Oh my! Bell tolls for Broke Law Schools as Spring melts Special Snowflakes Away‏

The same ruthless calculation that led colleges to milk their law-schools into near fatal mastitis will also tend to lead the same colleges to decide that that it’s time that dried up old milk cow went to McDonalds. —MacK Comment from other Blog

The above is a very apropos comment to LawProf's discussions of the increasing budgetary problems caused by declining enrollment in law school. In particular, the original post discussed the greater probability of entire law schools closing instead of just some internal budgetary reform within a school; it turns out that actually reforming a law school budget is too difficult due to the various (inflexible) financial and social interests involved. There is no repairing the ship in drydock, as it were, but she must be scuttled. For instance, cutting faculty salaries is a socially problematic decision, and laying off high-earning faculty even more difficult because of tenure. But the parent universities can easily shut the whole thing down at once, tenure or nay. Cute, isn't it? Tenure makes them individually unfireable—but jointly helpless. My academic freedom! Oy! Not if they are all fired at once by virtue of their being no school to teach at. I have a feeling that dismissed "Profussers",as enablers of the scam, will not be given much sympathy in certain places. It will be a magical day when the first TTTT law school announces it will close at the end of the academic year, and the postings of joy throughout the "scamblogs" ensue.

This situation cuts right to the moral heart of the matter. The law school administration and faculty are not morally or ethically driven, but pragmatic, at least when it comes to pursuing their own interests. Pragmatic is actually a (from a) Greek word meaning "no principals" or "no predisposition" (i.e., amoral). It simply does whatever works to complete its agenda. The ScamDeans and Flaw Schools have done exactly that. They have had the social leverage to take as much federal-backed student loan money as they can carry, and they done that, jacking up tuition as fast as they could open new law schools. (MOAR superfluous degrees! Ok, career counselors, repeat after me: if they ask about jobs, just say versatile, versatile, versatile. Close enough for horseshoes!) 

But they have painted themselves into a corner. The sk00lz bet everything on unlimited human arrogance and ignorance, in the form of what we now call special snowflakes, but the even the frostiest Special Snowfall eventually clears up. The sunshine of reality is slow to thaw, but it will. Thousands of students are opting out of applying and attending to law school compared to just a few years ago. (See also why). The springtime is here; applications keep declining, and with decreased LSAT scores to prevent schools from "hiding the decline". 

The establishment has nothing to fall back on. It has no good graces outside of totally clueless (and financially successful) boomers who think the profession is the same as it was under the Ford Administration, back when a 'Stang cost $3250 with a SelectShift Cruise-O-Matic. No one likes the schools, and no one will speak in their defense besides shills and profiteers. There will not be thousands of regular graduates of the Seton Halls out there protesting if the parent university closes down their precious J.D.-Alma Mater. Imagine if they tried to close down a real university; there would be protests. But a BLS? A CUA? A WUSTL or however you spell it? No one would mourn, except for the owners (Deans & Professors), since they are the almost only ones (of late) to have benefited from it.

That is the sweet irony; although without leadership, permanent structural reform is still unattainable, at least some minor justice will be done. There simply cannot be an endless expansion of a worthless-degree; eventually retraction begins, as it already has. The ScamDeans know this, and are more concerned than they dare let on. Which TTTT will break first? One will, and then another. The spell will be broken even more so, like a cheap knockoff Harry Potter wand from eBay being manhandled by a hyperactive clumsy kid with poor hand-eye coordination and knobby hands. The Scamdean/"Professors" have turned their back on everybody else, and starting at the worst offending schools, soon everybody else will be turning their back on them.

Remember your meditations: And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee, thou absurdly-tuition-inflated fake-job-placement-numbers worthless-credential granting TTTT "law" school that doesn't even teach "law".

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Read my book-length satire/exposé of law school, Smarter Than Socrates: The End of the Law School Era.