420

You ever wonder where the term “420″ came from? Huff Post cuts through the bullshit.

Anyone who says it was a “police code” gets dickpunched.

Short Url: http://bit.ly/SNUnk

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Technorati :  culture

Why You Should Protest When Others’ Freedom is Threatened

An obvious metaphor

Because birds always come home to roost. Yes, the right wing spent the Bush-Cheney years rolling their eyes at those of us who believe in the Constitution. They said that we have nothing to fear from surveillance if we weren’t hiding anything. They said that we were exaggerating the problem when the Bush-Cheney administration decided to stick its tentacles and agents and microphones in the nests of political dissidents. And the right wing cheered.

What now, punks?

UPDATE: And if you’re a leftie, but not screaming about this, shut up the next time “they” come for you.

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Technorati :  Civil Liberties, political correctness, politics

Mowing the Feminine “Lawn”

By Tatiana von Tauber

Well, if this commercial isn’t a testament to the fact that some people can have a whole lot of fun with sex, genital trimming, and gender stereotyping then nothing is.

As any women, I sat with my jaw somewhat dropped thinking “WTF?!” but as the commercial progressed and keeping in mind the huge discussion here on LS and a great contribution by sex therapist Dr. Marty Klein about shaving down there, be it mound or balls, I couldn’t help to laugh out loud. This commercial is great, especially the line “So all that’s left for me to see are tulips on the mound.”   Perhaps I’ve just acquired the male sense of humor.  I don’t know.  I about fell off my chair in laughter.

 
It punches those who can’t handle a little fun with sexuality or the various shapes of mound trimming but to others it’s certainly a fun, creative and silly example of how much more fun we could have about sexuality if we get over those hangups about it.

So glad I belong in that group. And yeah, it’s a lot of fucking fun. Figuratively speaking, of course.

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Technorati :  feminism

Dissenting View – USNWR Rankings

Today is like Christmas for prospective law students — US News and World Report leak day. The USNWR ranking is flawed, like all ranking systems (ahem BCS), but Marc doth protest too much, methinks. The rankings serve a  legitimate and useful purpose – comparing law schools by employment prospects.

In order to get the discussion in focus, you have to know that my view is that some law schools are scams. This is apart from Marc’s woeful diagnosis of legal education generally. My view is that some law schools mislead law students into attending with the promise of jet-setting lifestyles, $160k ($145?) salaries, and guaranteed employment. With some law schools charging tuition upwards of $40k a year, students deserve to know exactly what type of employment scenario they are facing.

If you are a prospective law student, you should take a look at this chart. Half of law school graduates make less than $62k a year.  Average loans coming out of law school are about $76k.  If debt generally tracked the distribution of the salary chart, there wouldn’t be that much of a problem.  News flash: it doesn’t. 

Here is some of the underhanded bullshit out there. In this thread, the admissions dean for Drexel doesn’t provide employment data (and there isn’t any on their website) and refuses to engage in a debate over the “complicated issues regarding how law schools report employment data” while including a list of firms graduates have placed into. It’s like three-card monte. Don’t look for the employment statistics – just look at these firms. Where’s the lucky lady? Where’s the lucky lady? Then the cards turn over and instead of being out two bucks to a street con, you’re out 150k and have a size nine poop chute.

I’d like to know the class ranks and/or personal connections of the Drexel grads at those firms. I’d bet my nut sack the answers are “exceptionally high” and/or “well connected.” This is not the fate of some dude at the median at Drexel. What about that fucking guy, eh? Add in the obvious gambler’s bias of law students (we can all be top 5%, right?) and you have a lot of people getting reamed in the ass by Sallie Mae several months after graduation. That list gives prospective students a flawed perspective. Drexel is a newly-accredited law school. Tuition is $30,800. I make no conclusions regarding the quality of education (whatever that means) at Drexel, but graduates are staring at over 100k in debt. Shouldn’t they get accurate data on what their return on investment will be?

I’m not just picking on Drexel here. Tuition at New York Law School is $42,500. Look at this shit. 25% of NYLS’ 2007 reported their employment. That’s sketch in and of itself. The median salary reported by these graduates is $160k. I’d like to know the fucking mean. This isn’t a “complicated issue regarding how law schools report employment data.” Show me both fucking numbers. In fact, show me ALL the numbers. There are a whole crop of these law schools out that charge WAY beyond what they’re worth and then use crappy data reporting to hide the ball. It’s almost fucking criminal.

This is where the rankings come in. You can’t compare numbers from schools. At Michigan, where I attend, they report very similar employment data ($160k medians in most markets) for about the same tuition ($40k-ish). Anyone claiming that Michigan’s employment prospects are in the same galaxy as NYLS is smoking crack. There is so much manipulation of these  numbers that it’s almost impossible. Yes, I know that the same beefs apply to USNWR’s metrics but the rankings are a pretty decent indicator of the value of a school at some level. It’s an adequate starting point for those considering law school to know what type of prospects they will be getting for their cash.

Marc thinks that what really matters is “quality of teaching, mentoring, and faculty-student relations.” That’s a sweet thought and all, but none of those things pay the bills. I agree with Marc that those things are important too – I’m just not sure how you capture and report that data. The bottom line is the metrics that US News uses (academic reputation?) or that Marc suggests should be used (quality of teaching?) are unknowable. That basically leaves employability as the only decent way to compare law schools. Employability is probably a proxy for the values Marc lists above anyway. Since employability generally follows the same trajectory as these rankings why isn’t it a useful way to compare law schools?

Marc is right about one thing – the law school has control here. They can reduce the law student’s reliance on these rankings by providing transparent employment data and rethinking their obscene tuition to lessen the impact of not obtaining the optimal employment at graduation. Decisions based on “quality of teaching, mentoring, and faculty-student relations” are easier to stomach if you have an accurate picture of what the post-graduation scenario actually is. Until then, the USNWR is about as good as it gets.

Short Url: http://bit.ly/vnBEC

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Technorati :  Academics, legal education

It Doesn’t Get Much Lower Than This – “Susan Boyle Does a Porno?”

Representing adult entertainment industry clients makes my cocktail party discussions somewhat interesting (to say the least). Often, I get asked “okay, but where do you personally draw the line?” I have always said that I’ll know it when I see it.

I have now seen it.

An adult entertainment company has registered susanboylexxx.com and has placed an offer on that site to pay Susan Boyle $1 million if she will lose her virginity on camera. Aside from the fact that this has to be one of the most douchebaggy things I’ve ever seen, the company that registered that website is certainly violating 15 U.S.C. § 1129 and probably violating 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d).

If Susan Boyle wants to simply collect $100,000 plus attorneys fees, she ought to sue them instead of taking them up on her offer.

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Technorati :  Adult Entertainment Law, adult entertainment trademarks, ass hat, trademark

The New U.S. News Rankings Are Here! The New U.S. News Rankings Are Here!

This hidden camera shot catches a law school dean as he wets his pants as he sees that his school has moved up two slots in the U.S. News rankings.

Ok, not here. I’m not publishing them. All the lawprof blogs are all aflutter with the new leaked U.S. News rankings — obsessing over which schools moved up and down. But, nobody is talking about the real story — that U.S. News’ rankings don’t mean jack for anyone except law school marketing departments. Here’s a news flash:

U.S. News doesn’t consider quality of teaching, practical skills training or faculty-student relations, while bar passage rate and placement have low importance in the U.S. News rankings. (source)

I am so tired of seeing law schools chase the U.S. News rankings. They mean nothing in terms of quality of education, yet they mean so much in terms of marketing. Why? Because law schools let them.

If I ever become dean of a law school, (which I probably won’t, but if I do…) when I get that U.S. News survey, I am going to gut a fish, wrap the entrails in the form, and send it back to them. Then I am going to focus on what really matters — quality of teaching, mentoring, and faculty-student relations.

One of my readers wrote to me one time:

U.S. News is just a corporate shill for the Establishment and their anointed legal indoctrination centers. The rankings are a rigged beauty contest where the big boys trade slots every year, but they always stay on top. That is why “teaching, practical skills training or faculty-student relations” aren’t factored, because they would plummet into the lower tiers.

Word to that Johnny.

No wonder American legal education is worthless. Perhaps if we were all more concerned with the Vault rankings, the profession would be better off.

UPDATE: My fellow Satyriconista, Chris Harbin, disagrees with me.

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Technorati :  law practice, legal education

Detroit, Detroit

The city that gave us our auto industry has contracted from 2 million residents to 900,000. Economically, it couldn’t be worse than Detroit.

A couple of recent stories out of Detroit should yank on any American’s heart strings. In this one, we have an interview with a man who has returned to subsistence hunting.

This one just gives us stark photographic evidence of the fact that Detroit is dead. I can’t imagine how I would feel if that were my home town.

The saddest part is that I bet Detroit hasn’t even hit rock bottom. I wonder if the city will exist at all in 50 years.

Short Url: http://bit.ly/10XMpg

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Technorati :  culture

Whatever happened to playing fair?

Matthew C. Sanchez

By Matthew Sanchez

A few recent intellectual property disputes have highlighted the fact that the decision to pursue legal action is both a legal and a moral choice.  While concepts such as “fair use” help to ensure protection of both intellectual property rights while promoting creative expression, they can’t replace a simple concept we all learned in kindergarten:  “treat others the way you’d like them to treat you.”

A couple of days ago, New York TV news station CW 11 convinced YouTube to take down a video from prank group Improv Everywhere that copied part of a CW 11 newscast.  The twist as that the CW 11 newscast itself copied an earlier Improv video to unintentionally hilarious effect.

In the original Improv video, the troupe hijacked a staged funeral as an April Fools Day prank on viewers and passers-by.  CW 11 reported the hijacking as a real prank on real funeral-goers that might have gone too far.  The newscasters missed the fact that the prank wasn’t on the fake funeral-goers but, instead, on those who believed the video was real.

Judged solely on the legal merits, CW 11 might have the (slight) upper hand on the competing questions of infringement.  CW 11 used only snippets of the Improv video and added news commentary, while Improv seems to have simply lifted a portion of CW 11 broadcast and uploaded it as is.  Its arguable whether Improv has a fair use argument:  the group does have in its favor that the use was noncommercial and it put the clip in wildly different context — that is, exposing CW 11′s blunder.

Regardless of the legal merits, there is no reason for copyright law to be involved here.  CW 11 borrowed from Improv, and Improv then borrowed from CW 11.  Both created expression that would not have been possible otherwise.  If not for this needless legal dispute, we would all win.

A even more disappointing recent example comes from “fair use” darling Shepard Fairey.  For those who haven’t been following along, he’s the defendant in the Associated Press’ big copyright flap over the Obama “HOPE” poster.

Last month, Fairey’s company Obey Giant Art Inc. alleged trademark violations in a cease-and-desist letter to Larkin Werner, a Pittsburgh Steelers fan who created a character that plays off of Fairey’s “Obey” images.  Dubbed “Steelerbaby,” Werner’s character is a baby doll in a knit Steelers uniform who appears in images and merchandise, typically accompanied by an admonishment to “Obey” or “Obey Steelerbaby.”

Fairey has built a career and no small amount of celebrity by creating new art from existing material.  The Obama poster, based upon a photo allegedly owned by AP, is a notable example.  Werner’s Steelerbaby, which is more Internet meme than profitmaking venture, is no different.  Like CW 11, Fairey might have the better end of the legal argument, but a little dose of common good sense shows that he (or his company) doesn’t have it “right.”

It’s my humble opinion that our IP system can only function alongside free creative expression if IP-holders — and IP-holder’s lawyers — first ask not whether they can win, but whether they should draw the line in the sandbox at all.

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Technorati :  copyright, fair use, trademark

The Feminazis v. Isaiah Thomas

Tara Kirsten King

By Tara Kirsten King

While I’m extremely proud to identify as a feminist, unfortunately I often find some of the people I find the most reprehensible are those in my own camp. Recently, Isiah Thomas was hired as a coach for Florida International University. My response: WHO CARES?! However it appears that the Women’s Studies Department of FIU cares a great deal and want to utilize Thomas’ employment as a teaching mechanism about the evils of sexual harassment by way of condemnation. SERIOUSLY? As director of the department, Laurie Shrage called this a “teachable moment.”

Shrage said she and numerous other women’s study faculty at F.I.U. were disappointed in the hiring but felt they could do little to change it. She said one of the first things that she and her colleagues planned on doing was walking over to Thomas’s office and hand delivering a copy of the university’s sexual harassment policy.

“He may choose to not accept it from us in person,” Shrage said. “We’re going to walk it over there rather than sending it to him because it shows that we’re concerned and he’s aware of it and that he’ll read it.”

Other ideas that Shrage has include a teach-in where the university invites experts on sexual harassment to speak on the topic and a meeting with the new F.I.U. president to make sure that they are behind the university’s sexual harassment policy.

“We want to hear a commitment that Thomas will be expected to go through some kind of sexual harassment training,” she said. (source)

First of all, Thomas was in the media’s eye for a long time. He is contentious, he may have sexually harassed one or a few along the way but then again he might not have. The unfortunate nature of the sexual harassment beast is its subjective nature—and I’m not sure the reasonable person standard can apply across the board for women. Regardless, I think it’s fair to say that the humiliation of the trial and his “now” tarnished reputation were the true “teachable moments for Thomas.” Secondly, angry feminists stewing over a new coach only because of what they know about him from a high-profile media circus, is as ridiculous as reifying Rhianna as the new poster girl for Domestic Violence.

Quite frankly, I think that Shrage and her entourage’s moral harassment is ironic, hypocritical, and antithetical to educating people about sexual harassment. What may be plausibly more effective is to ask Thomas to talk about his experience and not crucify him on a grandstand for it. Let him speak his “truth” and let the professionals educate in conjunction. Especially since the imposition of divisive politics are probably not part of the university’s pedagogical aim. If I were Thomas, when confronted by the Femi-Nazi’s I’d do one of two things: A) I’d accept the policy and hit on them or B) I’d tell them to go fuck themselves. But Isiah, has nothing to worry about –he’ll be old news again in no time much like second wave politics.

Tara Kirsten King is a second year law student at the University of Cincinnati. Concurrent with her law studies, she is earning a master’s degree in women’s studies. She earned her BA from San Francisco State University in women’s studies. King’s research focus is on feminist theory and transgendered rights.

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Technorati :  discrimination, feminism

Yet Another New Satyriconista – Tara Kirsten King

Tara Kirsten King

The Legal Satyricon is pleased to welcome Tara Kirsten King as our newest Satyriconista. King graduated from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in women’s studies, and is currently a joint degree candidate at the University of Cincinnati working toward her juris doctor and a master of arts in women’s studies. King’s research focus is on feminist theory and transgendered rights. Tara takes no prisoners. Please welcome give her a warm welcome.

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Technorati :  Satyriconista

Peeing on People and Prison

The always informative Jonathan Turley tips us off to a tale of a man, Jerome Kenneth King-zio, who decided to urinate on a fellow passenger during a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu. (source).

While I find the story shocking, I find it more shocking that Turley thinks that Mr. King-zio’s sentence was too light. He got three weeks in jail for assault.

I’m not saying that he should have gone un-punished. Some time in the clink is appropriate, and the sentence seems proportional to the crime. Yes, getting peed on is pretty freakin’ nasty. The victim had every right to be pissed off angry. I just question how long Prof. Turley thinks would have been appropriate.

Frankly, I think that King-zio deserved a royal ass-kicking. But, in terms of the harm he cause to the victim, I can’t really imagine that it did anything more than ruin her day and require her to change and wash her clothes. Provided King-zio was healthy, his urine would have been sterile upon exiting the body. It was quite unlikely that there would be any health effects from being peed on. And, it won’t likely stain her clothes. Aside from the “ew gross” factor (which is pretty freakin’ high), King-zio did the victim little more permanent harm than he would have if he had spilled a drink on her.

In contrast, lets look at some hypothetical harms she may very well have suffered on the same flight. I’m sure that some hacking sick passenger spewed their live virus samples into the air inside the germ tube we call an airplane. Similarly, as soon as she exited the airport, I’m sure some dirty prick will be standing outside smoking a cigarette — billowing carcinogens into the victim’s face. Hell, even someone farting next to her would cause poo particles to exit the farter’s ass, waft through the air, and then settle inside her sinus cavities. Yes, every time you smell a fart, that is poo entering your head.

So, maybe Turley needs to lighten up a wee bit.

Additions to the Blawgroll

I really should update the roll more often. I’ve been a big fan of Mark Bennett’s Defending People and Gideon’s A Public Defender for a long time. Unfortunately, the way I have to update my ‘roll is sort of a pain in the ass… thus my gushing respect for fellow members of the blawgosphere is not always in line with the lineup down at the bottom right.

Both Gideon and Bennett are fine specimens of the “Practical Blawgosphere.” In other words, blawgs by people who practice law or provide useful legal knowledge. Gideon brings a compassionate, humorous, and poignant perspective to the criminal law edge of the practical blawgosphere.

Bennett invented the term practical blawgosphere, which he defined as: Blogs which are recently updated and focused on knowledge or ideas that are clearly useable in the practice of law; or potentially useable in the practice of law, along with a discussion of how they might be useable. Bennett’s now-famous manifesto, Welcome to the Practical Blawgosphere is a must read. For more on that subject, read Greenfield’s “Are Law Professors Afraid of the Practical Blawgosphere?“

Gideon, Mark, welcome to the Satyriconroll.

Damn Queer Elephants!

Well this is the quote of the week:

“We didn’t pay 37 million zlotys ($11 million) for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there.”

So said Michal Grzes, a conservative councilor in the city of Poznan in western Poland. (source)

I guess I can see his point. First one gay elephant moves in. Then another. Then a gay zookeeper. Next thing you know, there are all these window boxes full of flowers outside the cages and the damn zoo is so gentrified that the hyenas can’t afford to live there anymore. I mean, seriously, have you priced condos in the South End lately?

H/T: Corey.

University of Massachusetts Liberals Against the First Amendment

I am usually very proud to be a graduate of the University of Massachusetts.

Not today.

AMHERST, Mass., April 16, 2009—Multiple First Amendment violations have rocked the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus in recent days. UMass has done nothing about the videotaped theft of and, later, the student government’s official censorship of The Minuteman, a conservative campus newspaper that mocked a student government official. Worse, last night, when a student senator offered a bill to reverse the unconstitutional censorship of The Minuteman, the Senate’s speaker had the UMass police throw him out (video of this incident is expected soon). These assaults on free speech came in the wake of last month’s disgraceful episode in which a speech by columnist Don Feder was shouted down by hecklers while UMass police officers did nothing. (source)

What caused the tiff? The UMass conservative organization, the Silent Majority, publishes a newspaper called “The Minuteman.” The most recent issue of The Minuteman exposed some financial irresponsibility in another student organization, Bridges (an organization that is supposed to spend its funds to tutor minority students), and mocked the organization and its director. The Expose appears on the first page of this document.

The next page of The Minuteman contained the following content:

‘STUDENT BRIDGES’, Our Jackass of the Month

• The only thing more horrifically large than their bloated 172K FY2009 budget is the bloated backside of
their responsibility-averse Director, Vanessa Snow.

• The only thing more wasteful than the careless way they manage their budget were the amount of
uneaten tacos and burritos they left at Taco Bell.

• They spent more money on food, drinks, hotels, and rental cars in Fiscal Year 2008 than Eliot Spitzer
spent on high-class hookers. (Well, almost)

• They failed to show any tangible quantitative achievements in their program during Fiscal Year 2008, yet
had the arrogant audacity to request a $50,000 larger budget when most student groups’ overall budget
allocations are less than $5,000.

• They, in essence, take your Student Activities Fee money to discriminatorily tutor poor minority students
without showing any tangible results.

• Under the guise of “building bridges to education opportunities” and acting as a “community service
organization,” the only servicing this group of corrupt bureaucrats-in-training does is at the salad bar at
Salsarengue, where it spent a preposterously indefensible $5000 in Fiscal Year 2008, thus literally making
Director Snow’s ass its own (rather large) budgetary line item for Fiscal Year 2009

• Given all the time this clumsy group of freeloading Leftists spends at restaurants in Holyoke, it is no
wonder that their obesity rate is higher than their mentored students’ high school graduation rate ‘STUDENT BRIDGES’, Our Jackass of the Month (source)

The Bridges crew wasn’t too pleased about this, so they engaged in a pretty time-honored UMass tradition: They stole all of the copies of the newspaper that they didn’t want others to read. The UMass student government association responded by calling for the conservative group’s funding to be cut unless they purchased an advertisement in the campus’ main newspaper, The Collegian, apologizing for the above statements. (source)

Despite the fact that the measure violated the First Amendment in two different ways, it still passed. The resolution passed, and when a student senator attempted to introduce his own measure repealing the clearly unconstitutional measure, he was escorted from the senate floor by campus police.

FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is on the case. They issued this letter to the UMass chancellor.

Sadly, I can report that none of this surprises me. While I got a fantastic education at UMass, I can say with great authority that the political correctness crowd runs the place. Any criticism of an organization like Bridges will certainly be met the same way.

I am certainly no fan of the campus right-wing crowd. Nevertheless, my beliefs are strong enough that they can stand in opposition to theirs… and if they can’t, then the marketplace of ideas will have spoken. It is a shame that Vanessa Snow and the Student Government Association don’t feel the same way about theirs.

I’m about as leftie as they come. Hell, my poor wife had to carry our daughter for an extra four days due to obligations I had to the Obama legal team. My liberal bona fides are pretty well established.

But, I’m not a free speech advocate only when it is my ox being gored. Well, yes I am… when free speech is under attack, it is always my ox being gored… whether that is the free speech of adult entertainment companies, protestors against the war in iraq, or the KKK.

Any “liberal” who doesn’t stand up for the Minuteman has no right to complain the next time it is liberal-valued free speech under attack.

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Technorati :  First Amendment, political correctness, prior restraint

The Worthlessness of American Legal Education

You'll get more practical knowledge out of this than you'll get out of three years at most law schools.

When I went to law school, it absolutely shocked me to learn how much the legal academy despises legal practitioners. In fact, laypeople might not know that for those who aspire to teach in a law school, it is considered to be a negative to have “too much” practice experience. The conventional wisdom is that once you’ve practiced for three years, that’s all you need in order to be a professor. More than that, and you’re considered to be “too experienced.” Less than that, however, is just fine. Go poke around some law school websites and look at the C.V.s of law professors. You may find some experience there, but you’ll be shocked at how many people with a few months of experience practicing law are responsible for training the next generation of lawyers.

We don’t teach you how to practice law. We teach you how to “think like a lawyer.” PFFFFFT!

One infamous quote that gets batted around the practical blawgosphere is this one:

We don’t want law school to be lawyer-training school. When we cave in to demands of that sort from the ABA and assorted study commissions, we actually invite alienation among law students and lawyers. Legal education should appreciate the depth of the legal discourse and explore its rich complexities. It should operate on a graduate-school level and graduate people truly learned in the law. -Marquette Prof. David Papke.

Papke took a beating for this from the practical blawgosphere. See, e.g., Greenfield, Gideon, Tannenbaum, and Bennett. Of course, no full-time law professors criticized him. Nobody wants to upset the academic apple cart — more appropriately described as a circle jerk.

Is it any wonder then that law schools don’t usually teach law students jack about how to practice law? Can you imagine any other profession where it would be a bona fide occupational requirement that you should be relatively (if not entirely) inexperienced in whatever it is you are teaching? As Tannenbaum put it:

In medical school we teach students about the body, its organs, how it works, how it reacts to certain factors, and what causes disease and sickness. Then the “doctors” do a “residency” where they focus on the practicalities of “doctoring.”

In law, we give “lawyers” a degree, that they can immediately frame, hang up in an office and greet unknowing clients. The law school having “done their job.” Some law schools embrace clinical programs and practical education, others, believe that a practicing lawyer is evidence of the failure of the law school’s education.

Apparently the people trying cases and arguing motions are not well versed in the law. They’re “just lawyers.” (source)

With this as an introduction to the legal academy, there are a couple of stories going around in which the legal academy either acknowledges its uselessness, or it damn well ought to. At least to those of you outside the bubble, it should demonstrate that legal education is broken and should be completely overhauled and reinvented.

Go Solo — Even though we didn’t teach you a damn thing!

A dispatch laugh from the guild of “I don’t know how to do it, but I’ll teach others how.” At least one law school is suggesting that students consider going solo after graduation.

Back in the “good old days,” (last year) law students went to law school for three years. While at law school, (for the most part) they attended lectures by, by and large, professors who never practiced law. They learned nothing. After three years, some law firm picked up that student on the basis of his grades in his “think like a lawyer” classes, and then gave him two years worth of paid training until he had a clue how to practice law.

That’s how I became a lawyer.

When I got my shiny new Georgetown Law degree, but had absolutely no clue how to draft a notice of appearance. I had no idea how to bill a client. My memos of law were like law review articles. My client letters were even worse. A client would ask a simple question and get a 10 page, well-written and well-researched treatise on the issue – but that isn’t what a client is looking for. Fortunately, I had patient mentors who told me “forget all the crap you learned in law school, we will teach you how to be a lawyer now.”

Unfortunately, the legal profession is in a state of free-fall because clients have gotten sick of paying for first-year associate billing when the first-year associate doesn’t know a damn thing about how to practice law. Clients are, correctly, saying that they shouldn’t have to pay to train new lawyers. So clients don’t want to pay to train them, but the law schools don’t want to train them either. So, they tell them to go solo!

Should we really turn out a few thousand solo practitioners a year who have been taught by those who couldn’t hack it as practitioners? Then what? Just have them “figure it out” on their own? This all as a reaction to the glut of lawyers created by — you guessed it, the academy.

I have news for the academy. If they want to turn out solos (which isn’t a bad idea) they had better get over this idea that law schools are not lawyer-training schools. That is precisely what they should be — or they should be shut the hell down.

I’m trying to do my part, but I am only one professor. In my classes, I require students to do projects like (gasp) client advice letters. I also require my students to submit bills with each assignment. When I have pro-bono cases, I try and drag in as many students as I can to help out. In other words, I try and turn my classes into lawyer training, despite the fact that some would call this blasphemy.

When you learn how to be a doctor, you work on cadavers until you learn how to work on real people. When you learn to fly a plane, you spend some time in the simulator. If you want to be a lawyer, you still need to attend law school. Unfortunately, most of the legal academy doesn’t think it should stoop to actually teaching students how to be lawyers. Even if law schools wanted to, how could they? The majority of tenured law professors don’t know how to be lawyers either. With that kind of “training,” dumping hundreds of clueless solos on the market will result in: 1) an avalanche of legal malpractice suits; 2) a hailstorm of unethical and unprofessional behavior by solos who lack the institutional mentors to teach them better; and, 3) a swarm of unsupportable litigation by desperate solos who are just trying to pay the rent.

Oh, but for $41,500, we’ll train you now.

One law school has reacted to the economic collapse by offering law students one more year of law school. Yes, for the bargain basement price of $41,500, and another year of your life, UCLA will actually teach students what they THOUGHT they were getting for the first three years of tuition payments — how to practice law.

In response to the changing employment situation for graduates of U.S. law schools, UCLA School of Law announced today that it is reopening its LL.M. program application process for the 2009-10 academic year, and will accept up to 20 additional students who are graduates of U.S. law schools, including deferred hires.

The newly admitted LL.M.s will have the option of participating in the new Transition to Practice program, which will focus on enhancing the practical skills and development of the new lawyer. The program will replicate significant parts of the learning that comes in the first year of practice, but in a controlled learning environment. (source)

An LLM to teach you how to practice? This is what the students should have been getting all along for the cost of their JD!

This new “program” at UCLA is an admission that law school is severely broken. Many people already say that law school is a year too long. I partially agree. It is a scam. You spend three years of your life and $120,000 to take law classes from people who, by and large, have no idea how to practice law. After those three years, you aren’t even prepared to take the BAR EXAM! You have to spend the next summer, and another couple thousand dollars, taking a bar preparation course. $120,000 and most law schools don’t even bother to teach you how to pass the bar (my school does have a bar prep course). Those that do are mocked by the “prestigious” end of the academy.

So now UCLA is going to let you pay for yet another year of school, after you’ve paid for your JD and your bar preparation course, to “replicate significant parts of the learning that comes in the first year of practice, but in a controlled learning environment.“

Three questions:

1) Why the hell isn’t UCLA, and every other law school, already doing that for their students? This is the very thing that the academy has rejected for years… I guess if you’ll pay them for another year, they’ll lower themselves to such pedestrian pursuits.

2) I wonder who UCLA is going to get to teach in this LLM program. Their best professor, Eugene Volokh, didn’t even know about the plan. And, as much as I admire him (if I were President, he would be my first choice to fill a Supreme Court vacancy), I’m not sure how much practical experience even he has. If the LLM program is nothing more than a few more full-time, “I practiced for 13 months and then clerked for a judge and now I teach theory and write law review articles” types, I can’t see how it will be remotely useful.

3) What kind of an abject fool would actually pay to attend this program? Honestly, anyone with this LLM on their resume should be blackballed as someone too incompetent to be a lawyer in the first place.

Anyone with the poor judgment to pay an ADDITIONAL $41,500 to “replicate significant parts of the learning that comes in the first year of practice, but in a controlled learning environment” is a complete asshat, and I wouldn’t want them handling my parking tickets — let alone my valuable legal work. They will be paying $41,500 to get less experience and practical training than they could get for free from an unpaid internship in a law office.

What if they can’t find an internship? If you graduate with a JD and you can’t find someone to hire you FOR FREE, then the market has spoken. You should be doing something with your life, but practicing law is NOT it.

But, have no fear: I have an alternative!

Announcing the “Practical LLM Program in First Amendment, Intellectual Property, and Internet Law”

If you are a prospective UCLA LLM student, send me a copy of your resume and a cover letter. I only require that you delete any reference to which law school you attended from your resume, because I don’t think that alma mater means jack. I’m not impressed by my own, and I’m certainly not going to be impressed by yours.

If you are accepted to the program, I will let you work in my office as an associate attorney (you’ll need to pass the Florida or Massachusetts bar first). I’ll teach you how to practice law in a REAL learning environment (none of this “controlled” bullshit). I’ll not only teach you how to actually draft pleadings, do real legal research, actually litigate and/or do transactional work, but I’ll also teach you how to talk to a client, develop clients, and how to practice with ethics so that you don’t develop a reputation for being a douchebag. Even better, I’ll have you work on a few pro-bono free speech cases that I might not have otherwise taken. At the end of the year, I guarantee you that you’ll be MUCH better prepared to practice law than any donkey who spent $41,500 at UCLA, AND you’ll have one year’s worth of experience on your resume. Plus, I can assure you that you will work on at least one really fun free speech case.

If you are selected, tuition for this program is $20,750 (half UCLA’s tuition). For that price, you will get your own office, your name on the door, and all of your overhead covered. You will be expected to generate at least $80,000 in collections — as the overhead for a new attorney is about $100,000.

If you don’t have the money up front, never fear. I can put you on a payment program, and I’ll let you work a flexible schedule so that you can have another part time paying job. However, you’ll need a sizable portion up front, and if you are late on your payments, you’ll be expelled.

After six months, if you are showing a profit, you’ll start getting paid a salary based on your profitability. If you can demonstrate adequate progress, talent, ethics, sense of humor, financial success, and future promise during that year, I will guarantee you a job as as an associate for at least one more year once you finish the program. That year WILL be a paid gig. Your salary will be based on your performance during the “LLM program.”

Even better than that, if you show that you can make it rain (and I’ll teach you how to do that too), you very well may become a partner with me. You know how long that will take? As long as it takes you to prove to me that it will be more profitable to be your partner than to lose you.

Any takers? Operators are standing by.

Hat tip to TaxProf for the story on UCLA’s program.

Short Url: http://bit.ly/12Zzuw

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