Student Loans

Morning Docket: 06.27.12

By

* Pay up or shut up: Dewey former partners need to worry about getting our kneecaps busted by the banks that loaned us money to fulfill our capital contributions? [Am Law Daily (sub. req.)]

* Senate leaders reached a tentative deal to keep student-loan interest rates at 3.4%. Too bad this only applies to undergrads — law students are still left holding the bag. [Wall Street Journal]

* Your mom probably told you not to be a tattletale, but evidently that kind of behavior really pays off in court. Adam Smith, formerly of Galleon, was sentenced to only two years’ probation for his “very substantial” aid in Raj Rajaratnam’s insider trading trial. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Forty-six CEOs on the 2012 Fortune 500 list went to law school, but only four hold degrees from schools outside the U.S. News Top 100, and just one went to an RNP school. Yikes. [U.S. News & World Report]

* Was this Nova Law professor “mentally deranged enough to engage in a campus shooting rampage”? That’s apparently what members of the administration thought when they fired him. [National Law Journal]

* Anna Gristina, the accused “Millionaire Madam,” was released last night on $250K bond after spending four months behind bars. Looks like it’s back to the world’s oldest profession for this soccer mom. [Reuters]

9 Comments

TTTrading Places: Law Schools Acquire New Territory

By

Law school deans should bet a dollar on whether or not change the name of a law school makes more people come.

And the band plays on. No matter what happens in the economy. No matter what kind of evidence we get that the market for legal jobs is totally in the tank. No matter what, law schools continue to expand and continue to find new ways to convince more people to spend a lot of money getting an education that might not lead to employment.

Of course, I’m talking about something new and annoying Cooley did, because you basically can’t have a conversation about what is wrong with law schools anymore without referencing some kind of fresh horror enacted by the people who run the Thomas M. Cooley Law School.

But this impulse towards MOAR LAW STUDENTS obviously isn’t just a Cooley problem. Even though some schools that are already in the law game have thoughtfully looked at reducing class sizes, there are always going to be schools and universities eager to provide prospective law students with educations they can waste money on.

Time for some stories about law school acquisitions, a plague that has now made it all the way down to Texas…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “TTTrading Places: Law Schools Acquire New Territory”

22 Comments

3L With Law School Debt and Underwater Mortgage Wants A New Car. Stupid Is As Stupid Does.

By

This kid should buy the Jaguar from Mad Men and call it a day.

You know, at some point you’ve got to stop trying to help people save themselves and instead just sit back and watch the tremendous destruction.

The Washington Post runs an advice column for people trying to save money. This weekend a distressed wife of a soon-to-be 3L had her question answered. It appears that her husband is determined to pursue a destructive and financially ruinous path, and there’s nothing she can do to make him think reasonably.

Well step aside, 3L wife; like the pull yourself together scene in Airplane, I think we can organize a line of people on the internet willing to slap some sense into this joker…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “3L With Law School Debt and Underwater Mortgage Wants A New Car. Stupid Is As Stupid Does.”

120 Comments

Let’s Watch Law Students Argue About Who Makes Their School Look Worse

By

If Charles Darwin went to Charleston Law...

Every law school is its own island. Every law school is basically an isolated community where vicious infighting (and often inbreeding) allows natural selection to work its magic and produce variations of same genus, but different species.

Like Darwin on the Beagle, sometimes I like to hop onto the HMS Walrus and survey the different kinds of law students evolving all around the country.

Today, my travels bring me to Charleston, South Carolina, and the newly accredited Charleston School of Law. At many law schools, the identity and the culture of the place is set based on years of tradition and a selective admissions process. But at a school like Charleston, we get to see identity development in practice.

And boy is it funny….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Let’s Watch Law Students Argue About Who Makes Their School Look Worse”

66 Comments

Law School Success Stories: High Risk, High Reward

By

Last month, in the inaugural post in our series of Law School Success Stories, we focused on the theme of “the value of thrift.” We outlined a “low risk” approach to law school, profiling happy law school graduates who secured their law degrees without going into excessive debt — under $50K upon graduation, which is the recommendation of Professor Brian Tamanaha, author of a new book (affiliate link) about reforming legal education.

Today we’re going to cover the flip side: the “high risk, high reward” approach to legal education. In some ways this is a dangerous theme. The promise of Biglaw bucks is the siren song that leads many to crash on the rocks of joblessness and crippling debt (as Will Meyerhofer discussed earlier today).

Some law schools clearly exaggerate the ability of a legal education to increase a person’s career prospects and earning potential. But for some subset of law students, however small, law school does turn out to be a golden ticket. Their numbers might be inflated, but they do exist. Law school has allowed these individuals to increase their incomes dramatically. And — shocker! — many of these J.D. holders actually enjoy their lucrative new jobs.

Read about a young woman who went from being a secretary to having a secretary — along with a six-figure paycheck. Meet a young man with a rather unmarketable undergraduate degree who now, thanks to law school, makes bank in New York City.

Here’s another way of describing today’s success stories: “Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you….”

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Law School Success Stories: High Risk, High Reward”

71 Comments

Who Is the Great Satan of the Legal Profession?

By

Ed. note: This post is by Will Meyerhofer, a former Sullivan & Cromwell attorney turned psychotherapist. He holds degrees from Harvard, NYU Law, and The Hunter College School of Social Work, and he blogs at The People’s Therapist. His new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist, is available on Amazon, as is his previous book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy (affiliate links).

I participated recently in a panel discussion at a conference, speaking with other lawyer/blogger types in front of an audience consisting largely of people from law firms and law schools. After we finished, I did the decent thing and sat and listened to the panel that followed mine. I happened to choose an empty seat next to a woman who introduced herself to me later as a dean at a law school, in charge of career placement, or whatever the euphemism is for trying to find students non-existent jobs. The law school was a small one — yes, one of those dreaded “third tier” places.

She confronted me afterwards. “I guess I’m the bad guy, huh?”

I was startled by her candor, but I knew what she meant. This was one of those people from a third tier law school — the greedy cynical fraudsters signing kids up for worthless degrees, then leaving them high and dry, unemployed and deeply in debt.

Despite her participation in crimes against humanity, I had to admit she didn’t seem so bad, in person.

Then I snapped back to my senses — and went on the attack, assuming my sacred role as The People’s burning spear of vengeance….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Who Is the Great Satan of the Legal Profession?”

27 Comments

Quote of the Day: The Broken Economics of Legal Education

By

Brian Tamanaha

The average debt of law graduates tops $100,000, and most new lawyers do not earn salaries sufficient to make the monthly payments on this debt. More than one-third of law graduates in recent years have failed to obtain lawyer jobs. Thousands of new law graduates will enter a government-sponsored debt relief program, and many will never fully pay off their law school debt.

– Washington University Law professor Brian Tamanaha, author of Failing Law Schools (affiliate link), painting a rosy picture of what life is like for recent law school graduates.

(What can be done to remedy this situation? Additional insights from Professor Tamanaha, after the jump.)

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Quote of the Day: The Broken Economics of Legal Education”

22 Comments

Non-Sequiturs: 05.29.12

By

* It must stink to be out $150 trillion dollars thanks to MF Global. Not as much as it stinks being bats**t crazy, but still. [Dealbreaker]

* Here’s another way of rating the effectiveness of law professors that has nothing to do with whether or not they are good at being law professors. [Tax Prof Blog]

* Sports agent who seems to be a professional defendant. [Sports Money / Forbes]

* Debt, but no degree, sounds tough. But it’s not always worse than more debt with a useless degree. [Washington Post]

* Romney embraces a birther. [ABC News]

* A Memorial Day Blawg Review. [The Wrongful Convictions Blog via Blawg Review]

* This is a beautiful day to live in Manhattan. [Hayden Planetarium]

6 Comments

Law School Success Stories: The Virtue of Thrift

By

Last month, we solicited law school success stories from you, our readers. We’re often quite critical of law schools around these parts. So, to even out the scales a bit, we’re going to be running a series of happy stories, focused on graduates who are glad they went to law school.

We’ve tried to organize the success stories under a few broad themes, to lend some structure to the discussion. Some of the themes exist in tension with each other, and not all themes will apply to all readers. By the time the series is done, however, we hope that the stories will collectively shed some light on the question of whether one should go to law school.

Let’s launch into our first collection of law school success stories. They could be grouped under the theme of “go cheap, or go home”….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Law School Success Stories: The Virtue of Thrift”

59 Comments

Dreams Do Come True: You Can Pay Off Your Student Debts In Cash

By

There’s a Canadian out there living the dream. He graduated from law school at the University of Toronto in 2009, during the heat of the recession.

But now, just three years later, he’s completely debt-free. A little while ago, he made his last debt payment of over $100,000, in cash.

Of course, he didn’t make that kind of money being a lawyer. There aren’t a lot of people who graduated in 2009 from law school who were able to pay off their debts through their work in law.

But I still consider Alex Kenjeev my hero. Slow rolls his debts, makes a bunch on money, then dumps bags of cash on the bank to leave him alone.

It could still happen….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Dreams Do Come True: You Can Pay Off Your Student Debts In Cash”

49 Comments
Page 12 of 371...8910111213141516...37