Law Schools

Lawyer Disciplined For Stealing From Her Job Working Retail In Tragic Commentary On The Law School Con Game

This lawyer is going to get a lot of public shaming over this, but maybe it's time we shame her law school instead.

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The Florida Supreme Court has suspended attorney Jacqueline Kinsella until further notice for “stealing $760 while working as a Kohl’s employee.”

Note, she wasn’t working in the Kohl’s in-house counsel office. She was tending a cash register.

How is it that a law school graduate found herself working a retail sales job and desperate for money? That requires a dive into the tragic con game that is a “Rank Not Published” law school in America, a relentless enterprise taking advantage of earnest students’ lawyerly dreams for fun and profit.

Kinsella is a 2014 graduate of Barry University, a “Rank Not Published” school in Orlando. A few years ago, the school’s CFO was arrested on charges of blowing $50K in school funds on trips to Hooters, even though, frankly, spending funds on wings and ogling probably accomplished as much for the students as anything the school actually does. Barry’s non-discounted cost for a student entering in 2017 is $224,132. That’s a hefty sum, and for all that money, 2016 graduates enjoy a 30.4 percent employment and a 32.8 percent underemployment score. Can a Barry graduate succeed as a lawyer? Sure. Are the odds stacked ferociously against them? Also yes.

Vegas would struggle to find takers for a game that requires a quarter-million dollars (plus interest!) for a 30 percent chance at earning $50 grand/year on the left-hand side of the bimodal salary distribution. But these “Rank Not Published” law schools do it without fail every year. They’ll set their LSAT cutoffs to abysmally low targets and find a bunch of kids that the other schools passed on who are fired up about making it as a lawyer. A handful of them will… hundreds of them won’t. But they’ll all pay their tuition!

Kinsella, apparently, was one of the students who found herself on the wrong end of the Barry job curve. Despite graduating in 2014, she didn’t get admitted to the bar until February 2016, preventing her from plying her trade and, more importantly, robbing her of a lawyer’s payday for over a year while the bills from her three years at Barry started to pile up. If she had to pay for bar prep courses, that’s even more money going out the door on a dream that turned into a nightmare.

Somewhere along the line, she needed more than her retail job was paying:

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Two months and five days after Bar admission, she pocketed $140 after closing a cash register but before dropping the money bag in the cash office. Four days later, she stole $100, by using a key on a cash register, according to the arrest report. On May 26, she pilfered $520 from two different registers.

According to the referee’s account, Kinsella expressed “significant remorse” over her actions. If only her law school could muster the same remorse.

Lawyer suspended for stealing from her employer while working retail at Kohl’s [Miami Herald]

Earlier: Law School’s Ex-CFO Arrested After Spending $50K At Hooters And Other Inappropriate Expenses
Raising The Bar: Law School Takes Bold Stance — No LSAT Scores Below 142!

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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