Friday, December 29, 2017

November 2017

Have a happy New Year. Also, Nando, thanks for everything. I don't think people realize the amount of work that goes into maintaining a blog. The other thing you didn't mention is the amount of invective hurled at you personally in the early days.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedNovember20161,124,700
September20171,123,800
October20171,130,500
November20171,131,6006,900
Seasonally adjustedNovember20161,122,500
September20171,127,700
October20171,128,100
November20171,128,7006,200
Change from Oct-17 to
Nov-17
600

Sunday, November 19, 2017

OcTTTober 2017

Greetings, scam fans. There's little news on the legal employment front, but then there never is. Seriously, look back at this post in November 2020 and leave a comment if it's changed by more than a few thousand. I'll wait.

In school news, Valparaiso's "Board voted to suspend admission of a first-year law school class in Valparaiso, Indiana for the fall of 2018" while it searches for sunnier climes. May I suggest Chile? OTLSS did a good write-up here.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedOctober20171,125,100
August20181,129,300
September20181,123,900
October20181,128,5003,400
Seasonally adjustedOctober20171,122,700
August20181,126,700
September20181,127,300
October20181,126,2003,500
Change from Sep-18 to
Oct-18
-1,100

Thursday, November 2, 2017

SepTTTember 2017

Happy November.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedSeptember20171,117,700
July20181,137,200
August20181,130,200
September20181,125,0007,300
Seasonally adjustedSeptember20171,121,300
July20181,127,000
August20181,127,700
September20181,128,6007,300
Change from Aug-18 to
Sep-18
900

Saturday, September 30, 2017

AugusTTT 2017

If I wait any longer it will be November.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedAugust20161,124,400
June20171,140,300
July20171,136,400
August20171,128,9004,500
Seasonally adjustedAugust20161,121,800
June20171,130,700
July20171,126,200
August20171,126,3004,500
Change from Jul-17 to
Aug-17
100

Thursday, September 21, 2017

WaTTTerheads fail Mississippi bar

In one of those tail-wagging-the-dog sequences, I noticed the following cartoon and then searched to get context.

Article is here. I don't spend much time thinking about the Mississippi bar, nor Mississippi in general, but came away dumbfounded and thought I'd share. Briefly, the July bar passage rate was 53 percent, low enough to raise eyebrows. The February exam was an outright slaughter. First, the obligatory conjecture.

No one seems to know for sure why the exam passing rate is declining, but some have suggested it may be that law schools are accepting less qualified students.

I personally think the bar passage rate is declining due to a huge, rollicking grading conspiracy, but that's just one blogger's opinion, man. A local lawyer interviewed, who done passed the bar in 2016, believes the exam is too subjective and thanks Jesus for her own success. Praise the Lord!

The most inane thing is further down.

A Cleveland woman filed a complaint in Hinds County Chancery Court over her failed 2015 bar examination. Zundria Crawford wanted permission to sue the Mississippi Board of Bar Admissions, but the judge denied her petition. Crawford has filed an appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

We've moved from suing schools to suing the bar examiners. My WAG is that somewhere in the background either a school — or another entity with a vested interest — instigated and is funding this. For her part:

When asked why she didn't just retake the bar exam, Crawford replied, it's not about her but will affect all applicants for the Mississippi Bar. She said she was deprived of her rights.

In the event Ms. Crawford is unsuccessful in her appeal, some advice for Mississippi bar applicants: You don't need to study harder. You need to pray harder.

Friday, August 4, 2017

July 2017

Happy August. I didn't want to waste one keystroke on Today's Law Degree Takes on a Broader Meaning but I'm stewing.

At the heart of the shift is a term used by schools known as "JD Advantage," which refers to a job that doesn't require a law degree but where a J.D. is advantageous in the eyes of an employer. Such jobs include compliance officers, paralegals, consultants and journalists.

Organizations that monitor law school performance have measured an uptick in this area of employment: the proportion of law school graduates obtaining JD advantage jobs has steadily increased — from 8 to 14 percent — since 2007.

These people NEVER quit; they lie awake thinking of ways to scam. I thought JD Advantage™ would wither from derision, but instead it is becoming the new normal. As a stylistic matter, note how Bloomberg has the term in quotes before giving it a less conspicuous treatment in the next paragraph.

To any college student — Lordy, I hope there are some — reading this: if your employer thinks it is helpful for you to have a JD then let them pay for it.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedJuly20161,131,500
May20171,125,700
June20171,140,400
July20171,136,9005,400
Seasonally adjustedJuly20161,121,400
May20171,128,100
June20171,130,700
July20171,126,4005,000
Change from Jun-17 to
Jul-17
-4,300

Friday, July 7, 2017

June 2017

This was both a good month and a good year. Now, if only a few dozen more schools would close …

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedJune20161,129,000
April20171,121,400
May20171,125,900
June20171,140,10011,100
Seasonally adjustedJune20161,120,800
April20171,125,900
May20171,128,800
June20171,130,80010,000
Change from May-17 to
Jun-17
2,000

Sunday, June 25, 2017

May 2017

It's becoming unrealistic for me to keep this blog going. I'll see if I can manage once a month.

First, it makes no sense to continue baying into the ether. Smart students already avoid law school. To quote Paul Campos:

These percentages are even more stark when converted into raw numbers. In 2010, just under 36,000 people with LSAT scores of 160+ applied for fall admission. This year, that number is going to be 14,000. This is a 61% decline (law school applications as a whole are down 39% over that time).

The remainder mostly shouldn't be going to law school, yet the U.S. Government is willing to lend them unlimited funds and the academy is happy to take it. I've accepted there's nothing neither I nor anyone else can do about that. Sure, there will be some random school closures, but circa 2017 the scam is alive and well. If anything, things have gotten worse; back in the day a successful applicant had a good chance of passing the bar.

The problem in focusing on law school is losing sight of the big picture. Last November a hostile government helped — the other party did itself no favor — elect the most incompetent, self-serving, corrupt candidate in history. His party, which looks to him as a means to an end, is worse. Here's a good example: GOP rep says he's fine with more people dying under Trumpcare as long as it saves money. Your new government, ladies and gentlemen. Puts law school in perspective, doesn't it?

If you haven't bothered with Twitter then I urge you in the strongest possible terms to take a look. Think of it as 2009-era scamblogging, with writers trying to reach a disbelieving public while facing a well-organized disinformation effort. You don't need to sign up. The following should get you started.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedMay20161,116,900
March20171,118,700
April20171,121,600
May20171,124,8007,900
Seasonally adjustedMay20161,120,100
March20171,123,300
April20171,125,700
May20171,127,7007,600
Change from Apr-17 to
May-17
2,000

Monday, May 8, 2017

April 2017

April was a good month. Not for legal employment, mind you, but for toilets and their administrators falling like dominoes.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedApril20161,114,500
February20171,118,000
March20171,118,400
April20171,120,2005,700
Seasonally adjustedApril20161,119,300
February20171,123,700
March20171,123,000
April20171,124,1004,800
Change from Mar-17 to
Apr-17
1,100

Monday, April 10, 2017

The States finally step in

Loans 'Designed to Fail': States Say Navient Preyed on Students

From the outset, the lender knew that many borrowers would be unable to repay, government lawyers say, but it still made the loans, ensnaring students in debt traps that have dogged them for more than a decade.

While these risky loans were a bad deal for students, they were a boon for Sallie Mae. The private loans were — as Sallie Mae itself put it — a "baited hook" that the lender used to reel in more federally guaranteed loans, according to an internal strategy memo cited in the Illinois lawsuit.

Here's hoping the states have better luck than borrowers have to date.

Friday, April 7, 2017

March 2017

Meh.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedMarch20161,115,600
January20171,118,800
February20171,117,900
March20171,117,2001,600
Seasonally adjustedMarch20161,119,600
January20171,125,800
February20171,123,300
March20171,121,8002,200
Change from Feb-17 to
Mar-17
-1,500

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Rise of the robolawyers

The Atlantic has an article this month on the consumerization of legal AI. The TL;DR is that garden variety civil legal issues are amenable to automation and "bots will become the main entry point into the legal system." The prediction is that by 2025, bots will handle the majority of divorces, contract disputes, and deportation proceedings.

Let me say this: both my work and encounters with vendors give me a good vantage point. I've argued since the early-2000s about technology displacing lawyers and other professionals. It was interesting having someone tell me I wasn't that smart after I posted an image of a production scanner, never mind that I had been to trade shows and met offshoring companies that would handle its output.

At this point I don't care whether you go to law school or not. The main thing you should be aware is that it is now commercially viable to replace lawyers with artificial intelligence, with the technology moving inexorably down the legal food chain. Absent protectionist measures — there won't be any — the writing is on the wall.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Harvard legiTTTimizes a scam

A funny thing happened on the way to this post. I created the above image over a year ago, intending to write about toilets doing an end run around the LSAT by accepting GRE results instead. The gist was that schools needed an innocuous, facially valid test to help get Asses In Seats while concurrently obscuring how dumb the asses actually were. In other words, a rankings scam.

Taking that to its logical conclusion, the best available easily-administered and graded, low-cost, objective test is CAPTCHA. Seriously. I've played Oregon Trail on a teletype, so I'm an expert on typing tests. "BANG!" For bonus irony, CAPTCHA is designed to defeat Artificial Intelligence yet AI will ultimately handle the work that might have gone to toilet graduates.

Harvard, eh, Hahvard, you peons, just threw a monkey wrench into that. The 8,000-pound gorilla of the legal academy announced

Starting in the fall of 2017, Harvard Law School will allow applicants to submit either the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) to be considered for admission to its three-year J.D. program.

The pilot program to accept the GRE is part of a wider strategy at Harvard Law School to expand access to legal education for students in the United States and internationally. … The Law School’s decision to accept the GRE will alleviate the financial burden on applicants who would otherwise be required to prepare and pay for an additional test.

The change is supported by an HLS study, designed in 2016 and completed earlier this year, examining, on an anonymized basis, the GRE scores of current and former HLS students who took both the GRE and the LSAT. In accordance with American Bar Association (ABA) Standards for Legal Education, the aim of the study was to determine whether the GRE is a valid predictor of first-year academic performance in law school. The statistical study showed that the GRE is an equally valid predictor of first-year grades.

Let's look at the winners:

  • Harvard, which just expanded its applicant pool amidst an ongoing brain drain as the smartest students avoid law school
  • Columbia and Chicago, which will pick up Harvard's dregs
  • Every toilet from Brooklyn to Costa Mesa. If the most prominent law school in the country says the GRE is a valid proxy then who's to argue? Christmas just came nine months early at Cooley, where disseminating unintentionally humorous irrelevant comparisons to Harvard is an insTTTiTTTuTTTion

The losers:

  • The LSAC, but they'll get over it
  • Anyone going to a school outside the T6. This was also the case before Harvard's change
  • A handful of 170 or 171-LSAT scorers who get Columbia as a consolation prize. It will be interesting if this bulge descends further down the rankings
  • Taxpayers, as toilets prey on a newly-expanded pool of stupid, gullible SJWs

Law school vs dying of dysentery? Tough choice.

Friday, March 10, 2017

February 2017

So much material to post, so little motivation.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedFebruary20161,112,500
December20161,130,500
January20171,119,200
February20171,119,2006,700
Seasonally adjustedFebruary20161,119,100
December20161,126,100
January20171,126,400
February20171,125,1006,000
Change from Jan-17 to
Feb-17
-1,300

Sunday, February 12, 2017

January 2017

I titled this blog after I graduated law school and was subsequently unable to reconcile a so-called profession's obsession with prestige with its patent scumminess. Scummy practitioners who are miserable human beings. A scummy academy that has driven the best and brightest students away, even as it encourages mediocre ones to matriculate and throw away their life. A scummy accreditor that needs no further comment. A scummy judiciary that blames the victims, aka "sophisticated consumers."

A while ago I reached a point where I not only lost interest in blogging, but even reading other scamblogs I've followed for years.

Anyhow, I popped into TTR recently and saw that Charlotte School of Law is holding a food drive. For its own students. The tl;dr version is the Dept of Education finally put the screws to a law school and cut off Federal loans, something it should have begun in the Joan King era.

Reportedly, the DoE offered to extend loans for the spring semester if the school agreed to shut down, but scumminess won the day. Nando and his commenters have already said all that needs to be, so I'll quit here.

Please give generously. CSL Students' Living Expenses

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedJanuary20161,111,000
November20161,124,700
December20161,130,400
January20171,117,4006,400
Seasonally adjustedJanuary20161,119,400
November20161,122,500
December20161,125,800
January20171,124,9005,500
Change from Dec-16 to
Jan-17
-900

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

December 2016

I'm obviously on top of things.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Not seasonally adjustedDecember20151,130,000
October20161,128,200
November20161,127,700
December20161,131,9001,900
Seasonally adjustedDecember20151,124,200
October20161,126,100
November20161,125,600
December20161,127,6003,400
Change from Nov-16 to
Dec-16
2,000