Law School Applications in Downward Spiral

Blogs like Inside the Law School Scam launched by "LawProf" seem to be having an affect because law school applications are apparently down nearly 17% over last year.

Marketplace forces at work.

There is increasing evidence that law schools have gamed their placement statistics to hide an imploding legal job market. Meanwhile law school graduates on the hook for huge tuition bills are facing years of "debtor's prison."

LawProf's blog makes for compelling reading and repeated visits. LawProf is also reporting that today 12 law schools have been hit with a class-action lawsuit for misrepresentation.

We do respectfully disagree with one contention on the blog. LawProf and the many active posters vehemently reject the premise that a law degree can open doors to alternative careers.

For what it's worth, a law degree has been extremely helpful to us in the writing/editing field, but admittedly the degree may no longer be a viable credential in today's marketplace.

Unlike a lot of the folks on that blog, we have no regrets about obtaining a J.D. perhaps because we attended law school at night (thanks to employer-provided educational benefits) while working full time and had significantly different expectations than those going full time right out of undergraduate college.

The work/school schedule was a long slog. How did we get through it? During lectures we looked forward to attacking the refrigerator after getting home from class and watching reruns of Tom Baker (shown above) portraying Dr. Who in the British science fiction series.


In 2012, in general based on available data, is a law degree worth pursuing? In a word, no.

Is Law Review Another Scam?

If you've ever sat down in a college library (as we have) and read through some of the humanities journals, you would have discovered that much of academic scholarship consists of tedious political propaganda masquerading as legitimate research.

We always thought that the legal scholarship as published in (presumed) prestigious and resume-enhancing law reviews was in general different. After all, the material is based on real-world cases--at least as appeals courts review the "facts"--with real-world application.

So in the spirit (or more particularly, dis-spirit) of the season, is it time to stop believing in Santa Claus as it were?

In yet another compelling blog post at the muckraking Inside the Law School Scam, "LawProf" maintains that law reviews are also bogus and, to make matters worse, lack the peer review that is usually standard in other disciplines:

Legal scholarship is produced under pseudo-academic conditions that form a fertile breeding ground for (very heavily footnoted) bullshit. Consider how legal academic publication almost always takes place. People who generally possess no formal academic training beyond what they received in law school (that is, none) write "law review articles." In the vast majority of cases, these articles consist of "doctrinal analysis," i.e., treating appellate court opinions... as texts that deserve to be taken seriously on their own terms. We are already, in other words, knee-deep in bullshit.

But it gets worse. Who is doing the evaluating of the supposed cogency of this analysis? Law students, that's who. So people who, incredibly enough, are even more ignorant than law professors about the actual legal system are charged with undertaking the equivalent of academic peer review for the purposes of legal scholarship. That contemporary research universities tolerate this charade can best be explained by examining the average law school's balance sheet, which will reveal that a nice chunk of the revenue generated by the school's operations is mulcted by central administrators in an example of what medieval Vikings called "raiding," but contemporary academic bureaucrats refer to as "cross-subsidization."

Read the whole posting here.

Law School: Our LSAT Data was Bogus

More gavels falling on law school admissions malfeasance?

The University of Illinois acknowledged Monday that its law school reported and/or published inaccurate admissions data in six of the last 10 years.

The university, in a prepared statement, said it had determined that Paul Pless, the law school's former assistant dean for admissions and financial aid, who resigned last week, was solely responsible for the inaccuracies...

Investigators concluded that Pless, who was responsible for reporting the information, "knowingly and intentionally" miscalculated key data to make it seem as if the University of Illinois was showing steady and occasionally dramatic improvement in the main factors used to gauge the academic credentials of a law school class.

Back in 2009, the same law school was accused of corrupt, politically motivated admissions practices.

Do You Really Want to Go to Law School?

Last October, a Boston College law student worried about paying back huge educational loans made headlines asked for a full refund if he dropped out. Unfortunately for him, the school had a "all sales are final" policy. Since then, there have been allegations that law schools in general are cooking the books in terms of job placement, and there are even some lawsuits pending against them from disgruntled students.

Against this backdrop, a tenured law professor has started a blog called Inside the Law School Scam which has captured a lot of attention from students, lawyers, and faculty alike. Although we're oversimplifying, "Law Prof" (who has since revealed his identify) argues in part that law school is way too expensive given the dismal career prospects in the current and future economy. He has caught a lot of flak from other academics who are of course quite satisfied with the cushy status quo.

Are law school administrators running a bait and switch? Consider the following issues which are explored in the blog:

• tuition is sky high
• student loans have become unmanageable
• lawyer unemployment is rampant
• professors are overpaid and underworked
• law schools provide minimal vocational training
• Full-time professors themselves have limited practical knowledge
• Individual law schools are manipulating/glorifying post-graduate employment statistics
• the taxpayer will ultimately be stuck with the tab for defaulted student loans

As one of the commentators wrote, "In law school, you 'do not' learn how to actually practice law, draft motions, pleadings, even a simple entry of appearance." 

To make matters worse, some lawyers from fancy schools who have snagged a high-paying job with what the site calls "BigLaw" are nonetheless unhappy with their career choice.

The postings and comments make for compelling reading. Check it out.