Indiana Tech Law School Forum

[Winston1984]

Is ITLS this TTT : https://californiaschooloflaw.com/index ... lass-video

Mark is ready to take the bar because he takes his exams on the same software as people take the real bar exam on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUYo ... QIDM#t=179

You mean ExamSoft or Exam 4?

Where do you find this stuff? I mean, seriously? This video has 46 views. You had to work hard to find this gem.

If I hear the word "unique" applied to a law school one more time, I swear to God.

CSL sent me an email with a link to the testimonials.

My favorite is the 70-year-old guy who said he went to California School of Law bc some people might confuse it with Berkeley. Like, he really said that.

Please post.

[jk148706]

https://californiaschooloflaw.com/index ... stimonials

The third video

ETA: he actually mentions Hastings and the University of California system in general.. But still....

[timbs4339]

Is there a TTT testimonial that doesn't feature some variation of 'our professors have actually practiced and so we get a pragmatic education that you don't if you're a T14 prole.'

Going to a top school kinda sucks. I have had 2 rhode scholars and 3 former supreme clerks as professors. I mean if I could just have a professor that worked at SF Legal Aid it would do me a lot of good.

Doesn't every school have adjuncts, though? Especially if your'e taking something like employment discrimination or anything that's plaintiff-side work, they tend to be real practitioners (at least at my school).

Yep, I went to a T14. Every adjunct was literally at the top of their field. You took trial practice with the head of a V10s trial practice, mass torts with a guy who litigated half the major asbestos cases, white collar crime with a famous district court judge, etc etc.

The idea that you need to pay people to teach law is kind of absurd. You may need to pay them to teach it full time, but most of the adjuncts volunteered their time at an infinitesimal amount of what they would have been making working.

[jingosaur]

https://californiaschooloflaw.com/index ... stimonials

The third video

ETA: he actually mentions Hastings and the University of California system in general.. But still....

He also says, "You will be put to the test if you qualify to get in."

[TheSpanishMain]

https://californiaschooloflaw.com/index ... stimonials

The third video

ETA: he actually mentions Hastings and the University of California system in general.. But still....

He also says, "You will be put to the test if you qualify to get in."

So...if you have 60 undergraduate credits?

What. The. Fuck. I can't believe this place exists, or that people are stupid enough to pay money for it. It's criminal.

[jk148706]

https://californiaschooloflaw.com/index ... stimonials

The third video

ETA: he actually mentions Hastings and the University of California system in general.. But still....

He also says, "You will be put to the test if you qualify to get in."

Omg. Didn't even realize that the first time.

[JCougar]

https://californiaschooloflaw.com/index ... stimonials

The third video

ETA: he actually mentions Hastings and the University of California system in general.. But still....

He also says, "You will be put to the test if you qualify to get in."

So...if you have 60 undergraduate credits?

What. The. Fuck. I can't believe this place exists, or that people are stupid enough to pay money for it. It's criminal.

Yeah, but this place's tuition is only $9K/year. This makes it many times more justifiable than Indiana Tech. You barely learn anything from law school anyway, so if a degree from this place lets you take the CA bar, I could care less if they're only charging $9K tuition.

[TheSpanishMain]

Yeah, but this place's tuition is only $9K/year. This makes it many times more justifiable than Indiana Tech. You barely learn anything from law school anyway, so if a degree from this place lets you take the CA bar, I could care less if they're only charging $9K tuition.

36K is still a lot of money. At least Indiana Tech as the "legitimacy" of some lay recognition within Indiana, since it's attached to an actual brick and mortar institution people are at least aware of. It's obviously a punchline in the legal world, and if it burned down tomorrow that would be the best thing for the students, but I don't see what the utility of these online CA "schools" could possibly be either. Surely no one is actually hiring these people.

But yes, I grant you, if you're going to get a worthless piece of paper, 36K is better than 200k, although still awful.

[timbs4339]

Yeah, but this place's tuition is only $9K/year. This makes it many times more justifiable than Indiana Tech. You barely learn anything from law school anyway, so if a degree from this place lets you take the CA bar, I could care less if they're only charging $9K tuition.

36K is still a lot of money. At least Indiana Tech as the "legitimacy" of some lay recognition within Indiana, since it's attached to an actual brick and mortar institution people are at least aware of. It's obviously a punchline in the legal world, and if it burned down tomorrow that would be the best thing for the students, but I don't see what the utility of these online CA "schools" could possibly be either. Surely no one is actually hiring these people.

But yes, I grant you, if you're going to get a worthless piece of paper, 36K is better than 200k, although still awful.

I would think, nay, hope, that the people taking advantage of this are people with a 100% guaranteed job at a family firm or who are independently wealthy and just want a degree so they can take the bar and open their own law firm, i.e., people who just need a certificate that lets them sit for the bar.

In reality, it is probably just a way to take advantage of naive people from poor and working class backgrounds.

[cron1834]

https://californiaschooloflaw.com/index ... stimonials

The third video

ETA: he actually mentions Hastings and the University of California system in general.. But still....

That is awesome. If you're 70, you don't have a lot of time to fuck around on the job market ...

[mewalke1]

https://californiaschooloflaw.com/index ... stimonials

The third video

ETA: he actually mentions Hastings and the University of California system in general.. But still....

Geez wtf. I just feel sorry for these people.

[JCougar]

Holy crap:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/201 ... ably-lower

The 25th percentile LSAT score for matriculants into the part-time program of Florida Coastal’s entering class of 2013 was 138. A 138 means that 90.4% of test takers scored higher than you did. That means a quarter of the entering students had an LSAT score below that. How far below? That’s unknown, but Florida Coastal was imprudent enough to publish its 2012 LSAT/GPA admissions grid in the 2014 ABA Guide, which shows the school admitted eight applicants with LSAT scores between 130 and 134. Note this information is regarding the entering class of 2012, which ended up having a 25th LSAT for the part-time program of 140, i..e, two points higher than that of the class of 2013, which in turn suggests that the school in this past admissions cycle admitted many more than eight people with LSATs of 134 and below.

An LSAT of 134 means that 95.3% of test takers scored higher. To get a 134 you have to choose the right answer on about 29 of 100 LSAT questions, but since it’s a multiple choice test this means that, accounting for random correct answers, you only need to get nine questions right as a consequence of something other than chance.

This is absolutely pathetic. The ABA needs to step in here because the integrity of the profession is on the line. This school needs to be closed down immediately.

[danquayle]

Holy crap:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/201 ... ably-lower

The 25th percentile LSAT score for matriculants into the part-time program of Florida Coastal’s entering class of 2013 was 138. A 138 means that 90.4% of test takers scored higher than you did. That means a quarter of the entering students had an LSAT score below that. How far below? That’s unknown, but Florida Coastal was imprudent enough to publish its 2012 LSAT/GPA admissions grid in the 2014 ABA Guide, which shows the school admitted eight applicants with LSAT scores between 130 and 134. Note this information is regarding the entering class of 2012, which ended up having a 25th LSAT for the part-time program of 140, i..e, two points higher than that of the class of 2013, which in turn suggests that the school in this past admissions cycle admitted many more than eight people with LSATs of 134 and below.

An LSAT of 134 means that 95.3% of test takers scored higher. To get a 134 you have to choose the right answer on about 29 of 100 LSAT questions, but since it’s a multiple choice test this means that, accounting for random correct answers, you only need to get nine questions right as a consequence of something other than chance.

This is absolutely pathetic. The ABA needs to step in here because the integrity of the profession is on the line. This school needs to be closed down immediately.

Eliminate accreditation for these degree mills, but open up "reading for the law" as a viable option. I still think there's a legit demand for low income legal services, but not at the cost of 100k+. People need to be able to survive on ~30k salaries.

You'd have an even more two-tiered system then, but I've always thought the problem is too much saturation for those highly selective jobs that law students need to justify attendance... not necessarily legal at large. An explicitly bifurcated system may be preferable to the implicit one we have now.

Even consider something like England has... a barrister-like position that handles most of the trial work.

[cron1834]

I am the furthest thing from an LSAT snob, and I hate most standardized testing with a passion. With that said, those numbers are actually abhorrent. Unless English is your second language or you have some accommodation issue (admittedly these are legit concerns), earning 9 more correct answers than random chance would predict should prevent you from ever earning a license for anything.

I agree that the ABA needs to do something here.

[TheSpanishMain]

I'll go out on a limb here: if you get a 134 on the LSAT, you are either A) struggling with the English language or B) dumb. As in, it's sort of surprising that you got through undergrad. We can argue about how well the LSAT correlates with intelligence, how learnable it is, how time management can play a factor, etc, but when you're talking about extremes like this...I'd say 134 is, or should be, pretty damning.

I agree that the ABA needs to do something here.

Is there any mechanism to ask the ABA to do something, or at least comment?

[Otunga]

That's just doing a disservice to people who could either do better with a retake, or should not become lawyers, or who have a language barrier and so should improve with it before attending LS (since that can drag you down in the class in LS).

Yes, it's a part-time program, and maybe a lot of people already have careers, but most likely it's a waste of their time and the opportunity cost is real. For K-JDs, it's batshit nuts to attend a school like that.

[TheSpanishMain]

That's just doing a disservice to people who could either do better with a retake

I don't want to sound elitist, and I'm sure there are examples of people who improve by 30+ points with proper studying, but I'm tempted to say that if you get a 134 then you are so incapable of grasping fundamentals that you should just not be a lawyer.

[cron1834]

I'll go out on a limb here: if you get a 134 on the LSAT, you are either A) struggling with the English language or B) dumb. As in, it's sort of surprising that you got through undergrad. We can argue about how well the LSAT correlates with intelligence, how learnable it is, how time management can play a factor, etc, but when you're talking about extremes like this...I'd say 134 is, or should be, pretty damning.

I agree that the ABA needs to do something here.

Is there any mechanism to ask the ABA to do something, or at least comment?

I agree re: 134 - certainly language issues and accommodation issues exist, but barring these 134 seems pretty dispositive to me.

I doubt the ABA can do anything about LSAT, though. Others who are better informed can talk about bar passage rates. I recall that there's a minimum standard, but it can be fudged somehow (the existence of some of these shitholes would seem to demonstrate that).

[Otunga]

That's just doing a disservice to people who could either do better with a retake

I don't want to sound elitist, and I'm sure there are examples of people who improve by 30+ points with proper studying, but I'm tempted to say that if you get a 134 then you are so incapable of grasping fundamentals that you should just not be a lawyer.

You could be right. I diag'd at about 149, and highest LSAT is 168, and shit, that demanded a lot of fucking investment.

[Tiago Splitter]

Sounds like 134 might not even be the worst of it. I figured 130 was a hard floor that even con artists wouldn't dip below, but apparently that's about to be smashed with the big drop in apps.

Fortunately it will take just 6-8 short years before these guys struggle enough with the bar that FL Coastal's accreditation starts to kinda sorta look threatened.

[JCougar]

Is it really the best strategy here to wait 6-8 years for the "market to correct itself" while taxpayers/tens of thousands of law students get screwed and the reputation of the legal profession tarnished? (That's a rhetorical question not directed at you, Tiago. Rhetorical in the sense that we already know which strategy the ABA appears to have chosen).

This isn't the banking sector of the economy, where "big brother" is going to scare off capital by taking massive interventionist action. The ABA really needs to reform its standards and close these hellholes down before Fall Semester 2014 starts. Nothing good can come from the status quo.

[Tiago Splitter]

Yeah I was being facetious. It will be several years before the ABA really takes notice, and even then the bar passage standards are so absurdly low that even a school routinely admitting people with LSAT's in the 130's can probably get over them.

[californiauser]

Holy crap:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/201 ... ably-lower

The 25th percentile LSAT score for matriculants into the part-time program of Florida Coastal’s entering class of 2013 was 138. A 138 means that 90.4% of test takers scored higher than you did. That means a quarter of the entering students had an LSAT score below that. How far below? That’s unknown, but Florida Coastal was imprudent enough to publish its 2012 LSAT/GPA admissions grid in the 2014 ABA Guide, which shows the school admitted eight applicants with LSAT scores between 130 and 134. Note this information is regarding the entering class of 2012, which ended up having a 25th LSAT for the part-time program of 140, i..e, two points higher than that of the class of 2013, which in turn suggests that the school in this past admissions cycle admitted many more than eight people with LSATs of 134 and below.

An LSAT of 134 means that 95.3% of test takers scored higher. To get a 134 you have to choose the right answer on about 29 of 100 LSAT questions, but since it’s a multiple choice test this means that, accounting for random correct answers, you only need to get nine questions right as a consequence of something other than chance.

This is absolutely pathetic. The ABA needs to step in here because the integrity of the profession is on the line. This school needs to be closed down immediately.

Won't the school flunk most of these students out? I'm pretty sure most TTTTs will accept people with these 130 scores then flunk them out after collecting a year of tuition once it becomes apparent that these people are incapable of passing the bar.

[sighsigh]

Keep in mind there is one thing that impedes a race to the bottom: T4's still tend to reject students whose LSATs are so low that it's statistically probable they're not going to pass the bar. If a school's BPR is too low, it risks losing ABA accreditation. Just from a survival standpoint, law schools can't afford to admit too many applicants in the 130s--students that might never have the skills to pass the bar. So the nadir of standards probably has a floor of between 137-145, depending on how stringent a state's bar requirements are (e.g. an Oklahoma school could afford to dip lower than a California school).

Law schools can just force these people to drop out after 1st or 2nd year. T4s like Cooley or Florida Coastal already do this a ton. So even this artificial floor isn't really there.

[haus]

Yeah, but this place's tuition is only $9K/year. This makes it many times more justifiable than Indiana Tech. You barely learn anything from law school anyway, so if a degree from this place lets you take the CA bar, I could care less if they're only charging $9K tuition.

36K is still a lot of money. At least Indiana Tech as the "legitimacy" of some lay recognition within Indiana, since it's attached to an actual brick and mortar institution people are at least aware of. It's obviously a punchline in the legal world, and if it burned down tomorrow that would be the best thing for the students, but I don't see what the utility of these online CA "schools" could possibly be either. Surely no one is actually hiring these people.

But yes, I grant you, if you're going to get a worthless piece of paper, 36K is better than 200k, although still awful.

To put it in context 36k is very near the one year annual tuition rate for several part time programs.