The Shark

is free tuition enough to get scared students to school?

[cynthia foster]

For all of those interested in the free tuition program at UC Irvine's new law school, Petra has an interesting look over at Cal Law.  The story is free with registration, and includes a discussion with Director of Admissions Victoria Ortiz, formerly of Boalt.

"[Ortiz] and her staff at UC-Irvine's law school have been traveling to various corners of the country to recruit students at college fairs in places like New England, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Michigan and Minnesota. Ortiz has also met with pre-law advisers and with college clubs and societies. When candidates ask about job prospects, Ortiz points out the 70 or so employers that have pledged to at least interview on the law school's campus, including firms like Bingham McCutchen; Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis; Arnold & Porter; Irell & Manella; Morrison & Foerster and O'Melveny & Myers."

Petra also delves deeper into enrollment trends this year, and how schools are dealing with the uncertain applicant pool sizes.

To read more, check the story out here and continue to stay tuned into The Shark as we bring you more news on the changing climates law students and prospective law students are facing.

avoid having your future job outsourced. get thee to a clinic.

[brian lauter]

If you’ve had a run in with the blue screen of death recently, chances are you’ve had to disclose your humiliating technological incompetence to an Indian. India is world’s number one location for technology support outsourcing. Heck, they’ve got so much outsourced work that they’re outsourcing outsourcing.

Soon, however, we might be turning to India for something more important than reinstalling device drivers: legal jobs.

A year long survey conducted by Legal Process Outsourcing found that about 52% of around 100 firms surveyed were either outsourcing or considering outsourcing legal research work.  About 46% of firms said the same for contract work, and about 35% were outsourcing or thinking about outsourcing IP and document review work respectively.

Legal outsourcing has been feared for years, but with all of the other pressures on the job market these days, these statistics seem especially alarming.

I don’t enjoy being the bearer of bad news, but this is a law school blog, and recently it seems that there’s a lot of it out there. So, just to switch things up, here’s The Positive Law Student’s take:

Legal research?  Doc review?   Boring...  But, you know what law firms can’t outsource?  Legal strategy, depositions, negotiations, and all kinds of tasks requiring a working understanding of the legal system and its relationship to real world.

In other words, take advantage of all of the skills courses, clinics, and externships your school has to offer. They’re often easier than normal classes; they’re usually pretty interesting; and they’ll provide you with specialized knowledge and skills that law firms can’t find abroad.

fetal position > law school.

[brian lauter]

Applications to Campbell Law School are up 20% this year!

It’s true, according to an article I read this morning on Carolina Newswire (they cover both Carolinas!).

Yes, I know you don’t care about Campbell Law School. I only mention it because the article quotes Campbell Law School’s Assistant Dean for Admissions Lewis Hutchison opining:

“It is interesting that the economy seems to be having no effect on applications. You would think the application count would be up overall given the state of the economy and job uncertainty, but it’s actually the exact opposite. In fact, 48 percent (96) of the 198 ABA approved law schools show a decline in the number of applications.”

I was surprised by Assistant Dean Hutchison’s statement, because, to me, incurring tens of thousands of dollars of debt in the hopes of entering a field where most employers are instituting salary and hiring freezes and others are laying people off is not natural.

Assistant Dean Hutchinson is right about one thing: the conventional wisdom is that the number of grad/law/med school applications increases during recessions.

I suppose some people look to school as a way to ride out the rough economic times and emerge on the other side with a valuable degree. If we’re talking opportunity costs, the three years of income you lose while in law school will likely be worth less during a recession. Also, school is an especially attractive sanctuary if Mom and Dad are going to pay for it.  So, why are law school and grad school applications on the decline during this recession?

Dean Richard Matasar of New York Law School thinks people have figured out the great insidious law school hoax lottery shot conspiracy and are mad as hell and not going to pay for it anymore.

I think people have just discovered the wisdom in my instinctive recession survival strategy:  drop everything, curl up into the fetal position, hold your breath, and wait for it to be over.

linx: the deepening worries of law school professors and, well, law school students.

[cynthia foster]

Anyone else wondering where January went?  Here's the what's up from the last week:

• RIAA Seeks Sanctions Against Harvard Law School Prof (ars technica)
• How to Escape the Law School Debt Trap (Slate)
• Finishing Up the New Grad School Rankings (Morse Code - US News)
• Family Law Professors File Prop 8 Amicus Brief (UC Davis News & Information)
• Law Schools Dealing With Budget Cuts (National Law Journal - has some updated info on Hastings' budget woes)
• Job Market for Visiting Faculty Shrinks, Along with Law School Endowments (ABA Journal)

stanford law working girl pleads guilty to tax evasion.

[cynthia foster]

AN UPDATE!  You all will probably remember the Stanford Law grad, Cristina Warthen nee Schulz, who was charged with tax evasion last year in connection with failing to report her escort company's earnings to the IRS.  Well, Brazil (as she was known in the escort world) has pleaded guilty.

According to the press release from U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello's office:

"Warthen admitted that, in 2003, she grossed more than $133,000 from her escort business.  According to the information filed in the case, Warthen had no other income for that year. Her net income was $81,797, resulting in a tax owing to the United States of $25,424. Warthen further acknowledged that she did not file a tax return for that year and that she took steps to hide her income, including storing cash in a safe deposit box and buying postal money orders in amounts designed to avoid the generation of a Currency Transaction Report."

Warthen will face up to five years imprisonment and up to $100,000 in fines.  (Unlikely she'll have a problem coughing that up - Warthen married Ask.com founder David Warthen in 2004, after her stint as an escort.)  She'll be sentenced on June 15, and we'll be here to let you know how she fared.

uc davis suffers possibly embarrassing(?) drop in bar exam passage rates.

[cynthia foster]

TaxProf has a nice chart up breaking down the July 2008 California Bar Exam passage rates by school.  You can see his full chart here. 

Probably the biggest shocker here is that UC Davis dropped considerably in the statewide rankings. 

In July 2007, Davis came in at a very respectable #5 with a passage rate of 84% (.pdf).  In 2008, however, they slipped to #14 with a passage rate of 80%.  While the discrepancy between the two rates doesn't seem to be that much (4%), it is worth noting that most schools experienced an increase in their passage rates, because overall the passage rates for the 2008 exam were the highest in 11 years.  California Western, a school in the middle of an effort to improve its exam stats, jumped from #13 to #8.

Better luck next year, King Hall?

Brian, an, ahem, King Hall student, weighs in on the overall California results below:

[brian lauter]

Last November we reported on California’s brutal 2008 bar passage rate.  Now, just when you had finally weaned yourself off of the Prozac and come out of hiding, the California Bar has released the July 2008 bar passage rates by school.  You can check out the official document here.

Don’t feel like doing all of that clicking?  Here are the highlights: 

·        Stanford (97%) gave the rest of the California schools a giant beat down with a passage rate 7% higher than the second place school.

·        USC, UCLA and Berkeley all hover at around 90%. 

·        Surprise!  Pepperdine, USF and Loyola are close behind. 

·        Davis and Hastings come in below the state average of 83.2% and get embarrassed by schools populated by students they rejected:  Cal-Western, Whittier, Santa Clara and McGeorge.

·        Western State, which you’ve probably never heard of because its not rated by U.S. News, beats Southwestern which you might have because it is. 

·        La Verne College of Law is a colossal rip-off – if you go there drop out immediately and demand a full refund.

What effect will this have on next year’s U.S. News Rankings?  Probably none, because everybody knows academic prestige is much more important than students being able to actually practice law after they graduate from law school.

What effect will this have on next year’s 1Ls?  Here’s hoping a few of them decide to weight bar passage rate a little more than U.S. News does.

the shark is hiring!

[cynthia foster]

Before I resume my regularly scheduled Monday programming (usually: frequent trips to the coffee maker to fuel massive Google Alerts sifting), I have one quick housekeeping announcement.  The Shark is hiring!  See our want ad below.

The Shark, a Cal Law blog by and for California law school students, is currently accepting applications for a paid freelance writing position.  An ideal candidate is a student at an accredited California law school with an interest in writing about law school news and their own law school experience.  No prior blogging experience is required, but it is helpful if an applicant feels comfortable on the internet and with law blogs.  To apply, please send an email stating your name, your school, your year, and any previous writing experience you may have to: theshark@incisivemedia.com.  A hired freelancer will be expected to produce 2-3 blog items per week, at a pay rate of $25 per item.  Cal Law is a member of the Incisive Media family, a leading worldwide B2B information provider.

If you have any questions about the position or The Shark, you can also ask them in the comments.

kegs vs. more kegs: is law school a more formative experience than undergrad?

[brian lauter]

Which experience do you think has influenced you more, undergrad or law school?

It’s not something I’d considered before, but another interesting article (the second I’ve mentioned this week) by Noam Schreiber in The New Republic begs the question.

Schreiber’s article argues that the law school experiences of Presidents Clinton and Obama help explain differences in their respective presidential transitions.  Essentially, Shreiber attributes Clinton’s “disregard for Washington protocol” and his more disorganized approach to his experience at Yale, and attributes Obama’s “reverence for Washington institutions” and his predilection for tactical maneuvering to his time at Harvard.

The article is the most detailed description I’ve read of life at Yale and Harvard and it emphasizes stark contrasts between those institutions.  Its also littered with interesting anecdotes, but as Prawfsblawg notes, there still doesn’t seem to be much hard support for the relationship Schreiber alleges.

Building on Shreiber’s thesis, Daniel W. Drezner of TheNewForeignPolicy.com asks the question posed above:  which is more formative, undergrad or law school?

A commenter to Drezner’s post argues that undergrad has a greater influence on personal identity, while law school has a greater influence on professional identity.

I agree.  However, over a lifetime, I think undergrad is the more formative experience.  Personal identity, at least partially formed during the college years, guides the way we approach decisions and situations.  The way we approach the hundreds of choices (including deciding which law school to go to) and circumstances we confront over a lifetime heavily influences professional identity.

Thus, it may be their undergrad experiences that best explain the difference in leadership style between President Clinton and President Obama.  I’ll be eagerly awaiting Mr. Shreiber’s stylistic breakdown of Georgetown and Occidental/Columbia.

and here we thought the great law school hoax is that you'll learn how practice law.

[brian lauter]

If you’re in law school, you probably know about law school debt.  What you probably didn’t know, but maybe suspected, is that you’re a victim “of an unfolding education hoax on the middle class that’s just as insidious, and nearly as sweeping, as the housing crisis.”

"Who is the purveyor of this hyperbole?" you might ask.  Well, its “the capitalist tool” herself, Kathy Kristof, writing for Forbes Magazine.  In an article entitled “The Great College Hoax” appearing in the February 2 edition of Forbes, Ms. Kristof unloads on our beloved institutions of higher learning.

First, she slams the “education industrial complex” that has “cultivated the image of college as a sure-fire path to a life of social and economic privilege.”  

Then, she moves on to law school.  Paraphrasing Professor Richard Sander of UCLA Law, she argues that law schools “lure in minority students to improve their diversity rankings without disclosing that less than half of African-Americans who enter these programs ever pass the bar,” and that law schools “goose employment statistics.”

Professor Sander and Ms. Kristof actually make a good point regarding the employment statistics.  We know law schools game employment numbers to improve their U.S. News rankings, but I wonder if any stop to think about misleading effect their “patently spurious” statistics may be having on incoming students.  As Professor Sander says, it does sound a lot like a conspiracy “tinged with consumer fraud.”

All of this should lead the average, debt-ridden law school student to one big I-can’t-believe-I-didn’t-think-of-this-sooner conclusion:  Forget a lifetime of loan payments.  Fraud, misrepresentation, unfair competition – these are your tickets to financial freedom.  Sue your school.  You might win, and if you don’t, maybe they’ll give you a couple of externship units for the effort.

gimmicky goodness: santa clara admissions office turns to second life for recruitment.

[cynthia foster]

Back in 2006, Harvard Law School broke questionably lame new ground by offering one course both to its in-the-flesh students and through a program on Second Life.  I can't find any evidence that CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion is still being offered by Harvard (I would guess not), but I can tell you one thing: Santa Clara University has jumped on the Second Life bandwagon about 2.5 years later.

According to a press release that crept its way into my inbox this morning, SCU Law School Dean of Admissions Jeanette Leach will be holding a recruitment "workshop" for Second Life users interested in attending the school.  Leach, in full Second Life avatar gear, will screen a video, answer questions, and generally introduce all those Residents interested in entering this crappy legal economy to life at a law school "in the heart of Silicon Valley."

Presumably, we are supposed to make some connection between the Internetyness of Silicon Valley and the Internetyness of Second Life.  I think this is supposed to be cool.

“We need to meet prospective students where they are, and more and more, we find potential law students in various online arenas, including virtual worlds,” added [senior assistant dean of external relations Julia] Yaffee. “This is an exciting opportunity for us to offer a live application workshop that prospective students from around the world can attend.”

This is all going down on Thursday, so don't forget to break from your Second Life dance parties to meet with Avatar Leach.

Full press release after the jump.