We have reported on the proposed merger of Southern New England School of Law with the University of Massachusetts, which would bring the first public law school to the state. At the time, I wrote:

I mean no offense by this, but isn’t the Southern New England School of Law not a very good law school? There’s a reason the school isn’t accredited, right? I just don’t see how raising the profile of bad law schools is the right way to go.

Apparently, Southern New England School of Law took offense. The Boston Globe reports:

“My students and faculty have been maligned,” the school’s dean, Robert Ward, said during a recent tour of campus, a 75,000-square-foot three-story building next to an outlet mall in North Dartmouth.

Ward acknowledged his school has a way to go to meet national accreditation standards, but said it is far from the crumbling, financially destitute failure critics portray it to be.

He noted a retired appeals court judge — a Harvard Law graduate, no less — among his 13-member faculty.

Putting aside the question of whether or not Southern New England is a good school, can we get back to the question of whether Massachusetts needs a public law school?

The influx of law students into the profession — and the deflationary pressure they bring to legal salaries — just can’t be stopped. There are too many prospective law students. And they aren’t listening to reason.

We have barred the gates but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes, drums… drums in the deep. We cannot get out … they are coming.

The University of Iowa College of Law — that’s right, Iowa — is receiving a record number of applications. The administration sent out this, almost taunting, email:

Greetings from The University of Iowa College of Law:

We have nearly completed a busy Fall travel schedule. Also, it has been a very successful travel season, as reflected in our total application numbers to date: Applications to The University of Iowa College of Law have increased 62% versus this time last year, and the quality and diversity of those applications has increased significantly, as well. It is still early in the admissions season, so we will see if these positive signs hold up over the long term. These increases do, however, reinforce the strengths of The University of Iowa College of Law:

I don’t even know how to make sense of a 62% increase in applications. But I’ll try after the jump.

We’ve talked a lot about law schools that are raising tuition. It borders on unconscionable for schools to pump up tuition at a time of deflationary legal salaries and a difficult job market.

So I was a little surprised when I received this email from a University of Miami School of Law student:

The Dean of UM just sent out an email announcing policy changes that are going to save students’ tuition money (up to a couple thousand $$$ per semester). This while other law school in America is trying to milk every last cent out of students.

A law school that costs less? To the bat mobile!

The Government Accountability Office has released a new report on the rising cost of legal education. Who is to blame? Not the ABA. Not university presidents using their law schools as cash cows.

According to the GAO, the U.S. News law school rankings put law school deans in a “resource intensive” competition to rise up the U.S. News list. The two key slides from the 44-page GAO report (PDF) are below:

The GAO makes a provocative argument. Let’s discuss it after the jump.

Thomas M. Cooley Law School — ranked #12 among ABA accredited schools, according to Thomas M. Cooley Law School — is looking to raise tuition. The school has been expanding, but apparently enrollment is down. So, predictably, the school decided to raise rates on its students.

An email informing Cooley students of the change was sent over the summer by Cooley’s president and dean, Don LeDuc. The last paragraph reads as follows:

Of course, we wish that we did not have to increase tuition, but the reality is that the cost of operation escalates and enrollment varies. The May 2009 class came in below the usual size, and transfers remain too high. Our operating revenue is tuition-based, so tuition must be set based on projected enrollment numbers. This year, the cost of financing our facilities at Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Auburn Hills increased due to the dislocation in the financial markets (the Ann Arbor facility is leased, so it does not contribute to the increased financing cost). It is in everyone’s interest to recruit new first-year students and to retain them in the second and third year.

How will students react to this?

Back in the day, young lawyers would complain that they were “selling their souls” for $160K a year. But now we are in a recession and the price of a fresh soul has come down considerably. From Craigslist:

1 Soul of Healthy Young Man - $100000 (Hamden, CT)

For sale:
The gently used soul of a healthy, Roman Catholic, young twenties, quinnipiac law student.

So, let me give you some background on the product and the reasons for selling:

My student loans are piling up and I’ve realized I really don’t give a shit what type of law I practice, I’m really only in this thing to further myself economically. Problem is, my student loans are outrageous and by the time I pay them off I’ll be spending the rest of my money on Cialis and colonoscopies. I don’t want that, I don’t need that. So let’s make a fucking deal.

In exchange for the payment of my student loans you will get my soul. This is a la motherfucking carte. No organs included. No skin, no vas differens, and certainly no homunculus.

Dude, you go to Quinnipiac, can’t you get a job as a pollster?

Just the other day, we told you about a law firm that was looking for free labor from an attorney who had already graduated from law school and passed the bar. Here, this law student wants somebody to purchase his soul for $100,000 bucks. When inflated expectation meets free market capitalism the fields are soaked with the tears of the martyrs.

Read more of the ad after the jump.

To paraphrase this video, inspired by an Avenue Q song and submitted to Above the Law’s first-ever Law Revue Contest, “What can you do with a JD from Cardozo?”

Um…. David Letterman? From Bitten & Bound:

David Letterman was the victim of a $2 million extortion plot and we have now discovered that according to New York public records, Stephanie Birkitt, 34, a former intern on The Late Show, lived with the accused extortionist Robert Joe Halderman, a CBS 48 Hours producer, and may have unwittingly fed him the information through the pages of her diary, photos and personal correspondence….

According to TMZ, Birkitt is one of the women who engaged in an affair with her boss, but ended it in 2003, prior to the birth of Letterman’s son….

Birkitt began working as a page for CBS New, 48 Hours, and The Late Show while still in college [at Wake Forest] in 1996. She spent a short time as an associate producer on segments for correspondent Erin Moriarty but soon decided that she wasn’t a news hound. That was when Letterman hired her as a personal assistant. She was initially brought on to handle his charities and his Indy car racing team, but her duties expanded over time.

Apparently so. Anyway, here’s the legal connection:

Birkett went on to the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City beginning in 2005 and passed the Connecticut bar exam in February 2009.

UPDATE: As noted in the comments, Birkitt also passed the New York bar exam in February. Congrats on passing two state bars, Steph!

FURTHER UPDATE: Actually, Birkitt’s relationship with Letterman may have lasted much longer. See here.

Now, before the elitists among you start ranking on Cardozo Law, there’s something you should know.

UPDATE / CORRECTION: After we noticed comments 34 and 41, we reached out to Loyola Law School for clarification. A Loyola spokesperson confirmed that the Chicago Tribune made an error: Loyola has renamed its main building for Philip Corboy, but NOT the school itself. For a correct account of what has taken place, see the law school’s press release.

We regret our replication of the Chicago Tribune’s error. Thanks to our commenters for bringing the mistake to our attention.

FURTHER UPDATE: The Tribune has corrected its story, but without noting the fact that it was corrected. Most publications, such as the New York Times and Slate, will note substantial corrections after they are made. Here at Above the Law, we will also explicitly note corrections that go to matters of substance (as opposed to, say, typographical errors).

We mentioned this already in Morning Docket, but the decision by Loyola - Chicago bears further discussion. We know that the overall economy has made things difficult on law schools. Tuition keeps going up, despite nearly record numbers of new applicants. So one should applaud a law school for getting a major boost to its endowment.

Loyola - Chicago received a huge gift, so massive that the school has decided to change its name its main building name in honor of the donor. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Loyola University Chicago’s School of Law will be renamed the Philip H. Corboy Law Center after the noted alumnus and prominent personal injury attorney who donated the largest single gift in the law school’s history, it will be announce Monday.

Some might argue that a decrease in the confusing proliferation of law schools named after St. Ignatius Loyola — we already have Loyola of Chicago, Loyola of Los Angeles, and Loyola of New Orleans — is a good thing. But was going with Philip Corboy the right move? Wasn’t Henry Walpole available?

More details after the jump.

Now that the New York Times has covered it, it’s official: the recession has hit the legal profession.

Here’s more evidence. Yesterday afternoon, while walking along 53rd Street in Manhattan (between Broadway and Eighth), we came across The Man in a Van. Aaron Heideman, aka The Man in a Van, is traveling around the country, collecting stories of how people have been affected by the recession. Contributors write down their narratives on a giant poster (which, when unfurled, spans 50 yards). Selected stories are written on the van itself.

Here is one person’s story, from a former law clerk — someone who would usually have no trouble landing a job:

Two additional pictures — a larger shot of the banner, plus one of the van — after the jump.

Do you want to purchase a discount legal education, but you don’t know where to look? A new list from the National Jurist will point you in the right direction. Tax Prof Blog reproduces the list of which law schools give you the most bang for your buck. Here are the top 15:

How do you come up with a list that ranks N. Carolina Central the best at anything? Check out the methodology after the jump.

In a world where there are already too many law degrees flooding the market and allowing firms to handle their associates like fungible assets, the new law school at UC Irvine continues to rake in positive press. We’ve previously noted that the new law school is already one of the most selective in the country. Today, the L.A. Times positively gushes about the new public law school:

In a challenging fundraising climate, the first new public law school in California in more than a generation begins classes Monday at UC Irvine with 61 top-flight students, a highly regarded faculty and the goal of becoming a model for an innovative legal education emphasizing hands-on experience and public service.

It appears prestige isn’t just conferred by a magazine.

Brian Leiter, a University of Chicago law professor and author of an influential blog on legal education, said that, based on the quality of its faculty and the entrance exam scores of its first class, UCI should be ranked among the nation’s top 20 law schools, status that typically takes a new school decades to achieve.

“It’s quite unusual. But this is an unusual situation,” Leiter said. “This is the University of California, after all, which is a big selling point. They’ve recruited the right kind of people from the right kind of places. And the fact that someone of Erwin [Chemerinsky]’s stature is the dean obviously helps.”

The school touts a commitment to public service that you don’t often hear from law schools. It also touts free tuition, which sounds like the Gods are having an orgasm to law students hoping to keep their debts under control.

After the jump we ask if UCI Law can keep it up. And an update on potential future tuition decisions.

Many of you are probably asking yourselves that very question. Especially if you are deeply in debt and/or without legal employment.

We decided to go to law school because, well, we didn’t have anything better to do. Law school has been described, quite accurately, as “the great American default option.”

If you’re in the same boat, or if you went to law school for some other less-than-inspiring reason (e.g., a desire for a six-figure salary), you may have a hard time relating to the clip below. It’s a promo for the “My Inspiration” video contest sponsored by Access Group, the non-profit student loan company, asking contestants to make videos explaining what inspired them to go to law school:

As was the case with last year’s video contest, the prize is a $10,000 scholarship to law school for the maker of the best video. In addition, five $1,500 honorable mention scholarships will be awarded.

Alas, if you were hoping to enter the contest yourself, sorry; the ten finalists have been chosen. Feel free to check out the finalists here, then cast your vote here. Enjoy.

Earlier: ‘What are your worries as a law student?’

Just this morning, we distinguished between a recent graduate who is suing her alma mater, and the general need for somebody to rein in law school tuition.

Today, the National Law Journal provides us with additional evidence that law school administrators are totally detached from the economic realities facing law school graduates:

Double-digit tuition increases loom for students at some of the country’s top public law schools.

School administrators say that the unusually large tuition hikes for the coming academic year are largely spurred by cuts in public funding — with endowment losses, initiatives to improve their schools and pressure to keep up with competing institutions also playing a part.

Are these law school administrators suffering from a dissociative psychotic breakdown? Jobs are being lost, salaries are being cut — yet law schools are raising tuition by double digits? This sounds like the kind of crap Louis XVI used to pull.

After the jump, we go searching for Robespierre.

You all know me here. I’m the guy that has relentlessly pushed for the government to do something about the crushing level of student indebtedness in this country. I have argued that students should be more easily able to discharge their debts through bankruptcy. I’ve implored law schools and universities in general to stop bilking their own students and saddling them with nearly insurmountable debt obligations.

But in the immortal words of Switch from The Matrix: “Not like this.”

This morning, the New York Post reported on a situation that even I cannot support:

Trina Thompson gave it the old college try, but couldn’t find work. Now she thinks her sheepskin wasn’t worth her time, and is suing her alma mater for her money back.

The Monroe College grad wants the $70,000 she spent on tuition because she hasn’t found gainful employment since earning her bachelor’s degree in April, according to a suit filed in Bronx Supreme Court on July 24.

She graduated in April, hasn’t been able to find a job in a scant five months during the worst recession since the Great Depression, and now she wants a refund on her education?

No. This is not what we have been fighting for. This is a horrible bastardization of the entire student loan bailout philosophy.

After the jump, I feel like Marx (or Engels) rolling around in a grave while Lenin turns communism into a totalitarian proposition.

Maybe the student loan bailout movement just received its first martyr. While people in the industry have long known that student loans cannot easily be discharged through bankruptcy, maybe a high profile case will clue the general public in on this needlessly unfair burden for those who seek post-graduate degrees.

Mark Jesperson had $350,000 in student loan debt and filed for bankruptcy. Lower courts ruled in favor of Jesperson, but then his case reached the 8th Circuit. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the 45-year-old Grand Marais man cannot escape more than $350,000 of student debt he piled up over more than a decade.

Jesperson had hoped to discharge the debt in bankruptcy and won the first couple rounds in court. But last week a three-judge panel reversed the lower courts’ decision and said he must pay the money back.

Evidently, little league baseball players have more common sense than our federal courts. Those kids understand the concept of a “mercy rule.”

But regular readers of Above the Law know that this decision is not at all unusual. In our society, it is easier to discharge a gaggle of zombies than it is to get out from under student loans.

While the dollar amount involved is unusual, experts say the latest ruling is not. It’s extremely difficult to get rid of student loan debt, even through bankruptcy.

Jesperson’s story is particularly sad. More details after the jump.

The New York Times has a fascinating story about Robert Bowman. Bowman took the bar exam four times and racked up $400,000 in student debt on his quest towards becoming an attorney, only to be denied admittance to the bar based on character and fitness. He sounds like a cross between Don Quixote and Jimmy Berluti.

He put himself through community college, worked and borrowed heavily to help pay for college, graduate school and even law school. He took the New York bar examination not once, not twice, not three times, but four, passing it last year. Finally, he seemed to be on his way.

In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval.

But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer.

The thing is, the appellate panel didn’t really explain why Bowman’s debt load made him unfit to be a lawyer:

“Applicant has not made any substantial payments on the loans,” the judges wrote in a terse decision and an unusual rejection of the committee’s recommendation. “Applicant has not presently established the character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law.”

Mr. Bowman, 47, appears to have crossed some unspoken line with his $400,000 in student debt and penalties, accumulated over many years.

Is $400,000 simply too much debt for a lawyer to carry? More details after the jump.

A new federal program promises student loan forgiveness for people who qualify after they’ve dutifully paid their debts for ten years. The program will also cap monthly loan payments depending on income. The act, passed in 2007, is set to become effective on July 1st. The National Law Journal reports the awesome news:

Some members of the class of 2009 will have less to complain about, however. A new federal program intended to help borrowers manage their student debt goes into effect on July 1. The legislation — called the College Cost Reduction & Access Act — will cap monthly loan payments according to income and forgive student debt balances after designated periods of time. For attorneys, the main beneficiaries will be those who go on to have long-term public interest careers. But the program will also make loan payments more affordable for all attorneys with high debt loads and relatively low incomes.

“There are a lot of things that are making it tough for new graduates, with the tight job market and the deferrals,” said Heather Jarvis, a senior program manager at Equal Justice Works, an organization that encourages attorneys to undertake public interest law careers. “But there has never been a better time to graduate, as far as student loans.”

Essentially this is the best piece of news for the class of 2009 since they got into law school in the first place. The government will forgive outstanding loans after ten years of payments for people who work in public interest and other qualifying organizations.

Obviously this program is geared towards students who take public interest jobs. Biglaw lawyers are still on their own with their debts:

This option wouldn’t make sense for graduates who take jobs at large firms paying upwards of $100,000, Jarvis said, but it might be right for the sizable segment of law school graduates who don’t earn that kind of money.

“The reality is that most law graduates don’t take those jobs and earn those salaries,” she said. “A lot of people make $60,000 or $70,000 a year. At these salaries, they would qualify for the income-based repayment plan. Debt loads are getting so high that it’s typical for someone to graduate from law school with $100,000 or more in debt. If you were going to stretch out paying your debt anyway, [income-based repayment] is a good option to consider.”

Right now, it appears that many students who can qualify for the program don’t even know it exists. More details after the jump.

The state of Minnesota is providing more evidence that law schools are completely out of whack with the current market realities. The state is doing what it can to keep undergraduate tuition low, at the expense of law students who will be drowning in so much debt they’ll need to grow gills.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports the most recent tuition proposal coming out of Minnesota:

Undergraduates catch a break in the next University of Minnesota budget that would keep their tuition increases low despite a cut in state funding.

Graduate and professional students won’t have the same luck.

The students who make up about 40 percent of the student body are the hidden victims of a bad-news budget that the Board of Regents is expected to vote on Wednesday.

By “graduate and professional students” the paper really means to say law students. The proposed tuition hike is larger for future (unemployed) lawyers than other graduate students:

While in-state undergraduate students will face 3.1 percent tuition hikes, most grad students could see a 7.5 percent increase in their bills this year. First-year medical students’ in-state rate may rise 5.2 percent, to $32,328. Newbie Minnesotan law students could pay 15.3 percent more than their counterparts did last year.

Are Minnesota state officials even nominally aware of what is going on in the legal market in their own state? Could somebody point the Board of Regents to www.abovethelaw.com after the jump?

If you have ever been on financial aid, you know that many law schools require you to work over the summer and make financial contributions towards your debts based on your summer employment. Harvard Law School has such a requirement. Financial aid awards have been traditionally determined based on a ten-week, minimum summer work requirement.

That’s a fine policy during normal economic times, but these are anything but normal economic times. Many students — even Ivy-encrusted Harvard Law students — have seen firms reduce the length of their summer programs to less than ten weeks.

Earlier this month, it looked like HLS students in this situation would not only be losing income because their firms scaled back their summer programs, but they would also owe Harvard more money. A few students received this email from the HLS financial aid office earlier this month:

In processing your application for aid, we note that you have indicated you will be working less than 10 weeks this summer. The official policy of the law school is to impute a contribution in all circumstances (except medical) when students work less than 10 weeks in the summer. Work in a paid law-related position is not required; the only requirement is that you work in some capacity. You can volunteer or work in a non law-related job if circumstances require you do to so. The best way to ensure that you will not be assessed an imputed contribution for part of the summer is to secure a volunteer position or a second paid job in order to meet the 10 week work requirement.

We understand that for students whose employers have reduced their summer programs for economic reasons, it might be difficult to find additional employment or volunteer opportunities. However, at this point we are not able to promise that our policy will be more flexible. If you are not able to meet the 10-week requirement after making an effort to explore other options, you can submit an appeal at the end of the summer to have the imputed portion of your student contribution reduced or eliminated. We will ask you to explain the circumstances and the steps you took to try to meet the 10-week work requirement. In making appeals decisions, the Financial Aid Committee will consider how widespread summer employment reductions were, the timing of your first notification that your summer employment was reduced, and your demonstration of a sustained effort to meet the 10 week work requirement.

Is this policy fair? HLS officials change course, after the jump.

On Monday, we warned you that student loan forgiveness programs were under attack. Today, the University of North Carolina School of Law informed students that the school could not afford to make the promised loan repayments to students in low income jobs. Here’s the email from UNC Law Dean Jack Boger:

We are writing to share news about a regrettable delay in our implementation of the new LRAP program at UNC School of Law. Unfortunately, because of the grave economic downturn that has hit the North Carolina state budget, we will not be able to go forward this spring with Loan Repayment Assistance Program funding. As you may know, various statewide freezes and other severe restrictions have been imposed this spring on all state funds, including the UNC law school account that was designated for LRAP purposes. Moreover, the state has made clear that it intends to ‘recapture’ those funds to meet its larger budgetary needs sometime before June 30, the end of this fiscal year. This will leave us without the financial means to make LRAP awards.

While we share your disappointment with this turn of events, we remain committed to the LRAP program - and will keep your application on file. We hope to be able to relaunch this program sometime during the 2009-10 fiscal year.

Thank you for your patience, and for your help in the development of this program. We also thank you for your continued support of Carolina Law.

Sincerely yours,

Jack Boger, Dean, UNC School of Law

UNC Law seems to be developing a pattern of raising people’s hopes, and then dashing them.

A student affected by this decision shares an interesting viewpoint after the jump.