Passing the LSAT Forum

[Cade McNown]

Good grief. Fraud prevention is not paternalism, because fraud protection involves protection from others. Paternalism is protection from oneself.

In any case, a minimum LSAT has nothing to do with preventing fraud. It has only to do with keeping a certain population from going to law school. The OP wasn't interested in discussing people who have been defrauded by law schools. Instead, OP wrote that non-fraudulent true disclosures are an insufficient method of consumer protection. It's a justifiable opinion, especially considering the cognitive bias (overconfidence) involved in many students' decision to attend a TTT, but it's paternalistic because it ignores differences in students' appetites for risk.

[NYSprague]

Good grief. Fraud prevention is not paternalism, because fraud protection involves protection from others. Paternalism is protection from oneself.

In any case, a minimum LSAT has nothing to do with preventing fraud. It has only to do with keeping a certain population from going to law school. The OP wasn't interested in discussing people who have been defrauded by law schools. Instead, OP wrote that non-fraudulent true disclosures are an insufficient method of consumer protection. It's a justifiable opinion, especially considering the cognitive bias (overconfidence) involved in many students' decision to attend a TTT, but it's paternalistic because it ignores differences in students' appetites for risk.

My point was that students are still operating under the beliefs fostered by law schools lying for years. I don't think a minimum LSAT will make a difference given the climate that still exists about law school. The LSAT isn't the problem, false beliefs are the problem. A couple of years of more accurate information isn't enough to change the thinking about law school.
Schools still lie about a lot of things, like discouraging retaking the LSAT.

[timbs4339]

Demand for legal services for low and middle-income people is not going to be fixed by Econ 101 supply/demand bullshit (oh look at these neat intersecting lines on a graph!). It depends on the willingness of the government to provide increased budgets for indigent defense or civil Gideon. If you think a 158 cutoff is going to make it difficult for legal aid and the PD offices to find recruits, you're dreaming.

The rest of your arguments seem to boil down to paternalism = bad. Why? A little paternalism in the housing market could have saved everyone, dumb borrowers and responsible citizens, a lot of hassle. And there are certainly limits on what transparency can do in the short-term. Your notion that as long as there's only economic harm we shouldn't protect people from others shows a shockingly naive view of what it means to be deeply in debt at age 25 with no way out.

[NYSprague]

Demand for legal services for low and middle-income people is not going to be fixed by Econ 101 supply/demand bullshit (oh look at these neat intersecting lines on a graph!). It depends on the willingness of the government to provide increased budgets for indigent defense or civil Gideon. If you think a 158 cutoff is going to make it difficult for legal aid and the PD offices to find recruits, you're dreaming.

The rest of your arguments seem to boil down to paternalism = bad. Why? A little paternalism in the housing market could have saved everyone, dumb borrowers and responsible citizens, a lot of hassle. And there are certainly limits on what transparency can do in the short-term. Your notion that as long as there's only economic harm we shouldn't protect people from others shows a shockingly naive view of what it means to be deeply in debt at age 25 with no way out.

Agreed.
I get so tired of the people who claim that we need more lawyers because there is a need for legal services.
The oversupply of licensed attorneys is not making a dent in the need of people for lawyers who simply can't pay for them. And that isn't just the people living in poverty. Plenty of middle class people can't afford lawyers for the basic stuff they might need.

[Cade McNown]

Demand for legal services for low and middle-income people is not going to be fixed by Econ 101 supply/demand bullshit (oh look at these neat intersecting lines on a graph!). It depends on the willingness of the government to provide increased budgets for indigent defense or civil Gideon. If you think a 158 cutoff is going to make it difficult for legal aid and the PD offices to find recruits, you're dreaming.

I agree that the underlined is relevant, and in fact I'd be all for it. But let's not pretend that the availability indigent defense, civil Gideon, or other safety values you failed to mention like court fee waivers and voluntary pro bono magically makes economic principles "bullshit." Safety nets are common market factors, but a safety net of legal services no more reduces the price-impact of a decreased supply of lawyers than food stamps reduce the adverse price impacts of agricultural cartels (e.g., if you artificially restrain the number of people who can produce corn, the price of an ear of corn rises, no matter whether a private buyer or public assistance foots the bill). Moreover, if you increase barriers to entry to law, where charity can only be given by licensed attorneys, you necessarily make it more difficult for legal aid organizations to find more recruits.

The rest of your arguments seem to boil down to paternalism = bad. Why? A little paternalism in the housing market could have saved everyone, dumb borrowers and responsible citizens, a lot of hassle. And there are certainly limits on what transparency can do in the short-term. Your notion that as long as there's only economic harm we shouldn't protect people from others shows a shockingly naive view of what it means to be deeply in debt at age 25 with no way out.

I agree that disclosure is a limited remedy, and I do indeed think that bare paternalism is bad. However, I never said the underlined, because the underlined would not be an argument based in paternalism. Again, paternalism is the desire to protect people from themselves, not from others (e.g. 'I know better than you what's good for you vs. I know better than you what's good for us). I fail to see how the plight of massively indebted, unemployed law grads is the fault of anyone but the grads themselves. I also fail to see how the housing crisis is analogous on paternalism grounds.

[NYSprague]

Did you miss the part about schools lying about employment and salaries for decades? This is all schools at all levels. T14 schools were guilty of hiring kids to boost their employment stats.

I don't think you understand how deep and how pervasive the false idea that law equals rich is.

People take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt based on the prevailing thinking. But that belief was created by the lies of the schools.

I don't understand why you don't see this as the foundation of the problem. LST has only existed for a couple of cycles now and I bet most applicants don't even know it exists or, if they do, believe it to be credible.

[03152016]

dear lord has this become pedantic

[03152016]

i'm not going to engage in what is a fairly useless argument over whether or not the idea is paternalistic
but editing my quote changed both the meaning and tone, so i'm really not understanding why you did it

[NYSprague]

dear lord has this become pedantic

Sorry. I do get on a soapbox. But, honestly, if I could somehow prevent most people from going to law school, I would do it. There are very very few brilliant legal minds who are going to make innovations or be important to law. Everyone else is replaceable.

[sublime]

..

[03152016]

I fail to see how the plight of massively indebted, unemployed law grads is the fault of anyone but the grads themselves.

i don't understand this bizarre lack of sympathy
not everyone has the cultural capital to navigate a system that for years was designed to intentionally mislead the uninformed
median salary data that leaves out half the class, bogus employment numbers that lumped in non-FT/LT/JD jobs, fake scholarships that few would retain and section stacking, juicing ranking stats through falsified measures of student selectivity, school funded positions or direct hiring, the list goes on and on
what do you think will happen
pitting savvy, well-educated deans who used systematic deception to stuff their TTTs full of unsuspecting students regardless of the realities of the legal job market, reinforced by a pervasive media narrative that law is a high paying prestigious profession
vs
a kid who was the first in his family to graduate from college, who doesn't even know a lawyer in real life, let alone know to scour the fine print of a law school website for 509 disclosures

plz

Sorry. I do get on a soapbox. But, honestly, if I could somehow prevent most people from going to law school, I would do it. There are very very few brilliant legal minds who are going to make innovations or be important to law. Everyone else is replaceable.

no no i wasn't referring to you at all lol

[NYSprague]

In response to sublime and this probably doesn't even belong in this thread. But I typed it already.


Huge areas of ignorance (in random order):
understanding the regional nature of law instead of USnews rankings.

Not understanding that there are schools that no one should attend even for free. The scam schools and the trap schools are still up and running.

Not understanding how law school admissions is primarily a numbers game. (But getting a job generally takes more than numbers)

Not understanding that school plus grades don't guarantee a job. Not understanding bidding, interviewing, etc. for getting a job. General massive denial about the job market. Complete cluelessness about the bimodal distribution of salaries.

Not understanding that biglaw in New York pays $96,000 after taxes and you won't be rich. No clue about the sweatshop aspects of biglaw.

Being entranced by the biglaw salary because you care about money, but somehow not caring about money when it comes to borrowing it instead of earning it.

Complete failure to actively network for jobs from day 1 and relying solely on OCI.

Complete lack of understanding the non dischargeable nature of this debt and figuring it won't matter because of PAYE.

Not understanding how government hiring and PI hiring remains extremely tough. Not understanding the need to probably work for free for a significant amount of time just to hope to get a job.

Ignorance of the emotional stress of not having a job which tends to push people into depression.

Refusing to drop out of law school after 1L if you lose your scholarship or have grades that make you almost unemployable, but you still need biglaw to repay your debt.

[sublime]

..

[Cade McNown]

i'm not going to engage in what is a fairly useless argument over whether or not the idea is paternalistic
but editing my quote changed both the meaning and tone, so i'm really not understanding why you did it

As I explained, I did it to abbreviate your quote. I meant no change in meaning or tone, and frankly, I don't see any other meaning in what you've written besides "under-qualified potential law students should be barred from attending law school to protect them from themselves." Sorry if I misrepresented you.

As for sympathy, I have all the sympathy in the world for anyone who was actually defrauded by a law school. In my experience, however, the incidence of outright fraud and the existence any "systemic deception" is overstated. Also, the appropriate remedy for fraud is a lawsuit (every single one of which I know of has failed) or a prosecution (I know of none). Finally, yes, the facility with which law school applicants process true disclosures applicant to applicant, but the appropriate remedy for difficult-to-understand information (if any) is merely a supplement to the disclosure regime (a la POTUS' information gathering mechanism re undergrad I referenced earlier on page 1).

IMO, if you actually want to justify creating an LSAT-based barrier to entry, you should stop focusing exclusively on the interests of down-and-out law students who are largely responsible for their own choices. Instead, focus on the more compelling justification--i.e., the possible gains to Quality of Legal Services that might be achieved by additional/more stringent barriers to entry.

[timbs4339]

I agree that the underlined is relevant, and in fact I'd be all for it. But let's not pretend that the availability indigent defense, civil Gideon, or other safety values you failed to mention like court fee waivers and voluntary pro bono magically makes economic principles "bullshit." Safety nets are common market factors, but a safety net of legal services no more reduces the price-impact of a decreased supply of lawyers than food stamps reduce the adverse price impacts of agricultural cartels (e.g., if you artificially restrain the number of people who can produce corn, the price of an ear of corn rises, no matter whether a private buyer or public assistance foots the bill). Moreover, if you increase barriers to entry to law, where charity can only be given by licensed attorneys, you necessarily make it more difficult for legal aid organizations to find more recruits.

That's just not how it works in the real world. Law schools produce JDs. The increased supply of JDs does not translate into the increased supply of lawyers. I know this is difficult for someone who uses econ 101 jargon like "price impact" to understand, but it just doesn't. Thanks to the law schools, we've had an increased supply of JDs now for many year. Prices have not abated for the middle class and Legal Aid is not hiring any more lawyers. Getting rid of 10,000 law students is not going to make prices magically go up again.

Look, I understand. You've taken Econ 101. You understand how the market works and that means that you think you understand how the world works. It just doesn't work like that. It's going to take you little while to figure this out, but you'll get there.

Demand for legal services for low and middle-income people is not going to be fixed by Econ 101 supply/demand bullshit (oh look at these neat intersecting lines on a graph!). It depends on the willingness of the government to provide increased budgets for indigent defense or civil Gideon. If you think a 158 cutoff is going to make it difficult for legal aid and the PD offices to find recruits, you're dreaming.

I agree that the underlined is relevant, and in fact I'd be all for it. But let's not pretend that the availability indigent defense, civil Gideon, or other safety values you failed to mention like court fee waivers and voluntary pro bono magically makes economic principles "bullshit." Safety nets are common market factors, but a safety net of legal services no more reduces the price-impact of a decreased supply of lawyers than food stamps reduce the adverse price impacts of agricultural cartels (e.g., if you artificially restrain the number of people who can produce corn, the price of an ear of corn rises, no matter whether a private buyer or public assistance foots the bill). Moreover, if you increase barriers to entry to law, where charity can only be given by licensed attorneys, you necessarily make it more difficult for legal aid organizations to find more recruits.

I agree that disclosure is a limited remedy, and I do indeed think that bare paternalism is bad. However, I never said the underlined, because the underlined would not be an argument based in paternalism. Again, paternalism is the desire to protect people from themselves, not from others (e.g. 'I know better than you what's good for you vs. I know better than you what's good for us). I fail to see how the plight of massively indebted, unemployed law grads is the fault of anyone but the grads themselves. I also fail to see how the housing crisis is analogous on paternalism grounds.

Again, come back to the real world. What I'm telling you is that any attempt to separate protecting people from themselves and from others falls apart when you understand the context of higher education. The reason why we have this problem is because kids are presented with essentially uniform propaganda from the first day they set foot into grade school. Everyone from the President down to your grandmother told young people that the key to a secure life was more education, and it turned out to be bullshit. What we do in this section of TLS is try to essentially detox people from a lifetime of cultural lessons that don't apply anymore. But people have a very strong bias towards the default option, almost to the point where they are not making a conscious decision so much as going on instinct. This is very basic human psychology here, and it is not too terribly difficult for normal people to understand. Unfortunately homo economicus is still a few years off.

[NYSprague]

You know that in New York the lawsuit failed because the claims were so outrageous that judges couldn't believe any student would have believed them. The judges found that the individuals at the school may have been unethical. No one said that the schools were truthful in any of these cases.

I think these cases will keep coming back.

Also, isn't one in California continuing?

[Tanicius]

You know that in New York the lawsuit failed because the claims were so outrageous that judges couldn't believe any student would have believed them.

Substantive unconsciounability and other reasonable person standards for contracts have never made sense to me. What a trainwreck of an assortment of legal doctrines that are never consistently enforced.

[RCSOB657]

Did a little snooping around studentdoctor today
If you want to become an MD, it looks like you need a minimum of a 30 on the MCAT, that seems to be the cut-off
that's a 75th percentile score

On the other hand, if you want a JD, 141 seems to be the low end of the scale (25th percentile at Cooley and ITLS)
that's a 15th percentile score

So you have a frame of reference, if i answered 7 questions correct per section and guessed the rest completely at random (1/5 chance per question), i'd be above 141

Having a minimum required LSAT score would
-lessen the glut of JDs in the job market, and possibly lead to higher caliber graduates on the whole
-eliminate the TTTTs that only serve to swindle victims out of their tuition dollars
-lead to more demand and better outcomes for graduating law students
-possibly cull some of the least competent would-be applicants, leading to better outcomes for clients?
-possibly restore some modicum of respect and dignity to the profession?

should there be a cut-off
if not, why not
if so, what should the cut-off be

eta: i know this prob belongs in lsat discussion but it fits in with the discussions we generally have in choosing

You plan on dropping your big law special snowflake dream and becoming a public defender? Didn't think so.

[03152016]

wasn't really buying the argument made earlier that higher LS admission standards = burden for legal aid hiring
reached out to someone knowledgeable on the subject and here's what he said:

Hogwash, IMO. Legal aid services have never been, and aren't getting, expensive. Legal services are often most badly needed in areas that don't have hardly any lawyers at all -- these are gaps in areas with high demand for legal services that, over the last 100 years, have never been adequately filled by the free market.

The problem that I've noticed is more that public defender offices are starting to get an influx of highly qualified law school applicants who have been liberated by PSLF. It used to be that the best law school candidates would shy away from public defense. Why do something you love if it won't pay off your $200,000 of debt, when you can just get a miserable firm job for five years and then become a public defender if you still feel the white guilt? Nowadays it's different -- just about every public defender office in a big city across America is getting inundated with applications from students at Yale, NYU, Berkeley, GTown, Vanderbilt and all the way down the ranking food chain, because those public-service-minded individuals can finally afford to go into the work they love.

When I went through the hiring cycle, I interviewed with a bunch of offices throughout the country, and most of them simply did not know what to do with all the talent. A lot of them got greedy. The office where I interned for two summers and a school semester passed me up after my callback to do brand new interviews for some students from Harvard, even though they knew nothing about those students. I was pissed, and I bet there are lots of people at the [city] office where I'll be working who are going to pissed when they find out the [city] office hired a bunch of people from out-of-state T-14 schools this year instead of the people who interned at their office.

i had no idea that pd hiring had become so competitive due to pslf
it seems that such high demand for these jobs at the very top schools kills the argument that closing some tttts will have a demonstrable effect on pd hiring

[03152016]

Did a little snooping around studentdoctor today
If you want to become an MD, it looks like you need a minimum of a 30 on the MCAT, that seems to be the cut-off
that's a 75th percentile score

On the other hand, if you want a JD, 141 seems to be the low end of the scale (25th percentile at Cooley and ITLS)
that's a 15th percentile score

So you have a frame of reference, if i answered 7 questions correct per section and guessed the rest completely at random (1/5 chance per question), i'd be above 141

Having a minimum required LSAT score would
-lessen the glut of JDs in the job market, and possibly lead to higher caliber graduates on the whole
-eliminate the TTTTs that only serve to swindle victims out of their tuition dollars
-lead to more demand and better outcomes for graduating law students
-possibly cull some of the least competent would-be applicants, leading to better outcomes for clients?
-possibly restore some modicum of respect and dignity to the profession?

should there be a cut-off
if not, why not
if so, what should the cut-off be

eta: i know this prob belongs in lsat discussion but it fits in with the discussions we generally have in choosing

You plan on dropping your big law special snowflake dream and becoming a public defender? Didn't think so.

lol who are you
and wtf are you talking about you imbecile

[RCSOB657]

Someone you don't know.........do you speak to all strangers that way? I'll admit I'm not from NYC and have only been there a handful of times......but really that cannot be a common attitude there? I apologize for making the first post seem to be about you, but I assure you it wasn't about your character or whether or not you decide to go big law whenever and/or wherever you graduate LS in a couple years.


Simply what I meant was, I do not think having a minimum score to get into a LS is going to work to improve the quality of lawyer or job for that lawyer.

[03152016]

Someone you don't know.........do you speak to all strangers that way? I'll admit I'm not from NYC and have only been there a handful of times......but really that cannot be a common attitude there? I apologize for making the first post seem to be about you, but I assure you it wasn't about your character or whether or not you decide to go big law whenever and/or wherever you graduate LS in a couple years.


Simply what I meant was, I do not think having a minimum score to get into a LS is going to work to improve the quality of lawyer or job for that lawyer.

ok lol
well it sure seemed like a snarky insult
but judging from your post history i'm guessing you're esl
it got lost in translation

[Cade McNown]

wasn't really buying the argument made earlier that higher LS admission standards = burden for legal aid hiring
reached out to someone knowledgeable on the subject and here's what he said:

Hogwash, IMO. Legal aid services have never been, and aren't getting, expensive. Legal services are often most badly needed in areas that don't have hardly any lawyers at all -- these are gaps in areas with high demand for legal services that, over the last 100 years, have never been adequately filled by the free market.

The problem that I've noticed is more that public defender offices are starting to get an influx of highly qualified law school applicants who have been liberated by PSLF. It used to be that the best law school candidates would shy away from public defense. Why do something you love if it won't pay off your $200,000 of debt, when you can just get a miserable firm job for five years and then become a public defender if you still feel the white guilt? Nowadays it's different -- just about every public defender office in a big city across America is getting inundated with applications from students at Yale, NYU, Berkeley, GTown, Vanderbilt and all the way down the ranking food chain, because those public-service-minded individuals can finally afford to go into the work they love.

When I went through the hiring cycle, I interviewed with a bunch of offices throughout the country, and most of them simply did not know what to do with all the talent. A lot of them got greedy. The office where I interned for two summers and a school semester passed me up after my callback to do brand new interviews for some students from Harvard, even though they knew nothing about those students. I was pissed, and I bet there are lots of people at the [city] office where I'll be working who are going to pissed when they find out the [city] office hired a bunch of people from out-of-state T-14 schools this year instead of the people who interned at their office.

i had no idea that pd hiring had become so competitive due to pslf
it seems that such high demand for these jobs at the very top schools kills the argument that closing some tttts will have a demonstrable effect on pd hiring

LOLWUT? That was never the argument.

Public defender offices are subsidized by taxpayers. Indigents don't feel the price impact of PD-services because PD offices are designed to support the indigent as a matter of public policy. The taxpayer simply funds any difference. Most legal services, however, are not publicly subsidized. PD offices don't write wills. They don't negotiate contracts or leases. They don't file your incorporation papers. They don't settle your marital property disputes at divorce. They don't prepare your environmental impact report for your licensing hearing. They don't provide lobbying services. They don't register your trademark. They don't provide tax planning. They don't litigate your small civil disputes. They don't handle your bankruptcy. . . .

Thus, the argument that (bafflingly) still eludes you is this: where demand remains unchanged, fewer lawyers for unsubsidized legal services increases the price of all such services. Acting like you've soundly refuted this argument by reference to PD fees, or boldly denying that econ 101 has real-world applicability ( ), is just plain dumb.

[03152016]

Moreover, if you increase barriers to entry to law, where charity can only be given by licensed attorneys, you necessarily make it more difficult for legal aid organizations to find more recruits.

LOLWUT? That was never the argument.

r u being willfully ignorant here or r you actually retarded
your quote, as it appears above (without any need to edit, imagine that!) says that increasing barriers to entry will make it more difficult for legal aid organizations to find more recruits
so i posted a knowledgeable source's account of how pd offices are 'inundated' with grads from top schools
these jobs are in higher demand bc of pslf, pd hiring has become more competitive
ergo if barriers to entry increased and some TTTTs have to close up shop, the effect on pd hiring would be negligible
both bc the ratio of new grads to open positions would still be absurdly high
and bc the students at top schools clamoring for these pd jobs would ostensibly be unaffected by a minimum lsat threshold
r u like one of those libertarian retards who just completely rejects reality in favor of econ textbooks
like b honest how many ayn rand novels do u have on ur bookshelf

[Yanky91]

I did not read the previous posts. Please excuse me if this was previously said. However, I think that making a 158 LSAT the bar for entering law school is a good idea for one reason, but a bad idea for a few others. It would lead to a vast amount of law schools closing, and a lot of qualified and intelligent Professors out of their jobs. In addition, the scores and competition for the T14 would be ridiculous, not to mention the fact that scholarships would probably be impossible to get. I just do not think it would be feasible, and for most applicants it would be a complete nightmare. In all, I think making the bar a 158 is a bad idea.