For those thinking of going to law school

[frank ryan]

What is the worst law school around ? Do they have online law schools ?

[TripletDaddy]

University of utah.

[Commando]

What is the worst law school around ? Do they have online law schools ?

Yes, there are really terrible law schools that are not ABA approved. Particularly in California, where you don't need a degree from an ABA sanctioned school to sit for the bar.

[Lost Student]

What is the worst law school around ? Do they have online law schools ?

Concordia's new law school here in Boise is pretty bad. Last summer, after its inaugural class has completed their 2nd year of study, the ABA decided to not give them provisional accreditation and then the state bar decided to not grant an exception, meaning those students could not take the bar exam after graduation. About half of the students transferred to other law schools at that point. Those that transferred had to take classes for at least two years at their new school, meaning many law students lost an entire year.

I would even go so far as to say that Concordia is almost as bad as the University of Utah law school.

[old_gregg]

thomas jefferson is pretty bad. a friend's husband was paying sticker price there before he wised up and dropped out

[Uncle Ted]

Just when you think it couldn't get any worse...

Are Lawyers Getting Dumber?


Yes, says the woman who runs the bar exam

Last August, the tens of thousands of answer sheets from the bar exam started to stream into the National Conference of Bar Examiners. The initial results were so glaringly bad that staffers raced to tell their boss, Erica Moeser. In most states, the exam spans two days: The first is devoted to six hours of writing, and the second day brings six hours of multiple-choice questions. The NCBE, a nonprofit in Madison, Wis., creates and scores the multiple-choice part of the test, administered in every state but Louisiana. Those two days of bubble-filling and essay-scribbling are extremely stressful. For people who just spent three years studying the intricacies of the law, with the expectation that their $120,000 in tuition would translate into a bright white-collar future, failure can wreak emotional carnage. It can cost more than $800 to take the exam, and bombing the first time can mean losing a law firm job.


When he saw the abysmal returns, Mark Albanese, director of testing and research at the NCBE, scrambled to check his staff’s work. Once he and Moeser were confident the test had been fairly scored, they began reporting the numbers to state officials, who released their results to the public over the course of several weeks.

In Idaho, bar pass rates dropped 15 percentage points, from 80 percent to 65 percent. In Delaware, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas, scores dropped 9 percentage points or more. By the time all the states published their numbers, it was clear that the July exam had been a disaster everywhere. Scores on the multiple-choice part of the test registered their largest single-year drop in the four-decade history of the test.


“It was tremendously embarrassing,” says Matt Aksamit, a graduate of Creighton University School of Law, who failed Nebraska’s July bar exam last year. “I think a lot of people can relate to what it’s like to work hard for something and fall short of what you want.” (Aksamit took it again in February and passed.)


Panic swept the bottom half of American law schools, all of which are ranked partly on the basis of their ability to get their graduates into the profession. Moeser sent a letter to law school deans. She outlined future changes to the exam and how to prepare for them. Then she made a hard turn to the July exam. “The group that sat in July 2014 was less able than the group that sat in July 2013,” she wrote. It’s not us, Moeser was essentially saying. It’s you.


[...]

Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School and author of the 2012 book Don’t Go to Law School (Unless), cannot suppress a laugh when presented with that logic. “There’s a shortage of lawyers in this country the same way that there’s a shortage of Mercedes-Benzes,” he says. “There are many people who want them who don’t have them.” He predicts that pumping out more J.D.s will only lead to more under- or unemployed attorneys.


That’s part of why Moeser says schools should take their students’ professional prospects into account long before they take the bar. The problem, she insists, isn’t that her test discriminates but that law schools looking to put butts in seats are lowering their standards. In the process, she says, they create false expectations. “You’ve got this underclass in law schools who are really keeping the lights on but not reaping the benefit.” Moeser expects the reckoning to continue. “I would anticipate the scores will drop again, if I had to guess,” she says, her mouth drawing a straight line across her face. “I don’t anticipate a rebound.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/featur...etting-dumber-

[falafel]

That's a horrible title. Lawyers aren't getting dumber. Dumber people are going to law school. I, for one, am no dumber than I was on the first day of law school.

[Moliere]

That's a horrible title. Lawyers aren't getting dumber. Dumber people are going to law school. I, for one, am no dumber than I was on the first day of law school.

I believe you.

[TripletDaddy]

Interesting to learn that there is a single person that "runs the bar exam."

sounds like a lot of work!

[Uncle Ted]

The beginning of the end for lawyers... replacing them with a free robot:

A 19-year-old made a free robot lawyer that has appealed $3 million in parking tickets

Hiring a lawyer for a parking-ticket appeal is not only a headache, but it can also cost more than the ticket itself. Depending on the case and the lawyer, an appeal — a legal process where you argue out of paying the fine — can cost between $400 to $900.


But with the help of a robot made by British programmer Joshua Browder, 19, it costs nothing. Browder's bot handles questions about parking-ticket appeals in the UK. Since launching in late 2015, it has successfully appealed $3 million worth of tickets.
[...]

He's programming the bot to handle more complicated legal issues, too, including asylum for Syrian refugees. The language barrier is a coding challenge, since the robot needs to understand Arabic but produce a legal document in English. This bot will likely launch by summer — at no cost.


"If it is one day possible for any citizen to get the same standard of legal representation as a billionaire," Browder says, "how can that not be a good thing?"

http://www.businessinsider.com/joshua-browder-bot-for-parking-tickets-2016-2

[Sullyute]

The beginning of the end for lawyers... replacing them with a free robot:


http://www.businessinsider.com/joshu...tickets-2016-2

Hopefully his next robot can replace politicians.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Hopefully his next robot can replace politicians.

http://www.ersatzsciencejournal.com/sociology/scientist-apologizes-for-donald-trump-claims-programming-error/

[BigFatMeanie]

Hopefully his next robot can replace politicians.

Oh that day is coming...

[Uncle Ted]

What do you do if you spent $150,000+ on a law degree but still can find a job?... Sue your law school!

Law Graduate Gets Her Day in Court, Suing Law School

Nearly a decade has passed since an aspiring young lawyer in California, Anna Alaburda, graduated in the top tier of her class, passed the state bar exam and set out to use the law degree she had spent about $150,000 to acquire.


But on Monday, in a San Diego courtroom, she will tell a story that has become all too familiar among law students in the United States: Since graduating from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in 2008, she has yet to find a full-time salaried job as a lawyer.


From there, though, her story has taken an unusual twist: Ms. Alaburda, 37, is the first former law student whose case against a law school, charging that it inflated the employment data for its graduates as a way to lure students to enroll, will go to trial.
[...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/bu...data.html?_r=0

[LA Ute]

Really interesting pair of views here about legal education. Everyone who’s taken the LSAT or been to law school will have a reaction based on their own experience.

Malcolm Gladwell, Yale Dean Heather Gerken, And The Dialectic Tension Within Legal Education

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_...education.html