Administration Announces Haas To Take Over New Addition

Add this to the list of Dean Edley's failures.

Because of the financial predicament that the law school is in, they've decided to lease the new addition to Haas in exchange for roughly $10M a year. Apparently this will be enough to keep tuition from rising above $50k/year in the near term.

In an email sent out to student leaders this afternoon, Edley stated:

I know times are tough and I realize students are concerned about rising tuition. In response to these concerns, we've worked out a deal with Haas where they will be taking over the addition and we'll move some classes back to the annex. Students should be prepared to be excluded from the new addition unless they're wearing sports coats and can verify they have paid employment upon graduation.

The Administration email continued with several other cost cutting measures including:

- Hiring unemployed 3Ls as library security guards in order to cut the amount we currently pay the security guards and to boost employment stats.
- LLM and transfer numbers will be increased by 100%. To support this, a quarter of Boalt classes will now be taught in French.
- Zeb Cafe will be turned into the bar, "Zeb After Dark," Thursday through Saturday from 10 - 2am in an attempt to draw some of the Greek business away from Kip's. Any law student over 25 will be turned away at the door.

So, after all of that, do we think these measures will even help? What about all of the money we've put into the new addition without even being able to use it?

Live Blogging the 3L "How do I be a grown-up?" Meeting

5:38. Decided to liveblog the private sector meeting
5.39: Jason De Lo*enzo, who is apparently the "3L Adviser" Nix that, GL Adviser is talking
5:39. JDL, the GL adviser, is kinda hot, right?
5:40: We're talking about Law Career Economics, IBR, Targeted Repayment, and Strategic debt reduction and other goals -- I assume by this he means not being miserable
5:41. Did you know, in 1992 average debt was 37K, now 109K -- yeah, that's my debt ...
5:42. People seem to have had a lot of hot dogs at the event before this
5:43. I'd say there's like 40 or so people here, pretty good showing. glad to have Johnica back from YouSeeDeeCee
5:44. We are now talking about IBR -- his slides are going to be available to us and I'll send them out to the 2011 list-serve.
5:46. Joe Ro*e is kind of ridiculously smart
5:47. None of this makes any sense to me -- Oh, Tall*y is talking! He asked if there were tax implications of taking an IBR subsidy. No one knows. WHERE IS GERG*N?!
5:49. Note that IBR applies to subsidized, unsubsidized, and grad plus loans
5:50. This is way above my head right now
5:55. Sorry, spent the last 5 minutes trying to find pictures of this guy on facebook -- successfully I may add
5:56. The most important thing to to w/ IBR is in your first year making sure that your adjustments are based on your actual returns b/c your pay stub is an inaccurate measure of your first year ability to pay. Really, this thing that he's talking about is really great.
5:57. Also, don't get married. What's that? You're gay? You win this round!
5:58. Everyone is laughing now b/c on his most recent slide the max debt they are even considering is 150K
5:58. Sara G* ftw: "I feel like I missed the pre-req for this."
5:59. Oh, note that the little trick at 5:56 only really helpf you for the first two years.
6:01. Oh, sweet, his thing now is talking about how to get rid of our expensive loans first. You're lender will generally put ALL of your loans onto the same cycle -- be SURE to put your high interest ones first.
6:03. Should we invest in stocks? Statistically, the stock market (S&P) has yielded 7.4% since 1940 whereas you get an 8.1% benefit by paying off your loans -- risk averse? Don't invest.
6:05. Should I buy a home? And if I do, what's the difference b/t putting 10% down and 0% down. The premium for putting 0 down used to be TINY, now, it's much higher (stupid financial crisis). It's a difference between $800 a year vs $9K/year now
6:07. Oh heeeey Prof. Bart*ett
6:07. Note that you can get out of IBR payment whenever you want, and you can also go back int it whenever you want.
6:08. So, this dude works for this: http://www.gladvisor.com/ (based on his facebook profile which I totally didn't stalk ...)
6:09: TALL*Y: you are deferring interest in using IBR, but by so doing it is simple interest accrual NOT compound. WOW!
6:15. What about consolidation? If you consolidate, you lose the targeted reductions benefit.
6:15. TALL*Y: how many people in here would want to consolidate? Answer from everyone: ZERO
6:16. And, now the profs: (also, this guy is coming back in April) Now Tall*y: both him and Bobby (heart) had a much lower "real debt burden" (oh, Ta*lor with the party foul)
6:21. Tall*y: at what point do you take a slow route to repay in order to invest? You want the spread to be pretty decent, and that you REALLY want to diversity over time . Variable rates over time even out for those of us who are young (oh great, so all those straight through gunners get to benefit from this ... but then again, they never had a life and never will, so, you win some you lose some)
6:25. Consume things with durable appreciation value -- although if you understand what that means, you're probably fine
6:28. Check our firms 401K program and see if they have matching -- to the extent they have it, use it to the full! And to the max! Note that those contributions also reduce adjusted gross income. Once you don't get matching, it's not necessarily worth doing it in the first few years b/c our taxes are lower now than they may be when we are thinking of taking it out
6:30. Tall*y out, Bobby in: his experiences paying off his loans at Gunders*n. The secret to his success was that he drove a "68 Bel Air. He's also wearing jeans, I think? WORRY ABOUT THE GOLDEN HANDCUFFS! Firms want to make love to you, in that not lovey way. Speaking of lovey, hellllo professor.
6:34. Bobby: house as piggy bank. It's work, but it's worth it. Also, it's WAY easier to get used to new income than to downgrade, so don't upgrade until you actually have the money.
6:36. His first mistake, taxes his first year (he payed a "shit ton"): if you don't own a house you have very little to shelter your income. USE THE MED FLEX PLAN. HAVE BABIES! oh wait, DON'T have babies. Babies ≠ net gain.
6:37. Oh, also, you something about withholdings -- that I really don't understand.
6:38. W4 is your friend -- he changes each month (that's more often than I change my toothbrush, or sheets . . . err).
6:40. But watch out, your tax bill is going to give it to you really hard if you don't stay on top of this game -- a la Tall*y who got stiffed with a 15K tax bill
6:43. Get used to having a real budget ... boring ...

Oh, that's all folks. Hopefully this was helpful. We'll get you the slides and notes from this and from the public sector one. The videos will go up somewhere.