New York Times

Ways and Means of Mass Distraction

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Thoreau admonished us that we cannot “kill time without injuring eternity.” But what did he know? That proto-hippie pond-fetishist could not have imagined today’s world, where our collective attention spans have shriveled to goldfish levels and so much actual productive white-collar labor can be, to an observer, indistinguishable from simply loitering in front of a computer screen. Unless someone is looking over your shoulder, nobody knows whether you’re on PACER or playing Angry Birds.

We asked you, the ATL readership, where you turn for distraction when you don’t feel like billing or studying. The results of our research poll, after the jump….

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Revenge Is Best Served… Quickly: ABA DENIES Accreditation To School That Talked To The New York Times

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The ABA stopped talking and started firing shots.

Well that was fast.

Over the weekend, the New York Times unleashed a feature article about the role of the American Bar Association in keeping the cost of legal education absurdly high. The school profiled in that article, which we talked about yesterday, was Duncan Law School, which was seeking provisional accreditation from the ABA.

The article, by legal academia bête noire David Segal, came out in print on Sunday. Everybody talked about it on Monday. And today, on Tuesday, the ABA denied Duncan its provisional accreditation.

Boom. Roasted.

That’ll teach these law schools to get chatty with the mainstream media about this little legal education cartel they have going here…

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Quote of the Day: Tuition Money Well Spent?

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[A] law school could literally burn a huge sum of money and, as long as the flames were meant to teach something to the students — the craziness of the U.S. News algorithm, perhaps? — the school would benefit in the rankings.

– New York Times journalist David Segal, responding to a reader’s question in relation to his series of articles about the economics of law schools. Segal’s latest article, For Law Schools, a Price to Play the A.B.A.’s Way (our coverage here), concluded the series.

(Additional excerpts from Segal’s responses, after the jump.)

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To Stop the ABA, Do We Need to Allow Everybody to Start a Law School?

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I’m really enjoying the newfound interest from the New York Times about the state of legal education. Times reporter David Segal seems genuinely interested in recording the growing tragedy of American law schools.

Concern from mainstream media is great, but the proposed solutions are a little bit scary. Last month, Segal Slate explored the possibility of paying people to not go to law school.

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, Segal is at it again. This time, he’s questioning the American Bar Association’s role in keeping the cost of legal education so high. Unfortunately, the solution seems to be letting everybody who wants to open a law school do so.

Is it worth pushing down the price of legal education by offering really crappy legal education?

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Morning Docket: 12.19.11

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* It’s about freakin’ time. Guess who’s jumped on board the ever popular “blame the ABA” bandwagon? None other than David Segal, the New York Times equivalent of the law school scam blogger. [New York Times]

* Newt says that as president, he’d ignore SCOTUS decisions. Raise your hand if you want to elect someone who doesn’t understand our government’s system of checks and balances. [Los Angeles Times]

* Remember that time you applied for the DOJ Honors Program? You were probably rejected because you were a damn, dirty, liberal hippie. [CNN]

* Facebook is threatening to sue Mark Zuckerberg. No, not one — he founded the company. The other one — no, not the lawyer. This guy: the “ultimate Facebook troll.” [Hollywood Reporter]

* “We are the 99 percent.” You know that our country is circling the drain when even Yale Law thinks that the Occupy Wall Street movement coined 2011′s quote of the year. [ABC News]

* North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has died. Say hello to his slightly taller successor. [Bloomberg]

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A Note to Our Readers About Comments

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Sometimes silence is golden.

The executive editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson — who once worked as a legal journalist, for Steve Brill at the American Lawyer — recently issued A Note to Our Readers About Comments, in which she explained various changes to the Times’s commenting system. We thought we’d follow in the Gray Lady’s footsteps and announce a tweak of our own to the Above the Law comments.

Comments and online anonymity are hot topics right now, both here and abroad (e.g., India). Writer Katie Roiphe just mused about the angry anonymous commenter. Privacy lawyer Christopher Wolf recently argued, in the New York Times, that websites should “consider requiring either the use of real names (or registration with the online service) in circumstances, such as the comments section for news articles, where the benefits of anonymous posting are outweighed by the need for greater online civility.” Many Times readers disagreed, defending the value and importance of anonymous speech online.

In light of these conflicting concerns — civility, privacy, free expression — let’s turn our attention to the ATL comments….

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Easiest Way to Get into the NYT Wedding Section? Be an ‘Elite’ Lawyer

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'Til billable hours requirements do we part.

Since getting engaged, I’ve been wondering whether we should even bother trying to get into the New York Times wedding section. I’m sure that almost every newly engaged couple has similar thoughts, especially the blushing bridezillas in training. After all, the NYT wedding section is the place to announce your upcoming nuptials. Being featured in those hallowed pages is viewed as the ultimate sign of marital prestige.

You literally cannot go wrong with a write-up in the NYT wedding section (unless, of course, you end up with a Sex and the City situation and it looks like you’re a woman with a Hitler-esque mustache). So is there an easy way to get into the esteemed wedding section?

As proven by our very own Legal Eagle Wedding Watch, lawyers seem to have been featured in abundance. But that’s just the first part of the equation, according to a new demographics study….

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Quote of the Day: Law Professors Rule (Literally)

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[T]he dislike [for legal academics] is a result of law professors being too much in the world. You see, law professors — and I should disclose here that I am one — very nearly run the world, or at least certain parts of the U.S. government. When you include Justice Anthony Kennedy, who taught nights, they make up the majority of the Supreme Court.

– Professor Noah Feldman, in an interesting and provocative Bloomberg opinion piece (via Overlawyered), responding in part to David Segal’s latest New York Times piece criticizing legal education.

(Additional excerpts and discussion, after the jump.)

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Pay to Go to Law School or Get Paid to Quit: You Won’t Be Learning Anything Either Way

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How screwed up is legal education these days? One mainstream publication recently published an article suggesting law students should be paid to not go to law school, while the paper of record noted that nobody learns how to be a lawyer in law school anyway.

That’s what it’s come to, folks. Can you imagine Slate, which is owned by the Washington Post, publishing an article suggesting that we should pay M.B.A. candidates to stop going to business school? Can you imagine the New York Times publishing a feature article about how medical students don’t learn anything in medical school?

Welcome to law school, the red-headed stepchild of American professional schools….

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Size Matters: I Ain’t A Lawyer, I Just Charge A Lot

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Last week, Clifford Winston, drew up some controversy when he suggested that we do away with law school and bar exams and let anyone practice law. According to Winston, these barriers to entry “simply . . . protect lawyers from competition with non-lawyers and firms that are not lawyer-owned — competition that could reduce legal costs and give the public greater access to legal assistance.”

Elie was not convinced. Carolyn Elefant “pick[ed] apart Winston’s assertions piece by piece in an effort to diminish his credibility.” Both Elie and Elefant took issue with Winston’s assertion that costs would go down if non-lawyers were able to practice. Indeed, Elefant cited an example that using Legal Zoom could cost up to three or four times what it would cost a lawyer to perform the same task.

So who is right?

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