Irate law school grads say they were misled about job prospects

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by 03310151, Aug 17, 2010.

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  1. 03310151

    03310151 Active Member

    :rolleyes:

    Uh-oh, once the hoighty toighties figure out the scam, it'll be all over. The bubble's 'bout to pop on education:

    Irate law school grads say they were misled about job prospects | NJ.com

    Seton Hall law school graduates Scott Bullock and Justine Zappone say they were dismayed at the meager opportunities and heavy debt they faced. He blogs about his frustration.

    The angry rants first surfaced last summer on an anonymous New Jersey blog.

    Law school is a “scam,” the blogger wrote. Administrators are greedy “charlatans” who could not care less about education, and students are but “hapless lemmings” who have been tricked into paying a fortune to enter “America’s most overrated, miserable and saturated industry.”

    Within months, the blog was drawing up to 5,000 unique readers a day, many of whom praised the anonymous writer — known only as Law is 4 Losers — as a hero for exposing the lies they say they, too, were fed about secure jobs and generous incomes.

    The blogger is Scott Bullock, a 2005 Seton Hall University School of Law graduate who agreed to reveal his identity to The Star-Ledger for this article. Yet Bullock, whose outrage stems from graduating with more than $100,000 of debt but meager job prospects, says he is merely tapping into a groundswell of resentment against the nation’s law schools.

    As they enter the worst job market in decades, many young would-be lawyers are turning on their alma maters, blaming their quandary on high tuitions, lax accreditation standards and misleading job placement figures. Unless students graduate from schools like Harvard or Yale, they “might as well be busing tables,” Bullock said.

    “It’s really just a big Ponzi scheme,” said Bullock, 33, of Bridgewater. “They’re just cranking kids out for $45,000 a year.”

    School administrators, who admit to keeping tabs on these so-called “scam blogs,” which now number in the dozens, bristle at the charge that they run diploma mills. Not every graduate can land a six-figure job at a big-name law firm — especially during the current downturn — but many still find fulfilling careers in and out of the legal field, said Claudette St. Romain, an associate dean at Seton Hall, one of three law schools in New Jersey.
    “For a person with passion, a certain talent and a certain outlook, it’s a great education,” St. Romain said, noting that Gov. Chris Christie and several state senators are among
    the school’s alumni. “But it’s not for everybody — don’t get me wrong.”

    Tough times
    What law school officials don’t deny is that these are challenging times for new graduates. Job openings are scarce. Firms are increasingly turning to outsourcing or contract work. And still, the number of law school enrollees has continued to climb as those unable to find work clamor for professional degrees.

    The result: Unemployment among new law school grads nationwide has risen for two straight years, to a rate of 12 percent for the class of 2009, according to the National Association for Law Placement. Among the employed, one in four jobs were temporary, while one in 10 were part-time. One-fifth of those employed said they were searching for another job, twice as many as in the boom years a decade ago.

    Recognizing the mounting crisis, the American Bar Association recently urged prospective students to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of a legal education. For a law degree to pay off, the association said in a memo, a grad should earn at least $65,000 a year. Nearly half of employed 2008 grads had starting salaries below that amount.

    “Law students ought to look at the numbers and envision how their future might be before going to law school, not after,” said ABA president Carolyn Lamm.

    But the critics ask: How can prospective students make informed decisions when they aren’t given enough information in the first place?

    In the glossy Seton Hall brochures he perused before applying, Bullock recalls reading about six-figure salaries and job placement rates of more than 90 percent. Nothing he read, he said, prepared him for the harsh reality after graduation, of having to take a low-level temp job at a large Newark firm and toiling in “sweatshop” conditions elbow-to-elbow with dozens of other grads.

    Seton Hall classmate Justine Zeppone, who met Bullock while working at the same job, tells a similar story, saying it was then that she realized she had “made a very bad mistake.” The two friends recently opened their own law firm in Lyndhurst but, while they have managed to drum up two dozen clients, they say they often worry about making enough to survive.

    “It’s terrible. All the schoolwork, all the commitment, all the money — for not a lot,” said Zeppone, 31, of Clifton, adding that she will be paying off her $65,000 student loan until she is 60.

    Seton Hall administrators said they abide by NALP recommendations for reporting data and that sample sizes can vary because grads respond on a voluntary basis.

    On its website, the school currently reports an employment rate of 94 percent for the 2009 class, but does not break that down into full-time, part-time or temporary work. The school also claims a starting salary of $145,000 in private practice, though it does not specify how many grads reported salaries in this area.

    A CALL FOR CLARITY
    The push for more transparency is gaining traction even among some law professors, who say the wide disparity in how schools report such data makes it hard for prospective students to compare apples to apples.

    “There are certain ways to paint statistics, and schools paint it in a way that’s most favorable to them,” said Brian Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis. “This is not one school or two schools, this is a lot of schools doing this.”

    The lack of transparency is all the more troubling, he added, because of the large sums at stake. Average law school tuitions have risen twice as fast as inflation over the last two decades, to $35,740 for private schools in 2008, up from just $9,650 in 1998, according to the ABA. Living and book expenses ballooned to $13,680 during the same period.

    The rise in tuitions, Tamanaha said, is partly the result of a trend among law schools to expand their faculties so that individual professors have more time to focus on academic research. However, while this practice might help schools boost their standing in magazine rankings, which place heavy emphasis on academics, it does little to benefit graduates after they get their diplomas, he said.

    “I’m not sure I would go to law school today,” said Tamanaha, who paid a total of $15,000 to attend Boston University School of Law in the 1980s. “People have to think very hard about whether they want to take on this debt for uncertain returns.”

    Ben Rothman, 32, said he enrolled in Loyola Law School Los Angeles after working a string of “dead-end jobs,” with the impression that a law degree would be “a ticket to a high salary.” He says this notion was strengthened by Loyola’s job placement figures, which showed nine in 10 graduates landed jobs.

    However, Rothman, who graduated last May, says he soon questioned the value of his education when classes proved so easy that he could have slept through them and still achieved middling grades. He began wondering whether admissions officers would have “let a dead squirrel roll in.”

    Now, more than a year after graduating, Rothman is embarrassed to tell friends he is still jobless, living with his parents and $135,000 in debt. Even Loyola’s recent decision to retroactively raise grades in hopes of boosting employment prospects for alumni did nothing to help him, he said.

    “I just have a piece of paper that says I’m a lawyer,” said Rothman, who is considering a gig as a Revolutionary War-era re-enactor. (Though, after reviewing the job description, he concluded, “I’m actually unqualified.”)

    “Schools should be regulated — other industries are. I don’t see why they’re the exception,” he said. “Everyone assumes schools are altruistic, but they’re a business just like any other business.”

    A Loyola spokesperson said Rothman’s experience did not sound typical of the school’s graduates and that administrators work closely with students to ensure they “hit the ground running.”

    Rethinking reporting

    There are some signs that change is afoot.

    The ABA, which is in the middle of a three-year review of its accreditation process, last week appointed a committee to study how schools can more accurately report their job placement and salary figures, said Donald Polden, who is heading the effort.

    One of the models the committee plans to explore is a proposal by Kyle McEntee, a third-year student at Vanderbilt University, who suggests schools might get more candid information from graduates if they asked about employers and salaries separately. While Polden said he agrees with the aim of this proposal, he wonders if it may be too complicated.

    The association says it is also looking into changing the way it accredits new schools, in response to criticism that a proliferation of institutions is adding to the oversupply of lawyers and diluting the quality of the legal education system. Since the start of the decade, 18 new schools have received accreditation, adding to the existing 182 and helping swell the ranks of enrollment by 20,000 students.

    “The whole thing is being scrubbed, as they say, and being looked at,” Polden said.
    Other law students, though, say the problem is not so much with the law schools as it is with applicants’ big-dollar dreams.


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  2. JBjunior

    JBjunior Active Member

    The average age of someone entering law school is between 25 and 27 I believe, not quite "kids" being taken advantage of.

    Just like with any investment, they should be evaluating the chances that there will be a positive return. I am sure they were the ones who applied to the school because they were excited about the prospect.
     
  3. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    The best of the best are not making the big bucks yet people still want that JD after their name. If guys from schools like this can't find work, what are all of the DETC law school grads doing?


    Good post.
     
  4. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    Everyone knows that there is no money in law school anymore. Heck I have read the articles for years about their being 10 times too many law schools than are really needed. I doubt they did not read/hear the same stories as well. They just hoped they were the ones that were going to get one of those golden tickets. I do not feel bad for these grads.

    The local ADAs are only making in the high 30’s to start. That’s sad.
     
  5. SurfDoctor

    SurfDoctor Moderator

    It is my understanding that there have been too many law school graduates to fill available positions, and this has been going on for many years. IMO, it's part of the reason why there are so many frivolous law suits; there are a great many practicing attorneys that do not have enough work and are thus willing to grasp at any possible case they can. This occurs even though a case may not have much chance of winning.
     
  6. ELIAS

    ELIAS New Member

    I agree with Michael Oliver and everyone on this post. In addition the added bonus is that DETC LAW degrees might get a jump on the fact that those who are in California will probably reconsider going to an expensive school. Heck the law school down the road from my home in is an average of 70-80k for their four year program. I am not by any means going to pay that much for a law degree if I am not going to practice law. However, the students should really consider their career outlook and see if they will utilize the degree for practicing law. In my case I will be using it for business, and consulting Vets for free. Now that is just what I will be doing with it... JB JUNIOR makes it clear should look at it as an investment because your time, study, and effort is what you are paying forward. Amazing article though...
     
  7. 03310151

    03310151 Active Member

    WSJ Blog on the Ledger Story

    The Wall Street Journal law blog on the Newark Star Ledger story....


    Originally Posted by WSJ Blogs

    * August 16, 2010, 9:14 AM ET

    ‘A Big Ponzi Scheme’: More on the Ire Directed Toward Law Schools

    By Ashby Jones

    The law-job market is starting — just starting — to turn around (click here - Law Blog - WSJ for our latest on that).

    Still, it’s not happening fast enough for a handful of bloggers who continue to hammer the law schools for allegedly selling a false bill of goods.

    The Newark Star-Ledger ran a story Sunday on one such blog, in which the author — a graduate of the law school at Seton Hall — rails out against law school, calling it a “scam” and its administrators greedy “charlatans.” The profession, in the mind of the blogger, is “America’s most overrated, miserable and saturated industry.”

    The Star-Ledger publicly identified the blogger in the story as Scott Bullock, a 2005 Seton Hall law grad. Bullock didn’t let his newly found lack of anonymity get in the way of his candor.

    Law school is “really just a big Ponzi scheme,” said Bullock, 33, to the paper. “They’re just cranking kids out for $45,000 a year.” (Bullock was also featured in this 2007 article on law schools http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1190...stpop_emailed; and this LB post - Law Blog - WSJ a short while later.)

    School administrators, perhaps not surprisingly, don’t love the charge that they run diploma mills. Claudette St. Romain, an associate dean at Seton Hall, said that while not every Seton Hall grad can land a six-figure job at a prestigious firm, many grads still find fulfilling careers inside and out of the law.

    “For a person with passion, a certain talent and a certain outlook, it’s a great education,” she said. “But it’s not for everybody — don’t get me wrong.”

    Maybe so, but the push for greater transparency from the schools continues.

    According to the article, Seton Hall administrators said they abide by NALP recommendations for reporting data and that sample sizes can vary because grads respond on a voluntary basis.

    But on its website, the school currently reports an employment rate of 94 percent for the 2009 class, though it doesn’t break that down into full-time, part-time or temporary work. The school also claims a starting salary of $145,000 in private practice, though it does not specify how many grads reported salaries in this area.

    The push for more transparency is gaining traction even among some law professors.

    “There are certain ways to paint statistics, and schools paint it in a way that’s most favorable to them,” said Brian Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis. “This is not one school or two schools, this is a lot of schools doing this.”

    Continued Tamanaha: “I’m not sure I would go to law school today. People have to think very hard about whether they want to take on this debt for uncertain returns.” Tamanaha said he paid a total of $15,000 to attend Boston University School of Law in the 1980s.
     
  8. ELIAS

    ELIAS New Member

    Summary Occupational Guide

    If you look at these numbers they are not correct. I know a handful of people who work with EDD and they tell me that the numbers are obviously skewed. Forgive my typos key board tends to lock...
     
  9. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    They still charge about $50,000 with all the fee's and tuition for a JD at Concord which is DETC...wtf?
     
  10. BlueMason

    BlueMason Audaces fortuna juvat

    Indeed, there are too many lawyers out there.. but law schools are profiting too much to close their doors for a few years to allow the market to catch up.

    It's really not just lawyers that are having this issue, we can take this a step further and say that there are too many people who want a degree and then think that they are on their way of making six-figure salaries. What we do need (US and Canada, imho) are more skilled tradespeople. I know more people who are skilled workers (welders, electricians) who make six-figured, than I do University educated people...
     
  11. CargoJon

    CargoJon New Member

    These naive fools enter these programs and expect their graduation to look like the move "The Firm" where they weed through competing offer letters from top law firms who just cant' live without their talent.

    Sure, if you've been an attorney for 25 years with an established practice, you're going to make some good money. What the legal community doesn't like to brag about is the rookie public defenders or ADA's that are lucky to make $40K a year. That's what most of the law school grads end up doing, at least until they can latch on to something better.
     
  12. soupbone

    soupbone Active Member

    This could also be why professional certs are starting to carry more weight when compared to degrees in some fields. They won't take the place of a degree but certs are possibly allowing people to stand out more than they used to.
     
  13. AUTiger00

    AUTiger00 New Member

    I wouldn't consider Seton Hall "the best of the best". Law school grads have been posting stuff like this since 2006 telling potential law school applicants not to go and yet people think they will be the one who beats the odds. If you're not admitted a top-20 law school, don't even bother going.
     
  14. bazonkers

    bazonkers New Member

    Whatever happened to studying something you are really interested in and love as opposed to chasing the money? I think many of these grads are upset because they thought law school was a ticket to massive amounts of wealth. I bet those that went to law school because they legitimately were interested and passionate about the field aren't the ones complaining.
     
  15. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    You would lose the bet.

    It's true that law school has stopped becoming "a ticket to massive amounts of wealth", and certainly this is an issue for many people. But there is another problem -- law school is still "a ticket to massive amounts of debt".

    Law school tuition and other expenses have significantly outpaced the rate of inflation in recent years. As a result, it is now quite normal for law students to graduate with $100,000 - $200,000 in debt. That's a big hole.

    The ABA itself says that lawyers need an annual salary of at least $65,000 per year for the investment to make sense (as cited in the first post above). If you can't find a job that pays this well -- and a larger percentage of recent law grads have not been able to do so -- then you may never climb out of the debt hole (remember, you can't discharge student loans by declaring bankruptcy either).

    There are some people who passionately love the law for its own sake, who never expected to become filthy rich, and who are content to practice for modest wages. Good for them. But -- it turns out that even for those people, the prospect of lifetime indebtness is pretty depressing.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 17, 2010
  16. BlueMason

    BlueMason Audaces fortuna juvat

    I'm afraid Law and Medicine are fields whereby people are chasing the $ and the 'prestige' of being a Dr/Lawyer, rather than doing it for the love of the field... I know of a few nurses who really dislike being nurses however the $ keeps them there.. same goes for law.
     
  17. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member


    These people can't just stop paying their students loans if they can't find work. In Texas you have to stay current on your student loans to keep you license to practice.
     
  18. sideman

    sideman Well Known Member

    Sad but true. There are, however few, some of us that love the study of law for what it is.
     
  19. james_lankford

    james_lankford New Member

    what if the thing I'm really interested in and love is money :)
     
  20. BlueMason

    BlueMason Audaces fortuna juvat

    <br /> <br /> Combine that with a Business Degree and you're on your way to sure success opening and running a Gentlemen's Club! ;)
     

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