Bad People and Fools
Below, I have excerpted a comment "ibz" posted in the bar exam thread. The comment makes a great starting point for discussion, but first, the cliff notes: law schools (including, perhaps, our very own) have been inflating their stats on employment rates and average starting salaries. Many prospective law students do not fully comprehend this situation until they enroll, pay three years of tuition, graduate, and find themselves un- or under-employed. Recently (and rather predictably, given the particulars of their education and their relative idleness), unemployed alumni of Thomas Jefferson School of Law sued their alma mater, alleging various versions of detrimental reliance and fraud.
Here is ibz's take:
All of that is why I have a hard time getting fired up about this issue. I feel for the students who feel afraid for their futures and more than a little duped (most them went to law school to AVOID the school of hard knocks, only to graduate with an advanced degree) but I'm not yet convinced they are blameless enough to be entitled to a refund. A jury, I suppose, could see things differently.
Here is ibz's take:
I had only skimmed the coverage of the newish lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson School of Law, but David Lat pointed out today that the complaint was filed by a Boalt grad named Brian Procel. Cool.My intuition is in line with ibz's. Absent other strong feelings I will root for co-Boaltie Procel as an extension of principle, but my enthusiasm wanes when it comes to the merits. The world is full of crookely people who will do crookely things to relieve other people of money. I can think of no good reason to believe that the individuals who run our academic institutions are magically above the fray when it comes to those impulses. But--as ibz points out--neither should prospective law students: if it sounds true good to be true, it isn't. I don't know what "caveat discipulo" means, but I have yet to be convinced that caveat emptor shouldn't apply here.
The complaint is pretty detailed and worth reading, if you are interested in this sort of thing. My own intuition (moral, not legal) is that schools are bad if they misrepresent what happens to their graduates, but students are foolish if they rely on what schools say about employment statistics. Caveat discipulo, so to speak. (Third declension, right? It's been a while.)
All of that is why I have a hard time getting fired up about this issue. I feel for the students who feel afraid for their futures and more than a little duped (most them went to law school to AVOID the school of hard knocks, only to graduate with an advanced degree) but I'm not yet convinced they are blameless enough to be entitled to a refund. A jury, I suppose, could see things differently.
Labels: Legal Education Costs
posted by Patrick Bageant at 9:04 PM
28 Comments:
I don't get the notion that students are at fault for believing schools put out accurate employment data. As Dean Edley said to the 2L in that email, we are not supposed to be customers interested in buying a commodity. We should not have to look at non-profit schooling institutions with the same skepticism as when we go in to buy a used car. The fact that we are unreasonable to rely on what non-profit educational sources tell us is truly a sad and pathetic statement about the state of education.
I am pretty sure it is discipulus, -i.
the consumer laws that the plaintiff relies upon forbid businesses from false advertising in and of itself. generally, there's little or no defense of "yeah my statements were false but no reasonable person would have believed my false statements." the basic inquiry is on whether or not the defendant was pumping out false or misleading statements. so the key question is whether it's false or misleading when schools "hire" all the unemployed students for a couple of weeks so that the school can claim 99% employment.
11:23, I agree, sort of. I don't think students are "at fault" for taking a school's representations at face value. But I don't think that is the issue. The real question is, who should bear the cost of the students' unfortunate investment in a legal education? The student (who voluntarily chose to borrow money for law school and who get to keep the degree) or the school (which is a public institution that will just pass any judgment liability on to next year's students anyway)?
So, I think the question "are students at fault" is sort of a non-starter. The real question is, "are they entitled to demand someone else foot the bill for their education?"
well the judgment theoretically could be so financially crippling as to shut down these lower rank law schools... that would be a winning proposition for everyone.
Patrick, you're basically making the argument that the "cure is worse than the disease" because the burden ultimately gets shifted to other students. I'm sympathetic to that argument but something--perhaps not this lawsuit but something--needs to be done. I'd first point out that to some degree this burden shifting is already occurring. The school has to get the funds to pay for these stat-inflating jobs somehow. Additionally, there's something amiss whenever anyone--law school or otherwise--is incentivized to mislead in its stats. Even if students should have known better, there should not be an incentive to mislead. If the lawsuit--and it is a huge "IF"--leads to accurate stats, it will be a monumental success.
5:01, your comment is just flat out wrong. See Lavie v. Procter & Gamble Co., 129 Cal. Rptr. 2d 486, 494 (Cal. Ct. App. 2003) ("unless the advertisement targets a particular disadvantaged or vulnerable group, it is judged by the effect it would have on a reasonable consumer").
Oh snap.
It's discipule (vocative is the same as the nominative, except for 2nd declension masc. nouns, where -us changes to -e).
Romani ite domum!
But I think you want a nominative form here. It's "may the student beware," not "beware, student," so I don't think it calls for the vocative. (Though I might be remembering it wrong -- it's been a while.)
Now, write it out a hundred times.
Argh. Some languages deserved to die.
I think it is weird that anyone would believe "non-profit" was equivalent to "truthful in one's own promotional materials." However, for the record, I was about to snarkily suggest that TJSL was a for-profit institution. I would have been wrong.
Definitely nominative here. We're not conjugating caueo for the second person now are we?
See, e.g., Westboro Baptist Church.
Also: Go Canucks!
TJSL people in my BarBri class. Do I ask them about it? Do they know what a class action is?
"Thats, like, a lawsuit or something, right? Or wait, is it, like, you know, when you do jumping jacks during class-time?"
It's funny that we are willing to point the finger at TJSL for gaming the rankings when a bunch of people from our school are given bullshit "jobs" doing free work for a short bridge grant, which is of course counted as employed.
I was aware of that issue while applying for the bridge grant. It gave me pause and made me think a little. But, a) it's a welcome life boat in rough waters; b) it seems well set up for actually leading to long-term employment, because the "free work" is experience and skills-building, there are requirements for maintaining a job search, and a lot of employers (especially public sector/interest) won't look at us (new grads) until we've passed the bar, and the grant keeps you afloat until then. I haven't gotten a decision yet, but if I get the bridge thing, I think I will get a lot more out of it than the school will.
does it bother you that by taking the bridge grant you are deceiving future boalt students into thinking the employment picture is better than it actually is?
He/she is not deceiving future Boalt students; if anyone is, it is the ABA. Taking a benefit during the search for a job should not make ANYONE feel bad.
The Bridge grant ends in December. US News doesn't gather employment stats until February, so I'm fairly certain the bridge grant doesn't count towards the employed at 9 months stat. Regarding employed at graduation, I wasn't notified that I received a bridge grant until late June. So I don't see how I could have been counted as employed for that stat either.
Perhaps if they had timed the grant better, Boalt wouldn't have had its little slip in the rankings...
The problem here is timing. The kids that got hit the worst were 2010 graduates and some 2011 graduates. As a class of 2010 grad, I applied in the fall of 2006. I am sure the data I relied on then was completely accurate. Things just turned to shit afterwards, there is no fraud claim.
I think the real claim is different. Let's take a hypothetical 2010 Boalt grad who has no job after passing the Bar and is still looking actively. There are in fact a number of them still out there, I know because three came into my firm for an interview last week. While they are going around trying to get work, the school is claiming that 99% are employed and in high powered jobs. What is the implication? That those still looking are the shitty 1% who somehow bungled a Boalt degree. If it was true, then fine. But it's not. And it's very unfair to those still looking to put out numbers suggesting they are rare.
I think class actions based on these grounds may have more traction, though I'm not exactly sure what claim you would bring off the top of my head.
4:21, I deleted your comment. Please email me if you have concerns.
One other thing (same guy as above).
The myth here is that this is only happening to people from shitty schools. I know a Georgetown 2010 grad working as a "law clerk" at a 1-800 medical service business, making 13 dollars an hour.
The people who got through easy don't even understand what it's like to be one of the people that didn't.
Patrick,
I'm definitely sensitive to not wanting to push the costs of litigation on to future classes. But at some point there needs to be a disincentive for juking the stats. People believe these numbers. They go to law school in large part because of them. Whether reasonable or not, the intended purpose of these inflated stats is to induce people to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a product worth far less than they're led to believe. Something needs to be done to stop law schools from perpetuating such a massive fraud. The ABA isn't doing it, the government won't do it, and law schools sure as hell aren't going to regulate themselves anytime soon.
Not to mention, you can always say corporations (or in this case purveyors of a service) should escape liability no matter the wrong under the pretense that you're really just worried about those poor, innocent future consumers.
Money damages is the mechanism our society has put in place to punish wrongdoers and compensate injured parties for intentional misrepresentation. I think that setting a precedent that law schools aren't above the law when it comes to fraud will do more good than harm.
And if one successful lawsuit doesn't change industry practice, I say sue 'em all. Maybe a series of highly publicized judgments coupled with rising tuition to cover the losses will finally convince people to think a bit more seriously about taking on the expenses associated with a legal education.
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