How Will The 'Access To Education' Scandal Impact Access To Justice?

Kids who might have gone to elite undergrad institutions and would have had a chance at law school may be overlooked in the law school application process.

Do the revelations of the cheating by a variety of parents, coaches, and the ringmaster of this circus in their “successful” efforts to get underachieving children into USC (aka “University of Spoiled Children”) and elsewhere surprise anyone?

What a scandal and not the first for U$C in recent times. I won’t bore you with the details as this New York Times article stands ready to fill you in. The scandals run the gamut from athletics to health care to the business school, and those are just the ones I know about. Many of my friends who have degrees from USC are thoroughly disgusted and disheartened.

The cheating and bribery have perverted admissions and confirm the notions among many that that system, however you choose to define it, is rigged. Consider the collateral consequences that will follow parents and students for the rest of their lives, as well it should, not to mention the reputational damage to the various schools. Will these parents and students wear scarlet “A”s?

How could a Biglaw firm chair do this? Why on earth would he risk everything to do this? Whose ego was he stroking? His or his kid’s?

We all talk about “access to justice” or “A2J” as it is referred to by legal cognoscenti, but what’s the possible blowback to A2J from this access to education scandal, or “A2E” as I’m calling it?

Let’s assume that many of these students take up space that belonged to more deserving students, not just academically, although that’s a large part of it, but in other ways, such as contributing to a diverse campus composed of students from different backgrounds, identities, and economics. I don’t think that the “elite” will choose to spend their careers, whatever they may be and assuming that mommy and daddy don’t buy them a company to run into the ground, practicing “people law.” There are plenty of elite, high-priced lawyers out there, ready to do battle on behalf of big business, but not enough lawyers who provide A2J.

There is a shortage of those lawyers who not only have a commitment to justice as an abstract ideal, but who will choose to live out those words by working in the communities where they came from and want to return to. Kids, hopefully college bound, want the best education they can get and then use their educations in positive ways.

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Just as USC is an “elite” institution, we have “elite” law schools that take only the purported cream of the crop of those applying. Those institutions look down their collective noses at those schools that are lower-ranking and depending upon how much emphasis you place on those rankings, that could be any school below X, depending on how you define X — and this is not an algebra class, “solve for X.”

Similarly, Biglaw firms and the lawyers who populate them often disdain lawyers who practice people law. John Grisham nailed the differences between those practices in his novel The Litigators. (I thought it was hilarious, but then you have to have a sense of humor and lawyers don’t get high marks in that department.)

The vast majority of lawyers in this country did not graduate from elite law schools, any more than they necessarily graduated from elite undergraduate institutions. So, it’s not just that these cheaters took the places of students who deserved to be there on merit and not on parental largesse, it’s that the lack of “A2E” may also result in a lack of “A2J,” because kids who might have gone to elite undergrad institutions and maybe would have had a chance at going to law school may well be overlooked in the law school application process.

While it’s true that athletics or purported athletic participation and skill won’t open the door to law school, be it front, back, or side door, big donations to the law school of choice may well help. (I don’t think most attorneys are known for their athletic prowess.) How many incoming law students, especially from underserved communities, who may be the first ones to ever get beyond high school, have the financial resources to “grease the skids,” so to speak?   Are “donations” just a polite way of saying “bribes”? What’s the quid pro quo for those donations?

Is every law school applicant who has an undergrad degree from one of these schools at which the skids are greased going to be looked at askance, even though he or she received that degree righteously, i.e., without any interference (or whatever you want to call it) from obsessive and obsessed parents, who wanted only the best for their kids and were willing to pay for it?  And those parents will be paying more, not just in the inevitable expected pleas and issues with the IRS about the legitimacy of those charitable deductions, but also in attorney’s fees.

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What a shambles this scandal has made of an admissions process that people used to think was fair, at least to some extent. Just another example of how there are different systems for different people: in justice, in finance (consider the woes of the “unbanked” for whom the banks too big to fail don’t want to service). The list goes on.

At least, for now, law schools seem to be safe from the kind of blatant cheating that has gripped undergraduate schools and enraged the public over yet another example of injustice and inequality for many. The only competitive sport at law schools is a form of gymnastics, that is, climbing over each other for class rankings, law review, Order of the Coif, and other activities. It is nasty and cutthroat, but the game isn’t rigged in the same ways… yet.


old lady lawyer elderly woman grandmother grandma laptop computerJill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.