Louisville School of Law

If You Want To Own A Home, Don’t Borrow Money To Go To Law School

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How do I know that these people are not lawyers?

Now that my wife and I have a baby, people keep telling us that we shouldn’t just find a bigger rental, we should buy something and put down roots. My wife, politely, laughs and says, “We’re thinking about it.” I angrily roll my eyes and say, “Why don’t you think about going and f**king yourself.”

You see, we are both law school graduates who debt-financed our educations and now live in New York. Property ownership is not something that will happen for us… unless we just want to give up and move to an oil-soaked subdivision in Arkansas.

But I am not alone. A law professor has crunched some quick numbers and determined that at least half of the class of 2011 wouldn’t be able to own a home….

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Open Thread: 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings (53 – 68)

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Welcome back to our series of open threads on the latest batch of U.S. News law school rankings. Last time, readers weighed in on the law schools that made up the bottom third of the traditional first tier. Alas, thanks to the way employment statistics are now weighed in the U.S. News methodology, some law schools were knocked off of their prestigious pedestals, and law students are calling for their deans’ heads now that they’ve descended downwards into previously uncharted territory: the traditional second tier.

Today, we’ll take a look at those law schools, as well as their new rankings rivals — the schools that have traditionally been known to dwell in this part of the U.S. News list. You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. Your next stop, the Second Tier Zone….

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If ATL Decided the BCS

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The end is in sight for our long national nightmare. Starting in 2014, the NCAA will institute a four-team playoff to crown the national college football champion. The 14-year reign of the BCS will be looked back upon as a time of national unity: everyone thought the system was horrible. Even President Obama decried the system on the campaign trail . The BCS has been described as anything from a “horrible Jenga tower of bad arguments” to a “broken, failed, even corrupt enterprise.” Oh wait, that second quote is from a blurb for Brian Tamanaha’s recent book Failing Law Schools. But of course there is an important parallel between the BCS and the legal education industry: they have few defenders outside their own walls. The soon-to-be obsolete BCS system is only considered successful by those with a financial stake in the status quo. As for our current model of legal education, efforts to defend its value from the inside have not been well received, to put it mildly. But there’s an important difference between the BCS and legal academia. The BCS has shown a willingness to adapt and transform itself in the face of widespread and well-founded criticism.

Anyway, as even casual football fans know, a college team’s prospects are highly correlated with how the students at its affiliated law school rate their experiences. (Ed. note: this is untrue). So, after the jump, let’s have a look at how the law schools for the BCS bowl schools match up.

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Quote of the Day: If Law Students Took Data Into Account, We’d Be Living in a Different World

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Jim Chen

Law students should take merit stipulations into account when they decide whether to accept an offer of admission paired with a conditional grant of financial aid. By all accounts, they do not. Law schools should transparently disclose the likely effect of merit stipulations on their financial aid awards. By all accounts, law schools do no such thing.

– Jim Chen, former dean at the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law, opining on the merit scholarship racket in a new working paper.

(If you recall, Chen’s school recently over-promised financial aid to incoming students, which will result in a $2.4 million shortfall over three years.)

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Law School Over-Promises Financial Aid; Will Have $2.4 Million Shortfall Over Three Years

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It finally looks like the out-of-control cost of legal education came back to bite a law school in the behind.

A scandal is erupting at the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. The law school reportedly made more financial aid commitments than the school had a budget for. Brandeis blew their financial aid budget by more than 100%. That is, they promised more than double the money the school had budgeted.

Louisville Law’s assistant dean of admissions, Brandon Hamilton, has resigned. It appears that Hamilton may have been offering more money to students who had not yet decided on an Louisville in order to entice them to matriculate.

Maybe if Louisville had done more to contain tuition costs it wouldn’t have felt pressured to throw so much financial aid money at students to make their education cost effective?

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Morning Docket: 07.18.12

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* Bankruptcy blues: “No one is getting a free pass.” Howrey going to start clawing back all of that money from our former partners and their new firms? Dewey even want to get started with this failed firm’s D&L defectors? [Am Law Daily (sub. req.)]

* Way to show that you’ve got some Seoul: Ropes & Gray, Sheppard Mullin, and Clifford Chance were the first Biglaw firms to receive approval from the Korean Ministry of Justice to open the first foreign firm offices in South Korea. [Legal Week]

* This is supposed to represent an improvement? Pretty disappointing. The percentage of women holding state court judgeships increased by a whopping 0.7 percent over last year’s numbers. [National Law Journal]

* Throw your birth control pills in the air like confetti, because a judge tossed a lawsuit filed by seven states that tried to block the Affordable Care Act’s mandatory contraception coverage provision. [Lincoln Journal Star]

* “[S]omewhere along the way the guy forgot to tell the seller that he was working with the buyer.” Duane Morris was sued for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty for more than $192M. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Please don’t Google me, bitches. Brandon Hamilton, Louisville Law’s ex-assistant dean for admissions, resigned Monday after overpromising $2.4M in scholarship money to incoming law students. [Courier-Journal]

* A New Hampshire college is offering free tuition to students in their junior year if they combine their senior year with their first year at the Massachusetts School of Law. The catch? Mass Law is unaccredited. [NHPR]

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Lawyer of the Month: April Reader Poll

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April showers are supposed bring May flowers, but in the law world, April just showered us with a bunch of ridiculous lawyers acting like complete a-holes. One can only hope that May’s crop of nominees for the Lawyer of the Month contest brings us some more worthy competitors.

Drunken hotties? We’ve got ‘em. Nasty note writers? We’ve got those, too.

Let’s check out our nominees for April’s Lawyer of the Month competition….

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Musical Chairs: Dean Chen To Step Down at Louisville Law

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A few years ago, at a conference hosted by Penn APALSA, I had the pleasure of meeting Dean Jim Chen of the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law. He gave a luncheon keynote address that was deeply thoughtful and inspiring. Attendees of the conference were quite impressed.

Students and staff at U of L have also praised Dean Chen. And he does have achievements to crow about (besides, of course, his glittering résumé and impressive record of scholarship). In the most recent U.S. News law school rankings, the Brandeis School of Law climbed 11 spots (from 100 to 89).

When law schools fall in the rankings, their deans often follow. But U of L fared well in the latest rankings. So why is Dean Chen departing?

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Lawyer of the Day: Ex-Clerk Accused in Bizarre Break-In

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Earlier today, we mentioned the University of Louisville’s nice jump in this year’s U.S. News law school rankings. ATL readers are probably more familiar with the school, however, as the alma mater of Courtney King. King got in trouble for acts she allegedly committed while intoxicated, which gave rise to the diva-tastic phrase, “Google me, b*tch.”

This week, another Louisville law grad is in trouble for allegedly drinking too much and acting just an eensy-weensy bit belligerent. By that we mean she stands accused of trying to break into a judge’s house.

Keep reading to learn more about our hot-blooded lawyer of the day — and to see her mug shot. She’s attractive…

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Google Me, B***h: The Real Deal on Courtney King’s Arrest

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The blogosphere has been buzzing since we first wrote about Ice Miller attorney Courtney King’s alleged criminal activity. In case you missed our coverage, King was arrested after allegedly uttering, to the police, the words first made famous by rapper Eight Set: “Google me” (sans the “bitch”).

King, whom we recognized with Lawyer of the Day honors, was charged with alcohol intoxication, assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and terroristic threatening. She allegedly stated the following to the police, immediately prior to her arrest:

“You are going to… die. I’m a lawyer. You can Google me. You are dead. I work at a law firm in Indianapolis.”

People have quibbled over King’s attractiveness, but more importantly, they’ve speculated as to whether there was, in fact, any actual violence on King’s part leading up to her arrest. Was King overcharged? Was race a factor in her arrest? Is she on “possible probation” with the firm, or was she fired? All of this, and more, after the jump….

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