Parents' Weekend? Is This A Top-14 Law School Or Camp?

Parents' weekend is the latest aggressive marketing technique.

You know why your law school probably doesn’t have a parents’ weekend? Because you are a grown-ass adult, that’s why. You are totally and autonomously capable of scheduling your own visits from Mommy and Daddy. The school-sponsored mixer where your parents get to meet all of your professors and see what you’ve been doing with your life is called “Commencement.” Having a parents’ weekend for 1Ls is akin to having a parents’ weekend for the U.S. Marines.

But at Georgetown Law, parents’ weekend isn’t just a thing, it’s a thing they’re extremely proud of. A description of this past parents’ weekend showed up in the Georgetown Law magazine (p. 44). For those millennials playing along at home: a “magazine” is a cumbersome, glossy thing that parents read when they forget to charge their phones.

The tipster who sent us the mag — a former legal writing professor at two mid-Atlantic law schools and now of-counsel at a D.C. firm — wondered: “When did law students stop being adults, and why is Georgetown celebrating the fact? Is this just a natural progression of “helicopter parenting? It appears the parents have won and the administration will now fully embrace student immaturity and make it a weekend event. I wonder how long before parents start showing up at law firms and talking to partners about their kid’s work assignments.”

When making fun of millennials, I find it important to separate the sins of the children from the gross meddling of their parents. Here, I don’t think Georgetown is trying to coddle students who are unwilling to grow up. Instead, it’s all about Mom and Dad, who are still living vicariously through their adult children.

Here’s how Dean of Admissions Andy Cornblatt explains coming up with the idea for a full parents’ weekend. He was talking to a GULC alum who had kids at the law school. And then his idea jeans gave him a wedgie:

“When I asked him about [his children], his eyes lit up, and as I listened to him talk, a light switch went on in my head,” said Cornblatt, himself the proud parent of Nathan (C’18) and Johannah (G’16). “Graduate schools have not traditionally included parents and other members of the family in their students’ educational experience; they just figure the students are older and the families don’t need to be included nearly as much. Hearing [the parent] talk, it occurred to me that this couldn’t be further from the truth.”

There are two things you should notice from that explanation:

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1. No freaking student asked Georgetown to create a weekend for their parents.
2. This idea comes from the dean of admissions.

While Georgetown hasn’t struggled to fill its seats the ways other schools have, it is still in competition with the rest of the T14 for the best students. We know that many (if not most) law students end up working towards a degree that bears no resemblance to anything they actually wanted to do with their lives when they were younger and had hope. And we know that parents disproportionally influence their children’s “choice” to go to law school. If Georgetown is making a welcoming environment for parents to visit D.C. and feel like their kids are doing great, and some other school is not, that’s a potential advantage for the school when it comes time to ensnaring the next crop of “families” to attend the law school.

Meanwhile, if you are the kind of parent who is appalled by this kind of professional school hand-holding, well, then you are also probably the kind of parent who is not going to tell your kid where to go to law school. So Georgetown has lost nothing.

And then there’s this:

Above all, the Georgetown Law community helped to reassure anxious parents that their students will not only make it through law school but will also find rewarding careers. Neil Dennis, director of career services and diversity; Amy Mattock, director of employer outreach; and Assistant Dean Barbara Moulton of the Office of Public Interest and Community Service spoke to parents on Saturday about their team’s hard work on students’ behalf.

“That was absolutely helpful,” said [one parent], “because you think, what is the future going to bring with respect to a career? We learned right away that most likely next summer, [students] would be involved in some employment or internships and that that process was going to begin this fall… as a parent that was just wonderful to hear, that they will be involved in working as soon as they can.

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Those are the teats that GULC is trying to suckle. All but the most uninformed and delusional of parents have heard that the job market is challenging for young lawyers. Parents, talk amongst themselves: you don’t think anybody is actually paying attention at a high school dance recital, do you? And when Parent “I have a subscription to the New York Times” says “I heard law schools are a really bad bet in this market,” Georgetown wants their parents to say, “WELL NOT AT GEORGETOWN! I was just up there for a parents’ weekend and they told me kids are getting jobs before they even graduate. Yeah. That’s how it works at a school like Georgetown, don’t ya know. After their first year, they will be involved with working as soon as they can.”

And… it’s brilliant. I mean, it’s sneaky and manipulative and totally the next step on the path to parents calling up Biglaw partners who were mean to their special snowflakes. But also brilliant. Alumni are the best ambassadors of law schools, but as more and more alumni say “don’t…. don’t go in there,” capturing the parents is the next best thing.

If you can get Mommies and Daddies to think that their kids should go to Georgetown at full price instead of, say, George Washington at half-off, then GULC is winning the helicopter war. And that’s a victory worth having.

All in the Family [Georgetown Law Magazine (p. 44)]