Paul Campos

Non-Sequiturs: 07.18.12

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* Dear ABA: could you please at least LOOK at what’s going on at Rutgers-Camden. We’ve already looked at their arguably misleading ads. Now Paul Campos has figured that the school may have been massively under-reporting the amount of debt people graduate with to the ABA (scroll down to Upate III). Seriously ABA, do one small part of your freaking job JUST ONCE. [Inside the Law School Scam]

* Here’s a great way to lower the cost of education: make books free. I mean, it’ll never, ever happen, but it’s a good idea. [CALI via Tax Prof Blog]

* Law students might need a bit of a refresher on supply and demand before they hit up fall recruiting. [Adam Smith Esq.]

* Legacy LeBoeuf retirees have also been screwed by the D&L fiasco. Boy, Dewey know how they feel. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Should we care about the “scholarship” of law professors at all? [Adjunct Law Prof Blog]

* Wild strippers are a national problem in New Zealand. [The Telegraph]

* Congratulations to the latest class of Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40! [National LGBT Bar Association]

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Should Law Schools Put More Money Into Career Services?

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If we want career service gurus, we're going to have to pay for them.

I think we’ve established that law schools, as currently constructed, are terrible at helping their students find jobs and preparing students to practice law. If you think otherwise, you likely are on the payroll of a law school and are skilled in the arts of self-delusion.

Is there anything law schools can do to make themselves actually useful to their students?

One suggestion is for law schools to put more money in career services. Most law schools lack skilled and robust career services offices, but you could argue that the dean of the career services office is vastly more important to students than their Con Law professor.

A law school is trying to dump money into their career services office and make career development part of the 1L curriculum. Sounds like a step in the right direction, right? Well, professor Paul Campos doesn’t think so….

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Non-Sequiturs: 06.08.12

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There's no legal angle to this picture, and this picture is not involved in any of the blurbs.

* How many cops does it take to kill a man? [Simple Justice]

* Professor Paul Campos has been having fun with the NALP numbers. Well, fun for him, and for me. Less fun for anybody unlucky enough to have been part of the class of 2011. [Inside the Law School Scam]

* And if you don’t like to read, here’s some video about how bad the job market is for the class of 2011. ARE YOU LISTENING, PROSPECTIVE LAW STUDENTS? CAN YOU TAKE IN AND PROCESS INFORMATION? [Bloomberg Law]

* How come my anonymous readers don’t drop $25 million on me? I’d name a whole wing of my new house after them. And give them a T-shirt. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* In the recession, we cling to what we have instead of striking out into the unknown. In related news: if you leave your law job, there’ll be a stampede of people happy to take your spot. [What About Clients?]

* I don’t even think you should be allowed to defend yourself pro se. [Underdog]

* Southwestern Law’s Dean Bryant Garth is stepping down. One of these days, somebody will let me run a law school. [Southwestern Law School]

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Rutgers Law Dean Offers Nonsensical Response To Transparency Criticism

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On Friday, we reported on an aggressive and arguably misleading sales pitch from the people at Rutgers Law – Camden. The pitch, aimed towards students who had taken the GMAT, made this claim (among others): “As a direct result of the quality of legal education at Rutgers, of those employed nine months after graduation, 90% were employed in the legal field and 90% were in full time positions.” The school was clearly trying to make the economic case for going to law school, something you don’t see as much of in this difficult economy — at least from schools willing to tell the full story of their employment outcomes.

We wondered whether Rutgers was being as forthright as it could with its potential students. Over at Inside the Law School Scam, Professor Paul Campos took a closer look at the Rutgers numbers, and not surprisingly he found them to be highly suspect. Law School Transparency also shed more light on how Rutgers cooked up these numbers, and they went so far as to call for the resignation of the school’s associate dean of enrollment, Camille Andrews, who sent out the recruitment letter.

If you thought Rutgers Law Dean Rayman Solomon was going to throw Dean Andrews under the bus for this adventure in advertising, you haven’t been paying attention to how the law school game is played. Dean Solomon has come out in defense of his school’s recruitment materials.

I’m not entirely sure about the meaning of what he said, but there were definitely words involved…

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Non-Sequiturs: 05.07.12

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* I bought the excellent Mayweather/Cotto fight this weekend. Floyd looked great for a guy who was too much of a coward to fight Manny Pacquiao. But the sweet science is dying. In its place, a bunch of grabbing and submission could be legalized in New York. [New York Daily News]

* Speaking of boxing, hey football, I bet 40 years ago nobody thought this would ever happen to boxing. [Overlawyered]

* Cooley Law subpoenas Professor Paul Campos. [Inside the Law School Scam]

* Accusing the president of “thuggery,” just another day on the campaign trail. [Election Law Blog]

* These kids are smiling because those diplomas were free, folks. [OC Register]

* Here is a visual representation of the Dewey & LeBoeuf partner departures (which have also been captured in tabular form by Am Law Daily). [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* I think if more lawyers drew inspiration from Jeanne d’Arc, more recent graduates would light themselves on fire. [Amicae Curiae via Blawg Review]

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New York Forces Pro Bono Requirements Upon Would-Be Lawyers Because No One Else Cares About Poor People

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... except when it's forced upon us.

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman of the New York Court of Appeals announced yesterday that a new bar admission hurdle would be foisted upon would-be lawyers in the state, in the form of a 50-hour pro bono requirement.

Apparently poor people in the Empire State have been having trouble securing legal services, so what better way to assist them than to force similarly situated people to come to their aid? Instead of relying upon existing attorneys to lend a helping hand to those in need, Judge Lippman has chosen to force the task upon those who have no choice but to obey.

Chief Judge Lippman had a good idea, but it’s a bit misplaced. Let’s discuss what the new pro bono requirement means for you, and delve into what others are saying about it….

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Lawyerly Lairs: NYU Law Buys Another $3 Million Faculty Condo

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845 West End Avenue

In the battle to stay high (or climb higher) in the all-powerful U.S. News law school rankings, law schools compete with each other to woo star faculty. And this makes sense. Because a school’s peer reputation score “appears to explain around 90% of the variation in overall USNWR score,” as noted by Professor Eric Talley over at TaxProf Blog, it pays for a law school to snag top talent.

How does a law school prevail in the battle for superstars? Well, despite their impressive academic pedigrees and their Big Ideas, law professors just like us: they love luxury real estate.

Check out the $3.6 million apartment, located in the magnificent prewar condominium at 845 West End Avenue, that NYU Law School just added to its collection of fabulous faculty housing….

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Elite Law Schools Are Suffering the Consequences From Their Lack of Credibility

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How has it come to this?

Most people and institutions jealously guard their credibility. It’s hard to get people to trust you, and nearly impossible to get people to believe you after you’ve abused their trust. Nearly everybody who throws their good name away lives to regret it.

I wonder if member institutions of the American Bar Association are starting to realize that throwing away their credibility for the sake of masking a few bad years of employment statistics is a bad idea. I wonder if they’re starting to get that the American Bar Association’s laissez-faire approach toward transparency is going to have consequences far beyond the yearly bloodsport of the U.S. News law school rankings.

As a couple of elite law schools are learning this week, right now their word and credibility carries significantly less weight than the New York Post’s….

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How Stanford Law School Could Cut Tuition and Save the World

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There goes my hero…

Law school students are becoming more and more vocal about the myriad unresolved problems with the law school industry. Things are getting so bad that yesterday, a Rutgers student (and former Navy SEAL) got into a shouting match with Governor Chris Christie about the Rutgers merger drama.

Something has got to break soon. Right?

If Above the Law’s 2011 Lawyer of the Year Paul Campos has anything to say about it, the answer is a definite “yes.” And he has a drastic idea for fixing what he would call the “law school scam.” It all starts at Stanford University, where he visited earlier this week to talk about his idea.

What did Professor Campos have to say? Does “30 percent unilateral tuition cut” mean anything to you?

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ATL Survey Update: Great Unmet Expectations

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... to take a survey.

Yesterday, David Lat took a detailed look at the National Law Journal’s newly released list of “go-to” law schools — the ones placing the highest percentage of their 2011 graduates in Biglaw. Of course congratulations are due to Penn and Northwestern and the other schools whose graduates are still landing associate positions. But the real news is how seriously discouraging the NLJ data is. We all know the legal job market is tough, yet Bruce MacEwen’s observation that 85% of law schools give students a worse than 10% chance of getting a job in Biglaw still manages to startle.

Our ongoing ATL School & Firm Insider Survey (take it here!), asks current law students, among other things, “What do you expect to do after you graduate?” A whopping 71% tell us that they expect to work for a firm. (This percentage was consistent across class years.) That this proportion is so high, and so at odds with the NLJ findings, can mean some combination of two things:

  • The ATL student readership skews heavily toward that minority of students who will actually snag Biglaw gigs.
  • Many (if not most) expectations of law firm employment will be dashed against the reality of a contracting job market. In other words, a majority of students think they are in the fortunate minority

After the jump, we’ll look at how wide the gap between student expectation and market reality is, even at the “go-to” schools:

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