15 more law schools to be sued Forum

[071816]

sheeeit

[MrPapagiorgio]

I really wish you assholes would stop turning threads like this into "lol MTal" v. "SKY IS FALLING." The fact that people are actually filing suit against a dozen and a half ABA approved law schools should probably merit discussion on its own terms.

This.

Getting back to the topic, most of the law schools named in the suit are known to be dumps and nobody should be surprised by it. At what point in the rankings (just as an arbitrary line) would you be surprised at a school getting sued (disregard for the moment that BLS was included in this suit)?

[minnbills]

Getting back to the topic, most of the law schools named in the suit are known to be dumps and nobody should be surprised by it. At what point in the rankings (just as an arbitrary line) would you be surprised at a school getting sued (disregard for the moment that BLS was included in this suit)?

I don't think there's an arbitrary cut off. Though I would say that newer schools are more likely to be illegitimate

[beach_terror]

I really wish you assholes would stop turning threads like this into "lol MTal" v. "SKY IS FALLING." The fact that people are actually filing suit against a dozen and a half ABA approved law schools should probably merit discussion on its own terms.

This.

Getting back to the topic, most of the law schools named in the suit are known to be dumps and nobody should be surprised by it. At what point in the rankings (just as an arbitrary line) would you be surprised at a school getting sued (disregard for the moment that BLS was included in this suit)?

I'm pretty surprised to see my school in the list. I guess it's not all that surprising considering we were outed for the LSAT median fudging, but yeah.

[JamMasterJ]

Getting back to the topic, most of the law schools named in the suit are known to be dumps and nobody should be surprised by it. At what point in the rankings (just as an arbitrary line) would you be surprised at a school getting sued (disregard for the moment that BLS was included in this suit)?

I don't think there's an arbitrary cut off. Though I would say that newer schools are more likely to be illegitimate

fair point. Though for some reason, I don't expect this shit from the new Cali school (name is escaping me ATM)

[TIKITEMBO]

Wow. This is pretty incredible. I have a good friend who went to Cooley(which should of course be on this list) and I think of this friend whenever I read about law school fudging their numbers. If anyone can make it work, my friend can, but I really don't want them to learn the hard way. My friend almost has a full scholarship, but if the job connections are there to be made through a school, graduating with little debt isn't the only issue ITE. I'd really like to see more of this information come out before I start to apply.


And to MTal: Law schools are getting in trouble for presenting false information about the percentage of people who get employment through them. If you're going to push retail careers, maybe considering what you're criticizing it would be good to provide information on how likely it is that someone will make $100,000 in retail, how many positions there are that pay like that, and what percentage of employees actually see that kind of salary (and what other salaries do they see).

[MTal]

And to MTal: Law schools are getting in trouble for presenting false information about the percentage of people who get employment through them. If you're going to push retail careers, maybe considering what you're criticizing it would be good to provide information on how likely it is that someone will make $100,000 in retail, how many positions there are that pay like that, and what percentage of employees actually see that kind of salary (and what other salaries do they see).

Very few positions in retail pay 100k, and very few employees eventually see that salary. But it is still a better career choice than dumping 150k on a piece of paper which will leave you unemployed and suing your own school.

[MrPapagiorgio]

And to MTal: Law schools are getting in trouble for presenting false information about the percentage of people who get employment through them. If you're going to push retail careers, maybe considering what you're criticizing it would be good to provide information on how likely it is that someone will make $100,000 in retail, how many positions there are that pay like that, and what percentage of employees actually see that kind of salary (and what other salaries do they see).

Not to defend MTal, but part of his reasoning is that the likelihood of snagging those biglaw jerbs that pay six figures (at least outside a handful of schools) is not any better than six figures in retail. But in the case of the latter, you will not have the crushing debt. FWIW, one of my brothers went the way that MTal pushes in Stop and Shop and now enjoys a $300,000 salary with only a high school education. However, it took him 15 years from his starting job as a cashier to get where he is now.

[KeepitKind]

Dear prepared, well read, logical law school applicants,

DONT GO TO LAW SCHOOL BECAUSE YOU'LL BE POOR AND UNEMPLOYED AND DIE!!!!!!!!!!

Sincerely,
Internet Freak Out Guy

PS: The government flew the planes into the World Trade Center, caused Katrina, and you'll die.

i like this new poster

[MTal]

FWIW, one of my brothers went the way that MTal pushes in Stop and Shop and now enjoys a $300,000 salary with only a high school education. However, it took him 15 years from his starting job as a cashier to get where he is now.

Exactly.

[JCougar]

At what point in the rankings (just as an arbitrary line) would you be surprised at a school getting sued (disregard for the moment that BLS was included in this suit)?

At this point, I'd say Top 5.

[kwais]

Dear God, the rates for doc review jobs (which, of course, is the only "employment" available for the grads of most gutter schools like NYLS, Brooklyn, 'Bozo, et al, just keep plunging of late:

--LinkRemoved--

and

--LinkRemoved--

If you have 4+ years of specialized mortgage/foreclosure experience, you can get a whopping $33 an hour:

--LinkRemoved--


Go ahead and bash these jobs in usual TLS fashion, i.e. "only the anchorman from Cooley does doc review," and "no attorney would work for that rate since the degree is versatile, they could work in business, blah blah.

Reaility sucks, kids. But me thinks you're all gonna have to learn that the hard way.

someone is new here

[bouakedojo]

Glad to see this. Hope this is the beginning of a tipping point.

[JCougar]

I'm not here to justify that law school is a good or bad investment. However, there's absolutely no way to verify what you are and MTal claiming. You could be making shit up. Back up your statements with facts.

1/3 of the NYU class is unemployed, with other NYU grads doing doc review? That sounds like nonsense to me.

Without providing any evidence to justify your claims, you sound like bitter trolls.

Seriously, there's enough evidence out there showing that the unemployment problem isn't just a TTT issue. Basically every school ranked between 25 and 50 these days is suffering almost the exact same fate. And the schools ranked 18-25 are only doing marginally better.

I wouldn't be surprised if, without fudging the numbers, there's less than 50% of the class employed at graduation in basically every school ~18 and below. As for the schools between 6 and 18, it's probably more like 20-40% unemployed.

And that's just factoring in people who are unemployed. That's not considering people working at plaintiff's or very tiny firms making $50K/year to start, which probably constitutes 50% of the people that are employed.

If you want my best guess, the median starting salary of all schools outside of the T20 is pretty close to $0 if you count everyone that graduates and count temp salaries and people encouraged to get LLMs and MBAs simply due to lack of employment options as $0. Even schools in the T14 these days are creating phony positions 9 months after graduation for their students that last for three weeks so they can report to US News that their students are "employed" 9 months after graduation. After those 3 weeks are up, the students are nearly as fucked as people who went to Cooley. And that's in the bottom half of the T14.

Taking out $200K in loans is definitely not safe these days unless you get into at least Chicago. Beyond that, there's been stories floating around about 25-30% unemployment at graduation at schools like UVA, Georgetown, Berkeley, etc. 2 in 3 odds are decent, but a 25% chance of being unemployed at graduation is still a huge risk if you pay sticker.

There's a fair amount of people who will get legal jobs once they pass the bar, but these jobs likely will make it impossible to pay back the debt of going to a T14 at sticker, especially if you consider the cost of living at a lot of T14 schools in NYC, DC, or SF.

33% of people graduating from NYU being unemployed seems a tad high from what I've read, but it's probably not significantly off the mark.

[zanda]

Albany has a not-bad reputation upstate. I mean, its 1 of 3 law schools (Syracuse and UB being the others) in all of upstate NY and the only one within a couple hundred miles. At least in the old economy a decent percentage of people got NYS government jobs. Obviously things have changed (unemployed CNN 3L here with lots of unemployed classmates), but I'm not sure I'd group it in with schools like Cooley and NYLS.

[MrPapagiorgio]

Albany has a not-bad reputation upstate. I mean, its 1 of 3 law schools (Syracuse and UB being the others) in all of upstate NY and the only one within a couple hundred miles. At least in the old economy a decent percentage of people got NYS government jobs. Obviously things have changed (unemployed CNN 3L here with lots of unemployed classmates), but I'm not sure I'd group it in with schools like Cooley and NYLS.

In the old economy, sure. ITE, I would.

[JCougar]

And in addition, just looking at the number of people who make it into NLJ250 firms doesn't tell the real story. There's plenty of T14 people that get laid off or can't hack it in Biglaw. If you can't hack it after your first or second year, you may have decent exit options, or you may not. If you don't, the majority of legal jobs out there still pay $60-80K. If you paid sticker at a T14, 2 years of Biglaw isn't nearly enough to put a serious dent in your school debt if you're living in a high COL city like NYC.

[FeelTheHeat]

Happy to see this. Can I still shoot the messenger?

[lawbanshee]

Do you really think I'm making up the fact that there are 4 NYU grads on my doc review? It's a huge review with over 150+ lawyers at this review site alone. Besides the 4 NYU grads, there's kids here from BC, BU, Emory, U Penn, and as I mentioned tons and tons of Brooklyn and Cardozo grads. And this is just in my room, which seats 35 people. Trust me, it is not at all uncommon for "top" law grads to be staffed on doc review gigs, especially in the current train wreck of an economy. There are some very bright and capable people here who are stuck in the awful vise of debt and underemployment.

Even lowly document review isn't easy to get as it once was. Most agencies are only signing up people with at least a year or two of e-discovery experience. The standard rate nowadays in NYC is $30 an hour flat, no time & half for overtime. And of course no health benefits, no 401K, and no paid time off. Get sick & you not only have no health insurance, you also don't get paid if you have to call out. Not to mention footing your own bar dues, CLE costs, and so on. Nice, huh?

If you want a dime over $30 an hour in doc review today, you need to either:

A.) Speak a foreign language (preferably Japanense or Mandarin, those are frequently posted on Posse List and other temp attorney listservs), or

B.) Have several years of substantive legal experience in niche areas. Take this NJ gig, which pays $33 an hour flat. You need 4 years of specialized mortgage experience to get that rate:

--LinkRemoved--


Many on this site seem to labor under the delusion that "things will just somehow work out" and that if you miss Biglaw/OCI there's some top secret database of "midlaw" employers who act as "safety nets" and pay Biglaw ding victims 85 to 110 K to start.

Sorry kids, but those jobs really don't exist for 90%+ of recent grads. If they did, would the temp agency I'm currently working with/thru have found 150 lawyers with half a days notice, many from excellent schools, to work 12 hour days at $30 an hour flat? Do you really think these craigslist ads are some kind of sick joke and the agencies pay the $25 craigslist job board fees to prank all of you?

Many of the posters on here are going to learn a very hard & expensive lesson re: the laws of supply and demand.

[Tiago Splitter]

Many on this site seem to labor under the delusion that "things will just somehow work out" and that if you miss Biglaw/OCI there's some top secret database of "midlaw" employers who act as "safety nets" and pay Biglaw ding victims 85 to 110 K to start.

The standard refrain for those failing to get jobs through OCI is "/killself."

I see little to none of the optimism you claim is rampant on this site.

[MrPapagiorgio]

Many on this site seem to labor under the delusion that "things will just somehow work out" and that if you miss Biglaw/OCI there's some top secret database of "midlaw" employers who act as "safety nets" and pay Biglaw ding victims 85 to 110 K to start.

The standard refrain for those failing to get jobs through OCI is "/killself."

I see little to none of the optimism you claim is rampant on this site.

+1. TLS is quite the opposite of optimism.

[lawbanshee]

I don't know about today, but when I was in law school 10 years ago OCI was usually done a week or so before the first semester of 2 L started, with some interviews taking place the first week or two of classes. By a month or so into 2 L year many people had already gotten either offers or dings and the process was pretty much complete by late September.

If that is still the case, the answer to getting "dinged" at OCI is to simply drop out. There is no way to justify wasting 2 more years and God knows how much more borrowed money just to end up in doc review or with some schlock solo or rinky-dink firm for 40 or 50 K a year. Try to negoitate a pro-rated refund for what little of 2 L year you've attended thus far, and don't ever look back.

I'm not saying doc review is totally miserable: it is stress-free, mindless, and you can meet some fun people. Before the 2008 crash, most all the NYC projects paid 35/hour plus time & a half for OT, and sometimes gave $15 a day for meals and a taxi ride home if you billed more than 11 hours or stayed past 9 pm. I even had some projects that paid significantly more.

Those days are long, long gone. Today the standard rate is $30 an hour flat, no increased OT pay, no meals, no car rides, and usually VERY short projects (the one I'm on now will likely end tomorrow, making it a 6 day gig). Then it's back to calling all the agencies again to beg/tell them you're available, scanning craigslist all day, etc. And of course filing for UE, and scrpaing by on $400 a week from Uncle Sam until the next temp gig comes along.

Vastly better software combined with Indian outsourcing and the gross oversupply of lawyers has decimated the temp attorney industry the past 2 years. There's a guy on this job who's an '08 Fordham grad who will be starting a gig as a prison guard at Rikers in 2 weeks, and the entire room is jealous of him. Why wouldn't we be? He'll get OT pay, dental, medical, vision, 401K, pension, and not have to look for a new job every few weeks (or days) for the rest of his life.

Once you've entered the world of temping/doc review, your resume is complete garbage and even small firms no longer want to interview you. That's because they often pay even less than doc review, but actually expect you to WORK- (i.e, go to court, draft motions, meet clients, etc) rather than sit and click all day with your Ipod on wearing jeans and flip-flops.

[TIKITEMBO]

Not to defend MTal, but part of his reasoning is that the likelihood of snagging those biglaw jerbs that pay six figures (at least outside a handful of schools) is not any better than six figures in retail.

Not having debt is nice but plenty of people end up having to go into plenty of debt because they didn't even get document review wages in a career in retail.


Also, as a Chicagoland person I can't tell you how many people have said I should go to John Marshall I did note before in a thread here that I've been surprised at how many employed graduates I've met in the non-profit/government world in this area. Vanwinkle did point out that Daley was apparently an alum and the way politics go in Chicago, that's really all that's necessary.

[Cavgirl]

Getting back to the topic, most of the law schools named in the suit are known to be dumps and nobody should be surprised by it. At what point in the rankings (just as an arbitrary line) would you be surprised at a school getting sued (disregard for the moment that BLS was included in this suit)?

I don't think there's an arbitrary cut off. Though I would say that newer schools are more likely to be illegitimate

fair point. Though for some reason, I don't expect this shit from the new Cali school (name is escaping me ATM)

Are you talking about UC Irvine?

[admisionquestion]

You're exaggerating when you say it has to be t-14 or nothing. All those schools are in the bottom, nowhere near T-20 or T-30.

1/3rd of NYU's graduating class is unemployed. How will they pay back 200k in debt?

Law School Report at law.com shows that 44% of NYU grads are employed NLJ250. NYU has a reputation for PI being pretty solid. I cannot imagine that PI, shit-law, clerking, academics, continued ed, non-law business, etc do not make up for more than 22% of their class.