Cast out of academe, the VAPs will be in a world that they spent a decade avoiding and disdaining with side rasher of snobbery.

    It will be a joy to watch their fall. It will be the last reel of the Magnificent Ambersons. It will be glorious.

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    1. Exactly. The water is rising. I can't wait to see members of the professoriate begin to drown.

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    2. They ought to be able to work as lawyers.

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    3. So should a great number of lawyers. The point is that there aren't enough jobs for everyone, even those who assumed their credentials would save them over not having skills.

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    4. The problem today is that top BigLaw lawyers with top skills are ending up on the street. There are too many lawyers with great skills and too few jobs by a long shot.

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    5. Wow. Have to stand up and applaud this comment. Pitch perfect and even an apt Magnificent Ambersons reference.

      I'm laughing at these people their whole trip down the drain hole.

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  15. We need to hire better CSOs for these guys.

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    1. Beautiful. The CSO can tell them to join a business leads generation group like BNI. Which, actually, are not so bad for divorce and will referrals. Antitrust and securities litigation --not so much.

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  16. This is more of the same, as longer term employment outcomes need not be reported by law schools. The long term outcomes are horrible for the top schools. Even from Harvard, many biglaw partners are out on the street long before a rational retirement age. They cannot find other work.

    Columbia has about a third unemployed to start. I hear anecdotally that Harvard has about 5% more of the class employed after 9 months than Harvard. That is more than a quarter with poor job outcomes from Harvard each year.

    We are placing most lawyers into short-term jobs that they can only hold when they are young, and then wondering why a HYS with a federal clerkship and years of BigLaw experience cannot get a job after the first post-BigLaw job does not work out.

    This is a system of graduating double the number of lawyers as there are jobs and putting the half that get jobs into short-term work where there is no work for most experienced lawyers. This oversupply at first year level and increased oversupply produced by up or out policies of law firms cannot and should not go on.

    We need drastic steps. Like reducing the number of new grads below 18,000 for years to assure that grads get jobs initially and also to absorb the surplus experienced lawyers, or even those with really good records. That type of reduction may start to absorb maybe 5,000 more experienced lawyers a year - the number of lawyers being booted from biglaw alone each year.

    Another problem is the ACCA in house jobs. ACCA should require its members to be flexible with experience whenever possible. The jobs advertised are ridiculous because the experience requirements are so onerous for most jobs. A corporate lawyer ought to be able to come in and learn ISDA or investment management at the junior level. A litigator ought to be able to learn employment law at the junior level. ACCA should ask its members not to place experience caps on any legal job advertised on the site. It does not create more jobs but at least creates a path for lawyers to learn needed skills today so they can work.

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  17. They I acknowledge they were never nearly as commercially successful as The Police, you cannot use a Talking Heads lyric and then repeatedly refer to a completely different band from the New Wave era. You simply cannot.

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    1. Especially when The Police's titles and lyrics are so apropos . . . "So Lonely", "Hole in my Life", "Truth Hits Everybody", "Be My Girl - Sally" . . . and that's just Outlandos D'Amour.

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    2. and don't forget, "There's a little black hole on the sun today."

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  18. I have to agree w/ a few posters here that I don't enjoy watching anyone go through the unemployment/underemployment hell that I have currently been going through. I don't think I have had a good night's sleep for 3 years now - it is frequently broken up by waking up in the middle of the night and I have become terrified of my future - if I can be said to even have one. Right now, I was just lucky enough to receive a $14,000 a year, part-time job and I am incredibly grateful for that - I consider myself extremely lucky, because that's what so many have to hope for in this over-saturated legal market.

    That being said, I can't help but think that the greed of the people who caused this whole thing has eventually become their own downfall. Had we not overproduced so many lawyers so that greedy administrators could make more and more money off people trying to get an education, legal educational professionals probably wouldn't be experiencing this at all. Had they been content to keep graduates down to numbers that were sustainable, their own survival would not be in question.

    Reminds me of a quote my dad is fond of saying: pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Pigs are creative and therefore successful in business, but they aren't greedy to the point that they machinate their own downfall. Hogs' excessive greed, on the other hand, does them in every time, because it is unsustainable. Wish legal educational professionals had been more like pigs (although Nando would probably indicate that they were) and enjoyed their generous benefits, instead of wanting more and more dollars and being tempted by unlimited student loans, which resulted in their creating an unsustainable system that is now coming crashing down.

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  19. How many law school professors routinely work nights and weekends?

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    1. How many of them routinely work weekdays? Some of them regularly come to class wearing their overcoats in the late afternoon, obviously having just arrived (and intending to leave again as soon as the class is over).

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    2. They were working from home, don't you know. Do you know how arduous that can be? You're lucky they show up for class and a couple "office hours" each week. And then they have to go to the odd faculty meeting after that. And we haven't even begun to talk about conference attendance/preparation.

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  20. The unacknowledged problem is that the Cravath system was based on the premise that the lawyers leaving Cravath could get great jobs. That was true when it was set up and true for many years. It is not true any more for the the vast majority of US law firms which employ up or out policies.

    There are too many entry level attorneys being placed into non-career positions. This structure does not work, especially without law schools being required to provide long term employment outcomes.

    The answer is that these large law firms need to shift to more career positions. They need to slow down hiring and confirm that their former lawyers are moving out into lasting positions, not short term jobs. Even if it is a temp job, the temp agencies should try to find career temps, as does Axiom for example.

    Unless the stucture of the profession changes, there will be more and more lawyers out of the top schools unemployed.

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    1. "The answer is that these large law firms need to shift to more career positions. They need to slow down hiring and confirm that their former lawyers are moving out into lasting positions, not short term jobs."

      LOL. Why on earth would a law firm do that, given the glut of attorneys?

      "This structure does not work"

      Works just fine for the law firms. To maximize profits per partner, the strategy is to rely on short-term, cheap labor as much as possible, to maximize the different between billing rate and actual compensation paid to non-partner attorneys.

      Or did you think that law firms were altruistic organizations?

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    2. A law firm or in house employer can hire an experienced (10+ year) Harvard Law grad today for maybe $100,000, or maybe even less. Why does the churn improve things for the law firm?

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    3. The old Cravath system is broken according to the Georgetown report from yesterday. Whatever replaces it, the benefit will be to the partners, and secondly to the partners ability to please the clients. No one is worrying about the long-term careers of junior associates anymore. To the extent that concern ever existed, it ended during the purges and deferrals of the great recession.

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    4. Congress ought to start worrying. Taxpayer funding of ruining hundreds of thousands of peoples' lives and losing billions of taxpayer dollars at the same time.

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    5. Didn't bother them when it was mortgages.

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    6. More evidence that a top law school degree is no longer golden.

      When these HYS guys get down and deep into in house gigs at shops used to hiring from local law schools, they will get their come uppance.

      Fired for being from top schools! Arrogant! Out the door! The legal department needs more of us hard working tier 3 grads and not those d__n hoity toity Ivies.

      Wait and see if you don't believe this post. There will be an extra high turnover rate for HYS grads in house.

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    7. According to this (subscription required for full article), grads of the top schools are already being pushed down the line ... "Midsize firms are happy to sort through the remainders"

      http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?germane=1202589186825&id=1202589186107

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    8. post the whole article

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  21. I suspect that the law school faculty will start to resemble the other university faculties fairly soon with a decent percentage of the faculty on a nontenure, year-to-year contract. This will actually be healthy as then there will be faculty who are only expected to teach rather than write articles which will be deemed worthy (or not worthy) of publication by their or someone else's students.

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  22. The law school gravy train has run its course. In the end, there's not much difference between the law establishment grifters and the sucker lemmings. The lemmings just get f*$Ked first. But the grifters will get no sympathy from me. Maybe they'll learn to pick up a shovel and do some honest labour.

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  23. I suspect we'll see bloody internecine war as the elites turn on the TTTs and the TTTs use their regulatory capture to screw everyone.

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    1. One can always dream.

      There's already a little of that going on in the 2012 Michigan bar exam, or as I like to call it "Operation Cooley."

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  24. Since we're on an eighties kick:

    "Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others." Wall Street

    FYI profs, writing sh*tty law review articles that nobody reads is merely mental masturbation and doesn't qualify as producing something with your life. Nevertheless, that is still one notch above the buying and selling of young lives that the deans are engaged in. I'm speaking of you Yellon, Katz, Mitchell, O'Brien, LeDic...the rat-king pack.

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  25. Are HYS law school graduates in general having difficulty finding employment? This is a serious question. The reason I ask is because I thought these three law schools were immune to the legal downfall. I've heard that a few of them were unemployed for a while but it is my understanding that HYS is still a safe bet. I welcome enlightenment on this.

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    1. HYS helps, but it's never been a magic bullet. You have to keep your resume polished in relevant ways.

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  26. For a long time, HYS were being edged out of high level jobs and not recovering. That has not changed surely.

    Now there is more competition once one is edged out. It is much harder than before to recover.

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  27. The future of many deans once the sh*t hits the fan and difficult decisions must be made?

    Law faculty plotted to oust dean (GW Hatchet):
    http://www.gwhatchet.com/2013/02/25/law-faculty-plotted-to-oust-dean/#comment-342749

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  28. Sorry? You want me to feel sorry for the poor VAPs? I'm sorry I'm not sorry. These people wanted to get into the laziest, most useless sub-specialty (law) in the laziest, most useless "profession" on earth (academic professor). Professors are used to being worshiped, add nothing of value to society, complain when they have to DO THEIR JOBS (ugh, fml how am I going to grade all these papers!?), make an hourly rate that would make any Skaddenite blush, take continuously from credulous children, their credulous parents, and the credulous public, and complain about ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. They are the worst kind of people, and I can't understand how any sympathy could be generated toward them.

    A VAP is merely a "worst kind of person" in training. They've shined ass and elected to write nonsense and probably annoyed the hell out of their coworkers to no end, all with an eye toward becoming a terrible human being who fiscally savages a generation. See you on the bread line.

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  29. How's the market for private-school U.S. history and social studies teachers?

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  30. Boo hoo, why should I feel bad for a bunch of shysters who were angling for a cushy position in which to exploit people at? I have four words for these jerks: "Welcome to document review!"

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  31. I too have no sorrow for these "gold plated" lawyers, with their five years of Biglaw (raking in the cash), their top 10 degrees, their mere "visiting" status at law schools, etc.

    My sympathy lies firmly with the unemployed law grads, those who never even had a fucking chance. Those who were scammed. Not those who were born into law with a silver spoon in their mouths, and who are now finding themselves as fucked as everyone else.

    This blog needs to refocus. Who are the victims of the scam? Because it sure isn't Harvard grads.

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    1. Anyone who signed up for a low ranked school, or even a school that is not at the very top knew or should have known it was a big risk. When I was growing up there was a distant relation that could not make a good living from NYU night law school. So NYU was never a safe bet. Anything lower ranked, a lawyer can hit gold but can also end up with nothing. How could anyone sign up not understanding the risk?

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    2. Because the schools lied blatantly about job prospects and salaries. People thought schools and their deans were ethical and subject to the highest level of scrutiny.

      They were deceived, that is how.

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    3. Also, not everyone has the luxury of a relative who went to law school at NYU. A lot of us don't even have relatives who went to college. We based our decisions on advice from undergrad professors and the handful of respectable people we knew. Their formative professional years came in the 1980s, when law school was a relatively cheap bet with a good chance of an excellent pay-off.

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    4. There is a limit to the ignorance one can claim.

      I did not know my law school was a low ranked law school.

      I never heard of Harvard before this minute.

      I had no idea that there was a difference in term of jobs I could get if I went to a low ranked law school as opposed to Harvad

      I did not know that I should talk to people at the law school I was planning to attend about the types of jobs they had after law school. I thought every lawyer made exactly the same amount of money.

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  32. I continue to find it ironic that Lawprof gets a pass. He has been, and continues to be, a full participant in the scam. He is protected by tenure and there is no risk associated to his speaking out on the matter. He never really practiced law, he receives salary increases, summer stipends, great benefits and is looking forward to a pension funded by non-dischargeable debt. Recently, he quoted from “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis. He should read “Why I Left Goldman Sachs” by Greg Smith. That book is right on point. Campos should make the following statement (just like Smith):

    “I knew in my heart there was something deeply wrong in the way people were behaving, in the way they didn’t care about the repercussions ... My human reaction was that it was bad for the future of the [law school], a place that I had put a lot of heart and soul into. I knew that it was time for me to go – the young people’s disaffection had told me, the [student’s] distrust had told me. But the [law school] not really caring about what was going on told me the most. …

    [The law school] had lost sight of its mission; servicing [students]. That the culture was rotting, which presented a dire threat to the [law school] and the industry. When the [students] no longer trust the [law school], calamity ensues. …

    [The professors and administration] didn’t fully realize that you can’t just say that you are different and that you put [students] first: you actually have to act this way. And if you don’t, the smell of hypocrisy soon starts suffocating your employees and your [students].”

    Lawprof should follow Mr. Smith’s lead and try to maintain at least some integrity by leaving the scam.

    And I am no troll or prof. Just another JD.

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    1. Many feel the same way. But unfortunately, Campos lets his little band of rabid followers screech about how he's not part of the scam and how he's helping so many poor kids etc.

      I just don't see why he needs to be a professor to do it. It would be more effective, more newsworthy, more honest, if he did quit and make a real statement.

      I have a funny feeling that most of the anonymous comments (and they are always anonymous) from posters who immediately jump to his defense on this issue are actually Campos himself, pretending that there is huge support for his ethical freebie.

      I don't get it. Also not a troll. Just someone who calls it like he sees it.

      But I am not holding my breath for him to quit. I think this blog is just Campos self publicity from a professor who likes to take a deliberately contrary position on issues in order to get writing gigs and attention. (See the obseity stuff for proof - I mean, who can seriously argue that we don't have a problem with obese fat fuckers in this country?)

      Delete
    2. This entire post from LawProf seems to be a "look a me a poor professor things are bad where I am too" kind of post.

      No sympathy from me. Things are not bad from the standpoint of a tenured law professor, which is perhaps the easiest, most well-paid position in academia in the world.

      And you want him to give that up? Yeah, right. We all have our price, and his is clearly his salary from his law school.

      Delete
    3. ^^^^^^^^^^^^

      12:07 (a member in good standing of the law school industrial complex) talking to himself at 12:19 and 12:21.



      Delete
    4. oh hai campos at 12:37!

      Delete
    5. "I have a funny feeling that most of the anonymous comments (and they are always anonymous) from posters who immediately jump to his defense on this issue are actually Campos himself . . ."

      Brave words coming from an Anonymous commenter.

      Why do you think anyone here gives a shit about your "funny feelings"?

      Delete
    6. Lois, nobody gives a shit about your comments either, so fuck off.

      Delete
    7. You stay classy, Leiter.

      Delete
    8. Shut up Leiter.

      Delete
  33. So let me reword the original post:

    Many rich, Ivy types are sick of working in their $200K associate positions in biglaw and are trying to get $200K jobs doing a fraction of the work in law schools. They they are upset because law school hiring is frozen, and they can't get their biglaw jobs back.

    Boo fucking hoo.

    "My Maserati had a flat tire today."

    "We had to sell the vacation home in Italy."

    "Our portfolio only gained 24% last year."

    Who gives a fuck what's happening to this small, tiny fraction of the elite of the profession, those who had it all and who got greedy. For every one of those, there are literally 1000 lives ruined, all those countless thousands of grads of low tier law schools.

    Get a grip, LawProf. This isn't news. It's People magazine fluff.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agree, except that it is posts like these that may help to awaken faculty to reality.

      According to the blog linked, faculty are trying to determine if the drastic decline in enrollment is temporary or permanent.

      The tide of unemployment has to roll closer to them before they are threatened enough to pay attention.

      Delete
  34. There's a very simple reason why Lawprof gets a pass. His status as a law professor makes his critique of the scam interesting to mainstream media outlets. So long as he speaks as a law professor, the NYT and WSJ will continue to quote him and be interested in what he has to say. Nobody paid attention to this story until law professors started talking about it.

    But yes, that is the only reason. Campos is otherwise just as guilty as the rest and does ultimately deserve the same fate as the rest, to lose his job or to keep it at a much lower salary. But anybody who wants to see this movement succeed needs to hope that he remains a law professor a good while longer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Campos has been given immunity. He's the witness who helps to make out the case against the scam.

      Delete
    2. He would have whole articles written about him, rather than just being quoted, if he manned up and did the decent thing.

      And that kind of publicity might actually get us some change, instead of just talk about change.

      Delete
    3. I really really don't see how it quitting would "get whole articles written aboout him and get us some change".

      It's beyond naive and stupid to think that some TTT dean is going to be thinking, "man that Campos has quit, I also need to quit my $500k gig just cause Campos quit!" Think about how stupid that sounds.

      Delete
    4. I was thinking more along the lines of politicians starting to take us seriously and starting to take student debt issues and reform seriously. I don't expect any law school employee to do anything.

      So do you now see how stupid you sound?

      Delete
    5. Why would politicians take the issue more seriously just b/c Campos quit? Really now think about how naive and dumb you continue to sound.

      Whether Campos should quit or not for "moral" reasons, again, it is beyond naive and stupid to think it would do anything to reform law school and indeed higher ed scam in general.

      Delete
  35. He may be a crook, but he's our crook.

    Anyhow, Campos has set himself up for a solid retaliation defense if UColorado ever tries to give him the heave-ho.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Which could well be the purpose of this blog. A preemptive move by Campos to protect his job.

      Delete
    2. If the whole purpose of the blog was just a massive charade to "set himself up," I would expect maybe a post or two a month, tops.

      Someone who posts on a near-daily basis seems to have a genuine interest in the topic.

      Delete
    3. Well, he does have eight hours of highly paid nothing to fill each day, so these posts will kill half an hour of that.

      Delete
    4. Campos has tenure and is fairly senior lawprof. So I fail to see how writing this blog in and of itself "pre-emptively protects his job" better than if he just stayed quiet and continued to live off the scam in silence. That just doesn't make any sense whatsoever, at least on that score.

      Delete
    5. Actually, it is retaliation "charge" rather than "defense"

      Delete
  36. I am going to sound pompous - but f-c-it I probably am pompous....

    But in 20+ years of legal practice I have rarely seen anyone awash in the shit that the law or the economic system can pour on someone who really deserved to have that much shit poured on them.

    That is the problem with schadenfreude

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Deserved has nothing to do with it. Justice is a different story.

      Delete
    2. Poetic justice is usually sadism with a side of iambic pentameter or just a little omatopia - it is not actually justice, just entertainment for sadists.

      Delete
    3. Eh, I don't mind seeing what is happening as the scam unravels. These VAPs should direct their anger at the people who scammed them, not us who are waiting for the coming well- deserved implosions of many law schools.

      I don't think these VAPs realize that they were scammed too and thought their resumeds were magic shields of protection against failure.m

      There was a post that seemed shocked that TTTTs would pretend they were hiring for tenure track positions, and then it turns out that the jobs weren't tenure track after all.

      Delete
    4. ( a post on TFL)

      These people thought the scam happened to "other" people, not them. Someday they will understand that they were conned about law school just like e wry one else.

      Delete
    5. I agree with MacK. Also agree with his comments over at the other site.

      This correction is awful for a lot of people.

      Delete
  37. Lawprof will not lose his job. CU will not close. Campos has 23 years+ in the system and will most likely retire within the next 6-7 years. After all, he must be tired from teaching three classes per year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That poor chicken has to be pretty sore by now, Leiter.

      Delete
  38. "deliberately contrary position" -- I guess Campos should quit now since the law school scam has become mainstream. Campos has been a leader in a movement of bloggers that has radically changed the perception of law schools; I have referred this website to dozens of my paras, friends, and random strangers on a train. ITLSS has had a tremendous effect and each new blog posts dissaudes even more lemmings. Leiter, on the other hand, I have never heard off until I started reading ITLSS comments.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Whether Campos should quit or not, it is beyond silly to think that his quitting would do anything to advance the cause. It probably would hardly make the news.

    Do you really really think that all those law school deans/admins of the TTTs are going to be thinking, "my gosh, Campos has quit, we need to quit too and close down!" Get real!

    They will close down only when they are forced to close down b/c nobody is going anymore. Certainly Campos has contributed to that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It would get politicians to listen, dumbass. Far more than a biannual ten word quote in the NYT which is the coverage this blog gets right now.

      Campos has contributed. But not really. That's why the scam is still as scammy as before.

      Publicity is what we need, not more posts.

      Delete
    2. Yeah okay, you keep thinking that if Campos quitting would have so much power over the student loan industrial complex and their campaign contributions that politicians care about.

      When Greg Smith quit Goldman Sachs, did that force all these politicians to listen and enact real financial reform or are politicians still in the back pockets of Wall $treet?

      Whose sounds more like dumbass now?

      Delete
    3. You keep saying that it would make little difference whether or not he quits. I agree. So the logical outcome is that he should choose the path where he doesn't profit from the scam he's been writing about. End of story.

      Delete
  40. Law Prof gets a pass since he has been throwing gasoline around the house and appears ready to burn the motherfucker down while still inside. That is some Kamikaze shit man.

    Ultimately we need some Kamikazes and whistle blowers to show up. We need people inside the scam to publish the documents that demonstrate the fraud.

    I know some admin right now is sitting at their desk, they have help aid the fraud and they think their only option to help cover it up. No come out with it, blow the whistle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If Campos, a longtime tenured professor with all access, can't find a smoking gun (or even a water pistol), do you think it actually exists?

      Delete
    2. Yes. Illinois so blatantly skewed stats that they got caught, but only after an inside source let someone know. That is only one example. You know many others are doing similar things.
      The concern of law schools lying about medians is so great that LSAC will now be auditing the numbers based on the data they ha move access to.

      Don't pretend there aren't a numbet of insiders who could help end the scam.

      Delete
    3. Speaking of gasoline, maybe Campos should rage against the machine and engage in self-immolation during an interview on the law school scam with Bill O'Reilly. Would that be enough to placate you naysayers?

      Delete
    4. I happen to know Campos. He definitely has nihilistic tendencies.

      Delete
  41. Greg Smith left a 500K+/yr job with the prospect of making lots more in the future. Why? He has integrity and is not a hypocrite. I suspect more people know about Smith's NYT op-ed and book than know Campos. And, BTW, CU Law will not close.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ultimately what exactly did Greg Smith accomplish though?

      Exactly.

      Delete
    2. Made Greg Smith sleep at night, for one. Raised people's awareness.

      Campos is loaded, loaded with cash and houses and funded retirement plans, all taken from failed law students who mortgaged their lives for his success.

      He would be set if he dramatically and publicly quit. There's no poverty awaiting him.

      Why then is he staying? Typical boomer - I've got mine, but I want more of yours too.

      Delete
    3. No one cares. Why should Campos quit when he is one of a few people who is making a difference?

      Also, everyone at TLS, including the 0Ls who visit there, know campos and this blog. They listen because Campos is a professor.

      I doubt a single on knows or cares who Greg smith is and what he did or didn't do.

      Why should Lawprof give up his job? Why are you hounding him and not the hundreds of others who are doing nothing?

      Delete
    4. "Why then is he staying? Typical boomer - I've got mine, but I want more of yours too."

      If he wanted "more of yours", it seems irrational to be writing ITLSS, writing articles on Salon, etc, going on forums like TLS, writing books about not going to law school, etc.

      Instead, if he wanted "more of yours" it would make a lot more sense to be like Dean LeDuc, etc and entice people to go so indeed there would be "more of yours".

      It seems bizarre to accuse him to be trying to get "more of yours" when he is telling those "yours" not to go.

      Delete
    5. It isn't clear that Greg Smith act was necessarily "altruistic". Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Rather than guess at people's motives and intentions, I care as much or more about results and impact.

      Even if LawProf, DJM, Tamanahana are all self-serving swing trying to get out of the way when the scam implodes and its all about "self-preservation" or whatever, it is undeniable that they have advanced the cause of reform.

      It would also seem that if they just cared about their own self-preservation, it makes a whole lot more sense to me that they would just stay silent rather than actively warn people not to go and thereby hastening the day of reckoning, which if and when it comes, their "scamblogging" would no more spare them than if they had just stayed silent.

      Delete
    6. "Why should Lawprof give up his job? "

      Simple....because he draws his salary solely on a scam that hurts people. This is the dumbest argument here. I like the guy but he's guilty of profiting from the scam. Where's his character and ethics in all this? I'm glad he's writing about it but fuck...if you're a slave trader in the 18th century are you absolved from continuing the occupation because you exposed its horrors to the masses?

      Grow up. To paraphrase Bill Maher, Prof Campos is not your boyfriend.

      Delete
    7. "It would also seem that if they just cared about their own self-preservation, it makes a whole lot more sense to me that they would just stay silent"

      No...it would have all sunk under its own volition eventually. Now he gets to say he was on the right side of the issue. But he's tenured...he's in no danger of anything but bad vibes in the faculty lounge.

      Delete
    8. To compare being a lawprof to being a slave trader is just silly and ridiculous. Being a lawprof IN AND OF ITSELF if not immoral unlike a slave trader.

      Also LawProf, I believe, became a lawprof like 20+ years ago. I'm not going to bother looking it up but I venture to guess that his pay and the tuition at CU as well as students outcomes were not the scam it was today.

      Law schools and being lawprofs and even deans aren't in and of themselves "immoral". If they didn't use misleading marketing but told the truth and if they enrolled and charged tuition at numbers that made sense relative to outcomes, again there is no problem.

      Being a slave trader is inherently immoral because slavery is immoral. But being a lawprof isn't inherently immoral at all. And if all the 0L heed LawProf's advice about not attending unless it makes economic sense, then market forces will make law schools no longer a scam.

      Delete
    9. Maybe all these desperate and jobless VAPs want Lawprof to resign so there is one more opening in academia to fill.
      They seem like vultures when you read their comments.

      Delete
    10. "To compare being a lawprof to being a slave trader is just silly and ridiculous."

      You stupid hysterical ninny...analogies are not strict comparisons. Grow up. But thats what you have to resort to when the hard truth is that he's profiting from the scam just like every other prof and you can't deal with it. Nothing is "inherently" immoral....slavery is by far the norm throughout human history. And anyway, I wasn't comparing him to a slaveholder, nimrod.

      And btw, all the other excuses you used to absolve him can be applied to a large percentage of law school profs/admins.

      Goddamn some of the people on this site are simpletons.

      Delete
  42. Regardless of the "morality" of staying or quitting, objectively speaking did Greg Smith one act of quitting a writing a single op-ed do as much for financial reform as Campos has done for law school "reform"? I would find that hard to believe although I await evidence to the contrary.

    I'm not calling Campos some saint or martyr by any means nor praising him. Maybe he is no better than LeDuc and maybe all this is just for "self-preservation" and "ego" or whatever.

    Regardless, its still hard to believe that Smith ultimately accomplish anything while there are a lot of people on, at least, TLS who are much better off due Campos' efforts, whatever you think of his so-called "ulterior motives" and "hypocrisy".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As opposed to LeDic, Campos basically is warning the lemmings to stay away. If the lemmings still want to go 100K in debt so they can write "Esq." after their names, that's their problem, not Campos's. LeDic spends every waking moment trying to scam impressionable youngsters into attending law school. He swears up and down that a Cooley degree will lead to a rosy future. Campos does the opposite.

      Delete
  43. Please point to one single thing Campos has done at CU to limit tuition increases and decrease his bloated salary? This blog pushes readers to his various articles to increase the number of visitors to his “work.” He continues to take his generous salary and benefits and admittedly puts in minimal effort. In my opinion, the main reason law school applications are down is because tuition has reached its limit. Simple supply & demand.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But high tuition wasn't the problem in and of itself. Supply and demand principles don't work unless your dealing with informed and rational consumers. Until the transparency movement, tuition could be high (and keep rising) because students believed(reasonably in light of the information disclosed by law schools) that even at the high rate of tuition, law school was a safe investment. But now that accurate numbers are out, prospectives realize that the cost of law school is nowhere near what it is worth in the real world (except in a few very rare situations). Before the accurate information was disclosed by law schools, students wouldn't realize that they were scammed until after they graduated and tried to find a job. That would have continued but for the transparency/scam movement. Now, how much this blog/Prof. Campos specifically has to do with this, I don't know. My gut feeling says quite a bit.

      Delete
    2. You are woefully uninformed. Many many many 0Ls would have been happy to borrow sticker from the government to go to law school before the transparency movement started. There are stl plenty of mislead and deceived people who want to take out sticker debt thinking that law is their ticket to a better life.

      Supply and demand are not factors if you can easily borrow the money you need and you have been led to assume you can easily get a job to repay that debt. With IBR and PAYE programs, there is even a smaller relationship between supply and demand regarding g tuition cost/

      Only the scam movement and transparency in employment has stopped students from attending.

      Delete
    3. He may or may not have done anything at CU to limit tuition increases and decrease his bloated salary. But he undeniably has lent his voice to save at least some 0Ls to make better choices, either to go only at huge discounts or not to go at all. At least several people have said so.

      As far as law school applications being down simply because of high tuition, that's just not true. Otherwise law school apps should have been flat or down long ago if that were the case since tuition has been out of whack for a while.

      What is causing apps to go down is the knowledge of the risks and median outcomes of law school grads. A lot of people use to think that a JD was the path to riches or at least a solid middle class life. Now that is being challenged in a big way and picked up by MSM like NYT, WSJ, etc.

      It isn't "tuition" as such.

      Delete
    4. In Canada, they're going back to school and paying for it under "... a pilot program featuring a four-month long Law Practice Program (LPP), coupled with a four-month co-op placement. A detailed curriculum has not yet been released, but the task force promises that the largely academic solution will be focused on providing practical training in lieu of an articling position.

      ... Some skeptics wonder if the new program is effectively a waiting room, keeping students in a holding pattern and sheltering them from a job market unable to absorb new graduates in such large numbers.

      ... There will be heavier financial burden for those in the pilot program, who must pay tuition for an extra year, versus those who achieve articling positions and are instead earning a salary."

      http://thevarsity.ca/2013/02/25/jobless-after-law-school-back-to-class-for-unlucky-few/

      Delete
    5. I recall Lawprof putting it all on the line in a faculty meeting objecting to the addition of an LLM program at CU. He then reported about that meeting here.
      He was the sole dissenting vote.

      Delete
    6. Shut your hole Leiter.

      Delete
  44. Wow. A huge discussion over whether Campos should quit. Glad we re-hashed that one again, team.

    But my main comment - even just the name of the blog - The Faculty Lounge - pisses me off. Just the name has the connotation of a bunch of overpaid bozos sitting around bloviating with too much time on their hands while their student loan paychecks roll in.

    ReplyDelete
  45. His resignation would make headlines for about half a day and then get lost in the noise. Even the biggest stories vanish in a few news cycles, if that ... and one law professor quitting isn't going to be the biggest story of even one hour.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Did anyone see the comment by a VAP that grads could always start their own firm but he or she can't exactly start their own law school.

    And they wonder why we don't have sympathy for their foiled desires to join the scam.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm speechless. These arrogant fuckers deserve to be slapped with the business end of a shovel.

      Delete
    2. The part of the arrogance that bothers me to is the lack of regard for others without their pedigree. Did they ever care what happened to grads of schools outside the T14? Probably not, because they felt their HYS degree with high grades and a prestigious clerkship was their talisman against unemployment.

      But maybe if they had bothered to consider before they decamped for academia what was happening to the grads of the schools they were going to teach, they might have seen that this drastic oversupply ( which they were more than happy to keep pumping out) affects all of us.

      Delete
  47. I have a question for Prof. Campos. I just went to visit Cooley's website. On the right side of the screen, it had a link to click on re: employment outcomes (Employment in the Legal Profession.) 2 reports were there: one for the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the NALP study.

    I eagerly clicked on the NALP data because I was curious to see how Cooley would spin a 55% employment rate in the legal field and was shocked to see they were posting 2010 data (which conveniently has a 6% unemployment rate, which explains why they posted the 2010 and not the 2011 data), with the following message boldly printed:

    NOTE: 2011 NALP report data has not been released publically. We will update the report for 2011 once the data is public.

    I am confused because I recall NALP publically releasing 2011 information. Could someone please verify? This statement - that the 2011 report data has not been released publically - would be blatantly dishonest as it is now 2013 and in my opinion warrants a complaint to the Michigan Bar or whatever bar in which Pres. LeDuc is licensed. It also warrants a complaint to the ABA as this is a blatant attempt to publish misleading and lower unemployment statistics than what is currently known.

    But I just want to confirm before I take such action that NALP has indeed and long ago released the 2011 employment information. Could someone - LawProf, DJM, etc. please confirm what I suspect?

    Thank-you.

    http://www.cooley.edu/reports/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Middle class mind set

      We should be happy because someone else is suffering rather than thinking about our own suffering?

      I was never one to get anything out of being happy because the other guy is drowning with me. I don't feel "hey at least he's not getting a head of me."

      I just feel "wow this really sucks"

      Until the middle class stops being the middle class, I don't any thing will change in America.

      Delete
  48. Hi,

    I would like to file a complaint against Cooley for using NALP employment figures from 2010 and indicating that the 2011 figures aren't yet available when they have been available for quite some time. I do not know how to save a 'screenshot' of a webpage, to preseve it. Can anyone save the above screen for me? I will be using it in my complaint.

    Cooley uses the 2010 NALP data to 'prove' that legal employment is quite high and I am requesting screenshots of both the link above, where Cooley indicates that the 2011 info. is not yet available, plus a screenshot of the page after clicking on the report, which goes on to use the 2010 info. to portray that legal unemployment is very low.

    Or, if the process is easy, would anyone be willing to explain how I could save those pages as they currently are?

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://www.nalp.org/productDetail/?productID=170

      Delete
    2. To save a screenshot, while the webpage is showing on your screen simultaneously hit the Ctrl button and the PrtScn (print screen) button. Then go to Paint in Accessories. Click your mouse so the cursor is on the screen in paint and simultaneously click Ctrl button and the V key. This should paste the screen shot into Paint. You can crop it and save it as a file.

      Delete
    3. Google "Way back machine." This will pull up the internet archive. Put in the url you want to look up: http://www.cooley.edu/reports/recent_graduates.html
      That webpage has been saved once in the internet archive, in October 2012, and it has the same disclaimer that the 2011 info isn't available. Given enough time, the current page would get archived, but Cooley IT now will likely get told to pull it down post-haste.

      Delete
    4. Or just have a pdf writer installed as a printer and 'print' the page into a pdf.

      Delete
    5. According to the internet archive, the 2011 figures have been available at least since December 10, 2012.

      http://web.archive.org/web/20121210100551/http://www.nalp.org/productdetail/?productID=170

      You could contact NALP to find out exactly when they became available.

      Delete
  49. Latest post in The Faculty Lounge:

    Veterinary school is a rip-off too!

    It's not just us!

    It's wider social forces!

    It's the fault of "the corporatization of higher education"!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Prof Piety works in a toilet. She should ease up on the bullshit her ass is farting up onto Faculty Lounge. Her students aren't the sharpest knives and their is a real risk that one may smell crap and mistake her office for the bathroom and defecate on her.

      Delete
  50. Its the fault of all the federal tuition loan money being pumped into the college industry. When is the government going to wake up and realize they are mostly throwing money down the toilet?

    ReplyDelete
  51. I prefer Tears for Fears:

    And I find it kind of funny
    I find it kind of sad
    The dreams in which i´m dying
    Are the best i´ve ever had
    I find it hard to tell you
    'Cos I find it hard to take
    When people run in circles
    It´s a very very
    Mad world

    ReplyDelete
  52. All of the calls for LawProf to resign are just an attempt by law school scammers to marginalize him so that they can continue to wreck young people's lives without hearing any dissenting voices.

    Because what they really want for him to do is not to resign, but to shut this blog down. It has hurt the scam more than any thing else has done, and they want it gone.

    Remember that any of you non-scammers who foolishly are thinking of joining the 'resign' chorus.

    Also remember that personal attacks are what people do when they don't have an argument on the merits to make.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Those calling for Law Prof to resign are retarded. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

      Delete
    2. That's silly. What killed the law schools was the series of NY Times articles and the Senators who got on the ABA and forced the ABA to force law schools to disclose employment data. Those two things together drove home the desperate state of the job market. Blogs were a side show.

      Delete
    3. Those NYTimes articles though, especially the first one I read, referenced the scamblogs. Maybe if scamblogs never existed, the MSM might have eventually talked about it. Still the scamblogs have definitely played a "foundational" role.

      Delete
    4. 6:06 pm - without the blogs (especially this one) there would have been no NYT articles etc.

      Delete
    5. 605 is right. The attacks are disingenuous, misguided, mean spirited and absolutely stupid. Why spend even a second attacking a guy who has done so much to illuminate the scam?

      Delete
    6. The NYT was years late to the story, as it is to many stories. All the major news organizations were. Way back in 2007, the WSJ was already citing L2L:

      "The increasingly tough legal job market and the debate about whether law schools are candid with students about it were featured in a page-one WSJ article in September, which mentioned L2L."

      http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/12/19/the-law-blog-lawyer-of-the-year-loyola-2l/

      Delete
    7. "The attacks are disingenuous, misguided, mean spirited and absolutely stupid."

      What "attacks"? people are just correctly pointing out a little bit of the hypocrisy. Or is he Our Dear Leader who can't be criticized for a salary based on student loans?

      Delete
  53. 3:43 here.

    Thanks to everyone for giving me info on how to preserve a webpage. I checked and discovered that both the ABA and Above the Law had articles indicating that NALP had released the 2011 employment figures in June of last year. There simply is no excuse for Cooley to be using the more convenient 2010 figures.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cooley has released the employment data for the 2011 class. The "Recent Graduates" page you linked to seems to be a marketing gimmick focusing on entry-level legal hiring as a whole. And god damn is it a gimmick.

      http://www.cooley.edu/consumerinformation/#employment

      Delete
  54. Is there any other profession that has anything resembling the gulf that exists in law between academics and practitioners?

    You have professors of law who haven't seen the inside of a courtroom in 15 years, if ever. You have an endless flood of scholarship coming out of the academy that is overwhelmingly ignored by courts and practitioners. And now you have VAPs treated as traitors-come-crawling-back by their own former employers.

    Maybe a workable response is to phase out law school professorships, as such. Instead you could have successful lawyers of a scholarly bent take two year-long leaves of absence from their jobs to teach a couple of introductory classes, supervise clinics, and produce scholarship on issues they have encountered in practice and would like to think and write about more thoroughly and systematically. Then they would return to practice.

    dybbuk

    ReplyDelete
  55. "No...it would have all sunk under its own volition eventually. Now he gets to say he was on the right side of the issue. But he's tenured...he's in no danger of anything but bad vibes in the faculty lounge."

    -----

    Yes you're right. But the question is whether he has helped people or not regardless of whether you think he is worthy enough of your praises b/c he hasn't done enough by quitting, giving up all his wealth, self-immolating in front of the SCOTUS, etc.

    Many people clearly believe he has because he lent his voice to legitimize the scambloggers even though he himself is part of the scam, so to speak. And many people have indeed taken different choices directly b/c of this blog and his book and b/c someone inside the scam has credibility that a supposed scamblog "loser" doesn't.

    He didn't create the scam, he joined like 20 years ago when going to CU wasn't really a scam, certainly not like it is today. And not only does he NOT recruit suckers into the scam, he tells them to avoid it.

    To the people that he's helped, it is far more than just being able to simply say that "he was on the right side of the issue".

    But even if you want to criticize Campos for not being "saintly" or "martyr-like" ENOUGH, what does that then say about 99% of most other lawprofs. If I am going to go after lawprofs, the 99% deserve more scorn FIRST. Its stupid to be going after Campos FIRST for not doing enough when 99% are doing NOTHING or actually ACTIVE PERPETUATING THE SCAM.



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "But the question is whether he has helped people or not "

      No the question is of he's profiting of of the scam he's critiquing. End of story. He can critique just as well in this blog as an ex-prof...and with a clear conscience.

      Delete
  56. There was a comment about being a lawprof being equivalent to a "slave trader" and Campos therefore recognizing that law schooling, like slave trading is inherently immoral and therefore needs to resign.

    This analysis is just completely wrong.

    Slave trading is inherently wrong and immoral because we all believe that slavery itself is wrong. There is no way to reform slavery while still being slavery.

    Law schools, OTOH, are not inherently immoral and incapable of being reformed. For instance, if law schools:
    - controlled enrollment to match the # of jobs
    - controlled tuition to match "return on investment"
    - was honest and totally upfront in marketing their degree

    then law schools and being a law prof wouldn't be a scam and immoral AT ALL.

    Unless Campos has said that the very existence of law schools and being a lawprof was beyond reform and inherently evil, then I don't see why he "needs" to resign rather than say as a lawprof while trying to reform it.

    Even if you want to claim he isn't doing "enough", as others have said, he is doing more than like 99.9% of other profs. And again being a lawprof in and of itself is not immoral.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lawprof has never said that law is beyond reform. He is working his ass of to try to get reform.

      Delete
    2. Stop trying so hard, moron, you'll hurt yourself. Its profiting off of onerous student loans with students having very little chance of employment that is immoral...not the entirety of law school. Is he making his money of of these loans, yes or no?

      Again, Law prof is not your boyfriend. Ninny.

      Delete
    3. Why are you always so angry? Calm down dude. If you are so jealous of law prof start your own blog.

      Delete
    4. Angry? Rolling my eyes at childish simpletons throwing out childish accusations and walls of text when faced with the truth....that is not anger. But you have nothing else to say. The angry ones here are the people that can't deal with a little bit of honesty. I'm on Campos' side but Im not a child...I see where he's being hypocritical. I would be disgusted with myself if I profited off of these loans. You wouldn't? OK...but don't ask anyone else to be OK with it.

      But you're too busy getting pissed at anyone who raises a simple little uncomfortable truth. Its ridiculous and why I know you're a child.

      But keep up with the ad hominem....its all you have when faced with the facts here.

      Delete
  57. Like I said in an earlier comment, the most effective way to radically decrease the number of law graduates is to go to the heart of it, the federally-backed loans which keep the whole thing running. Why does the federal government keep throwing so much money down this rat hole? And how can you get them to stop?

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
  59. Here's the thing about this blog and Campos. Keeping it real and honest.

    We HAD plenty of of scamblogs - good ones, intelligent ones, not just like Nando's piece of trash. We had BIDER, we had Shilling Me Softly, we had our own leaders.

    But dumb in-fighting and territory battles (e.g. Nando attacking anyone who he felt didn't fit the template, which is odd in itself because he loves this blog) led to some of our best writers and activists leaving, giving up, or just throwing their hands up in despair at the mess.

    And then this blog opened up, with its gimmick ("it's written by an anonymous law professor!"), and people flocked here.

    The point being, THERE IS - OR WAS - NO SHORTAGE OF LEADERS AND SPOKESPEOPLE FOR THE SCAMBLOG MOVEMENT, WHO WERE NOT PART OF THE SCAM!

    It's not like we needed Campos to lead us to the promised land. We were disloyal to our own internal leaders, our own internal leaders got greedy and fought with each other and tried to claim their stake in the scamblog movement, and the whole thing became so exclusionary.

    If people are not happy with Campos (and there are FAR TOO FEW PEOPLE who are not happy with the idea that we are being led by someone who personally and directly lives off the proceeds of the scam), then perhaps it's time for a unified scamblog that is led by legitimate leaders.

    How about some of the older scambloggers, who don't have time to blog full time or put all that effort into it (we're not all Campos with a paid office job with nothing to do other than blog), get together and set up a new scamblog, one that they all contribute to?

    Bring the scamblogs back to where they belong, which is a STUDENT and JD GRAD led movement, not a law professor movement.

    But I get the impression that the old scambloggers have insulted each other far too much to make friends and collaborate. And we're left with this Pied Piper bullshit, where we're not being told that VAPs are victims of the scam. Fuck that.

    We do have choices. We do have leaders, although in exile. Time to re-form and regroup?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shilling Me Softly was a piece of shit. The blogger even crossed over to the dark side selling Kaplan/Princeton Review prep garbage.

      Delete
    2. Dude this is insane. No one is stopping the old bloggers from coming back. Law Prof ain't. Law Prof has taken the lead cause shit was fucking really wack before. Nando was/is still keeping it real though.

      Does it suck we are being led by a professor at the moment? Kinda. I wish there was a heavily indebted law grad out there who did everything right and was from great school who was leading the movement, getting publicity, and speaking for the scammed. But you know what Law Prof ain't stopping that, I bet he would love that too.

      Till the law school scam craps out our indebted messiah we got Law Prof leading and we should be fucking thanking him for doing all he has done.

      Delete
    3. The law school scam had no real legitimacy before lawprof because the background and accomplishments of the scam leaders were easy to dismiss. Maybe those same qualities that led them to make poor decisions about law school and to not do particularly well in law school are the same ones that led to them collapsing once real attention started to be paid.

      Lawprof also has credibility because he is putting himself on the line with his colleagues. This is not easy to do.


      Do you really want to go back to the sad sack stories that people trivialized?

      Go ahead, no one is stopping you.

      PS. None of you can write like lawprof. Another factor in his success.

      Delete
  60. It would not surprise me if Campos and his law prof buddies are sitting in the faculty lounge, saying the following:

    "He he he he he! Look, we've rounded up all these scam believers into one place, destroyed all the other scamblogs, and now they're all here, all they do is fight and bicker and rant and make themselves look so stupid. Awesome job, Campos. You're doing more to hide the scam than anyone else. Any journalist who reads your site also reads the comments, and concludes that the students are idiots who would have failed no matter what. And the students have no idea whatsoever that they are being manipulated by the establishment. Campy, you tha man. Here, some more cognac?"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The only thing that I would add is that Campos is at the head of a centuries-old conspiracy to influence world leaders and deplete our precious bodily fluids.

      Delete
    2. Good ol' Dr Strangelove.

      Delete
  61. Good ol' Dr. Strangelove.

    ReplyDelete
  62. The personal attacks on Lawprof are at a new high. This post must really have hit a nerve.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Any chance it is related to the subject matter of the future of professors? They can't leave denial so they are particularly viscous in defending their incorrect beliefs.

      Delete
    2. To whoever said that people think law students are stupid: you must be a professor

      Delete
    3. "Any chance it is related to the subject matter of the future of professors?"

      Yes, which naturally leads to Campos' salary.

      Delete
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