Hey, Ide...Law students sue law schools: "You sed I'd be able to get a job!"

[Malthus]

Anyway, teasing you about U of M never gets old, right? 

I predicted that response.   

[Barrister]

Anyway, teasing you about U of M never gets old, right? 

I predicted that response.   

Now tell me tomorrow's 6/49 numbers.

[crazy canuck]

I know I never tire of hearing you tease BB about the U of M.

[Ideologue]

Feb 10 (Reuters) - Class-action lawsuits recently filed against fifteen law schools for fraud are "credit negative" because they could cause reputational damage and a decline in tuition revenue, according to a report released this week by the ratings agency Moody's Investors Service.

The analysis of credit ratings for law-school bonds was released on Monday as part of the agency's weekly credit outlook.

Law-school graduates sued three schools in 2011, and twelve more on Feb. 1, alleging they committed fraud by publishing misleading job-placement statistics. The wave of litigation comes at a bad time for law schools -- especially those that are lower ranked, the report said.

"The outlook in general is that law schools are looking at fewer applications," said Emily Schwarz, who authored the report. "Students are starting to question the value of the degree because of high tuition rates and more limited job prospects. They're concerned they won't get their money's worth."

Moody's maintains credit ratings for eight of the fifteen schools sued, including: Southwestern Law School; California Western School of Law; Brooklyn Law School; New York Law School; Golden Gate University; DePaul University; Hofstra University; and the University of San Francisco.

None of the fifteen law schools facing lawsuits are among the top 50 in the latest US News & World Report rankings, and six are not ranked by the magazine at all.

Experts in legal education said they agreed with Moody's findings.

"In general, my sense is that credit agencies are not reliable, as their track record prior to the Great Recession amply confirms," Brian Leiter, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who runs a popular blog on legal education, said in an email. "But in this case, the diagnosis seems to me exactly right."

STANDALONE SCHOOLS AT RISK

The report noted that standalone law schools -- including New York Law School and Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles -- are more likely to suffer the negative effects of the lawsuits than those that are part of a larger university. Standalone schools have less operating revenue and smaller balance sheets than those attached to universities, the report said.

Brian Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, agreed on this point.

"Standalone law schools are especially vulnerable because there is no institutional support behind them to help out in difficult financial times," said Tamanaha. "At lower-ranked law schools ... the situation can quickly deteriorate if they experience year-after-year double digit declines in the numbers of applicants."

There are already troubling signs for some standalone law schools.

In January, Moody's revised its outlook on New York Law School from "stable" to "negative," reflecting "recent enrollment volatility" -- a 25-percent decrease in the size of the 2011 entering class -- and uncertainty about the outcome of the pending lawsuit. (The agency affirmed an underlying "A3" rating on New York Law School's bonds, the lowest grade of "A" bonds with above-average creditworthiness.)

Carol A. Buckler, interim dean of New York Law School, did not respond specifically to the Moody's reports, but said the lawsuit filed against the law school last year is without merit. "We are vigorously pursuing it in court and believe that we will prevail ," she wrote in an email.

Leslie Steinberg, associate dean for public affairs at Southwestern Law School, said that the lawsuit against the school is also without merit.

"Southwestern carries insurance to protect against financial instability and to preserve institutional resources," Steinberg said.

(Reporting by Moira Herbst)

LOL.

[OttoVonBismarck]

But seriously ... the difficulty in law school is not 'doing the work', but rather in doing it (and all sorts of semi-mandatory "extra curricular" activities) well enough to stand out, sufficient to make you attractive to employers - while competing with a whole bunch of really motivated and very intelligent students. It isn't sufficient to just understand the stuff.

It is a lot easier to "shine" in undergraduate work. Law schools (well, at least the top law schools  ) are very selective in who they let in - meaning the students are mostly those who got straight A's already as undergraduates.  So the competition is tough.

I don't doubt that this is true, but hard sciences are even harder when it comes to attaining career success. Pretty much any professional chemist, biologist, geologist, or physicist is going to have a Ph.D., the people who make good livings with those degrees alone at the undergraduate level are not very great in number, and most of them have probably gone into "ancillary" careers that aren't directly scientific (e.x. maybe a chemistry undergrad gets a job at a chemical plant and works his way into management.)

To become a "real" scientist requires a terminal degree and a long time working on it. Then, once that is finished you basically enter the hyper competitive world of academia. The truth of the matter is, getting a Ph.D. in a hard science is bad for almost every person who does it. At universities the current tenured professors essentially "use" young Ph.D's as cheap labor more or less indefinitely. There have been many articles in the past few years about newly minted Ph.D's in even the hardest of fields that have very little chance of ever getting a tenure-track job. So they go from university to university doing adjunct professor work and being research grunts, making paltry salary.

Some can go into the private sector, but even there, the number of jobs compared to the number of candidates is crazy.

Law school is definitely somewhat unique in that the top graduates go on to very lucrative careers while mid-tier and lower can and often do end up not making anywhere near the money of their higher achieving classmates. But the hard sciences have career paths that are almost totally controlled by a guild-like system dominated by people who get into a position and stay in until they die of old age.

[CountDeMoney]

Pretty much any professional chemist, biologist, geologist, or physicist is going to have a Ph.D., the people who make good livings with those degrees alone at the undergraduate level are not very great in number, and most of them have probably gone into "ancillary" careers that aren't directly scientific (e.x. maybe a chemistry undergrad gets a job at a chemical plant and works his way into management.)

Yup;  the vast majority of the big wigs I've met in the energy business all started off climbing utility poles back in the day, or running a substation control board, or kept the turbines going.  Degrees in Geography, Electrical Engineering, even Physics:  all still lunch-pail guys who traded in their goggles and hard hats for a tie and short-sleeved dress shirts.

To become a "real" scientist requires a terminal degree and a long time working on it. Then, once that is finished you basically enter the hyper competitive world of academia. The truth of the matter is, getting a Ph.D. in a hard science is bad for almost every person who does it. At universities the current tenured professors essentially "use" young Ph.D's as cheap labor more or less indefinitely. There have been many articles in the past few years about newly minted Ph.D's in even the hardest of fields that have very little chance of ever getting a tenure-track job. So they go from university to university doing adjunct professor work and being research grunts, making paltry salary.

Yes, that certainly explains all the 24 year old PhDs with no money at Hopkins and RPI and all the other scientific/medical/engineering schools, working their asses off for peanuts, going from grant assignment to grant assignment, working from fellow to fellow.  Complete bodies of research knowledge, yet no applicable experience.  Just in the queue forever.

Law school is definitely somewhat unique in that the top graduates go on to very lucrative careers while mid-tier and lower can and often do end up not making anywhere near the money of their higher achieving classmates. But the hard sciences have career paths that are almost totally controlled by a guild-like system dominated by people who get into a position and stay in until they die of old age.

Yeah, law school is one of the few advanced graduate programs where how you perform and what you do there is directly proportional to where you land.  Medical and science, not so much.