Where do contract / temp attorneys come from? Forum

[reasonable_man]

Without even reading what he wrote I can tell you that what you count as "relevant" was likely extremely offensive and unhelpful to the posters in that thread.

I mean, let's be honest. Information that convinced someone not to go to Rutgers-Newark would probably be the most helpful thing they heard in their entire life.

That might actually be true. I'll give you that. But most people aren't convinced of much by strangers who barge in on them and then lecture them on what idiots they are.

It's really sad that you (I mean the mods collectively), have decided that your primary function is to stop relevant discussions on the worth of a law school in the only section where people applying to law school will actually read such discussions. In this, TLS contributes to the law school problem that is finally making headlines in main-stream media. The value of the product purchased is very relevant in a forum filled with consumers. See, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/busin ... ics&st=cse

Here is a serious suggestion. How about allowing users to create threads within the Law school admissions forums where students can seek out negative opinions about schools and why a particular school is a bad option. That way, there is, at least, a place to make a counter argument to the rainbow/lollypop threads regarding Hofstra, Seton Hall and Brooklyn that are allowed to exist on the admissions forums (irrespective of how harmful the misinformation spread in these threads might be). Student’s that don’t want an honest and “harsh” appraisal can stick to the threads about seat deposits to attend NYLS at a cost of $210,000 for 3 years at stickers while educated consumers can read up on the realities of these schools in counter-threads that aren’t relegated to the lounge. Or would this derail TLS's new bent toward censorship and pandering to law schools? Will I now be banned for speaking without the conch Jack?

--ImageRemoved--

[robotclubmember]

dayyyuuuuummmmnnnnnn boiiiii u bout to get yo wig flipped upside yo head 4 realz

[robotclubmember]

i think people are generally allowed to make those threads.

At the Careerist, Vivia Chen writes: "To me, so much has been written, blogged, and litigated there's no longer any excuse to plead ignorance of market reality. ... Why plunk down ungodly sums of money to go to a low-ranking law school? Unless you're pretty sure that you'll be at the top of your class, or you're dying to be a lawyer, why bother? Maybe that sounds snotty. But law is a pretty snotty profession, no?"

while i disagree that any litigation has brought attention to the issue, and disagree that the blogging is on everyone's radar (it simply isn't), i will say that anyone who is posting on this site should know the realities by now and don't need to be reminded inside of their threads. it's the people who haven't seen this site that we need to worry about. i think posters can post whatever they want. one of my pet projects is to build an ROI calculator to post in the admissions board over the next week or so. something that builds in scholarships, the probability of keeping them, the probability of employment, the opportunity costs, and the interest. i also plan to add the impacts of going into IBR (many feel IBR is a panacea to your debt woes but in reality, you have to be living in damn near squalor to qualify if you're in a major market like NYC). i really believe most students are incapable of calculating ROI, patronizing as it may be. that's something that i don't think anyone would object to. i think people can make about any contribution they want and the mods don't restrict that. but trolling is not allowed. sometimes trolling and contributing are one in the same though. i just want more stories.

[bouakedojo]

Will I now be banned for speaking without the conch Jack?

You get love from me for the Lord of the Flies reference, dude.

[Heartford]

i think people are generally allowed to make those threads.

At the Careerist, Vivia Chen writes: "To me, so much has been written, blogged, and litigated there's no longer any excuse to plead ignorance of market reality. ... Why plunk down ungodly sums of money to go to a low-ranking law school? Unless you're pretty sure that you'll be at the top of your class, or you're dying to be a lawyer, why bother? Maybe that sounds snotty. But law is a pretty snotty profession, no?"

while i disagree that any litigation has brought attention to the issue, and disagree that the blogging is on everyone's radar (it simply isn't), i will say that anyone who is posting on this site should know the realities by now and don't need to be reminded inside of their threads. it's the people who haven't seen this site that we need to worry about. i think posters can post whatever they want. one of my pet projects is to build an ROI calculator to post in the admissions board over the next week or so. something that builds in scholarships, the probability of keeping them, the probability of employment, the opportunity costs, and the interest. i also plan to add the impacts of going into IBR (many feel IBR is a panacea to your debt woes but in reality, you have to be living in damn near squalor to qualify if you're in a major market like NYC). i really believe most students are incapable of calculating ROI, patronizing as it may be. that's something that i don't think anyone would object to. i think people can make about any contribution they want and the mods don't restrict that. but trolling is not allowed. sometimes trolling and contributing are one in the same though. i just want more stories.

Please remember to add cost of living to your calculator. Seems like lots of people only pay attention to the tuition prices without wondering how the F they're going to afford to live within 50 miles of NYC, for example, to be able to to attend these schools.

[robotclubmember]

thx for the suggestion! i hadn't thought about that either. people need to keep in mind when they're in law school, many of them will be paying interest on every starbucks coffee they drink for the next ten years...

what i will provide is a template in which inputs are entered, but the lowest number possible. so i wouldn't be populating COL but leave it as an input that the user has to populate based on the school's estimates (along with tuition, scholarship, scholarship % stip, etc). i won't leave an input for opportunity costs because i think most college students have flawed assumptions about what their opportunities are and cannot reasonably predict them, but rather show the "break-even" point at which you would have been just as good without the law school degree (i.e., the amount of income needed in a non-top-law-schools.com scenario whose ROI would match the law school scenario). i think many people will be surprised to find that they would financially do better in the long run with a 40k job out of college with comp adjustments at 4 - 5% per annum than rolling the dice at a T2 where they lose three years of income and take an three years of debt.

if anyone has other idea on how to build a realistic ROI calc an law school let me know.

edit - to estimate for scholarship stip, does it seem reasonable to say that, if your scholarship requires top 25% for example, that after year 1 a 75% chance of losing the scholarship is built in, and that it is reflected in increasing the tuition paid by the probability of losing the scholarship x the value of the scholarship?

[Verity]

+1 for mods getting with the program.

[vanwinkle]

It's really sad that you (I mean the mods collectively), have decided that your primary function is to stop relevant discussions on the worth of a law school in the only section where people applying to law school will actually read such discussions.

Clearly you don't understand what's relevant in the Class of 2014 forums.

The Class of 2014 forums aren't for "people applying to law school" at all. They're there for people who have already applied to law school, been through the process, considered everything, and decided to attend a particular school. Many of them have probably already seen this type of stuff written in the many different forums it's raised in. Those who don't, well, could have easily accessed it if they wanted, and can still find it in the right places if they're still interested in hearing it. But this stuff isn't relevant in a place where people have already decided to go and are trying to get to know their future classmates.

People are welcome to post stuff about particular law schools all they want in the law school admissions forums. If you have something positive or negative to say about a particular law school, that you think is relevant to people trying to decide whether to go there, then post it in the "Choosing a Law School" forum. That's the whole point of that forum; it's for 0Ls who are trying to choose a particular place to go, and if you have something that helps them decide to not go somewhere, that's relevant there.

There's no viewpoint censorship on TLS. If there was, there wouldn't be the repeated and numerous discussions about whether going to law school is a bad idea. We just expect, like with any other type of discussion, that 1) it goes in the right forum and 2) doesn't disrupt the relevant discussion in other forums. You can't talk about this stuff everywhere on TLS, but that doesn't mean you can't talk about this stuff on TLS.

[Paraflam]

They're there for people who have already applied to law school, been through the process, considered everything,

Not always true. Which is our point.

[Borhas]

It's really sad that you (I mean the mods collectively), have decided that your primary function is to stop relevant discussions on the worth of a law school in the only section where people applying to law school will actually read such discussions.

Clearly you don't understand what's relevant in the Class of 2014 forums.

The Class of 2014 forums aren't for "people applying to law school" at all. They're there for people who have already applied to law school, been through the process, considered everything, and decided to attend a particular school. Many of them have probably already seen this type of stuff written in the many different forums it's raised in. Those who don't, well, could have easily accessed it if they wanted, and can still find it in the right places if they're still interested in hearing it. But this stuff isn't relevant in a place where people have already decided to go and are trying to get to know their future classmates.

People are welcome to post stuff about particular law schools all they want in the law school admissions forums. If you have something positive or negative to say about a particular law school, that you think is relevant to people trying to decide whether to go there, then post it in the "Choosing a Law School" forum. That's the whole point of that forum; it's for 0Ls who are trying to choose a particular place to go, and if you have something that helps them decide to not go somewhere, that's relevant there.

There's no viewpoint censorship on TLS. If there was, there wouldn't be the repeated and numerous discussions about whether going to law school is a bad idea. We just expect, like with any other type of discussion, that 1) it goes in the right forum and 2) doesn't disrupt the relevant discussion in other forums. You can't talk about this stuff everywhere on TLS, but that doesn't mean you can't talk about this stuff on TLS.

I think that's a better description of the law students forum than the class '14 forum, since there are still plenty of chances to drop out w/o much cost before actual attendance... a seat deposit is hardly an ironclad commitment.

[Verity]

They're there for people who have already applied to law school, been through the process, considered everything,

Not always true. Which is our point.

Ok now, vw has a point. If people start posting this stuff in "Class of 20XX" threads, then even after the people in those threads read it, consider it, and move on still determined to go to LS, there will be nowhere for them to get together and focus on their enrollment unassailed, because people are still posting this stuff in their threads.

[seatown12]

Current/former law students, no matter what they have to say, belong in the Class of 2014 forum about as much as 0Ls belong in this forum. And if you honestly can't grasp the distinction between the Choosing a Law School and Class of 2014 forums you have no business giving anyone advice.

[vanwinkle]

Ok now, vw has a point. If people start posting this stuff in "Class of 20XX" threads, then even after the people in those threads read it, consider it, and move on still determined to go to LS, there will be nowhere for them to get together and focus on their enrollment unassailed, because people are still posting this stuff in their threads.

This is exactly right. Sure, some of those people may not have considered literally everything they could have, but whether they have or not, they've made their decision and they're trying to focus on enrollment and moving to their new law school. We provide forums where they can focus on that, and those forums stop working if they get clogged with anti-enrollment trolling.

I think that's a better description of the law students forum than the class '14 forum, since there are still plenty of chances to drop out w/o much cost before actual attendance... a seat deposit is hardly an ironclad commitment.

The point isn't that they've made an ironclad commitment to attending. The point is that they've chosen to attend a particular law school already, and have things to do because of it, and those forums are for them to focus on those things. They're in those forums to figure out how to find housing and when they'll find out their class schedule so they can order textbooks. Folks with savior complexes who rush in to try to save them from themselves are just getting in the way of that.

If they are still wavering and considering withdrawing, they can keep reading up on info and joining discussions about whether to attend in the admissions forums. Nothing's stopping them from participating or reading those forums once they decide to attend. But we don't provide the Class of 2014 forums so that you have a convenient place to intrude on them and tell them all they're making a terrible mistake. If we permitted that, then nobody would use those forums anymore, and it would stop being a convenient place for you to troll them all anyway.

[A'nold]

It's really sad that you (I mean the mods collectively), have decided that your primary function is to stop relevant discussions on the worth of a law school in the only section where people applying to law school will actually read such discussions.

Clearly you don't understand what's relevant in the Class of 2014 forums.

The Class of 2014 forums aren't for "people applying to law school" at all. They're there for people who have already applied to law school, been through the process, considered everything, and decided to attend a particular school. Many of them have probably already seen this type of stuff written in the many different forums it's raised in. Those who don't, well, could have easily accessed it if they wanted, and can still find it in the right places if they're still interested in hearing it. But this stuff isn't relevant in a place where people have already decided to go and are trying to get to know their future classmates.

People are welcome to post stuff about particular law schools all they want in the law school admissions forums. If you have something positive or negative to say about a particular law school, that you think is relevant to people trying to decide whether to go there, then post it in the "Choosing a Law School" forum. That's the whole point of that forum; it's for 0Ls who are trying to choose a particular place to go, and if you have something that helps them decide to not go somewhere, that's relevant there.

There's no viewpoint censorship on TLS. If there was, there wouldn't be the repeated and numerous discussions about whether going to law school is a bad idea. We just expect, like with any other type of discussion, that 1) it goes in the right forum and 2) doesn't disrupt the relevant discussion in other forums. You can't talk about this stuff everywhere on TLS, but that doesn't mean you can't talk about this stuff on TLS.

+1.

There would be no point in having a "class of 2014" Seton Hall or whatever thread if the mods allowed this to go on. The scam bloggers would overrun the entire forum and the entire purpose of getting to know your future classmates would be defeated. I also think that scam bloggers posting in "what should I choose, Hofstra $$, Seton Hall $$$, or St. Johns $?" threads should be prohibited as well. Scam bloggers should not be prohibited from posting in threads like "should I attend Seton Hall?" For the former, posts like "enjoy McDonalds if you go to any of those schools" and then posting 100 craiglist ads is completely unproductive and offensive and encourage people not to post such questions.

[vanwinkle]

At this point, I think there's no chance of this thread going back on-topic.

If folks want to start a new thread about contract/temp attorneys, or anything else new or interesting related to legal employment, they're welcome to do so. If they want to post new things about why going to a particular law school is a bad idea, they can do so in the Choosing a Law School forum. And so on and so forth. As long as it's actually relevant to the forum it's placed in, it's permitted.

Anyone with legitimate interest in discussing moderation policies is welcome to do so here: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 0&t=146657

And, thread lock.

[vanwinkle]

Because I like to do new things and see how they turn out: Thread unlocked. For now. Let's hear some more stories about contract and temp attorneys. But this is not an invitation to pick up the prior conversation, unless you want to see the thread get locked again.

[vanwinkle]

Nevermind. There's a new thread already, so this is a duplicate.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=161664