Above the Law - Latest Comments

Re: The Wussification of Legal Education Continues

Joshua Silverstein — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:36:13 -0000

Many of you are so informed. But many of you are not. Furthermore, many of you, even when informed, falsely believe that absolute grades matter and are comparable across schools when this is not the case. To the extent you know what is going on, I applaud it. I wish all employers did. It would have made my article far less necessary.

Re: Are Law Schools Too Logical?

Brandon Reed — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:31:22 -0000

I have been looking at the non-ABA approved law school options in California. They are extremely affordable. Northwestern School of Law is $12K total. Concord Law School is $40,000. Concord claims that financial aid is allowed and would likely be needed. Northwestern does not have financial aid but allows you to pay monthly just under $300. Both programs would allow you to take the California Bar and practice there. After 5 year of practice many other states would allow you to practice with very little if any application process.

If law school really doesn't teach you how to be a lawyer and Biglaw is hiring even fewer lawyers why attend a prestigious school? If you want to go solo and build your practice from the ground up with very little debt I would suggest the California alternative schools. After 10 years it won't matter what school you attended anyway.

One of the most fundamental ways to bring down the costs of a legal education is for the State Bar Associations to allow non-ABA accredited institutions to create law programs and allow those who graduate from those programs to take the bar exam and practice in that state. California has set the precedent for this. New entrants are the ones who provide extreme cost cutting, or disruptive, options. Please see "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School Professor, for more information regarding this concept. Further the ABA could get rid of the requirement to attend college prior to attending Law School and the Law Schools could create a Bachelors Degree Program, which qualifies you to take the Bar Exam. Many other countries have Bachelors in Law programs setting the precedent for this action. Both of these suggested measures would lower the expense and provide more options for a legal education.

Because institutions tend to want to offer higher quality options, that tend to drive up costs, I highly doubt current law schools nor the ABA will come up with programs that would dramatically lower costs and implement them.

Re: Lesbian Couple Fall Prey to ‘Morality Clause’

sheepdan — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:23:44 -0000

Not really. You're focusing on whether she is doing something wrong by choice, as opposed to whether she is doing something immoral as defined by living together with someone outside of marriage.

If the purpose of this clause is to protect the kids from being exposed to the "bad influence" of their parent living in an extramarital relationship, then that influence would still be present regardless of the possibility of her marrying this partner.

Sure, the judge in this case probably also thinks that homosexuality is generally immoral, so maybe that is clouding his decision. But, you probably think that extramarital sex generally moral, so maybe that is clouding your decision.

Re: Columbia Scholarship Scandal Shows How White People Are Still Helped By Institutional Racism

CanadaIsYearsAhead — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:18:30 -0000

Not when the purpose of these scholarships is to equalize a historically inequitable playing field.

It's called substantive equality.

#Missingthepoint

Re: Lesbian Couple Fall Prey to ‘Morality Clause’

sheepdan — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:14:15 -0000

Don't you mean witnessed by a second party?

Re: The Worst LL.M. Programs… In The World

Ryan — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:42:36 -0000

Not sure why there is so much hate for LLMs. I practiced for 3 years as a litigator, hated it, and went to UCLA to get an entertainment LLM. Learned a lot about a legal nitche and made a lot of great contacts (the professors were leading practitioners who represented very high level talent). They helped me get a great in-house job and I couldn't be happier. If someone wants to make a change into a specific area of the law, it is an easy way of making yourself attractive to potential employers. Yes, there is a cost, but the increase in my salary for one year more than paid off those loans.

Re: Are Law Schools Too Logical?

Last Call for Law School — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:30:44 -0000

Looks like the kiddies get creative screwing off during her Barbri lectures:
http://stufftododuringbarbri.b...

Re: The Worst LL.M. Programs… In The World

Unemployed_Northeastern — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:27:48 -0000

I dunna - the JD program is north of $70k/year at this point, so who knows what the LLM costs. Not worth my time to figure it out. But hey, working for the public interest is a priceless opportunity, so it must be worth it, right?

Re: Are Law Schools Too Logical?

Guest — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:15:04 -0000

Greg Giraldo would have roasted this chick hard: Looking at her smile reminds me that I need to waterproof the planks on my deck. Oh, and she likes pearl necklaces..

Re: The Wussification of Legal Education Continues

Joshua Silverstein — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:05:38 -0000

Whether we should heighten our substantive standards is a different question from labeling. There are plausible arguments that we should flunk out more students, though I disagree. In any event, I'm addressing a different question, so I'm not going to get into the issue of what our substantive standards should be.

I of course disagree that grade inflation will mislead the students. I believe that, under my system, students will, on the whole, receive better information about their performance than under the status quo. Since such a large portion of the article and many of my prior postings here are dedicated to this point, I'm not going to elaborate further.

Re. hurting good students, I address this in Part IV.B., among other places. In short, there will be no real harm to good students, and any such harm is easily outweighed by the benefits to the overall student body.

Re: The Wussification of Legal Education Continues

Joshua Silverstein — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:57:42 -0000

As if I needed to say it, but no, I'm not kidding. The majority of my colleagues and I spend the bulk of our working lives trying to figure out how to help our students. But nice avoidance of profanity. "Aeronautical fornication." Solid. Still, I prefer "airborne copulation."

Re: Are Law Schools Too Logical?

Partner Emeritus — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:54:03 -0000

Ms. Francese, who looks like a refugee from the New Jersey Housewives show, does not address what we all know but pseudo-intellectuals refuse to accept: the legal market has shifted permanently to require fewer job openings. You can have remarkable left and right brain prowess; nevertheless, this doesn't address the fact that law schools are producing 3 lawyers for every available legal job slot. Moreover, older attorneys are working until they die (I seem to be the rare exception), attorneys are not leaving government jobs and LPOs are replacing domestic billing of menial tasks, which clients got tired of paying at premium rates.

I suspect Ms. Francese refuses to acknowledge all of this because her paycheck depends on eschewing what I have said and convincing impressionable lemmings that a life of sunshine and lollipops awaits them if they just pursue a law degree. I have always said that the difference between a law professor and a three card monte operator is that at least the latter will teach you how he hides the ball for a reasonable sum. The former will extort you for a princely sum and never teach you anything of value. That is all.

Re: The Wussification of Legal Education Continues

Joshua Silverstein — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:50:31 -0000

Your usage of "treated" is ambiguous. If what you mean is the academic policies at undergrad schools, then yes, technically, at most undergrad schools, C's are still satisfactory. But that is not how they are perceived by many if not most students, and by large parts of many other constituencies, such as employers, parents, and others, as I explain in the article. Moreover, law schools award substantially lower grades to their students than the students received in undergrad, as I demonstrate in the article. In short, the disconnect between what law students perceive and what we tend to convey with low grades generally and C's specifically is real. And that disconnect is substantially our fault because we are the ones out of step with all of the rest of graduate education and with the historical grading practices our students have experienced throughout all of their pre-law schooling.

Re: Are Law Schools Too Logical?

Last Call for Law School — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:47:54 -0000

"F*ck empathetic understanding...it's all about sociopathic understanding these days."

Signed,
Jamie, er, whoops, I mean M.E.

Re: Are Law Schools Too Logical?

Limine — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:31:12 -0000

Great. So law schools are bad enough right now at actually teaching basic legal doctrine, and Ms. Penne a la Moron wants to shift MORE away from that.

Re: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Bad News From Boston

JoePesci — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:12:55 -0000

Yes, that may be true, but I know that Credit Suisse took basically their entire non-attorney legal staff and laid off everybody, then hired back the equivalent positions as temps with a 1 year time limit on the assignment.

Re: The Wussification of Legal Education Continues

GentlyWaftingCurtains — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:08:39 -0000

If you really wanted to serve the interests of students you would fail these C or "low pass" students now, and save them the pain and tuition of being in law school, looking for legal work, and passing the bar. All grade inflation does is mislead these students into thinking they can hack it in a increasingly competitive legal market, so that law schools can continue milking them. Further, it hurts good students providing them less room to distinguish themselves from their incompetent colleagues. Embracing grade inflation serves no one's interests but the law schools, and the idea was rightly belittled by Elie.

Re: Are Law Schools Too Logical?

ThatDude — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:07:43 -0000

That photo on her web page is at least a decade old, right?

Re: The Wussification of Legal Education Continues

Emperor_Aguestus — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:53:13 -0000

The difference in understanding is not what you suggest: all the institutions at which these students have been schooled treated C grades as acceptable; these particular students, however, never treated C grades as acceptable for themselves because they aspired to be better than their peers. Now, however, they're no longer the smartest kids in the room and are actually producing C grade-quality work relative to their current peers (i.e., they're now average, not above-average).

It's the students, not the schools, that need to correct a flawed understanding.

Re: District Attorney and Major TV Network Sued Over Stupid Reality Show

Lou Sassole — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:49:46 -0000

That's nice. Nobody here cares.

Re: The Wussification of Legal Education Continues

Emperor_Aguestus — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:48:59 -0000

How stupid do you think we (i.e., those conducting OCI) and our legal HR people are? We know the context of any candidate's GPA long before we meet them, both in terms of how their school grades them as well as in terms of how hard or soft that curve is relative to those at other candidates' schools.

Re: Non-Sequiturs: 05.21.13

pureliberal — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:48:22 -0000

Wayne County Circuit Judge Wade McCree is currently facing
allegations of misconduct by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission. While the
conduct by Judge McCree may have been improper in some form, being judged by
the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission is far more improper.

The Chairperson of the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission
is Oakland County Circuit Court Chief Judge Nanci “Nazi” J. Grant. Judge Nazi
Grant is perhaps the most corrupt, racist and dangerous judge in Michigan at
this time.

How can the Chairperson of the JTC, Judge Nazi Grant, dare
sit in judgment of misconduct of another judge when she is “GUILTY” of criminal
misconduct? Grant knowingly and willfully used her courtroom to accommodate a retaliatory,
life threatening hate crime conducted against a party steered into her
courtroom, by her close personal friends.

It seems Grant, who is a fanatical Talmudic Jew that hates
Arabs and Muslims, has no problem with subordinating a corrupt and racist Jew crony
who wanted the death of an Arabic whistleblower. In doing so, Nazi Grant
knowing and willfully allowed massive perjury and fraud by a dangerous public
school official to go unchecked and to be used as “evidence” against the
targeted party.

One of the most shameful portions of the scheme of Nazi Grant
and her corrupt and racist cronies is that it involved the criminal cover-up of
sex offenders and pedophiles by the Troy School District Board Of Education and
its administration. I wonder what is
more disgraceful, the cover-up of sex offenders by a judge or the sexual
interactions of McCree and a consenting adult? This is in fact the comparison.

Grant was so biased and corrupt in the matter, she even
allowed blatant perjury surrounding the violent death of a former Troy School
District employee. The Troy School District official, who was receiving the
favors of Nazi Grant, was allowed to testify that the dead person was still
alive and that any information to the otherwise was “deranged.” The dead guy was even listed as a witness.

There is a question as to whether Judge McCree should have
recused himself from a case where he may have had a personal bias. In the
situation with Judge Nanci “Nazi” J. Grant and her corrupt and racist cronies,
there is no question at all. That Grant is on the JTC and judging another judge
of a situation she is criminally guilty of, is hypocrisy off the charts of
reason.

Re: The Wussification of Legal Education Continues

Emperor_Aguestus — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:45:48 -0000

"Law schools generally feel they have a responsibility to our students"

You're kidding, right? Compare the tuition at your TTT to the salary prospects of your mouth-breathing matriculates, then tell me you give an aeronautical fornication about them. I wonder how much your nose will grow.

Re: Which Supreme Court Justice Are You?

Lou Sassole — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:43:42 -0000

Dear Mike,

Go fuck yourself.

Re: Are Law Schools Too Logical?

Emperor_Aguestus — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:37:05 -0000

Paula was, hands down, the worst BarBri lecturer . . . to hell with her and her singing.