No. They're not cogent. They're shit.Tanicius wrote:Perfect use of anon.Anonymous User wrote:anyone care to actually engage the substance of his responses? they seem pretty cogent
There IS an oversupply of lawyers. The BLS and NALP say so. His response consists entirely of briefly describing what he hopes the legal market should be, or what he thinks it should be, not what it is. He might as well say "evolution doesn't happen because the world is complex and God should do it." His argument is on par with that.
He says that law professors are not overpaid. He proves this by quoting a law professors' starting salary at Case Western. He does not mention teaching load. Nor does he get to any useful point: can law schools cut cost? To that, he says "we have to keep the lights on." That is the shittiest response ever, in fact. Critics of law schools build better straw men than that.
He says that job statistics underreport the number of students actually getting jobs because the statistics only go 9 months after graduation. That's a great argument, Dean. Please, do tell us more. "I haven't looked at the stats a year out." The only correct response to that is "go fuck yourself."
Wanna come out of annon yet?
There is just no objective way that anyone, even you, annon/Dean Mitchell, can say Dean Mitchell's responses a) cast doubt on the by now conventionally assumed proposition that law schools need to 1) drastically lower class sizes, 2) increase teaching loads, 3) decrease hiring of faculty and staff, and 4) lower tuition OR b) claim his responses provide much support for any other relevant proposition. His responses were NOT cogent.
And I would strongly urge any professor or Dean reading these forums not to publicly agree with Dean Mitchell, because when the economy recovers but the legal market stays structurally weak against unchanged supply, you will have embarrassed yourself, because by that time, your fellow faculty, to put it nicely, will have taken their heads of our their asses and forgot they agreed with you way back when, and you'll be left holding the bag.
Remember that scene in The Adventures of Ron Burgundy when Ron, the local San Diego news anchor who mindlessly reads anything put on his teleprompter, ends a newscast saying "go fuck yourself San Diego," and then, after the cameras stop rolling, goes on to say "hey guys, nice work, another great broadcast in the books," and is then flummoxed by everyone's silent shock? Well, Dean Mitchel is Ron Burgundy. Bloomberg Law is running a headline that he is denying that there is an oversupply of lawyers. This is in fact a disastrous interview for the legal academy, and Dean Mitchel, and the legal academy, seem not to even realize it.
Great interview for whoever that reporter is. He essentially put Dean Mitchel in a deposition and fucked him over. "So, law school is like a business?" And when he went in for the kill, the Dean got pushed off his game and said something stupid. At least this gives you a sense of what farce the defense of the status quo is.
