Student Debts

Non-Sequiturs: 02.09.11

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* Hey Elie, check this out: “Money Tips for Young Lawyers.” The top tip: “Get on top of student loans.” [Alpha Consumer / U.S. News & World Report]

* What matters more, experience or grades? [Lawyerist]

* Who should use a legal recruiter — and who shouldn’t? Recruiter Dan Binstock explains. [The Careerist]

* Sports law professor Gabriel Feldman considers some of the legal issues related to a possible NFL lockout. [Huffington Post]

Rep. Christopher Lee (R-NY)

* Ashby Jones asks: Is it time for stricter regulation of law schools and the information they disclose (or don’t disclose)? In other words, “Should Congress gin up the Law Student Truth in Education Act of 2011?” [WSJ Law Blog]

* If you’re interested in the intersection of law and neuroscience, here’s a new blog to check out (by the fabulous Professor Nita Farahany, of Vanderbilt Law). [Law and Biosciences Daily Digest]

* Professor Charles Ogletree is offering a cool new course at HLS: “Race and Justice — The Wire.” [WBUR]

* A married Republican congressman, Christopher Lee, has a new nickname: “The Craigslist Congressman.” His comment on the controversy: “I have to work this out with my wife.” [Gawker]

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Woman Sues Oxford Institute of Legal Practice For Ruining Her Career

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I guess in some ways the legal economy across the pond is just as challenging as it is in America. And it seems that some British students are just as averse to personal responsibility as American students.  A graduate of Oxford Law the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice is suing the school for £100,000, claiming that the school “ruined” her legal career.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post may have given the erroneous impression that the plaintiff is suing the University of Oxford, the venerable and world-renowned institution that most people are referring to when they refer to “Oxford.” Although the plaintiff attended the University of Oxford as an undergraduate, where she studied law, she is actually suing the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice. According to a tipster who’s a graduate of the University of Oxford, the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice — which happens to be located in Oxford, UK — is not currently affiliated with the University of Oxford.

How did OXILP ruin her career? She claims that they didn’t prepare her to take crucial legal exams. Yeah, let me rephrase: she failed her exams and is now blaming the school.

You know, if Ben Kenobi was still alive, I think he’d scream, “You have done that yourself.” But let’s hear the sad tale of Maria Abramova…

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Law Graduates: Welcome to Your ‘Barely Legal’ Future

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I know lots of guys fantasize about boinking “barely legal” teenage girls. Not me, I like women: fully formed, adult women. There’s just something unseemly about older men salivating over girls who could have been in high school a year ago. Call me crazy, but it’s just more interesting as an adult to be intimate with other adults.

Similarly, I like my lawyers to actually practice law. There’s something unseemly about watching market forces turn law school graduates into glorified paralegals and secretaries. Call me a prude, but there’s just something gross about seeing young, nubile attorneys going around begging for document review positions. These people spent three years of their lives and six figures of their (or someone else’s) money to get law degrees; they should have something to show for their efforts.

But even if I don’t like to look, I can’t deny that this is happening. We are all living in a time that will be studied by future generations: a time when attorney career paths bifurcated, between traditional partnership-track associates and what I’ll call “barely legal” career paths….

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Canada Has A Better System for Prescription Meds and Law Schools?

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It seems like the number of applications to American law schools is finally going down. Maybe that number would go down even further if prospective American law students knew more about the magical land up north.

Yes, we’re talking about Canada. America’s homely cousin might not be as hot, but she’s got a great personality and is nice and funny. Having already figured out how to provide health care to all of its citizens, Canada seems to have also come up with a system of legal education that doesn’t hobble its young lawyers before they even start practice.

Canada’s key to success seems to be actually regulating its law schools and assuring a basic level of high quality across the board. There are only 20 law schools in Canada, which means that (gasp) not everybody who wants to go can go. Yet despite demand, Canadian law schools also cost less than their American counterparts.

It appears that much like their health care system, not every Canadian gets exactly what they want precisely when they want it. But their magical ability to behave like adults when faced with delayed gratification somehow makes things better for everybody. Chant “U.S.A., U.S.A.,” all the way to debtor’s prison if you like, but clearly the Canadians are doing something right — and maybe we could learn from them here in the States…

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Quote of the Day: Don’t Worry Her Pretty Little Head About It

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It makes sense for anyone contemplating law school to make sure he or she has a passion for the profession. Your friend would have to consciously be avoiding stories about unemployed law school graduates if she knows nothing about this. But perhaps, since you say she is a worrier, she doesn’t want to dwell on what the world will look like three or more years from now when she graduates. She wants to be a lawyer, so there’s no reason for you to fill her with your doubts.

— Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence, answering a Slate reader’s question about whether she should warn her friend and roommate about the perils of going to law school.

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A Notable Correction to the New York Times Article on Law School

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It isn’t easy to wring a correction out of the New York Times. The Gray Lady is notoriously stingy when it comes to confessing error. [FN1]

But David Segal’s very interesting and widely read article about the perils of going to law school — which still sits at the top of the NYT’s list of most-emailed articles, several days after it first came online — now bears a notable correction…

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Character & Fitness Fail for Graduate With ‘No Plan’ To Pay Off His Debts

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Well, how much debt do you have?

Wow. Guy goes to law school, guy racks up a huge amount of debt, guy has no idea how he’ll pay off his debts. Sound familiar? Okay, here’s the twist: the guy failed the “character and fitness” component of the Ohio bar because he has no plan to pay off his loans.

What the hell kind of legal education system are we running where we charge people more than they can afford to get a legal education, and then prevent them from being lawyers because they can’t pay off their debts?

Because it’s not like Hassan Jonathan Griffin was in a particularly unique situation when he went before the Ohio bar. A year and a half ago, we wrote about a man who was dinged on his character and fitness review because he was $400,000 in debt. That’s an extraordinary case. Hassan Jonathan Griffin owes around $170,000. He has a part-time job as a public defender. He used to be a stockbroker. He’s got as much a chance of figuring out a way to pay off his loans as most people from the Lost Generation.

If Griffin can’t pass C&F, Ohio might as well say that half of the recent graduates in the state don’t have the “character and fitness” to be a lawyer…

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The ABA Started ‘Warning’ People About Going to Law School Years Ago

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I have no idea why this is blowing up today, but it looks like the mainstream media just figured that maybe going to law school isn’t the most awesome idea (especially in this economy).

On New Year’s Eve, John Carney — our former colleague, from his days at Dealbreaker — noted on CNBC’s NetNet that the ABA issued a paper entitled The Value Proposition of Going to Law School (Word document). NetNet called the report an official warning from the ABA about the perils of going to law school. I’m always happy to see that particular report get a little bit more coverage. We linked to Carney’s post in Morning Docket on Monday, when we got back from break.

But then it seems that Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway noticed Carney’s report, and he did a story on it. And then Megan McArdle of The Atlantic noticed the Outside the Beltway report, and she did a story on it, today. And in the meantime the ABA paper has been linked and retweeted a bunch of times.

And that’s all well and good, except for the fact that the damn thing came out years ago and was widely discussed in the legal blogosphere back in 2009. So, umm, while it’s great that everybody is interested in this party, there hasn’t actually been any new news about the matter over the last few days….

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When The Kids Come Home This Christmas, Talk About Their Debt

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I like it when the mainstream media drops by to take a look at the student debt crisis. I’d like to think that, unlike the housing bubble, this impending crisis can be avoided with sensible government regulation and individual actors making smart decisions about their own financial futures.

The government regulation is, strangely, the easy part — Congress will care that younger Americans are being crushed under their own debt load, or it won’t. This seems to me like a non-partisan problem. So if our elected officials get a clue (a pretty big “if”), then perhaps something positive will happen.

Getting individual actors to behave in their own economic self-interest is the hard part. Trust me, I talk to students thinking about going to law school almost every day. These kids seem to be allergic to facts and figures. But maybe with enough media spotlight, families will actually start thinking about how their kids are going to pay off their debts, and behaving rationally.

There was a big article on MSNBC.com yesterday showing just how far we have to go, as a country, to get the student loan crisis under control…

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Kudos to Maryland Law for Protecting Its Students from Tuition Increases

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Next month I’ll be appearing on a panel at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. The subject of the panel: how to get good press for your law school.

One obvious answer: do good things for your students. Just like the University of Maryland School of Law.

Our coverage of UMB hasn’t always been kind. See, e.g., discussion of former Dean Karen Rothenberg’s controversial pay packages (here and here).

This time, though, Maryland Law is doing the right thing. In a time of strained state budgets, it has succeeded in holding the line on tuition increases (which, as we’ve discussed, are running rampant throughout the law schools). UMB law students won’t see their tuition go up next year, academic year 2011-12, even though students in other schools at the university will.

How did Maryland manage this feat? Let’s take a look — which might prove instructive for other law schools….

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