Which law schools are the most overrated by US News and World Report?: A ranking of schools by mismatch between US News rank and placement success.

Imagine two recent law grads, A and B, both equally indebted to the tune of 100,000 interest-accruing and nondischargeable dollars. They are standing beside each other at a jobs fair. Or maybe they are fellow employees of Radio Shack or Starbucks, chatting during a smoking break. Or maybe they are sitting side-by-side on a document-sorting temp project. Or maybe they are coworkers in a government or public interest law office, working for free in the desperate hope that they might impress or network their way into a paying law job. And A and B hold the following conversation: 

A: (proudly): I graduated from the 26^th best law school in the country. 

B: (sad and embarrassed): You must be really smart, much smarter than me. I graduated from a lowly 3rd tier school.

If prospective law students feel that they might enjoy being similarly situated to "A" in status and prestige, then they ought to carefully study US News and World Report's law school ranking and use it to guide their choice of law schools. If not, I offer the following caution: While consumers of the annual "Best Law Schools" edition of US News may assume that there is a very close correlation between a law school’s US News rank and its placement outcomes, that is not the case. Placement success comprises only 18% of a school’s US News rank, and US News even gets that wrong by giving schools full-credit for phony-baloney "JD Advantage" jobs in calculating placement rates. Similarly, US News gives full credit for law school funded jobs-- which typically involve a law school throwing a few bucks at unemployed recent grads and telling them to volunteer full-time in some public interest law office, an arrangement the schools refer to as "public service fellowships" or "Bridge to Practice" programs.  

In the table below, I have ranked schools by mismatch between their most recent US News rank and their Class of 2012 placement success rank. As to placement success, the rank is based on each law school’s percentage of graduates who obtained bar-required, full-time (FT), long-term (LT) (which includes one year long judicial clerkships), nonsolo non-school-funded jobs within nine months of graduation. I obtained the employment rank by going to this excellent calculator and by clicking "choose your own formula," and then by clicking "bar passage required," "long-term," "full-time" and "exclude from numerator: school funded and solo practitioner." This generates a calculation of each school’s employment rate, within the formula chosen, in rank order.

The table includes every school with a US News rank at least 25 places higher than its placement rank. Georgetown doesn’t quite make the cut, but it deserves special mention-- its placement rank of 32^nd was (by far) the worst among the "T-14," i.e. the 14 schools that have been recognized, more or less accurately, as genuinely elite. And Georgetown's Class of 2012 stats were  no fluke--its placement rank for the Class of 2011 was 50th, also (by far) the worst among the T-14. In light of Georgetown’s numbers, perhaps it would be better to refer to the "T-13."

First tier schools are in italics. These are schools that, by virtue of their US News rank alone, may (in the words of Paul Campos), "attract[ ] the kind of highly-qualified, reasonably prudent 0Ls who would never consider attending the vast majority of law schools at anything like sticker price, and yet still end[ ] up generating a very high risk of financial and personal disaster for its students." Thus, even more than lower-tiered schools, they may function as life-ruining "traps" for some really bright and promising kids who deserve better from society. In addition to those listed, I also want to mention three other overrated first-tier schools that just miss the 25 place cut-off: Notre Dame, Washington U. of St. Louis, and the University of Utah.

One final point: the presence on this list of several Virginia and D.C. schools, plus Georgetown's worst-of-the-T14 placement rate, is a pretty good indication that D.C. is no oasis in the desert for newbie lawyers; rather, a mirage.

School	% FT, LT  law jobs nine months out	placement rank	US News rank	Mismatch
American	38.4%	171	56	115
Catholic	36.2%	177	80	97
Washington & Lee	49.2%	119	26	93
UC- Hastings	46.3%	138	48	90
Michigan State	38.8%	170	80	90
George Mason	49.1%	122	41	81
Pepperdine	45.5%	141	61	80
Univ. of Oregon	37.9%	173	94	79
Case-Western	43.6%	144	68	76
Univ. of Colorado	49.7%	117	44	73
Univ. of Denver	47.3%	133	64	69
Northeastern	41.9%	154	86	68
Indiana-Bloomington	53.4%	92	25	67
Univ. of San Diego	47.1%	135	68	67
Santa Clara U.	40.9%	160	96	64
Chapman	33.7%	187	126	61
Univ. of Maryland	52.4%	99	41	58
DePaul	39.9%	166	109	57
William & Mary	55.9%	84	33	51
U. of San Francisco	21.3%	195	144	51
Seattle U.	43.0%	149	102	47
Temple U.	52.0%	102	56	46
Syracuse U.	45.4%	142	96	46
Brooklyn	48.5%	125	80	45
George Washington	60.2%	62	21	41
Univ. of Maine	36.8%	175	134	41
Univ. of Florida	55.6%	86	46	40
Univ. of Connecticut	52.8%	96	58	38
McGeorge	40.5%	162	124	38
Yeshiva	53.2%	93	58	35
Indiana-Indianapolis	47.5%	131	98	33
Hamline	41.1%	159	126	33
Ohio State	58.6%	68	36	32
Arizona State	60.4%	60	29	31
Univ. of Wisconsin	59.9%	64	33	31
Cleveland State	43.2%	148	119	29
St. Thomas	42.2%	153	124	29
Univ. of Richmond	56.1%	81	53	28
Univ. of Minnesota	63.5%	46	19	27
Univ. of Illinois	58.2%	73	47	26
UC- Davis	59.9%	63	38	25
SUNY-Buffalo	51.2%	111	86	25

Law School - The Animated Movie

A quote from Adam B's great post yesterday got me thinking:

Given these desperate final attempts to scam, it is as important as ever to bring the widest possible audience to the scamblogs.  Perhaps we should launch an OLSS Junior edition with scam deans played by Disney villians…

So here's the preliminary cast list:

Snow White - played by all those oh-so-innocent law professorettes, none of whom have even an ounce of knowledge that law school is a scam. "Scam? What scam? International law isn't a scam."

Pinocchio - so many Pinocchios, literally hundreds of them, thousands even. Like extras in the movie, they're everywhere, from the dean's office to the admissions office to the career office. Very long noses too, given the sheer volume of lies these scoundrels tell to law school applicants.

Dumbo - the fool who applies to law school these days.

Cinderella - a young law student from a lowly background, hoping to make it big. Except when the law school ball ends, she literally goes back to scrubbing floors instead of marrying that Biglaw prince.

Robin Hood - law professors, nobly stealing from the poor and keeping it all for themselves. Wait, have I got that right?

Donald F**ked - like the vast majority of law students.

Peter Panhandler - you get the idea now...

Winnie the Poo - too easy?

The Seven Professors: Dopey, Dopey, Dopey, Dopey, Dopey, Dopey, and Dopey, all working long, hard, two-hour days down the student loan mine for a few months each year.


And the list goes on and on.  Except with one huge omission: there's no Rescuers.

Dean Nick Allard and the Future of the Scam

Despite the plummeting law school applications from the highest LSAT scorers, which could prove problematic as bar passage rates in some jurisdictions continue to tank, the law schools still have a few tricks up their sleeves.  As the downward spiral becomes permanent, not just a blip resulting from “bad press,” the deans must find new methods for generating income for these failing institutions.

For example, Brooklyn Law School recently announced that it will offer a two-year J.D. program designed for non-traditional students, i.e. middle-aged students, foreign-trained lawyers, and other people trying to reenter the workforce in a second post-recession career.  Obviously, this is a particularly nasty scam, which attempts to attract the least hirable potential students.  Most law firms do not want to hire older lawyers even if they have years of experience.  It goes without saying that the majority of older lawyers will not have the ability to scrape together a makeshift solo practice, nor would most want to or plan to.  

BLS is marketing this new program as a great way for older people to reignite their careers and to find employment stability before they retire.  It is only incidental, I suppose, that it is also a great way to scam unemployed middle-aged people who think that a two-year program will cost less (it won’t).

The BLS factory has always had a version of this scam: the night program.  However, the night program still admits mostly students in their 20s and early 30s with LSAT/GPA scores that the school wanted to divert away from USNWR (until recently).  Most of the students in the night program are rejects from the full-time program.  Now, with applications from the more-informed internet users drying up, the school might think that older potential students may be easier to con.  Perhaps they do not realize that the over-45 crowd reads blogs at almost the same rate as the rest of us.

Touro Law School seems to have a similar plan for trying to circumvent the cynical blog-reading young adults.  Recently, Touro has targeted prospective students on the opposite end of the age spectrum by offering to lock undergraduate freshman into a program with University of Central Florida where they would graduate a year early with their B.A. and enter Touro immediately.  I guess that the compressed educational timeline is supposed to attract students (six years instead of seven, what a bargain)! More importantly, Touro sees that the viral spreading of information is killing the normal application pool, and so they must target a younger and more naïve crowd. 

Given these desperate final attempts to scam, it is as important as ever to bring the widest possible audience to the scamblogs.  Perhaps we should launch an OLSS Junior edition with scam deans played by Disney villians…

"Just Do It" Must Have Already Been Taken

"It can be done."

Commencement Speaker: Allen Fore

Law School: Valparaiso University Law School

Claim to Fame: Director of Public Affairs for Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP

Notes: Fore quotes from his personal hero, Ronald Reagan. Isn't Reagan where this whole "public divestment of public education" started? The "why should I pay for your degree" thing?

*****

"It's always impossible until it's done."

Commencement Speaker: David Drummond

Law School: Santa Clara University School of Law

Claim to Fame: Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer of Google

Notes: Drummond quoted his personal hero, Nelson Mandela, in his speech. Drummond went on to say of Google: "Because it's a big company doesn't mean I can't fight to make sure that this big company sticks to its principles, that its continual march toward openness and progress and fairness mirrors the marches I participated in 30 years ago on this campus." Note Drummond attended Santa Clara undergrad; his law degree is from Stanford.

*****

"Lawyering is service. Do it with honor and integrity."

Commencement Speaker: Sonia Sotomayor

Law School: Yale Law School

Claim to Fame: First Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Notes: The gist of Sotomayor's remarks were to follow their values and passions and not to worry about their resumes.

*****

"Graduates, as you survey the life and career paths before you, consider how the meaningful application of your exquisite Swiss Army knife of a degree, especially application of your critical thinking, can lead to greater involvement in your self-worth."

Commencement Speaker: William "Mo" Cowan

Law School: Boston College Law School

Claim to Fame: Interim U.S. Senator about to "return to the private sector"

Notes: Cowan told the grads: "Find the proper balance between your net worth and your self-worth." He then went on to provide this gem: "Your true career path will be as clear as a bell, and you will know how best to utilize that versatile tool of remarkably infinite utility."

IBR: The Tax Time Bomb At The End Of The Rainbow

What if there was a way for you to go to law school, take a job in the public sector, and lead a life in line with the American Dream? Philip Schrag and many law schools have just the solution for you: Income Based Repayment (IBR). But, like most things associated with law school, IBR has a dark side that interested parties don’t want students to know about.

Philip Schrag’s paper “refuting” Brian Tamanaha’s Failing Law Schools presents IBR as a great way to make law school more “accessible”, which is a red herring that can be quickly dispatched. The reason we have a lawyer shortage isn’t because we don’t have enough lawyers. It’s because tuitions that are skyrocketing every year can’t be serviced by a public sector salary. Schrag’s paper makes the worst type of self-serving argument. He argues that IBR nullifies the tuition crisis. He wants taxpayers to subsidize law schools, with no checks on the rising tuition. He wants taxpayers to pay his salary, which I am sure he doesn’t want decreasing anytime soon.

IBR is being pitched by law schools as a way to make law school more affordable to all. Several law schools proudly display information about IBR on their websites. On its face, IBR is a very attractive program. Students who have a partial financial hardship qualify. The government qualifies borrowers for partial financial hardship "if the monthly amount you would be required to pay on your IBR-eligible federal student loans under a 10-year Standard Repayment Plan is higher than the monthly amount you would be required to repay under IBR". Given that the majority of law graduates don't make enough money to service their debts, we can assume that almost all law graduates not in BigLaw moving forward will be eligible for this program.

What IBR’s proponents don’t want to publicize is the tax liability that waits at the end of the IBR period. The amount of the loan amount forgiven is treated as taxable income by the IRS. So, let’s say that you have $230,000 forgiven as a result of IBR. Let’s also assume that even after 25 years, you are still only making $45,000 per year because of the law schools still pumping out 44,000 graduates per year every year. If we are to use the tax laws in place today, and add in the standard deduction and 2 kids, that leaves you with a tax bill of $60,463. That’s right: you would owe almost $15,000 more than your annual income in taxes. It’s one last way for law school to ruin your financial well-being.

"Admission Through Performance"

"Law School Offers Second Chance," by Karen Sloan (National Law Journal)

An article about the Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law, an unaccredited law school whose mission is to produce attorneys to service the underserved populations in Southern Appalachia. Duncan is hosting three free LSAT prep courses. If that whole "standardized test score" thing doesn't work out, don't sweat it. Duncan started a new "Admission Through Performance" program. Duncan at absolutely no charge will enroll you in a free, four-week course on the Federal Rules of Evidence taught by the Duncan faculty. If you do well, meaning a 70 on a 100 point final exam, consider yourself a 1L.

*****

"Luckless Law Grad Gets Loan Relief....10 Years Later," by Joe Pallazzola (WSJ Blogs)

Michael Hedlund, after 10 years of bankruptcy litigation, received a hardship discharge on $53,000 of $85,000 in student loans. Mr. Hedlund failed the bar exam twice, then locked his keys inside his car while stopping to get coffee on the third attempt thereby quashing his dreams forever. Congratulations to Mr. Hedlund for gutting out 10 years of bankruptcy litigation -- which likely cost more than the amount discharged if he had been properly charged.

*****

"US, Chinese law schools to deepen collaboration," by Caroline Berg (China Daily USA)

Columbia University Law School and Peking University Law School signed a memo of understanding to "expand opportunities." Seems like every educational institution in the US from local school districts on up is trying to capture Chinese money through one way or another.

*****

"Commendable Conduct Award," by Steven J. Harper (AmLaw Daily)

Harper gives kudos to University of Kansas School of Law Dean Stephen Mazza for voluntarily reducing the size of the incoming class from 175 down to 120 just because it was "the right thing to do."

*****

"Rutgers Students Join Holt in Opposition of Rising Student Loan Rates," by Katrina Rossos (East Brunswick Patch)

Harvard Law grad complains that high student loans are preventing him from moving on in his life. Article concerns H.R. 1911 which seeks to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to establish interest rates for new loans made on, or after, July 1, 2013. This bill passed the House of Representatives on Thursday morning in a 224 to 193 vote. Interest rates on Stafford loans would no longer be fixed but would rise or fall from year to year with the government's cost of borrowing. The initial rate for the loans would be about 4.4 percent but in coming years it could increase to a cap of 8.5 percent.

Elizabeth Warren is pushing for student loan interest rates to be tied to cut to near zero. Warren is proposing the Student Loan Fairness Act where student loan interest would be cut to the low .75 percent interest rate that banks pay to the Federal Reserve for short-term loans. This would be a one-year fix until a long-term solution could be agreed upon.

Stafford loans are set to double from the current rate of 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1, 2013.

Wanna Be a Cowboy

Anonymous Comment:  ....People/employers/the world cares about money. "How much money can you make for me?" If you went to Harvard and can't generate revenues, you're getting cut loose by end of the year. If you went to Cooley and can generate $2MM in bills, you're a damn rockstar and partner.

Dear Prospective Law Students a/k/a Legal Cowboys & Cowgirls:

You have undoubtedly heard the term "rainmaking" in relationship to practicing law. You probably vaguely understand that it means "getting clients." It is undoubtedly an abstract concept to you at this point. You assume there is some sort of relationship between "being a good lawyer" and "being a rainmaker." Since you are confident that you will be a good lawyer, you have little doubt that you will be a rainmaker and have lots of clients. Let me assure you there is little to no connection between these concepts.

You need to give considerable thought to the rainmaking aspect of practicing law before you actually decide to go to law school. I know that you believe that "highly over saturated legal market" doesn't apply to you, but it does. If you do not know where your clients are coming from before you go to law school, you are really going to be at a loss once you graduate.

The rainmaking metaphor is apt for a lot of reasons. We need water to live. You will need bountiful paying clients to have a growing, thriving practice and be able to pay your bills. The current legal market is not a rain forest; it is a desert. A dry, dry desert.

Place yourself for a moment in the Old West in the late 19th century. You are a young greenhorn fresh off the train from out East. You don't know much about cowboying, but you always dreamed of being a cowboy when you were growing up. You spent your youth reading books about cowboys, then you borrowed a small fortune at a heavy interest rate from a shady New York banker, bought a few hundred head of cattle and headed out West on a train with cattle cars in tow. The train drops you and your herd off at a town in the middle of no where and pulls away leaving you behind. You see the conductor laugh and shake his head as the train pulls away.

What do you do now? The cattle need water. You start asking the old timers where to take your cattle for a drink and they just snicker at you. Someone finally takes pity on you and explains that most of the water was diverted from the river by the large land and cattle barons and now a major drought has hit. The mighty river is just a trickle. Carcasses of dead critters line its banks. The old timers sneer and ask "didn't anyone out East tell you about the drought and the land barons? Wasn't it in the fancy newspapers out East?" Yes, you say, but you always wanted to be a cowboy and you really didn't think you would have trouble watering your cattle once you made it West. You read all the books about cowboying. You're a cowboy now in your heart. You own fancy boots, a big hat, a lasso and a horse named Trigger and everything. Somebody just needs to get you some water for your cattle before they all die so you can show them what a good cowboy you really are. You wish you could make rain like the Indians or something. So, Tex, how are you going to water your cattle? Your cattle are dying, Tex.

So, lawyer cowboys and cowgirls, how are you going to get paying clients? (Keyword in that sentence is "paying" incidentally. There will be no shortage of people with problems who cannot afford to pay you.)

If you are just the child of some Blue Collar Joe who grew up in a working class neighborhood you have your work cut out for you. First, everybody you grew up with already knows a lawyer or is related to a lawyer. Second, keep in mind most people go their entire lives and may only need a lawyer once or twice. Plus, if they can do it themselves they probably will do so. Remember dentists have it all over lawyers. A dentist only has to have about 1,500 to 2,000 patients for a sustainable practice because the patients are on six-month recall. If you try to skip your dental appointments, you end up paying for it down the road. Legal clients are not on six-month recall with their attorneys. In fact, they are likely to be angry at their attorney for the legal process and the cost of legal services and not return period even if they do need more services. The phone needs to be ringing all the time or you are in trouble. Can you generate a quarter million a year in legal revenue to pay for your office overhead and staff and leave a little left over for yourself? That's a start. What about a half million? Year in and year out? If not, stay away from law school.

Did you grow up the child of some Silver Spoon Richy Rich? Is your dad and his friends over at the club wealthy? Do they have businesses that are either growing or tend to get themselves in trouble? Do you have enough experience and social suction to pull that work away from the current lawyers doing the work? If so, maybe law school is for you.

Please understand that even if you land a job with a law firm, you need to start producing from your own client base or you will be gone and replaced with a freshly minted lawyer. No one cares how good a lawyer you are because there are lots of really good lawyers. You eat what you kill in life.

Being a "good lawyer" isn't enough. Wanting to be a lawyer from the time you were born isn't enough. Can you make rain? Do you have access to the water you need to water your cattle? If you cannot answer this yes before you apply to law school, then do not apply to law school. A herd of stinking dead cattle is not pretty. 

Oh, and by the way, that banker out East that lent you the money to buy the cattle? He hired some really nasty Black Bart outlaw types to track you down. Get along now, little Cowboy.

The Pitt and the US News Pendulum: A tour of the destructively stupid US News law school ranking metrics.

On March 12, 2013, University of Pittsburgh Law School Dean William Carter gave a thirty-six minute long talk to students and others to address the dreadful news that his school had declined from 69th to 91st in the annual US News and World Report law school ranking. And Carter did not even bear any responsibility for the catastrophe, having just been appointed dean a few months earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQxxNBCUqJ8

I figured that Dean Carter’s presentation would be a hilarious and exasperating fog of crisis management PR plus boosterism. But instead I found myself nodding in agreement at many of his points. Carter attacked the flawed nature of US News ranking metrics, which is hardly surprising under the circumstances, but he did so in an a manner that I found to be thorough and informative. To be clear, Carter’s presentation was not scam-free--I mean, he is a second tier law school dean. Still, when a second tier law dean is battling US News’ ranking guru Bob Morse, he may well be the lesser of two very evil evils, like Scylla or the Democratic Party.

Carter went through the components and sub-components that comprise the US News law school ranking, and argued that US News' metrics are highly unreliable-- indeed, that an effort to look good for US News by changing law school practices in certain ways could actually hurt students. Carter's presentation is a good springboard for a discussion of exactly what the US News law school ranking measures. Carter’s points are in roman, and my comments are in italics.

 I. Reputational Survey of Law School Deans and Faculty (25%):

The US news reputational survey consists of a bubble sheet sent to law school deans and selected faculty. These  survey-takers are asked to rate every law school on a 1-5 scale, though there is a "don't know" option. Academics who fill out the survey are usually only familiar with a handful of schools. As for the rest, their primary knowledge of a school is often its place in the previous year’s US News ranking, thus creating an "echo chamber" effect in the current year’s ranking.

The importance of this factor--25%!--sheds light on why law professors have such disgusting (I mean, collegial) personalities and why you will often find them traveling to, speaking at, or hosting schmoozefests, aka conferences. You see, a law school’s reputation may depend on its professors generating favorable chatter and gossip among colleagues, leaving a dim impression, reinforced by promotional material (aka "law porn") that significant and exciting scholarship is happening at those professors' home institutions. That way, later on, those colleagues may color in the "4" or "5" bubble on the US News reputation survey, even if they have no direct experience of the school.

II. Reputational Survey of Lawyers and Judges (15%):

US News does not disclose which lawyers and judges are asked to fill out the survey, though the lawyers are known to be Big Law partners. Only 9% of those asked to fill out the survey actually responded-- kudos to the practicing bar for so thoroughly disregarding this nonsense. The lower the response rate, the greater the opportunity for skew.

III. Selectivity (25%):
a. LSAT (12.5%);

b. Undergrad GPA (10.0%);
c. Percent Accepted (2.5%)

Carter complained that his school was punished by US News because his school’s median LSAT fell from 159 to 158. He said: "Do I think that there is a substantive difference between a class that had a median of 159 and a median of 158?. . .I simply refuse to accept that."

Carter is wrong here. Selectivity matters; it is the only thing that does, other than placement and cost. By punishing schools that lower admissions standards, the mischief-making US News ranking can actually have a virtuous effect. Schools are no doubt sorely tempted to lower, or even abandon, admissions standards, as law school applications dwindle due to growing awareness of the scam. The one thing that prevents them from doing so is the prospect of a tumble in the US News ranking. "Percent accepted," particularly, should be worth way more than 2.5%. I mean, the LSAT can be taken again and again, and a high GPA may only mean that a kid took easy classes in college, but there is no getting around a law school rejection. So I say: bonus US News points when a law school refuses to accept some young moron’s borrowed fortune in the interest of maintaining its selectivity.

IV. Placement (18%):
a. Jobs Nine Months After Graduation (14%);
b. Employment Rate on Date of Graduation (4%)

US News changed its methodology this year as to how it calculates employment rates. Formerly, employment was calculated in absolute terms, with full credit for all jobs, including short-term jobs. Now, however, placement success is calculated by assigning various weights to the numbers of graduates employed in 22 different categories of jobs and durations of jobs. US News provides full-credit for JD Advantage jobs lasting more than one year. As well, US News does not discount law school funded jobs, giving an enormous advantage to schools that subsidize fellowships for recent grads.

US News gives full-credit for JD Advantage jobs? If US News is going to make such a monumental blunder, who cares about its careful weighting of 22 different categories of jobs and job durations. Since the definition of a JD Advantage job is so imprecise, schools have every incentive to scam-up their employment success rates by characterizing any old kind of job as JD Advantage. Thus, a third tier scam school can characterize a graduate's job peddling insurance as JD Advantage and the school will receive the same US News credit in the placement category as Stanford receives when it places a grad in a SCOTUS clerkship.

US News gives full-credit for law school funded "jobs"? That means that a law school that charges above average tuition, and uses the extra tuition money to subsidize one year long "fellowships" (i.e. stipends for some of its unemployed recent grads to go volunteer full-time somewhere) gets rewarded by US News as it calculates the rankings. I would rather law school be compressed into two years, after which grads can volunteer their services to practitioners in exchange for training, with a substantial savings in time and money.

V. Faculty Resources: Expenditure Per Student (9.75%):

This measure, an alleged proxy for quality, is based only on a law school’s budget divided by number of students enrolled. It doesn’t matter what the school actually did with money and, of course, the money need not be spent on students per se. A school can immediately boost its score in this category by either: (a) reducing the number of students or (b) increasing its budget. Carter stated that he could boost his score in this category by increasing tuition, but would rather take a US News hit than impose additional tuition burdens on his students. Carter asserted that he could make Pitt a US News top 50 school within two years by boosting tuition by $5,000 a year, but he refuses to do that.

Carter is correct. This factor is crude and monstrous. Any school can get a US News rating bump by increasing tuition. A prospective law student who attaches importance to a school’s US News ranking may want to think that one through. He or she may choose a school based on its being ranked slightly higher than some other school, without realizing that that school is ranked slightly higher solely because it charges higher tuition (producing a higher average expenditure per student). So that edition of US News may end up costing a kid thousands of dollars, not $9.95 (or $29.95 for the expanded online edition).

To show how much US News really cares about actual quality education, as opposed to its phony-baloney proxies, consider: it doesn’t matter to US News what the money is spent on, only the average expenditure per student. The money can be spent on renovating the Dean’s Office or on free booze for the faculty. Hell, a school can double tuition and spend the whole increase on a 40-foot tall solid gold statue of a naked Bob Morse with an extended middle finger. The boost in this category would be no different than if the additional money was spent on some pedagogical miracle capable of turning every dim-bulb Cooley student into Clarence Darrow.

VI. Faculty Resources: Student-Faculty Ratio (3%):

In this category, schools are ranked based on how many full-time faculty they have relative to the size of their student enrollment. Carter notes that U.S. News doesn’t count adjuncts, "who can often be some of the most valuable teachers in the building."

A law school with the maximum permissible number of adjuncts would strike out with US News in this category, and yet probably provide a better and more cost-effective professional education than one filled to the brim with tenured six figure salaried windbags, many of whom would not know the difference between a courtroom and a faculty lounge. Here, again, Morse’s formula has a deleterious effect on legal education as it exists in actual reality, in favor of his imaginary world where prestige and quality can be precisely measured and assigned a numerical rank.

VII. Library (0.75%):

This category does not seek to measure how much support a school provides to its library. It measures only one thing: number of bound volumes in the school’s library. It does not measure the quality of information services, only the number of books. Even law librarians think this is nuts in the digital age. Carter quotes the chief librarian at his school as saying. "I don’t need more books...this is the year 2013."

Okay. 3/4 of 1% of a law school’s US News rank is based on the number of bound volumes gathering mold in the stacks. Bound volumes--in the high noon of the digital age. Has Bob Morse heard of Westlaw? Kindle? I truly hope that Bob Morse is having an affair with some legal books dealer. Because the only other explanation is that he is raving mad.

VIII. Bar Passage Rate (2%) (based on plus of minus deviation from average pass rate in the state):

IX. Financial Aid (1.5%):

X. Conclusion:

Until only two years ago, US News was basically all that prospective law students had to go by.  Now, however, there is much more data available because, starting with the Class of 2011, the ABA has required law schools to survey their graduates, nine months out, as to employment status. There are some fine sites to help prospective students and their influencers access and interpret the data (below), and the US News ranking is not one of them. If you must have a ranking, check out Above the Law's-- it is superior to that of US News in many ways, chief among them that it does not count alleged JD Advantage jobs. 

Nobody should care about US News’ idiotic survey of academic gossips, or its obnoxious "expenditures per student" proxy for quality, or its concern for the vastness of each law school's collection of bound volumes. 

http://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=other&show=jobs 
http://abovethelaw.com/careers/law-school-rankings/ 
http://educatingtomorrowslawyers.du.edu/law-jobs/   
http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/
http://www.lawschoolcafe.org/


　

　

More News Round Up

"Why You're In Deep Trouble If You Can't Afford A Lawyer,"  Mother Jones Magazine

This article is worth a read for all you Perry Mason wanna-bes. It's a cliche that criminal defense lawyers are chronically overworked and underpaid. Here are the statistics to back it up. The article could just have easily been entitled "Why You're in Deep Trouble If You Are a Defense Lawyer."

*****

"The Calculus of University Presidents,"  by William D. Henderson (National Law Journal)

Another very good article worth a read. Henderson basically argues that most university presidents will either have a choice to radically integrate law schools without either national or regional employment strength into the arts & letters department or shut them down completely.

Money Quote: "Arguably, law schools are the bleeding edge of the growing problems facing all four-year colleges and universities: growing tuition and debt loads in combination with flat or declining earning for graduates. The six-figure debt loads of unemployed or underemployed law students make them the poster children for a system of higher education that is rapidly on its way to becoming unsustainable. Sallie Mae, the government-chartered lender for higher education, is having difficulties selling its bundled student loans to large institutional investors, prompting concerns that the federal government is financing a student loan bubble that is destined to burst."

*****

"Ask Stacy: Should I lend My Granddaughter Money for Law School?"  by Stacy Johnson (Money Talks News)

Let me take a crack at answering this letter: "No, you should not lend your granddaughter money for law school. You will never see your money again. Your granddaughter's life will be ruined. Hire her to help you clean around the house and run errands for you. You will get something for your money and your granddaughter will have a marketable skill."

Seriously, neither "Stacy" nor any of the commenters mentioned that law school was a disastrous idea in and of itself. All they were worried about was whether it was a good idea to lend to family and how much interest they could soak the grandkid for. Sheeesh. What sort of advice column is this?

*****

"Time for a Radical Change in Legal Education,"  by Douglas A. Kahn (National Law Journal)

Money Quote: "One current proposal is to reduce the amount of required law school training to two years. For reasons noted below, I believe that there is a much better vehicle for addressing this problem. Instead of reducing the years in law school, I propose a substantial reduction in the amount of required general undergraduate education."

Gotta love this proposal. Turf warfare. "Hey, we law schools have been giving the English and History Department cover for generations, the cut shouldn't come at our end but their end!" How is it a radical change in legal education to cut out a few years of undergrad? Isn't that keeping the law school status quo intact?

*****

"Oakton's John Cochran wins 'Survivor' show and $1 million," by Tom Jackman (Washington Post)

Money Quote: "The [Survivor] episodes were filmed last year on Caramoan in the Philippines, where [John] Cochran had to eat nasty things and do all the other physical and mental torture tests required of the contestants. He collects $1 million for his troubles."

Turns out Cochran also graduated from Harvard Law School. Obviously Cochran landed one of the "JD Advantage" jobs with the reality show gig. If Cochran was actually practicing law with his degree, he would be doing much worse things than eating bugs and likely doing them for minimum wage. Way to play the game, Mr. Cochran. We salute you.

*****

"East Campus would be perfect setting for law school,"  by Thomas T. Huff (M-Live Guest Opinion)

A guest opinion letter to support the new "Western Michigan University Law School" formerly known as "Cooley Law School." The writer claims this new merger will "elevate the university to a new level"  and he advocates for setting up the new law school in the old part of campus "surrounded by mature oak trees."

No. Stop. Don't.

News Round Up

Yahoo! News is running a series of articles showcasing personal stories of people who were ensnared in the student loan trap. A couple have featured attorneys:

Beware the Student Loan Trap by David J. Koslowski

Money Quote: "Some said I was naive. I look back and realize I was outright stupid."

Borrowing My Way Through Law School and Paying it Back 30 Years Later by William H. Sloan

Money Quote: "The problem was the loan is like a mortgage, and I will be paying on it until 2032, when I will be 61 years old."

*****

"Dear Class of '13: You've been scammed" by Brett Arend's (Market Watch/Wall Street Journal)

Money Quote: "You sit here today, $30.000 or $40,000 in debt, as the latest victims of what may well be the biggest conspiracy in U.S. history. It is a conspiracy so big and powerful that Dan Brown won't even touch it. It's a conspiracy so insidious that you will rarely hear its name. Move over, Illuminati. Stand down, Wall Street. Area 51? Pah. It's nothing. The biggest conspiracy of all? The College-Industrial Complex."

*****

"Law Deans Scramble" by Steven Harper (The AmLaw Daily)

The 5 stages of grief, LawDean style.

Money Quote: "The crisis in legal education continues, with the number of people applying to law school declining along with the job prospects for those who graduate. In the face of these trends, some law school deans are still trying to preserve an unsustainable business model. Offering what they apparently regard as innovative ideas, they're making things worse."

*****

"Law schools are choosing substance over LSATs, admission dean says," by Debra Cassens Weiss (ABA Journal)

LOL!

Money Quote: "I don't [think] focusing on scores is the way to go," [Sarah] Zearfoss [admissions dean at the University of Michigan Law School] responds. "It's not fair to the individual. It's not fair to the institution."

*****

Back with some more soon!

It's time to move out of your parent's basement.

Yesterday I went back to Springfield, MA.  It was interesting to see the town where I spent my first year of law school again.  Part of me really missed it there. 

But, now I am no longer there.  Life goes on.  Law school comes and goes.  Many people can't get past the latter idea.  That law school ends.  Many people are still perpetual students in their minds.  They did not develop past law school.  Perhaps it is because their parents coddled them throughout law school.  Maybe they moved back in with mother and pa after law school.  They failed to thrive.  They never grew wings.  And they are angry.

It's time to fly, young one!

I moved out at the tender age of 18.  I knew that if I wanted to live according to my dreams I (and not my parents) was responsible for that.  I knew that it was all up to me -- not the government, not the schools, and not my mother.

YET MOST OF MY CRITICS HAVE AN EXTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL.  They think that it is up to EVERYONE ELSE to wipe their butts for them.  They can not get their minds around the idea that it is not the school's fault that they failed.

It.  Is.  Their.  Fault.  Too.

I would love to survey those who are bamboozled in life and ask them, "how long did you live with your parents?"  I imagine that many of those who are sore about school lived with their parents for a very, very long time.  One of my readers openly stated that he moved in with his inlaws after law school.  No wonder he failed to thrive in life.

Fernando Rodriguez?

Living with your parents does not make you a bad person.  Either does complaining about law school.  But your complaints fall on deaf ears.  Nobody cares except for the legions of other whiners.  Those who realized a long time ago that their lives were up to them have moved on.  They have often found jobs and happiness.  They realize that there is little time to whine on the internet.

Tell your parents: I AM MOVING OUT, MOTHER!  FATHER, SEE YOU LATER!  I am GOING MY OWN WAY!

Grow up.  Get a job.  Move up the ladder.  And stop making excuses!  If you honestly think that posting pictures of poop on the internet is adult behavior, think again.  If you honestly think that whining on YouTube is going to make your life somehow magical, think again.   You will be miserable if you continue to dwell and stew on the past.  You will always be miserable if you continue to MAKE EXCUSES! 

It is time to MOVE ON.  Get out of your mother's nest and fly.

LawProf Indictment

I'm going to yield the floor to Mr. Jeff Matthews, who posted over at The Faculty Lounge concerning the ongoing debate over the Legal Job Market:

I am not a big fan of personal attack, but there are indeed some issues which bear introspection among academians.

I don't begrudge law profs maximizing their salaries. I don't mind their reluctance to give up pay, nor would I ever expect them to. I don't mind them questioning whether the problem is as bad as some say. I don't mind that they continue the casebook method despite complaints by students that, given how hard it is to land a job, maybe a more hands-on approach is in order. These things are open for debate.

But, in all honesty (and no profs need respond), for years we have all known that the law schools have been posting misleading employment statistics. While the language they employed was technically true, they have been selective in their data gathering and categorizing, without full disclosure as to the means used to skew the results. This has been common knowledge for at least 20 years. My graduating class from UT Law in 1993 can attest to it. Ask just about any of the 500+ attorneys we graduated that year. This has been the case for EVERY lawyer in any graduating class after mine in any school that I have ever known. I have never seen ONE lawyer, when the topic came up, who didn't agree the stats were bogus.

Though it has become common knowledge among lawyers after the fact (of attending law school for a while to figure out the bunk by watching all the hopeless-sounding 3rd-years ahead of us), it most certainly was not widespread knowledge among many of the members of the entering classes who really did not know many lawyers to begin with. I do think the advent of scamblogging has made the scam more transparent the more popular scamblogging has become. (Gotta love the internet for those who would have more trouble finding answers by walking pavement.)

So, in the sense that law school systematically published misleading figures, knowing they were misleading, in order to get kids with stars in their eyes to pony up $100k+, I call BS on that. Every law professor should have rebuked this practice until it was stopped. But you all (or dang near everyone of you) sat there quietly. You knew it, too. We know you did. Heck, Professor Powers even gave us 3rd years a speech about how not to worry that we didn't have jobs line-up like we expected we ought to have. It was apologetic with a dose of encouragement thrown in.

That practice was shameful. I hope you guys are more vocal about truth-in-education in the future. You don't have to be all negative on law school, but at least stand up and call for the truth when you see your compadres and employers teaming up to pull stunts like these. Don't just sit quietly and watch all those kids have their hopes dashed so that you feel obliged to give moral encouragement to "Hang in there. It's not so bad. Give it time. You'll be fine." This is little consolation, even if the damage is repaired over time by the efforts of the kids whose hopes were dashed.

Posted by: Jeff Matthews | May 07, 2013 at 11:55 PM

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2013/05/reconsidering-the-conventional-wisdom-on-the-legal-job-market-part-iii.html

Straight up, Jeff,  'nuff said.  By my view of the comments, no LawProf responded directly to Jeff.

When it comes to the self-interested ScamDeans and LawProfs, caveat emptor, everybody.  Those hefty, tenured ("non-profit") salaries don't just drop out of the sky, you know.  Some would say that Our Promethian Betters deserve no less.

What the truck?

England is known the world over for its legal system, replete with tradition and prestige.  Wigs and robes in court - it doesn't come much more "we're not changing with the times!" than that.

Or does it.

Turns out that a trucking company, Eddie Stobart, is bidding for contracts to provide legal aid services, much to the chagrin of traditional law firms that typically provide such services.

Read all about here.

Just to be clear, though, we're not talking about truck drivers offering legal services. From what I can gather, we're talking about a law firm that is a subsidiary of Eddie Stobart, Stobart Barristers, which has very little to do with Eddie Stobart.

But to hear the complaints from the traditional lawyers who are trying to protect their high fees, you'd think that Stobart Barristers was proposing that the poor should be represented in court by truckers who are known by "CB handles" like "Slippery Jim" and "Madcat", and who would replace the horsehair wigs with those trucker hats that your grandfather wears sometimes.

"That's a big 10-4, judge".

Here's some quotes from the article, and there's plenty more articles out there on this matter too:

The row within the legal profession over the plans is intensifying. The head of Stobart Barristers has described traditional law firms who rely on legal aid as "'wounded animals waiting to die" and accused rival lawyers of sending his firm messages urging it to "Truck Off".

 He's right. Traditional law firms are wasteful, slow, and expensive. Where legal aid money is concerned, economy should be the number one priority; providing the most people with adequate services, rather than providing a select few with premium services.  It's the same over here.  Traditional law firms are wasteful and serve not for the benefit of clients, but partners' wallets.  And little anonymous attacks from those trying to protect their incomes?  Sounds like law professor tactics.

[Said Trevor Howarth, legal director at Stobart,] "We at Stobart are well known for taking out the waste and the waste here is the duplication of solicitors going to the courtroom. At the moment there are 1,600 legal aid firms; in future there will be 400. At Stobart, we wouldn't use 10 trucks to deliver one product."

Again, correct. Law firms are just so damn inefficient.  Hourly billing, overstaffed, making problems where none exist. It's a broken system, both here in the US and over there in the UK by the sound of things.

On removing a defendant's right to choose their solicitor, Howarth said: "I don't think the lack of choice is damaging. [People are not] entitled to access justice with an open cheque. No one is stopping them paying for their own choice of solicitor."

Common sense, and to be clear, he's talking about a defendant who is generally in the lowest court and charged with a minor offense, and whose legal fees are being footed by the taxpayer.  Nobody is talking about removing anyone's choice of legal representation if they can afford to pay for it themselves.  But don't expect lawyers to agree.  In fact, expect them to tell lies to protect their business (remind you of law professors perhaps?):

Paul Harris, president of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors' Association, warned that the quality of legal representation would decline. "How is anyone facing serious criminal allegations going to feel being represented by a haulage company?" he asked.

Ah, there we go.  The deliberate misrepresentation, the lie, designed to align the stupid or lazy with his cause. Circulate the myth that this change will mean your lawyer will have dirt under his fingernails and an STD from a truckstop hooker, and of course nobody wants this. His income will be saved, and who gives a damn about all the defendants who get no representation because there's no money left.  Of course, in reality Stobart Barristers is staffed by real lawyers, with real training, just like every other law firm.

While this interesting little story has lots of relevance to us over in the US, it's also useful for drawing parallels with our system of legal education. Our 200 schools, all offering a three year program, ultimately paid for by the taxpayers in many cases, are a prime example of using ten trucks to deliver one product.

We need 100 schools, each offering a two year program, at a quarter of the current cost.  And that's being generous.  But try to make such common sense changes, and you're met with attacks and lies from the legal education establishment.  Untruths about how the public will suffer, how standards will drop, how the entire legal system as we know it will crumble into a world where truck drivers are representing people in court and prestigious lawyers are forced to dirty their eyes by even looking at such vile creatures.  Of course nobody wants reform when law professors circulate such lies.  We need to have our voices heard a little more.

I hope Stobart wins.  It's good for everyone except those who live high on the hog by overcharging for legal services.  Or law degrees.

And I hope we can all learn some valuable lessons over here about stripping the waste from the legal system.  Because if they can do it in England, where legal tradition was born, then we can damn well do it over here to those law schools that were created in the past two decades for the sole purpose of milking the system.