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.

Borrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnnnnnggggggggggg

I made the mistake of ambling over to the ABA Journal to peruse Law school financing system in need of ‘serious re-engineering,’ task force says. Like many media websites, it ranks articles by views, comments, and e-mail forwards. So, what is this presTTTigious "profession" focused on this summer weekend?

As we can see, the Cooley suit and the law school financing reform article didn't interest readers as much as treadmill desks. The ranking changes in real time and both articles fell off the page while I was typing this.

I confidently predict that a Stetson associate dean scraping gum off her shoe would garner more interest from ABA Journal readers than a judge agreeing law school is a total scam. Especially if she was blowing a prospect at the time.

P.S.: Ignore the $15/hr contract article, #8. That's just a figure some scambloggers fabricated before being caught and excoriated by sharp-eyed law academics. Lawyers really make tons of money, as well-documented by a pair of Seton Hall and Rutgers professors. Big pimpin'.

Cooley heading for #1!!!!!!

Hearts throughout this great nation were set aflutter today by the news that Thomas M. Cooley Law School received ABA approval to open a new campus in the Tampa Bay area. While some had questioned whether the satellite campus could surmount the ABA's rigorous, grueling accreditation protocols, happily it did, and will begin offering evening classes to its well-qualified student body May 2012.

Presently home to just one law school, Stetson, the booming area legal market has been clamoring for more graduates. Until now, the deficit had been partly satisfied by importing Cooley graduates from the school's home base in Michigan, often by G5. Indeed Cooley, whose motto is "The spirit of the law is in the human heart (Lex Corde)," would be doing a public disservice had it not reached out.

Those who follow law school rankings have been astonished by Cooley's unbroken rise in Judging the Law Schools, the industry bible. By most criteria, Cooley is the #1 school in the country. In overall rank, until now it has come in #2, a hair behind a well-known Massachusetts institution. Eschewing meaningless statistics, which many law schools intentionally misreport, anyway, the Cooley rankings focus on items intrinsic to the law school experience, such as Part Time Faculty and Library Total Square Footage. With its new facilities and additional faculty, Cooley is destined for #1.

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http://www.cooley.edu/newsevents/2011/080811_cooley_opens_tampa_campus.html

August 8, 2011

Thomas M. Cooley Law School to Open New Campus in Tampa Bay

The Thomas M. Cooley Law School announced today that the American Bar Association's (ABA) Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar accepted the recommendation of the Accreditation Committee to acquiesce in the Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s application to open a Tampa Bay-area campus in Riverview, Florida. The Tampa Bay campus has also been approved by the Higher Learning Commission and the Florida Department of Education, Commission for Independent Education.

The Tampa Bay campus will begin offering evening classes in May 2012, followed by morning classes in September 2012, and afternoon classes in January 2013. The implementation will follow the same pattern as at the School's other campuses, rolling out the standard curriculum over a three-year period. All Cooley students will be eligible to attend classes at the Tampa Bay campus.

Tampa Bay comprises a little over 4,000,000 residents, but is home to only one law school. Florida represents Cooley's largest alumni location outside Michigan, and Florida provides about 6% of our applicants and 5% of our incoming students each year. The School also has an active externship program in the state.

In addition to its large alumni base of 886 graduates throughout Florida, Cooley has had a growing presence in the Tampa Bay area through its Service to Soldiers: Legal Assistance Referral Program, which recently expanded to Florida in January. The ABA's Military Pro Bono Project and the Hillsborough County Bar Association joined together with Cooley to offer a complimentary training program aimed at preparing local attorneys to represent members of the military in legal issues ranging from child custody concerns to housing rental disputes.

Cooley, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Michigan educational corporation, has acquired a 130,000 square-foot facility in Riverview, comparable in size to its current campus in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Renovations and staffing details are expected to be finalized in the coming weeks. The facility will accommodate the approximately 700 students who are expected to attend.

Professor Jeffrey L. Martlew, a former Michigan circuit court judge, has been designated as the Associate Dean for the Tampa Bay campus. Associate Dean Martlew explained that the new campus in Tampa Bay will cater to an underserved sector of law students, particularly part-time students and minority populations, but will provide Cooley’s full-time program as well.

Cooley Law School is the largest law school in the nation. Founded in 1972, the private, non-profit law school operates J.D. programs across Michigan in Lansing, Auburn Hills, Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor. Today, Cooley Law School has more than 15,000 graduates across the nation and worldwide and also offers joint degree and master of laws programs. Cooley offers enrollment three times a year; in January, May and September. Additional information about Cooley can be found at cooley.edu.

DiversiTTTy

My beloved alma mater has emphasized racial diversity since the glory days of rioting, the 1960s. I thought this was a good idea, despite the school taking the idea too far. For instance, it sets aside law review seats. Its URM alumni have mostly done well, and better than me in any event.

"Diversity" is a code word for "straight, white males need not apply." Guided by the AMA and ADA -- whatever they do, do the opposite -- the ABA wants the US Snooze rankings to incorporate diversity. Basically, enshrine the concept that "diverse" students benefit a law school more than, uh, non-"diverse" ones. Black student from Chicago, good. White student who emigrated from Serbia, bad. Diversity, good. Merit, bad.

This letter could have been written by Lewis Carroll. We're talking about a so-called professional organization, the ABA, which is controlled by large firms whose equity partners are nearly lily white. Sure, they employ "diverse" graduates, as non-partnership-track staff attorneys, contract attorneys, and coders. See Tom the Temp's blog.

To its credit, USNWR has so far resisted this effort to torture its rankings to appease the ABA. Seems measuring "diversity," and how much "diversity" to include in the ranking, is problematic.

Want diversity? Go to Cooley.