Nontradlaw announces 2nd edition of “Later in Life Lawyers”

Posted on May 2, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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Just a quick note to let you know that the Second Edition of “Later in Life Lawyers” has been released, and the book now includes a forty page additional section that deals specifically with how to approach law school in today’s still-sluggish economy, focusing almost entirely on the two main issues facing graduates today: jobs and student debt. This makes “Later in Life Lawyers” the only law school guidebook on the market to provide significant and relevant guidance for applicants considering a legal education in a market downturn, and we feel it represents a huge step forward in bringing mainstream legal career advice up-to-date.

Nontradlaw remains committed to its role as the reliable, trustworthy and sensible Internet resource for anyone considering law school, for current law students, and for recent graduates, and we hope that you’ll remain an active member of the site and play a valuable role in helping new applicants make smart choices about their legal careers.

http://www.amazon.com/Later—Life-Lawyers-Non-Traditional-Student/dp/1888960167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335967147&sr=8-1

NTL Admin

Posted in Careers, Employment, Finances, Student debt | Leave a comment

Jagged Rocks of Wisdom

Posted on March 11, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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It’s slow in law school news recently, not much happening at all.  I’m reluctant to waste your time and mine trying to dig up a story where there isn’t one, so instead, I’m going to post a book review I wrote about what I consider to be one of the best books for law students in terms of actual, real-life, useful advice:

The book is Jagged Rocks of Wisdom: Professional Advice for the New Attorney, by Morten Lund.  It really is worth picking up and reading if you haven’t done so already.

I’ve broken rules 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 19, and 21, just about half the rules in this book. Each and every time I broke one of these rules, I felt the consequences: loss of trust by my supervising partner, looking like an idiot, looking lazy, the list goes on and on. Had I read Lund’s book, Jagged Rocks of Wisdom: Professional Advice for the New Attorney, before starting work at the largest law firm I ever worked in, I would have undoubtedly been far more successful than I was.

Lund is a Yale Law School grad who is now a partner with Stoel Rives LLP, a prestigious large law firm of the type many law grads hope to work in one day. He is literally the kind of guy who makes hiring and firing decisions, and who you’ve got to please in order to succeed. This alone proves his credentials for writing this book, which is a highly-distilled set of twenty-one simple rules that each and every new associate should adhere to. These aren’t suggestions, these aren’t guidelines, they are rules, each well-written, and each with real-life consequences for breaking (and real life benefits for following).

Lund writes from the perspective of a partner in a law firm, faced with associates who are variously ineducated, unskilled, eager to learn, forgetful, lazy, clueless, rude, stuck-up, arrogant and utterly unaware of their low place within the hierarchy of a law firm. He has to manage these associates, and he’s got many other things to do each day besides manage associates. So by producing such a simple, clear set of rules for how the law firm works, he has essentially produced a book that if read and digested by associates, there should be no more of the stupid, timewasting, moneywasting, embarrassing, client-annoying, partner-annoying, and pointless mistakes that suck useful time out of each and every day. And when these mistakes are avoided, he’s happier. So you’ll be happier. Because if the partner isn’t happy, you will definitely not be happy and you won’t leave the office until the partner is happy!

The book is a lunchtime read – it’s short. There’s no fluff in
here, just 100% pure and serious advice. Some of it sounds like common sense, but for every reader (including me), there’s important rules that are not common sense, but which are still highly important. For example, I would often be in a casual hallway discussion with a partner about a project, and realized that I had no yellow pad to write on. So I either tried to remember everything that I was being told (a bad move), or scribbled the information on whatever I had in my hands, which was generally the back side of an already-printed contract or envelope, sometimes the back of my hand itself. These techniques showed me as unprofessional, and this was noticed by partners who felt my record-keeping was a little too ephemeral for their liking. Just remember that every rule is in the book because someone (or some people) didn’t know beforehand, and screwed something up. Read each and every rule, just to make sure you’re not one of those people who screw up.

Screw ups in law firms cost time and money to fix. They sometimes cause clients to leave the firm. I have seen this happen with my own eyes. Law is a competitive business, and one that cannot afford to produce anything other than perfect work product. With so many other law firms begging for new business, client relationships to certain firms are loosening, and it might not take much of a screw up to send that lucrative client down the road to the next law firm. That’s a career ending move in many cases.

It took me a long time to realize how things worked, and had I read this book before taking a position in a larger law firm, I would have been given a “heads up” in about one hour that would serve me well in my first few years of practice. I would have found it easier to decipher what the partners were looking for, how to act around them, and how to fit in to excel in my role of junior associate.

Law grads have generally been told they are special for decades. Special in high school, college, law school. But the game changes when they hit the real world, where partners are rushing around pulling together transactions spanning millions of dollars, or litigating cases with enormous stakes. Law grads aren’t special in law firms. There are few miniature transactions that are simple for new associates to cut their teeth on, so in order to learn, new associates much dive in at the bottom of an existing team. And there’s a huge learning curve, both in terms of the substantive law, the structure of the transaction, the nature of the parties etc. The one and only asset a new associate can bring to the team is contained in Lund’s book: A working style that will mesh as quickly as possible with the team, and an ability to not make these stupid mistakes (having read this book). Then the team can focus on bringing the new member up to speed, rather than spending their time correcting mistakes and screw-ups made by the newbie who just didn’t know the rules.

Lund’s book is published and available. If you’re a law student nearing graduation or nearing a summer position working in a firm, buy it, read it, and take it all in. It will boost your chances of getting a favorable outcome from that summer placement or internship countless times. If you’re a law professor looking for a good book to use for a short course on legal skills, buy twenty copies and use it as the class text. Bring in a guest lawyer each week and discuss one or two of the rules. If you’re a hiring partner in a law firm, buy this book for each and every one of your new associates, and have a one hour meeting with a senior partner to go over the material so that each and every new associate knows the rules. This book shouldn’t be limited to law students who want to become the best attorneys they can; employers can take a proactive step and make sure that each and every new attorney knows the rules by making sure the new associates have this book.

Lund has written the book that will make your first couple of years in a law firm as successful and least-stressful as possible. In this economy, this book could easily make the difference between a job for two years, or a job for life. Who doesn’t want that?

(And if you’re an author and looking for someone to review a book you’ve written, shoot me an email; I’m happy to help out.)

Posted in Law school | Leave a comment

The most inappropriate choice of sources?

Posted on February 27, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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This news article, entitled “Lawsuits against law schools weak: legal ed experts”, caught my eye.  There’s been little substantive news about these lawsuits recently, and I’m waiting to see how they turn out.

According to the article, however, the lawsuits are a waste of time.  But the article makes a significant mistake in its choice of sources: they are all law professors.  That is, every source quoted has a vested interest in the lawsuits failing.

In fact, none of the “legal ed experts” are real-life practicing lawyers – they are all inhabitants of the ivory tower, and all hoping for the sake of their lifestyles and retirements that law schools remain an expensive and attractive option for bewildered college grads looking for a glimmer of hope in this economy.  For a taste of the legal ed insight in the article, we have the following:

“I have a feeling a lot of the lawsuits will not get very far, especially if the schools can show they were complying with the rules,” said Brian Leiter, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School . . .

A spokeswoman from Brooklyn Law School said that the claims in the lawsuit “are without merit, and we will vigorously defend against them in court.”

David Logan, dean of Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island, said he is skeptical about the merits of the lawsuits. The schools’ graduate job placement data may be “opaque” he said, but still in compliance with industry standards.

Whether claims against law schools stand up in court depends on the how strong consumer protection laws are in each state, said Douglas Rush, a professor at Saint Louis University who specializes in legal education.

The Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego was the first law school to be sued when a graduate filed a class action complaint last May. The school’s dean, Rudolph Hasl, said that since the information the school published about job placement is “accurate and correct,” the school is in a “very strong position” in the litigation.

There is one – just one – professor quoted in the article who deserves an honorable mention, however, for providing some common-sense, unbiased legal analysis to the issue:

Mark Gergen, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said he finds the claims in the lawsuits credible. Even if the job data reported by law schools was technically accurate, courts could find them guilty of common-law fraud for stating something they knew or had reason to know was misleading, he said.

And that should be the key to this entire debate: did the schools state something they knew or had reason to know was misleading?  Because the issue of whether incoming students reasonably relied on the information is cut and dried – they did rely on it, otherwise the schools would have had no reason to publish it and falsify it to make the schools more attractive, and it’s certainly not news that some (many? most?) law students are in part attracted to the profession by the lure of a stable, decent income; not necessarily riches, but certainly some form of financial compensation for their efforts.

Can’t wait for a real life judge or lawyer to weigh in on these issues, rather than a string of academics.

Posted in Cooley Lawsuit, Employment, Finances, Gainful employment, General education, Higher Education Bubble, Ivory tower, Law professor, Law school, Student debt, Theory v. Practice | 2 Comments

A warning for parents with kids in college

Posted on February 19, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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The warning being to think long and hard before borrowing against a 401K, or cashing in other retirement savings, to pay for college for a child.  As described in this article, parents who have emptied retirement accounts to pay for a child’s college, or worse still, co-signed on student loans, are now finding themselves in trouble now that the child has graduated, can’t find a decent job, and can’t repay the parents or the lender.

And while the child might have thirty, forty, or even fifty years to regain some economic traction before retirement, and thus has time to make up for a slow start in the workplace, the parent might only have ten, perhaps fewer, years before retirement is a reality.  This isn’t enough time to recoup losses sustained from expensive college bills, and catching up on the retirement savings is hampered with a non-dischargeable student loan payment.  Even more so, now that most parents are scrambling to recoup some of the losses sustained in the recession which ruined even some of the most sound and conservative retirement plans.

My thoughts on this are simple: if my kids decide to attend an expensive college, one that will result in hefty student debt, I’ll strongly encourage (require) them to look elsewhere.  I’m happy to help pay the college bills, and I’m even happy to co-sign on a modest student loan for a really good school, but I fully intend to not be part of the cycle of ever-increasing tuition and ever-increasing student debt.  Jeez, I’ll be paying off my own student debt until my kids are my age right now (early middle age), so hopefully that will be a good example of what not to do.  There are good schools out there that don’t cost a fortune to attend, and that provide perfectly good educations, and those will be the schools that I push my children towards.

Many of us have seen the damage large student loans do to a recent graduate or a young family, and many of us have seen the damage large student loans do to a career.  It’s just not worth it, and I, for one, will be putting a stop to it in my family.  If it’s the last thing I do, my kids will attend college without incurring significant student debt, and without me incurring additional student debt.  It’s just not worth it.

Posted in Careers, Employment, Finances, General education, Higher Education Bubble, Scholarships, Student debt | Leave a comment

Comparing loan repayment programs

Posted on February 10, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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First up, this article about Yale’s Career Options Assistance Program (loan repayment for low-paid grads) being scaled down:

Faced with increased enrollment and rising loan costs, the Yale Law School is scaling back its loan forgiveness program.

The Career Options Assistance Program, which partially subsidizes tuition loan payments for Law School graduates should they enter relatively low-salary careers, will require a larger student contribution from members of the incoming and future classes than it currently does.

. . .

COAP is designed to encourage Law School alumni to pursue public service careers, though the program does not limit participation to specific career paths.

Under the previous policy, law school alumni who earn less than $60,000 in their postgraduation careers are eligible to have their loans payments fully subsidized by COAP, while those earning more than $60,000 are expected to contribute a quarter of their income above that baseline. The new policy sets the baseline salary lower, at $50,000, and expects participants to contribute varying percentages of their income toward loan payments, based on a sliding scale of income brackets. For alumni with adjusted incomes over $80,000, for instance, COAP expects a contribution of $6,750 in addition to 60 percent of the income exceeding $80,000.

. . .

Spending on COAP currently constitutes 3.5 percent of the Law School’s annual budget, at $3.5 million per year. The money comes from the Law School’s $961 million endowment — which allocates several hundred thousand dollars to the program — as well as general Law School funds.

That’s a nice program, and a model for what other law schools should be doing.   Sure, Yale has a large endowment, but many schools could find the funds for loan repayment programs if they bothered to consider it important.

Here’s my law school’s loan repayment plan, just for comparison:

You’ve got to be kidding.  We’re spending that money on vacations sabbaticals.

Most law schools have a similar lack of concern for their low-paid grads who end up in public service.

What struck me as particularly good about Yale’s program is that it covers every grad who takes a low-paid position, public service or not.  If a grad wants to take a low-paid job in a small firm somewhere, they’re covered too.  It’s as if Yale is guaranteeing that its grads will be alright financially for a decade after graduation, and standing by its education, not merely paying lip service to loan repayment programs by creating a token plan that virtually no students qualify for, but that can be used as publicity material to suck in new applicants each year.

If only every law school was required to have a substantial loan repayment program as part of its ABA accreditation.

Posted in ABA, Careers, Employment, Finances, Forgive Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy, General education, Law school, Public Interest, Student debt | Leave a comment

Building upon yesterday’s post, and worrying SEO tactics…

Posted on February 9, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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My inbox was once again full of junk today, including the usual emails from people who claim to be working as “Search Engine Optimizers” (SEOs), a profession that is the result of the rise in popularity of social networks, and competition for placement on Google, and it’s essentially what’s clogging up the Internet with low-quality content and all those sites that link to other sites that link to other sites and so on.  SEOs spend their time trying to ensure that their clients’ websites are pushed higher up in the results of, well, Google, because nobody really uses anything else to search anymore.  And they spend their time on “viral” marketing, which is little more than stirring up interest in stuff that isn’t generally worthy of attention by utilizing social networking.  In order to do this, they try to put links to their clients’ sites on other sites, to make their clients look more popular/legitimate than they really are.  And they sometimes write/create content that makes sites look legitimate or more than mere collections of links.

I’m not specifically bashing Shpoonkle here, but it’s a prime example of publishing trash content just to make a site look legit as far as Google is concerned, pushing it up the results for no reason other than having lots of new content.  For example, on the Shpoonkle blog, the most recent post is the following:

TechPluto is a  Technology site that showcases web start ups by doing their critical  analysis and writing in-depth review, digging out utility services [link removed] and covering latest tech news and events from across the globe.

Check out “Shpoonkle’s review” [link removed] at TechPluto. . . . Also check out TechPluto’s Online Business Board, that keeps track of hottest online businesses in Tech Industry.

Junk content, and on obvious link exchange to boost site rankings that was written by TechPluto.  (In case you’re interested, TechPluto is linked to a marketing company called AQR8, which posts reviews on TechPluto for a fee.  It’s all paid marketing and social media trickery, not legitimate and spontaneous interest in Shpoonkle.  But hey, if Shpoonkle wants to toss me a few hundred bucks, I’d be happy to write an article about how great it is.  It would help pay for the upkeep on Nontradlaw.)

If this isn’t blatant enough, the secondmost recent post is a “guest” post from a jewellry appraiser, the third post is about “Fata Morgana” (“the name for a mirage associated with the enchantress Morgan Le Fay, of the King Arthur legend”, just in case you’re interested, but it has nothing to do with law and everything to do with a generating unique content for boosting Google rankings), and it’s all just a big old game to add content to try and fool Google – and real people like you and me – that something is a legitimate, trustworthy, popular endeavor that is widely-respected by other sites across the Internet.  When in fact, it isn’t.  Again, not singling out Shpoonkle, but it’s a prime example.  There are many others, but I happen to visit Shpoonkle once in a while, just to see how they’re getting on, so I can vouch for the fact that the Shpoonkle blog is full of worthless content just for the sake of making Google think that the site is fresh every day.

And freshness and content matters.  When I post a blog entry here, this site’s Google ranking jumps.  And when I don’t post an entry for a few days, the ranking falls.

But back to the main point.  I felt a little bad for highlighting Aldo Baker in a somewhat negative manner in my post yesterday, so I subsequently looked at his web personal site.  He’s a SEO, not a law student or student debt activist.  I foolishly originally thought that he was a concerned student debt activist who wanted me to show his good infographic.  His bio says the following:

My main focus revolves around Social Media and SEO. I consult for clients and help spread unique relevant content around the web. I love working with clients who get it and actually want to produce content that people will respond to.

Lately, I have been very interested in infographic marketing. It’s exciting to see a piece of your content going viral across the web on different social media outlets. Not to mention it’s a fantastic link bait campaign.

In this ever changing world of online marketing, it is important to stay ahead of the game.

And that’s fine.  It’s a job, it’s what he enjoys, and I have no problem with that.  And the infographic link he sent me was a good infographic – someone clearly spent time on that.

But here’s where the whole SEO thing gets a little sinister…

My concern yesterday was that this legitimate infographic was being used to sell some of the lowest-quality, highest-cost education available – degrees from for-profit online schools.  The infographic was using warnings about student debt to sell overpriced online degrees that will result in excessive student debt.  Weird.  Surely one would expect articles and infographics about how great online degrees are?  Or how cost-effective online education is?  Using your enemy to sell your product is all a little too Paula Deen/Novo Nordisk for me.

Here’s a sample of the emails I receive from SEOs:

Hi,

Let me take this opportunity to introduce myself, I’m [name removed] and as Search Engine Optimizer I manage & run a large selection of quality sites in different topics.

While working on one of my project sites I’ve found  nontradlaw.net [I doubt this] and I believe that with my help you can reach higher results in terms of search engines, Page Rank, visibility and traffic.

I’d really love to elaborate more about my proposal and if you’re interested please do not hesitate to contact me and I will happily send you the additional details.

This stuff usually ends up in my trashcan.  It’s an obvious form email that gets cold-sent to thousands of other potential clients.  But it’s concerning that SEOs are being used by for-profit colleges and online colleges to aggresively push their products, and to manipulate search engine results in order to sell junk degrees to unsuspecting students.

But far worse, I regularly get offers from SEOs to post their articles, which are generally “top” lists of something or other related to education, and the source is always – ALWAYS – a site that is peddling junk online degrees that would benefit from the traffic generated by being associated loosely with Nontradlaw.  Some openly suggest that Nontradlaw could be added to the list that will be circulated to other (online) college sites (an offer that I always refuse), or promoted on those sites, but the real reason is not that Nontradlaw is actually listworthy material, but rather they want me to spread their fake articles around and unwittingly act as a trusted conduit that will help push their online degree sites upwards on Google.

For example, this email from one SEO:

Hi Charles,

We would love to share with you an article that we just posted on our own blog! “10 Leaders Who Are Fighting for Student Loan Reform” (link removed) would be an interesting story for your readers to check out and discuss on your blog.

Either way, I hope you continue putting out great content through your blog. It has been a sincere pleasure to read.

Sounds legit, and there’s nothing I like more than anyone fighting for student loan reform.  But the site that is hosting that particular list is OnlineCollege.org, a clearing house for junk online degrees.  Looks legit on the surface, but it’s a classic example of low-quality, throwaway, but seemingly-compelling and important content used to promote/legitimize for-proft online education.  It’s advertising material dressed up as educational material, and it’s implying that people who are anti-”onlinecollegeandhugedebt” are endorsing “onlinecollegeandhugedebt”.  Alan Collinge, from studentloanjustice.org, surely can’t endorse OnlineCollege.org, right?  Or Kyle from Law School Transparency?  Yet they’re right there, on OnlineCollege.org.  Of course, most people can see through this marketing tactic, but there’s enough who can’t figure it out, and who will see that article as an endorsement of that particular online degree clearinghouse.  “Oh, look, these legitimate activists are mentioned in this article posted at this clearinghouse, so these online degree must be legit too…”

This bothers me.  I don’t particularly care about advertising, but I’m seeing a worrying trend of SEOs and other marketers deliberately targeting those people and organizations who are the polar opposite of what their clients are, and using those targets in materials and articles to make it look as if the targets are somehow endorsing the SEO’s clients.

And I was reeled in yesterday – to some extent – by even linking to the infographic.  It makes it appear like this site is collaborating, endorsing, and approving of the online degree site that hosts the infographic, which is not the case.  Infographic good, online colleges bad.  And I’ve seen a significant rise in emails recently from SEOs who want to use me (and I imagine many other opponents of costly online for-profit colleges) to become entangled with their sites online, and thus directly or indirectly endorse their goals.  I’d rather that Nontradlaw remains low-ranked but trustworthy, instead of highly-ranked but linked to anything that wishes to use Nontradlaw’s good name as a means to make online degrees look like they are worth spending even a dime on.  The cost of those links is way too high in terms of the damage it would do to the reputation this site has built up over the past thirteen years.

Here’s another one:

Hi Charles,

I recently discovered your blog, and I have become a frequent reader. We recently published an article “10 Professors Who Were Caught Dealing Drugs” that dovetails well with your audience. Perhaps you would be interested in sharing with them?

Here’s the link: [removed]
Thanks for the great content, and I hope the article I’ve linked primes your interest.

This one was from someone at OnlineColleges.net, another clearinghouse for rip-off online degrees.  On the surface, the article looks like something I’d be interested in – professors out of control, showing a hidden dark side of higher education.  But it’s a carefully-crafted article designed to attract those who are against rampant “onlinecollegeandhugedebt” and use them as tools to promote rampant “onlinecollegeandhugedebt”.  People would visit Nontradlaw, read that article, and click through to that clearinghouse, taking with them the idea that Nontradlaw is vouching for the quality of those degrees.

And another:

Hi Charles,

I work with Onlineuniversities.com, where we just published entitled, “15 Surprising Side Effects of Rising College Costs” Considering this overlap in subject matter with your blog, I thought perhaps you would be interested in sharing the article with your readers? If so, you can find the article here:
(link removed).
It has been a sincere pleasure to read your great content.

Yet another weak article/list sent to me by yet another for-profit degree clearinghouse to try and promote its services.  And it’s promoting junk online degrees by addressing the very things that make online degrees worthless, because this is the latest tactic of these marketers: by promoting their junk degrees along with feeble, throwaway articles that seemingly show concern for important higher education and student debt issues, it makes it look like their clients are the “good guys” and not part of the problem.

It’s almost non-stop, and every time I open my email, it’s literally filled with articles from SEOs, link exchangers, and other marketers who are looking to place their content on this site, include Nontradlaw in their content, use me to promote online degrees, and generally try and make online for-profit colleges look legitimate.  It’s easy to get lured in by offers of cross-promotion that might boost this site up the Google rankings, but I like to think that my readers are a little smarter than that.

The easy way to sift through the crap?  Just look where the information you’re reading is posted.  If it’s at a site that is anything to do with online colleges, online degrees, or online education, chances are you’re reading advertising material dressed up as legitimate articles, designed to promote online degrees and generate large profits for online colleges.

Or just remember that there are virtually no circumstances where clicking an “online degree finding tool” will result in your prospects in life being improved.

Posted in For-Profit, General education, Higher Education Bubble, Law school, Nothing to do with law, Online Education, Rip off, Student debt | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Sorting through email

Posted on February 8, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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A number of people emailed me things that are worth posting, but for whatever reason (business, laziness, etc.) I never got around to adding them to the site.

So, first up is a news release from New York Law School:

The New York Law School Law Review announces the publication of its latest issue, the Clinical Theory Workshop 25th Anniversary Conference. The 13 articles in this issue, by 24 authors, seek to answer two questions: What have clinical legal educators learned from the last 25 years of clinical scholarship and what should they work on next? The authors explore the elements of good lawyering, ways to help students learn those elements, and the pedagogical and other duties of law schools from a variety of perspectives. These and many more papers were presented at the Clinical Theory Workshop 25th Anniversary Conference held in October 2010 at New York Law School.

For those of you who have the time and inclination, this might be an interesting read.  Some of the articles seem, on their faces, decent enough: Clinicians, Practitioners and Scribes: Drafting Client Work Product in a Small Business Clinic by Robert Statchen; New Roles to Solve Old Problems: Lawyering for Ordinary People in Today’s Context by Martha Mansfield and Louise Trubek; Revision Quest: A Law School Guide to Designing Experiential Courses Involving Real Lawyering by Deborah Maranville, Mary Lynch, Susan Kay, Phyllis Goldfarb, and Russel Engler, and so on.  It’s worth noting that these reasonable articles are written by professors who are clinical professors and who have, in general, some decent practical experience under their belts.

And then there’s some articles that seem to demonstrate exactly what the disconnect is between law schools and real-world lawyering: Epistemology and Ethics in Relationship-Centered Legal Education and Practice by Susan Brooks and Robert Madden, for example.  Really?

How about before we start in on the epistemology in relationship-centered legal education, we start answering this question: “Why the hell can’t law schools teach more practical law?”  (Answer – because most law professors don’t know how to practice law, never having done it, but I don’t want to get into that now.)  But I guess accepting that simple truth would mean that the majority of authors of the articles in this law review would be out of jobs…

Point being, some of the articles look decent enough.  But the wider puzzle is this: if this group has been around for twenty-five years, looking at issues of clinical legal education, then why on earth have they made so little headway in pushing clinical legal education to the forefront?

Next up, an email from Alan Collinge at Studentloanjustice.org, pointing me to his extremely good article about the issues surrounding the loss (theft?) of consumer protections for student loans.  This article is a must-read, as is a letter to your Senator and Representative afterwards.  Take a look at the piece here.  Bankruptcy protection must be restored to student loans as soon as possible.  Good stuff.

Next, the good folk at Law School Transparency dropped me a quick email about the latest round of lawsuits filed against law schools.  As ever, LST is working hard to collaborate towards change, and readers of this blog should make sure that LST is a site that they regularly visit and pay attention to.

Last, Aldo Baker notified me of the latest infographic over at www.topcollegesonline.com, entitled “The Walking Debt“.  It’s a good infographic, but why on earth is it posted at a site that exists for the sole purpose of pushing people towards junk online degrees, which are by far the easiest way to rack up mountains of student debt?  I find it puzzling that a site very closely linked to what I (and many others) consider to be at best exceptionally expensive degrees, and at worst life-ruining scams from repeat offenders such as Phoenix, Full Sail, Capella, Kaplan, etc. is displaying info cautioning people about excessive student loans.  Or is that part of the marketing strategy (“we’re legitimate and trustworthy because we’re open about student loans, so you don’t need to worry about any of the for-profit colleges we’re directing you towards”), or maybe part of the legal defense strategy (“look, we warned these students that it’s expensive, but they clearly didn’t listen…”)  Who knows.

I regularly get propositions via email from numerous people for blog post exchanges and suchlike, but almost without exception, the blogs end up being nothing more than directories pushing people to online degree providers.  I’m sure that these sites get commissions from online colleges when they refer prospective students to the college sites, and I typically refuse to even respond to them.  I’m happy to have anyone use this site as a forum for their own blog posts, articles, opinions and whatever, provided they are not doing so merely to push traffic towards something that is damaging to any movement for student loan relief, tuition reduction, education reform etc. (i.e. no guest posts from any bloggers at sites that direct people to for-profit online education).  And please, if you have blog posts that are languishing elsewhere on the Internet, I’m happy to repost them here – just shoot me an email.  We’re all in this together, and if I can promote your site/movement, let me know.

Posted in Careers, Employment, Fairness For Struggling Students Act, Finances, For-Profit, Higher Education Bubble, Law professor, Law school, Law School Transparency, Online Education, Rip off, Student debt, Theory v. Practice | Leave a comment

Sallie Mae Watch – January 30, 2012

Posted on January 30, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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It seems that Sallie Mae could well have been copying the tactics of the subprime lenders, way back from 2006 onwards.  That is, making risky loans, hiding the risk from investors, and making money in the process.  (Is this new to anyone though?  I guess it is, because people still borrow from Sallie Mae, and people still attend for-profit colleges.)

This story, which is getting shamefully little coverage, provides a brief overview of a class action lawsuit against Sallie Mae which has been certified.  Here’s the gist of the story:

A federal judge has certified a securities fraud class action against Sallie Mae, the top student loan provider in the United States.

Lead plaintiff SLM Ventures accused SLM Corp., Sallie Mae’s corporate name, of telling investors it used strict underwriting standards for its loans, while weakening those standards by approving risky loans to students at for-profit schools.

U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III laid out the allegations in a 19-page ruling.

“In 2006, Sallie Mae’s management decided to expand the company’s PEL [Private Education Loan] business. Between June 2006 and December 2007, Sallie Mae’s PEL portfolio more than doubled, growing from $7 billion to $15.8 billion. At the time, Sallie Mae publicly stated that it had applied strict underwriting standards to all PEL borrowers. However, SLM Ventures alleges that Sallie Mae actually relaxed its underwriting standards and loaned billions of dollars to borrowers with low credit scores and other high risk borrowers who attended part-time, correspondence, or for-profit schools.” (Citations omitted.)

Sallie Mae then moved as many problem loans as possible into forbearance to hide the true number of private loans that were delinquent or in default, in violation of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, the investors said.

They accuse Sallie Mae’s chairman of fudging the numbers to profit on a merger.

“In April 2007, Sallie Mae and its then-Chairman of the Board, Albert L. Lord (‘Lord’), negotiated to sell the company to a group of private equity investors (the ‘Flowers Transaction’). The strike price was set at $60 per share, and was contingent on Sallie Mae’s financial performance and outlook. If the proposed merger closed, Lord would receive a cash payment totaling $225 million representing the value of his stock options.

(Underlining added by me.)

The details of the SM lawsuit, including today’s class certification, can be found here, at the web site of Girard Gibbs LLP, lead counsel.

I’m not particularly surprised to hear that Sallie Mae was allegedly involved in this kind of behavior (and I’m almost certain that there is no need for the use of the word “allegedly”, based on SM’s past performance).  I’m not surprised, either, that for-profit schools are involved too, and that for-profit schools are once again revealed as nothing more than a vehicle for siphoning money from the government and individuals, straight into the coffers of Sallie Mae’s investors.

Updates to follow as information arrives…

Posted in For-Profit, General education, Higher Education Bubble, Sallie Mae, Student debt | Leave a comment

Good news at last?

Posted on January 28, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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I’ll be the first to admit that this blog does tend to dwell on the negative aspects of higher education.  (Well, after all, those are the parts that need to change, and thus deserve our attention).  But time for some good news.  Half good, at least.

Obama did bring higher education reform, albeit rather weak, to the front and center during the State of the Union speech this week.  The policies he set forth essentially put higher education on notice that his administration will not sit back and let tuition costs continue to rise, and will not allow higher education to become a luxury.  Fine goals indeed.

And for anyone still unsure about the upcoming election in November, this short piece in Forbes spells it out neatly with the following quote:

The question at this point isn’t whether or not Republicans are vulnerable [on issues of higher education]; the question is: “When will young voters start to take notice?”

I lean to the left politically, but given a strong, moderate, competent, and uniting conservative candidate, and not the increasingly right-wing, religious, backward, and inappropriate candidates the Republicans have thrown into the mix this year, I’d be tempted to vote for the right, particularly if such a candidate supported some solid and sensible economic reforms and dropped some of the more ridiculous social and fiscal positions held by those seeking attention in the Republican party these days.  Obama has his faults.  Fewer than most, admittedly, but there are some flaws.

But his flaws do not include ignoring the massive issues surrounding higher education, which is a far bigger deal than most politicians currently understand.  And even if his stated policies are nothing more than an attempt to win the youth vote, it’s a step in the right direction.  The Republican candidates have no viable position on these issues, which is essentially the same as favoring the status quo – higher education becoming increasingly profit-oriented, and rapidly becoming Big Education.  They just don’t see the younger voters as important, they don’t get the issues that younger voters are concerned about, and if either Romney or Gingrich is elected, you can bet that college will continue to get more and more expensive, more and more out-of-touch, and less and less beneficial to the average student.

In fact, it’s well documented that for-profit education as a whole is against the Obama administration’s proposed and already-enacted reforms, which reduce government money flowing to these institutions, thus reducing the amount of government money flowing into the pockets of investors.  If this is still unclear to any readers, just take a quick look at this article from the New York Times, detailing just one of many instances of money coming from a for-profit college and into the Romney campaign, and the subsequent endorsement of this particular college by Romney as a shining example of how great for-profit education is.  Do we really want to elect a president who has been bought by the for-profit education industry?  Do people realize how damaging this would be for legitimate higher education?

In my opinion, it is extraordinarily short-sighted to allow our system of higher education to continue rotting, both for economic and social reasons.  So right now, if you’re truly concerned about higher education, there is nobody who you should be voting for except Obama.

Moving to a slightly different point, I noted one huge omission from Obama’s State of the Union speech: assistance for recent grads (and even assistance for grads over the past decade, many of whom are still struggling with student loans.)  Half a generation of graduates – from at least 2000 to 2010, probably from the late-1990s and through today, are hugely burdened by student debt that they were encouraged to incur, told was “good debt”, and led to believe was the route to prosperity.  And it turns out that it wasn’t.  And that’s half a generation who is financially lost at this point to a greater degree than prior generations.  A little help would go a long way to ensuring that these graduates aren’t left out, and aren’t left to struggle while those before and those after enjoy the fruits of reasonably-priced higher education.

What could be done to help recent grads?  A reduction in interest rates would help to lower the payments.  How about earlier forgiveness?  Maybe 15 years?  Who knows.  It’s all well and good to worry about how the high costs of higher education will affect graduates of the future, but let’s not forget those recent grads who are already suffering and whose futures are already damaged.  If ever there was a mess that could use a little triage to sort out the victims in terms of need, this is it.  But as it stands, some of the sickest graduates are ignored, while those who aren’t even ill yet are promised future benefits.

Posted in Employment, Finances, General education, Higher Education Bubble, Student debt | Leave a comment

Sallie Mae Watch – January 19, 2012

Posted on January 19, 2012 by NTLAdmin
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As you may have heard, Sallie Mae released its 2011 Q4 financial results yesterday.  I’ve browsed through the content, and it’s generally business as usual.  A few staggering facts to show how big the student debt problem continues to be:

  • SM is hogging about 50% of the private student lending market, and expects to grow in the future.
  • Net income was $511 million.
  • SM originated $457 million in new loans in Q4, and $2.7 billion for the entire year.
  • SM expects to originate 18% more private loans in 2012, a total of $3.2 billion.

Those figures show a hunger for private student loans that, despite all efforts to the contrary, is growing fast.

Why?  Well, because it can.  Colleges continue to increase tuition without justification, and for-profit colleges continue to suck in the gullible and foolish.  And SM, to be honest, is merely reacting to market conditions.

Efforts to push for reduced college costs are key to reducing the student loan problem.  Until college gets with the program and stops fleecing students and their parents, the problem will perpetuate; colleges will continue to develop empires rather than minds.

Some comments in the conference call were interesting.  Albert Lord, the CEO, said the following:

Let me just wrap up with a final word on the increased media attention that private student lending is getting. And I often see the term student loan bubble . . . .  I suppose the term student loan bubble is a headline grabber.  I do not see it on the private side of student lending.

And he’s absolutely correct.  There is no bubble, in the traditional sense.  There’s no instability to the business.  Nothing’s going to collapse.  If borrowers find out that their expensive degrees are worthless, if they find that they can’t get jobs that cover the loan payments, then SM won’t be the loser.  The borrowers will lose, the taxpayer will lose, but SM, with its bankruptcy-proof loans, will rake in the cash.  And it’ll rake in additional cash from the collections process.  As far as SM goes, this is bubble-proof.

The following question was asked by one analyst:

There’s an increasing likelihood that the Republicans have a real chance to win the election this fall, and the Republicans have always been much more favorable to the student lenders than the Democrats. They always oppose the expansion of the Federal Direct Program and supported . . . a repeal of the student lending takeover. Is there [any candidate] talking about . . . opening up the market . . . and repealing the nationalization of the private student loan sector?

The Republicans have at least one voter, I guess, judging from that.  The question can be summed up as, “Do you know if the Republicans will deregulate the market and remove consumer protections?”

And the answer was telling, again from Lord:

I have not heard anybody talk about student loans yet, on either side of the campaign and certainly, within among the Republican candidates.

This is a huge problem.  Huge.  Because if someone at the very core of the student loan industry has not heard a damn thing about any student loan reforms – bankruptcy reform, lending restrictions, nothing – from any politicians, then it’s clear that everyone’s protests are falling on deaf ears in Washington.  So for all the efforts of OWS and other activist groups, there’s no insider information leaking from politicians that anything legitimate is in the works to change the student lending status quo.  You would have thought that there might be a few politicians who are making sure student lending reform is high on the agenda, but it appears that it’s still a fringe issue.

Posted in Finances, For-Profit, Sallie Mae, Student debt | Leave a comment