Law School Described in Six Words

By: Timothy P. Flynn

Recently, a WSJ Law Blog post described law school in six words. The post was inspired by a law professor at Marquette University Law School who, in turn, was inspired by the master of lean prose: Ernest Hemingway.

After all, legal prose should be concise and to the point. Simple declarative sentences should be the rule in legal papers.

Hemingway is said to have once won a bet by writing a story in just six words.  His contribution, scribbled on a bar napkin, was:

• For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Here is what the WSJ's blogger came up with to describe various facets of law school:

• For sale: law degree, no promises.
• Three years later, they weren't ready.
• You'll get hired, so they claimed.
• "But I'm tenured", the professor replied.
• The former dean pleaded not guilty.

Here is our contribution:

• Legal profession: not easy to enter. 
• A divorce lawyer? Are you sure?
• Top tier law school: good salary.
• Tier Three law school: huge debt.
• Cooley Law School; marketing in action.

To the law students and legal professionals out there among our readers, post your law school "stories" to our comments.

www.clarkstonlegal.com
info@clarkstonlegal.com

Read more »

Posted in: Cooley Law School,divorce lawyer,Ernest Hemingway,law school,Wall Street Journal

Consumers of Legal Services Force Change in Law School Curriculum

Last Sunday's NYT had yet another above the fold, law school-related headline: What They Don't Teach Law Students: Lawyering.  In a sustained economic downturn, corporations (and individuals) that have reduced their legal budgets want lawyers with practical knowledge; not theoretical brilliance.

The academic template for law schools has been around, with very little change, since Harvard Law School branded the so-called "case method" in the late 19th Century.  This traditional legal pedagogy was memorialized in the 1973 movie, The Paper Chase.

The Socratic case method calls for students to read and break down cases that illustrate a particular, albeit ancient or esoteric, legal principle.  A law professor calls on students who must answer hard questions about the cases they have briefed.  The law students are forced to reason and think on their feet, like a lawyer in a courtroom.

The Socratic case method does not teach the student, however, how to handle contemporary problems faced by real-life clients in today's unforgiving marketplace.  Today, the cost-conscious consumer makes every effort to avoid the courtroom.

In our era of sustained economic downturn, the traditional law school model is under attack from two sides: there are very few legal jobs waiting for the legions of debt-burdened graduating law students; and clients generally do not want to see first or second year lawyers' time on their monthly invoices.

In response, many law schools have attempted practical innovations, introducing a "legal writing across the curriculum" component, and developing various legal clinics where students represent actual clients.  The effort has been to produce market-tested graduates.

Former Vanderbilt Law School Dean Edward Rubin has isolated the following areas where corporate clients are demanding better training from the academy:

• A better understanding of modern litigation which now includes an e-discovery component, diligent fact gathering, and a settlement process designed to avoid court; 
• Deeper knowledge of transactional law, including how to properly draft, evaluate and challenge a contract; 
• How to perform basic corporate due diligence in the modern government regulatory context; 
• Stronger legal writing skills (age-old complaint); and 
• Getting a clue about the economics of a law practice.

Locally, both the Wayne State University Law School, and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law (this blogger's alma mater) have robust legal writing programs and have been leaders in developing urban clinics which provide students with practical experience serving real clients.

Like any customer, law clients want excellent service for a reasonable fee.  Hiring a law firm that implements cutting edge, cost-sensitive technique is more important than ever in reducing a corporation's or an individual's legal bills.

www.clarkstonlegal.com

info@clarkstonlegal.com

Read more »

Posted in: e-discovery,Harvard Law School,law school,law student,lawyer,New York Times,Paper Chase,University of Detroit Mercy,Wayne State University

Cooley Law School Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Internet Foes

What is it about Cooley Law School's reputation that makes the folks over there so hyper-sensitive about how that veritable lawyer factory is portrayed?  Cooley just cannot seem to avoid repeatedly shooting itself in the foot on the Internet.

Yesterday, Cooley Law School President Don Leduc announced defamation lawsuits against a New York City law firm and several John Doe bloggers.  The lawsuits are splashed all over the law school's website.

The complaint against the bloggers (apparently a disparate group of highly dissatisfied former students) alleges the unknown defendants published false statements that Cooley law school representatives were committing fraud and other criminal acts in order to induce prospective students to attend the law school; that the business purpose of the school is to create, then transfer "securities" out of the robust stream of student loans coming into the school; and that the law school is under investigation by an undercover government task force for Title IV violations.

The complaint against the law firm alleges that Kurzon Strauss, a small New York City law firm, published false information relative to the law school's post-graduation employment rate and the school's student loan default rate in an apparent effort to attract litigants for a planned class action law suit against Cooley and other law schools.  This complaint sets out a series of business torts including defamation, interference with the law school's business relations, breach of contract, and "false light".

There is no doubt Cooley is taking this litigation seriously, hiring Michigan's premire "biglaw" firm: Miller Canfield.  The complaints were filed in the Ingham County Circuit Court on the basis Cooley's business injuries occurred in Lansing, MI, where the school is located.

Cooley apparently operates under the ancient Hollywood adage, "there is no such thing as bad publicity."  This blog wryly noted when Cooley purchased the rights to name a minor league baseball park (the former Oldsmobile Stadium; now known as Cooley Law School Stadium) and when the school's website shamelessly touted itself as the #2 law school in the country; second only to Harvard Law School.

These marketing gaffs come straight from the top of the law school's administration.  They do not advance the legitimate goals of Michigan's fifth law school, nor do they serve the interests of the legions of Cooley law graduates that have passed bar exams across the nation at historically higher than average rates.

Stay tuned for interesting developments on this one.  After Miller Canfield has earned about a half million in fees to conduct plenty of discovery, one of the sides will be filing dispositive motions sometime in 2013.

http://www.clarkstonlegal.com/

info@clarkstonlegal.com

Read more »

Posted in: Cooley Law School,defamation,Don Leduc,Havard Law School,Ingham County,Ingham County Circuit Court,Kurzon Strauss,law school,lawyer,tort

Reasonable Fees a Must in Tight Legal Services Market

Consumer focus groups often characterize attorneys as overpriced. Combine that conclusion with a lawyer's frequent arrogance, and the overall experience of purchasing legal services can be disappointing.

A recent study cited in The Economist noted that so called “Big Law” [America’s 250 largest private law firms] shed 8% of its work force over the past two years. Many top-tier law school graduates cannot find work in their chosen field.

Local general practitioners have also seen the effects of a tight market for legal services amidst a glut of service providers. Fortunately for them, appearing before the local magistrate or county trial judge cannot be outsourced to India like an e-discovery document review.

Nevertheless, globalization, digitization, and cloud-based data sourcing are driving fees for all legal services downward. Information is coming to the people at a bit-torrent pace. The client is forcing the attorney to re-think how service is measured and purchased.

Although professional pundits have been forecasting the death of the billable hour for the past two decades, it appears to finally be happening. Value-based alternative fee arrangements such as flat fees, performance contingencies, and multiple transaction discounts, are commonplace among competitive firms.

Survival in such an industry depends on a client-focused approach. Adding value to the client’s case, always important, is now imperative.

No one wants to overspend on a lawyer.  Therefore, prior to hiring an attorney, do some research on the Internet; check the reviews; check the electronic profile.  Your digital due diligence will increase the likelihood that your dollars will be well spent.

http://www.clarkstonlegal.com/
 
info@clarkstonlegal.com

Read more »

Posted in: attorney,Big Law,law school,lawyer,legal services,The Economist

In the Future, Everyone Will Be a Lawyer for Fifteen Minutes

It had to finally happen.  This blog has posted on the problems facing post-Great Recession law graduates: gigantic non-dischargeable student loans; a glut of newly minted lawyers; and few law-related job prospects.

According to the Law School Admissions Council, over the past year, law school admissions have dropped by over 11% to their lowest levels in a decade; perhaps due to the factors listed above.

The profession will no doubt rebound.  But not before more pain is inflicted.  Some in the industry predict that law school applications will continue to fall off over the next two years as the U.S. economy tries to mount a sustained recovery.  And any newly minted lawyer can tell you how difficult it has been to become engaged in the industry.

In the meantime, if you or a family member is absolutely determined to enter the profession, one advantage is to get an early start.  Along these lines, the Michigan Supreme Court Learning Center is again offering law-related programs for middle school and high school students this summer.  The program features a moot court exercise, discussions from jurists, lawyers and other legal professionals, and other law-related activities.

If you have a student interested in the law that would benefit from this program, contact Rachel Drenovsky:

drenovskyr@courts.mi.gov or (517) 373-5027.  

Here is the link to more information about the program from the Michigan Supreme Court Learning Center.

Read more »

Posted in: Great Recession,law school,Law School Admissions Council,lawyer,Michigan Supreme Court Learning Center

Cooley Law School Ranks (Itself) 2nd in Nation, Behind Harvard

Good News!  Cooley Law School's latest law school ranking has just been published on its web site.  In a single year, they have improved from 12th to second best in the nation; only Harvard Law School remains ranked higher than Cooley according to the their own rankings.

Now, you've just got to stand back and take note of such bold and relentless devotion to self-promotion.  Simply refusing to allow reality to get in the way of its vision of excellence, Cooley actually announced its ever-higher ranking in a press-release on its web site.

Despite a firm national consensus that the law school dwels in the basement of the "4th Tier", Cooley believes it deserves top-flight status largely based on their collossal law library; one of the largest in the nation.  Nevermind that in our increasingly digitized world, actual bricks, mortar, and book volumes are rendered less-significant by the minute; think Borders.

This blog took note when Cooley drew serious national criticism by installing its good name on a minor league baseball park in Lansing; the former Oldsmobile Stadium.  That post received more comments than any other in this blog's two-year history.

A steady theme in the law-blogoshpere concerns the lack of employment prospects in the legal field after a six-figure student loan debt is incurred.  Along these lines, this blog questions the propriety of an educational institution that rakes-in premium tuition dollars on the promise of future employment, despite the absolute saturation and professional grid-lock among the already-minted lawyers in our service-based economy.

With its satelite campus system, and a jaw-dropping legion of graduates, Cooley is part of the "lawyers-gone-wild" problem in our nation.  This latest self-adulatory ranking is simply designed to entice ever-more eager but unsuspecting students into parting with a lot of dough for their shot at the American Dream; lawyer-style. 

In the opinion of this blogger, however, Cooley's self-rank is so disingenuous, it boarders on fraud.  Perhaps its time for the ABA to review this business model.  On the other hand, maybe Harvard Business School should do one of its famous case-studies on Cooley's undisputed financial success.

Post Script:  If you want to see how a federal judge views Cooley's BS self-ranking, take a look at Judge Quists' opinion, here.

http://www.clarkstonlegal.com/

Read more »

Posted in: ABA,American Bar Association,Cooley Law School,Cooley Law School Stadium,Lansing,law school

ABA Proposes to Drop LSAT Requirement for Law School Applicants

The dreaded LSAT scantron.

From time-to-time this law blog has addressed the effects that the down economy has had on the legal profession. In doing so, we’ve alerted our readers to the collateral effects now becoming manifest for recent graduates of the nation’s 250+ law schools. We’ve often asked the question: do we really need more lawyers?

The latest development in this rough chapter of the profession is the current proposal of the American Bar Association to drop the requirement that students entering law school take the LSAT.

Doesn’t this sound like a good thing? Many critics have long-asserted that the only thing this test measures is one’s aptitude for taking a standardized test. Well, not so fast.

The consensus among the industry professionals is that all the top-tier law schools will continue requiring that applicants sit for the exam. It should be noted that as many as 10 law schools already have been granted waivers to admit students without LSAT scores.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the chairman of the ABA’s committee on the entrance exam has told the National Law Journal that a significant faction within the committee has concluded that the rule that law school applicants, “submit to a valid and reliable admission test” should be repealed. The committee’s concern, in part, relates to the ABA’s proper role in the law school admission process and its indirect endorsement of the Law School Admission Counsel; the well-funded organization that administers the LSAT.

The proposal to drop the LSAT requirement will be the subject of public debate at the ABA committee’s next meeting on April 2 in Chicago.

Last weekend, we posted on the problems associated with the glut of lawyers, taking our lead from a front-page story in the NYT Business Section that has since received much exposure. The ABA proposal has attracted more unwanted attention to the professional formation of attorneys.

One of the knocks against lawyer-making is that the process is designed to enrich the law school and impoverish the law student. Students willingly submit to the impoverishment process in exchange for a coveted professional credential: the Juris Doctor.

Local connection: No law school exemplifies this process more than our own Cooley Law School, receiving yet more spectacular negative publicity on this subject in the tongue-in-cheeky blog Above the Law whose recent post on this subject asks, “does the ABA really want every lower-ranked law school to turn into Thomas Cooley?”

While acknowledging that most of the top-schools will continue using the admission test, ATL suggests that Cooley will drop the LSAT like a bad habit, opening the door even further for those, er, less-qualified legal aspirants that can afford to pay heavy-duty tuition bills for their shot at the American Dream; lawyer style.

While our service-economy is flexible and somewhat forgiving, your law school student loan obligation is not. Where the rubber meets the road on this problem is that attorney positions have become occasional in a crowded profession.

http://www.clarkstonlegal.com/

info@clarkstonlegal.com

Read more »

Posted in: ABA,Cooley Law School,Great Recession,law school,lawyer

Is Law School Worth the Tuition Investment?

Graphic by Peter & Maria Hoey

Does Michigan’s economy really need six law schools pumping over a thousand newly minted graduates into the service sector every year?  

Unlike many job seekers, most new lawyers are heavily debt-burdened; some carrying well over $100,000 in student loans.  This can lead to desperation.

  

The economy is still smarting in several key sectors here in Michigan.  Both the auto and real estate sectors appear to be clawing their way back, but the jobless rate remains stubbornly high.  Most experts are saying we are in for another half-decade of “recovery”.

In down-times, higher education, as an industry, does remarkably well.  People take a hard look at their employment prospects and many decide to improve their skills by obtaining additional credentials.

Law school is something that nearly half the population considers at one time or another.  In this tough economy, however, have law schools turned this recurring American Dream into a debt-nightmare?


The question is on Congress' collective mind; they ordered up a report on this very topic from the GAO.

An entire generation of newly minted lawyers, facing student loans the size of a modest first home, are in the same tight spot as those who over-purchased real estate during the boom years.  Only for these new lawyers, there is no foreclosure option.  

And the prospects are, well, scary.  Established small and medium sized firms will lease office space, but they are not going to pay salaries.  The larger firms are downsizing their attorney-rosters.  A Northwestern Law study estimates that the large firm sector has lost more than 15,000 attorney and staff positions since 2008.

Corporate legal departments are slashing legal expenses; anything that can be outsourced goes to India where there is a glut of cheap lawyers, eager to review documents for about $20 per hour.

Despite this grim outlook, law schools are reporting up to 93% of their graduates are, “known to be employed nine-months after graduation.”  This statistic is fostered by the annual law school rankings published by the U.S. News & World Report. 

  

Employment as a barista at Starbucks, however, is different than working in the legal profession.  To improve their stats, some law schools have been known to temporarily hire a battalion of their recent grads for $20 an hour to work in the placement office.  The U.S. News statistic does not take these distortions into account.

This grim theme was the focus of recent “over-the-top” marketing techniques employed by Lansing’s Cooley Law School.  The correlation between a paucity of jobs and a downright glut of attorneys is well documented in the blogosphere.

It’s not all bad though.  Students with a high motivation and grade point can persist with good jobs in their chosen field, even after they take off their rose-colored glasses.

In our free society, with its commerce, temptations and throw-away marriages, there will always be a strong demand for legal services.



Update:  Shortly after this post, inspired by the front page article in the Sunday NYT's Business Section, this offering appeared in the WSJ's Law Blog.


Another Update:  As another sick indicator for law students and lawyers alike, here is a report from the ABA Journal about the editor-in-chief of the Chicago-Kent Law Review describing how he cannot find a job despite his best efforts.  Presumably, this dude is at the top of his class.  Like Michigan, however, Illinois has half a dozen law schools, all churning-out juris doctors each year, all with little hope of landing a paying lawyer-gig.  Go figure.

www.clarkstonlegal.com

info@clarkstonlegal.com

Read more »

Posted in: attorney,Chicago-Kent Law Review,Cooley Law School,law school,lawyer,U.S. News and World Report

What Happens if Michigan Goes Belly-Up?

This is a post from the State Bar of Michigan's official blog.  The post is the original content of University of Indiana School of Law Professor Gerard Magliocca.

Not that this would ever happen in Michigan, but Prof. Magliocca guest blogs at Balkinization on the constitutional implications of a state going into default, in "Too Big To Fail" States".  He says we better get ready, especially for a default by a big state:

The prospect that a state like California might default or need a bailout raises two interesting constitutional questions. The first is whether Congress can attach conditions to a bailout that would require a state to undertake substantial reforms of its constitution. I think the answer is yes. Under South Dakota v. Dole, Congress has broad authority to place strings on the receipt of federal money so long as there is some relationship or germaneness between the money and the terms. After all, the state is always free not to take the funds.

 

The much harder question is what happens if a state threatens to default unless it gets a bailout. In the case of a small state, this is not much of a threat. A default there would not cause any systemic problems. If California or another large state defaults, however, that's a different story. These states may be "too big to fail." What's worse, they know this. It is clear that Congress cannot just order a state not to default--that would run afoul of New York v. United States and the Tenth Amendment. Thus, if California comes to Congress for a bailout, the state is the one with the leverage. ("Give us a bailout on generous terms or else.") In effect, this would create the possibility of a "reverse unfunded mandate"--the federal government picking up the tab for a profligate state.

 

What can be done to address this issue? One possibility, I suppose, is that Congress could declare that a state in default is not "a republican form of government" under the Guarantee Clause and then order them not to default. That's a pretty heavy lift though, especially since states that defaulted in the past were never considered "not republican." The other thought is that Congress could threaten to withhold other federal spending from a renegade state. Would this be constitutional? I'm not sure. There's a difference between saying to a state, "Here's a gift with some conditions. Take it or leave it" and saying "Here's a gift. Take it or else we are going to kick you in the teeth." Nevertheless, that might be the only way to make a default so costly for the state that it would have to accept a bailout under stringent terms.

 

One reason we got into trouble in 2008 is that there were no default rules (or analysis) in place when "too big to fail" financial institutions started to fail. We'd better not make the same error when it comes to state governments.

Read more »

Posted in: law school,Professor Gerard Magliocca,State Bar of Michigan,strategic default