What about the low-to-middle income kids who work really hard, barely get in with a 145 LSAT, rack up $200k+ in debt, and never pass the bar? Because there are many more of those than your crackbaby example. You okay with sacrificing hundreds of those kids for your lone example?

4/23/2015 4:28:59 PM

Yes because neither you, I need anyone else has a right to stop that person from dreaming.

Beethoven himself was a disabled person from an uneducated family and by all accounts was an underperformer who would never amount to anything and theoretically should have been deprived access to being a composer.

You don't have that right to predict the future and try to suggest enhanced regulations are a panacea for the legal education paradigm. Even if just one more person is given that chance then it is worth it.

4/23/2015 5:08:32 PM

Nor anyone else*

4/23/2015 5:12:32 PM

Thats your opinion...and its not shared by many people.

If that person really wants to fulfill their dream, then they should study really hard for the LSAT!!

4/23/2015 5:24:52 PM

Is establishing a set of standards really depriving someone of access to a profession?

4/23/2015 5:38:41 PM

You don't deserve to call yourself Beethoven. Ludwig did not adhere to standards of the majority. Rank and file suits terrified to stand up for what is right.

4/23/2015 5:52:04 PM

What kind of law are you practicing in Florida?

4/23/2015 5:54:20 PM

You're right, I never passed the bar. I've been discovered.

4/23/2015 5:58:07 PM

[Edited on April 23, 2015 at 6:16 PM. Reason : ]

4/23/2015 6:15:07 PM

Listen I need to say that I am not here to troll. I simply at this early stage in my career strongly believe that these interests that are trying to restrict the ability of people to get legal education are motivated by greed and do not represent the majority sentiment of the profession. Only extreme fringe groups that are extremely vocal wish to restrict the number of lawyers. I firmly believe that and I am beginning to want to dedicate my practice to helping people get into the bar due to the powers that wish to restrict the number of law schools. I also believe that law school could be taught like high school and that more involvement of Americans in their civic rights is directly related t lowering the cost of education and cost of legal aid

4/23/2015 6:20:25 PM

You have some pretty radical views on what you think the practive of law should entail. More power to you, but that's never going to happen.

And the greedy people are the ones running law schools that let anyone in, take their hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then watch them not pass the bar.

[Edited on April 23, 2015 at 7:11 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2015 7:10:44 PM

I respect your realism, and I enjoy an opportunity to share this "radical" view

Thought it over for a long time and realized this:

(1) middle of the road attorneys that are not on a vendetta or a mission of some kind - like normal people - need to get involved and give back and weigh in on decisions and participate in their local bar associations and in the bar itself to make sure there is no runaway tyranny of fringe & extremist policymakers

(2) to the girl who is worried about her mandatory dues paying for softball - that is exactly the point in #1 - if you participated and downvoted all of the stupid shit that they came up with then you could prevent this runaway fringe group from levying fees on you to participate in their lame ass kickball league and calling it "professionalism"

4/23/2015 7:35:22 PM

Thanks for explaining how democracy works. Now let me explain to you how incentives work. It is difficult to get involved with an organization that employs individuals whose salaries are almost solely funded by mandatory dues for the purpose of eliminating their incomes. People generally don't appreciate efforts to take away their income sources and tend to take steps to prevent that from happening.

What I can do, however, is continue to try and persuade other attorneys and legislators (here and outside of tww) that mandatory bar membership is not only anathema to my First Amendment rights of association, but it also causes financial hardships to many young struggling attorneys while doing very little to advance the cause of justice. Not all judicial districts in NC are mandatory, so this also makes it more difficult to make the case against mandatory bar membership to an attorney who isn't currently forced to pay local tribute and who also doesn't want to take a stand on an issue that could cause them political problems later in their career.

4/24/2015 6:30:47 AM

Bwahahahahaha <cue Debbie downer theme>

lot of words there but it still hangs on this abstract "difficult to get involved premise"

Their mode of compensation has nothing to do with your participation. Maybe you still need democracy explained to you after all.

4/24/2015 8:50:35 AM

Cost/benefit analysis. I choose to spend my time in persuading others rather than waste my time working within the Mecklenburg Bar apparatus in an attempt to persuade them to move to a voluntary system.

4/24/2015 9:05:22 AM

You should, at the very least, be able to fill out a waiver form of some sort to show that you aren't actually practicing law (pay stub from company you are working for maybe?).

4/24/2015 9:15:44 AM

I agree, but ^ doesn't matter. If you have an active license, they require annual tribute.

4/24/2015 9:35:17 AM

Understand, just agreeing with you that their should be some flexibility. I think there should also be some "hardship" waivers as well. So many kids out there looking for jobs but have to pay all types of fees, money for CLEs, etc. It's an expensive profession.

4/24/2015 9:54:56 AM

Like I said, extremists want a one-size-fits-all concept to limit things, enhance regulations, make life more difficult, and make everything more expensive.

In the end, the copious bullshit fees amount to passing the fees down to clients and making legal assistance less accessible because a fringe extremist that is extremely vocal typically gets into some bullshit position of menial power (through the passive silence of the normal majority) and then they start coming up with shit to make everyone's life harder.

Cue the who's policing the self-regulated agencies debate:

4/24/2015 7:42:41 PM

Infilaw is "backing out" of purchasing my school (Charleston School of Law) over financial concerns.....that they created. Once they announced they were going to purchase our school, we had a mass exodus of transfers and the enrollment dropped significantly. It's been a rough two years for the school.

Hopefully we can recover. Honestly I didn't initially care too much about the situation. I have no attachment to my grad school...but the more I read about Infilaw, the more I wanted them to fail in this acquisition. Hopefully my school can make the successful turn to non-profit and regain some credibility.

Are there any Charlotte School of Law grads in here? I'd love to hear some first hand experiences on an Infilaw education and how job searches have been going?

4/28/2015 9:35:59 AM

Apparently nobody wants to respond to that query because bitching about job searches is laden with dorkery.

Either that or they are all employed and not viewing wolfweb from the iphone at the moment.

Sick burn.

I would respond, but I don't qualify because I don't have the Infilaw Degree

Also nobody gives a shit about where you went to law school after a couple years out. Also nobody asks for your GPA. (You didn't mention the GPA piece, but it's also true. Nobody gives a shit about GPA or school once you have a track record of steady employment doing good things at the DA / PD / firm.)

4/28/2015 10:43:11 PM

Do you realize that you're just having a conversation with yourself?

4/29/2015 8:34:10 AM

it should be telling that he is typically only acknowledged in threads about such things as diarrhea

4/30/2015 6:24:18 PM

This guy has singlehandedly ruined what was an otherwise informative thread.

5/3/2015 9:21:08 PM

Ok so to bring this thread back on track... To the OP

No, I graduated.

Wouldn't know how it is going because I graduated.


I guess it went well because I passed the bar.


Now to my points:

To others considering going to law school and looking for information: yes, go, go to law school and live your dreams. You will be successful. Ignore the haters that tell you there are no jobs. Ignore the people who blog all day about whose school is shitty or how the market is saturated.

I hope that is informative for those who care to know.

5/4/2015 12:44:22 AM

I would never encourage someone to go to law school, regardless of whether it's Tier 1 or Tier 3, if

1) They aren't 100% certain they want to practice law.
2) They aren't 100% certain they can make enough money doing it to pay back their debt.
AND (not OR)
3) They aren't 100% certain they have the skills/knowledge/abilities to hack it in law school, the bar exam and their future careers.

I have met too many people with six figure debt loads that can't be discharged who regret going into a field they hate, or that they couldn't even pass the bar.

My advice, depending on what type of law you want to practice is to test the waters first. If you want to be a criminal attorney, go get a job as a paralegal at a criminal firm. If you want to be a family law attorney, sign up as a guardian ad litem, or for the clerk's office. If you want to be a patent attorney and you have an engineering background, go apply for a job with the USPTO. If you can hack it in these fields, you may be able to find an employer that will pay for your education, and you have a guaranteed job upon completion.

Law school should not be used by those who don't know what they want to do with their lives, and they are scared to leave the education system, so law sounds good. Nor should people enter into it thinking they're guaranteed six figure starting salaries upon graduation. Just be realistic.

5/4/2015 10:16:03 AM

I would agree with what Beethoven said except it is a huge myth that there are people just "wandering around" and happenstance fall into law school. Those people get filtered out. Anyone who makes it into school deserves a shot and shouldn't have a cloud of "oh you're not diehard wanting to be a lawyer" suspicion over their heads.

5/4/2015 4:30:51 PM

Not going to graduation, so I am officially done with law school as of 9PM last night.

5/5/2015 4:45:36 PM

I went to graduate school (for math) and I'd like to point out that a lot of y'all's critiques of law school resonate w/ shit I've heard about math, and academia in general. the only difference is

1. grad school (unless it's for law or medicine) isn't hugely expensive, usually.

for me it boils down to: since law, physics, marine biology, etc. seem like desirable careers to many people, there's got to be some kind of competition for who gets them. and that competition entails a lot of people failing, and wasting non-trivial chunks of their lives (and perhaps tons of money.)

but I agree we should have strict-ish admission standards for entrance to these programs, to discourage people who plainly aren't going to be able to hack it on the next level. it's sad that a business is being made out of lending people money to pursue empty dreams. pretty fucked up, in fact. empty dreams are bad enough when you ain't going $100K in debt to pursue them.

5/6/2015 12:41:26 AM

The profession of law fully deserves every critique it gets from professionals in the non-legal areas.

I agree with your analysis about supply and demand. Just like marine bio ( to fit your scenarios ) is full of dumb bitches that want to swim with the orcas, the legal profession is full of stupid radicalized militant liberals that want to legislate things. It would turn out that most lawyers end up wanting to regulate some form of commerce or marriage. I guess that would be the marine bio equivalent of studying the blue fin tuna estuarine guppies or something.

Also the law field has a huge amount of frumpy chicks who act pretty because they are "smart" and also closet gays.

5/6/2015 1:11:51 AM

TGD posted this elsewhere, and I thought it'd also be of interest here: http://abovethelaw.com/2015/05/leaked-video-of-charleston-law-board-csol-is-s-o-l/

5/15/2015 10:41:20 AM

Oh yeah...shit's getting real down here. Those two guys are are like wanted men. Our school had about $25 million in "rainy day" funds two years ago and now it's all gone because of those two men.

I'm really torn between hoping someone comes in and saves the school...and hoping it closes down and I can join in on a lawsuit and get my school loans paid off.

Here's a good read from one of our professors:

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150515/PC1002/150519576/1023

5/15/2015 10:53:59 AM

Apparently I'm out of the loop since I'm just now reading up on the drama at my alma mater...

I have no ties to the school at this point, but definitely don't want to see it close in this manner. There have been signs of mismanagment since day 1, however, so none of this is a surprise.

5/15/2015 11:51:33 AM

Missed all the discussion on job prospects as it was happening. NC is saturated in the top metro areas (Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Winston-Salem) and "destination" spots (Asheville, Chapel Hill, Wilmington).

Beyond that, there's actually a pretty desperate need for attorneys in quite a few areas; the more rural, the more desperate. You can find a job fairly easily in Greenville, Fayetteville, New Bern, Boone, Burlington, etc -- and if you're comfortable moving into the countryside, you can get hired or hang a shingle starting from nothing and make $texas in short order.

Even in the saturated spots, though, many attorneys suck ass. That's especially true in the litigation arena where people are lazy as hell, functionally illiterate, and have personalities to match.

5/21/2015 12:25:49 AM

From the article:

Quote :

"There’s nothing like a last-second call from the dean of your law school telling you that you’re about to fail the bar exam to boost your confidence."

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/07/law-school-dean-allegedly-begged-graduates-not-to-take-the-bar-exam-on-the-day-before-the-test/

7/28/2015 2:38:21 PM

^ Fucking Infilaw. My law school is in a tailspin ever since they tried to acquire us. We had just passed USC in bar passage rate as well.

Oh well...never got attached to the school anyways...just sad to see.

7/28/2015 2:56:53 PM

Finally, Elon has a respectable bar passage rate again

9/5/2015 8:01:43 PM

News from NCCU Law: "For all 2016 graduates (December and July) if you pay $450.00 to a commercial bar prep course, the law school will pay your balance. This applies to ALL commercial bar vendors. It does not matter if you are enrolled to take the BARBRI, Kaplan, Themis, and/or AmeriBAR course."

9/14/2015 11:54:06 PM

Falling below a state average murdered by Charlotte Law has prompted some soul-searching at NCCU apparently...

9/27/2015 3:31:23 PM

I'll take it.

9/29/2015 1:43:10 PM

I've been wondering when the first of these type suits would be litigated. Guess the jury didn't bite on this one. The jury was likely comprised of people over 30 who understand merely graduating from college/grad school doesn't guarantee you a job.

http://collegeinsurrection.com/2016/03/fraud-claim-against-thomas-jefferson-law-school-rejected-by-jury/

3/25/2016 8:39:05 AM

On a positive note...Infilaw got shut down in their bid to purchase Charleston School of Law. A big money attorney out of Georgetown purchased instead and is hiring back all of the old professors and turning the school back around. The plan is for it to be non-profit in about nine years or so.

Again, I wasn't attached to the school at all, but it's better for the legal environment in SC for it to flourish.

3/25/2016 11:20:04 AM

That's good news. Had there not been the confluence of market conditions, shareholder greed, and infilaw, I think Charleston was on the way to becoming something great for SC (just a feeling, I don't know anything).

Hope they can wash the infilaw stain away and get back to it

3/31/2016 11:16:11 PM

I agree. The year before the Infilaw news they had passed USC in bar passage rate and the incoming class profile was looking strong. Then Infilaw comes in and 1/3 of the students transfer, half the professors leave or are "fired", and the incoming classes suffer.

I think it's already turned around faster than expected. The new guy has hired all of the old professors back (and given them generous settlements on their lawsuits). The general vibe is ridiculously positive right now. It's going to take them a couple years to get the trust back from incoming students, but I definitely think its headed in the right direction.

4/1/2016 8:02:24 AM

Just happened to run across this on my timeline, SC Feb. bar results announced. Charleston with a stellar 45.9% just behind USC's equally stellar 48.98%. Making CSOL alum everywhere proud once again.

http://www.sccourts.org/bar/SABER_Feb_2016.pdf

4/22/2016 4:08:59 PM

To be fair, that's mainly the result of half of the last two classes transferring with the Infilaw situation. It was pretty much the bottom of the barrel students that stuck it out (aka, wouldn't be accepted as a transfer student at other schools). I could be wrong, but a couple years ago we were in the mid 70s I believe. USC's is probably the more surprising one...ten years ago they were consistently around 80%. They've been dropping ever since CSOL opened up, but I never expected them to get that low.

4/23/2016 5:05:26 PM

One thing to note is that the Feb. passing percentage is typically significantly lower than the July results. This is mostly attributed to the fact that statistically, there are more re-takers in Feb. and the pass rate for re-takers is lower than it is for first time takers.

And then there's this; it's not just SC: http://abovethelaw.com/2016/04/new-yorks-february-bar-exam-results-reveal-worst-pass-rates-in-more-than-a-decade/

4/27/2016 5:46:06 PM

Thank goodness Charleston blocked the Infilaw takeover. Apparently things are back on the uptick.

Charlotte School of Law put on probation:

http://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/american-bar-association-places-charlotte-school-of-law-on-probation/468069979

11/17/2016 10:15:48 AM

Nail in the coffin for CSoL: http://abovethelaw.com/2016/12/law-school-denied-access-to-federal-student-loan-dollars/

12/20/2016 12:07:32 AM

CSOL isn't looking so bad now. Thanks, crappy NC law schools!

http://abovethelaw.com/2017/03/law-schools-duel-for-the-worst-bar-exam-passage-rates-ever/?rf=1

3/29/2017 4:40:45 PM