Anecdotes about law school swim through my head. It’s hard to know where to begin, now that I declare this blog up and running again.
For some reason (and maybe I’ll even try to ascertain that reason by writing this), I’d rather cut to the chase. Let’s put forth the burning question here: why did I call this blog what I did, and what exactly needs to be debunked?
That’s a much more specific question than asking if America has crossed over some line in the sand called “Fascism,” even though I would not be honest if I did not share the first word that popped into my head when posing the question above. After all, I’m old enough to remember America during my youth impliedly promising me it would never cross that line.
Sour grapes? I’ll go as far as to say that’s a valid question. Just remember what the parable is. I ate my grapes by going to and finally finishing law school.
Has the bold experiment in Democracy finally come to a halt, exemplified by the way honest, decent young adults sign up for law school by the droves; make a financial aid pact that essentially turns them into indentured servants; and get genuinely swindled by nothing more than an elaborate bunco operation not designed to teach, but only to skim the top 10% of the class as “winners” of the law school “games”? Are such “games” really determinative of who will function best in the elite society as lawyers? Or are they even designed (like in the Hunger Games) for the amusement of those overseeing it?
And that’s all only the procedural side of things. Then there’s a substantive side that touches upon morality and theories of justice—both topics at best mere jokes in the law school atmosphere I encountered.
When beginning my journey into law back in 2007 (when I started preparing for the LSAT exam), I truly wanted to enter law school with a blank slate, even though that was most likely impossible to do at my age. I very deliberately turned off the lever in my brain that used to unleash my hypersensitivity to injustice and lies.
Sure enough, as the challenge overtook me and my attending lectures demanded that I speak freely and with an opinion, I rediscovered my hypersensitive moral compass and found it remarkably out of whack with the majority of other students (although a few, and only a few, were even more sensitive than I am). That’s not to say that I was not impressed with my not-so-sensitive colleagues, because I was and still am. On the other hand I must express some concern, since not all of those crowned as "winners" of the “games” had what I would consider a stable emotional state of mind ready to run the quirky business of interpreting and enforcing the laws of this country.
I’m still not sure what to make of my own relationship to the law. My mediocrity from the onset as reflected by my performance in the “games” surely would have discouraged someone younger than me who doesn’t know that things can turn around so keep trying. Somehow it also reminded me of those times on my high school golf team when I truly could not hit the ball or putt, despite hours upon hours of practicing.
Moreover, I always sensed with every assignment I undertook that I did fit into the legal world, and I even did pretty well in some classes. My hypersensitivity to a sense of justice should therefore not disqualify me from being a lawyer, as some professors suggested to me along the way, but should fit in like all the other human elements that law has traditionally encompassed.
Why then do I still get the funny feeling that law schools are driven by a pseudo-moral landscape based on strong people ruling over the weak through competition, even if that competition allows a few improper bolo punches. In my prep course to the Bar Exam, one of the professors put it nicely albeit with irony: “if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough.” Isn’t this mentality a conqueror’s mentality and against the idea of rights and Democracy as stated in the U.S. Constitution?
When I was young, I took an IQ test administered by a psychologist. I didn’t prepare for it; I didn’t try hard to do my best; and based on the way the test was administered, I certainly didn’t have any opportunity to cheat. IQs, after all, are supposed to measure simply how smart people are—not how much they might want the success that comes from officially having a high IQ. This test by a psychologist is designed by psychologists in such a way that you really can’t improve the results through trying harder than the next person.
Unlike IQs, LSAT scores and law school GPAs are supposed to test how people apply what intelligence they have and how hard their resolve might be. They are designed that way. On the other hand, isn’t the liability of a party and the culpability of a potential criminal also something that is simply supposed to be (like an IQ)? Or do people really have to earn a dismissal of their case? What is our justice system at all if a judgment can be earned instead of determined?
I must indeed express my concern for the “winners.” The overseers have now seeded them into the elite realm of American society.
Even worse, the “losers.” A few of them had what I would consider genuine character and decency, but were, like me, spastics when it comes to playing the “games.”
What needs to be debunked? Why do I care?
I care, because I don’t like to get hurt or see people being hurt by brats empowered by self-appointed gatekeepers.
Behind the ideals of law schools in America are thousands of years of scholarship, but also a bunch of high school dropouts who nonetheless got rich in America and are now setting naïve standards as to the type of super-people they want to join into their corporations.
Law is a serious business and not a reality TV show. We become lawyers to fulfill our own individual sense of justice. We are therefore by definition all welcome into the legal profession, because it must welcome anyone who wants to serve their particular American demographic.
Anyone assuming they can turn you away or tell you there isn’t room for you is corrupted. That’s what must be debunked.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
Five Years Later
A recent google search about another matter allowed me to arrive at this blog after nearly five years of neglect. I was so happy to see recent comments were made by readers who liked what they read. I’m glad others chimed in as well.
I’ll be happy to update my saga, especially since people are asking. More importantly, I hope that this can continue to be a helpful source to those, like me, who encounter law school as anything but a routine process.
I’ve never thought of myself as someone who wants to steal thunder away from those who do well in law school, but attending law school has made me believe steadfastly that some of the best future legal talent lies in those people who struggle through it. We live in an era where law schools and business schools are attempting to prove themselves as the only real useful training that higher education has to offer, outside of perhaps med school and engineering school.
I have lots more stories about my experiences as a law student over the past five years. For now, I believe I left off with my attempts to pass the Baby Bar (FYLSE).
Based on your comments, I do need to clear up some of the rules about this. Like the California Bar, you can take the Baby Bar as many times as you want. The only restriction is you can’t get your studies at a correspondence school or at an unaccredited brick-and-mortar school to count, unless you pass the Baby Bar by the third time it is held after the successful conclusion of your first year. In other words, if you conclude your first year in the month of June, you can take the Baby Bar the following October as the first attempt, the following June as the second attempt, and the October after that as the third attempt, but skipping any of these “attempts” does not buy you more time. They count as an “attempt” whether you sit for it or not.
I was in a different category, as someone who had been culled or academically disqualified from an ABA-accredited law school. I did not sit for my “first attempt” of the Baby Bar, because my school was offering one more semester to disqualified students as a “retesting” period: you were given one more chance to pass the exams with a C+ or better, which I did not accomplish. My “second attempt” was therefore actually my first (June 2010), which I did not pass.
The following September, I enrolled in an unaccredited law school that today no longer exists. That meant, I had only one more chance to pass the Baby Bar (my “third attempt,” which was actually my second) if those courses were to count. I did not pass the October 2010 Baby Bar either, leaving me once again knocked down in the dirt.
Nonetheless, I did enroll for the June 2011 Baby Bar, even though it didn’t count for anything. I passed it with lots of room to spare.
As far as the statistics went, 24.6% of all test-takers passed the June 2010 Baby Bar; 19.5% passed the October 2010; and 18.7% passed the June 2011. That means that of my three attempts, I passed the hardest one.
I can say that I benefited because the June 2011 Baby Bar had two criminal law questions on it, and I was strongest in criminal law. There was a rare nuisance question that I did not do well on. As far the multiple choice questions, I got a surprising 85% correct.
But as I said, my finally passing the Baby Bar amounted to nothing, except as a bargaining chip to get into another school, which might agree to allow me credit for some of those first-year courses.
What happened instead was that at the beginning of 2011, I started courting other ABA-accredited schools with the intention of starting completely over with my law studies. This is consistent with another rule here in California that if you are disqualified after your first year, you can become eligible to enroll again at a law school after three years. Because I was disqualified after my first year in 2008-2009, I could enroll again for law school beginning in the fall of 2011.
One of the ongoing influences here were the student loans I had taken out in 2008-2009, which I continued to dodge with forbearances and unemployment deferments, but these were running out. Even though my original school rejected my application for re-admittance (probably with some good cause, although I did feel betrayed), I got accepted into another ABA-accredited school’s fulltime day program.
So there you have it: a law school experience that stretched out into six years instead of three; a Baby Bar that I finally passed on my third attempt, but not the required “third attempt” to make any courses in my past count; a second year commenced at an unaccredited school that amounted to nothing; but finally, a rebirth of sorts at a new ABA-accredited school. I graduated with a J.D. last May. I am awaiting results from the California Bar Exam which I took last February.
There is no moral to this tale yet. It keeps going. I do not know how I will be accepted into the lawyer community, but suffice it to say that I have my doubts after these experiences that it will be an easy transition.
In Hesse’s Demian, the hero is asked to look upon the mark on Cain’s forehead not as a curse, but as a badge of courage. Somehow, that’s how I am trying to interpret all this. If anyone else reading this relates to any of my missteps here and feel you have a mark on your forehead, I encourage you to try feeling the same way. Be bad.
I’ll be happy to update my saga, especially since people are asking. More importantly, I hope that this can continue to be a helpful source to those, like me, who encounter law school as anything but a routine process.
I’ve never thought of myself as someone who wants to steal thunder away from those who do well in law school, but attending law school has made me believe steadfastly that some of the best future legal talent lies in those people who struggle through it. We live in an era where law schools and business schools are attempting to prove themselves as the only real useful training that higher education has to offer, outside of perhaps med school and engineering school.
I have lots more stories about my experiences as a law student over the past five years. For now, I believe I left off with my attempts to pass the Baby Bar (FYLSE).
Based on your comments, I do need to clear up some of the rules about this. Like the California Bar, you can take the Baby Bar as many times as you want. The only restriction is you can’t get your studies at a correspondence school or at an unaccredited brick-and-mortar school to count, unless you pass the Baby Bar by the third time it is held after the successful conclusion of your first year. In other words, if you conclude your first year in the month of June, you can take the Baby Bar the following October as the first attempt, the following June as the second attempt, and the October after that as the third attempt, but skipping any of these “attempts” does not buy you more time. They count as an “attempt” whether you sit for it or not.
I was in a different category, as someone who had been culled or academically disqualified from an ABA-accredited law school. I did not sit for my “first attempt” of the Baby Bar, because my school was offering one more semester to disqualified students as a “retesting” period: you were given one more chance to pass the exams with a C+ or better, which I did not accomplish. My “second attempt” was therefore actually my first (June 2010), which I did not pass.
The following September, I enrolled in an unaccredited law school that today no longer exists. That meant, I had only one more chance to pass the Baby Bar (my “third attempt,” which was actually my second) if those courses were to count. I did not pass the October 2010 Baby Bar either, leaving me once again knocked down in the dirt.
Nonetheless, I did enroll for the June 2011 Baby Bar, even though it didn’t count for anything. I passed it with lots of room to spare.
As far as the statistics went, 24.6% of all test-takers passed the June 2010 Baby Bar; 19.5% passed the October 2010; and 18.7% passed the June 2011. That means that of my three attempts, I passed the hardest one.
I can say that I benefited because the June 2011 Baby Bar had two criminal law questions on it, and I was strongest in criminal law. There was a rare nuisance question that I did not do well on. As far the multiple choice questions, I got a surprising 85% correct.
But as I said, my finally passing the Baby Bar amounted to nothing, except as a bargaining chip to get into another school, which might agree to allow me credit for some of those first-year courses.
What happened instead was that at the beginning of 2011, I started courting other ABA-accredited schools with the intention of starting completely over with my law studies. This is consistent with another rule here in California that if you are disqualified after your first year, you can become eligible to enroll again at a law school after three years. Because I was disqualified after my first year in 2008-2009, I could enroll again for law school beginning in the fall of 2011.
One of the ongoing influences here were the student loans I had taken out in 2008-2009, which I continued to dodge with forbearances and unemployment deferments, but these were running out. Even though my original school rejected my application for re-admittance (probably with some good cause, although I did feel betrayed), I got accepted into another ABA-accredited school’s fulltime day program.
So there you have it: a law school experience that stretched out into six years instead of three; a Baby Bar that I finally passed on my third attempt, but not the required “third attempt” to make any courses in my past count; a second year commenced at an unaccredited school that amounted to nothing; but finally, a rebirth of sorts at a new ABA-accredited school. I graduated with a J.D. last May. I am awaiting results from the California Bar Exam which I took last February.
There is no moral to this tale yet. It keeps going. I do not know how I will be accepted into the lawyer community, but suffice it to say that I have my doubts after these experiences that it will be an easy transition.
In Hesse’s Demian, the hero is asked to look upon the mark on Cain’s forehead not as a curse, but as a badge of courage. Somehow, that’s how I am trying to interpret all this. If anyone else reading this relates to any of my missteps here and feel you have a mark on your forehead, I encourage you to try feeling the same way. Be bad.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Transubstantiation of Lawyer Reality
Do you believe? I mean do you have faith, that when a court decides someone is guilty, that person actually is guilty? What about the opposite: if innocent in a court of law that person is innocent?
I’ve been mildly but genuinely criticized in my blog for taking on the whole legal profession as it is practiced here in America, instead of concentrating on the smaller reality that law schools are dishonest and greedy. Concerning the history of law, we all know that sometimes the good guy gets executed: just read the Gospels of the Bible or about poor Socrates drinking the hemlock.
I’ve always been interested in the traditional differences between Catholics and Protestants, and one of these has been the Catholic belief that during the ritual of Communion, they actually believe that the wine and bread are transubstantiated into the blood and body of Christ. Catholics don’t talk about this or try to explain how this could be, they use their faith to believe it: not to satiate their scientific curiosity, but to make them more righteous in the eyes of the Lord.
Without trying to get into the nitty gritty of how religion functions or dysfunctions, I see a comparison to the function/dysfunction of law school. When we 1Ls were being introduced to moot court, about 20 upper classmates walked into our lecture hall, single file, all dressed the same in their natty legal outfits, sat down in a perfectly sequential choreography, never cracked a smile, never waved at acquaintances in the audience, or changed the thin-lipped expressions on their faces. The packed room of students all went silent, as if the air had just been sucked out of the room. “My God,” I whispered to the person next to me, “is this a law school or a cult?”
It’s a good question and pertains to what these youngsters apparently want to do for the rest of their lives, even if they appeared to me to be painfully naïve. Keep in mind, all you fresh young lawyers looking for jobs at law firms or business! Sometimes these places want your obedient, suited selves not because they are nurturing a work environment where people above all are not allowed to giggle or fart, but because they need young gullible minds to do their dirty work. In fact, some of these young gullible minds might even be coaxed into doing something that will get them disbarred or even imprisoned.
But at the end of the day, what do they really believe? What is their faith? Do they borrow from Catholicism and believe that they are actually the cream of a meritocracy crop that is smarter than anyone else in society? Are lawyers officers of the courts or special privileged members of society? Are they an esoteric cult whose brain functions rise way, way above the norm, so they can protect an otherwise hoi polloi society from themselves? What do the lawyers themselves believe?
I have been reading Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History, and have even started up a new blog about it. Bugliosi is a Los Angeles prosecutor famous for trying and convicting Charles Manson in the late 1960s. It’s one thing when the lawyer theater that goes on inside a court is so cocksure of itself that it sends a man to the lethal injection, but Bugliosi is of a breed that believes this theater is the only reality to the point where he thinks others who don’t think like him are in a fantasy world. Can lawyers, by dint of their skills and bag of tricks inside a courtroom, actually bring these methods outside of the court and actually transubstantiate lawyer theater into reality? Bugliosi believes so, as he now declares himself an historian, advanced logician, and scientist.
What about you: do you believe? Sometimes I have to thank God for apostasy.
I’ve been mildly but genuinely criticized in my blog for taking on the whole legal profession as it is practiced here in America, instead of concentrating on the smaller reality that law schools are dishonest and greedy. Concerning the history of law, we all know that sometimes the good guy gets executed: just read the Gospels of the Bible or about poor Socrates drinking the hemlock.
I’ve always been interested in the traditional differences between Catholics and Protestants, and one of these has been the Catholic belief that during the ritual of Communion, they actually believe that the wine and bread are transubstantiated into the blood and body of Christ. Catholics don’t talk about this or try to explain how this could be, they use their faith to believe it: not to satiate their scientific curiosity, but to make them more righteous in the eyes of the Lord.
Without trying to get into the nitty gritty of how religion functions or dysfunctions, I see a comparison to the function/dysfunction of law school. When we 1Ls were being introduced to moot court, about 20 upper classmates walked into our lecture hall, single file, all dressed the same in their natty legal outfits, sat down in a perfectly sequential choreography, never cracked a smile, never waved at acquaintances in the audience, or changed the thin-lipped expressions on their faces. The packed room of students all went silent, as if the air had just been sucked out of the room. “My God,” I whispered to the person next to me, “is this a law school or a cult?”
It’s a good question and pertains to what these youngsters apparently want to do for the rest of their lives, even if they appeared to me to be painfully naïve. Keep in mind, all you fresh young lawyers looking for jobs at law firms or business! Sometimes these places want your obedient, suited selves not because they are nurturing a work environment where people above all are not allowed to giggle or fart, but because they need young gullible minds to do their dirty work. In fact, some of these young gullible minds might even be coaxed into doing something that will get them disbarred or even imprisoned.
But at the end of the day, what do they really believe? What is their faith? Do they borrow from Catholicism and believe that they are actually the cream of a meritocracy crop that is smarter than anyone else in society? Are lawyers officers of the courts or special privileged members of society? Are they an esoteric cult whose brain functions rise way, way above the norm, so they can protect an otherwise hoi polloi society from themselves? What do the lawyers themselves believe?
I have been reading Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History, and have even started up a new blog about it. Bugliosi is a Los Angeles prosecutor famous for trying and convicting Charles Manson in the late 1960s. It’s one thing when the lawyer theater that goes on inside a court is so cocksure of itself that it sends a man to the lethal injection, but Bugliosi is of a breed that believes this theater is the only reality to the point where he thinks others who don’t think like him are in a fantasy world. Can lawyers, by dint of their skills and bag of tricks inside a courtroom, actually bring these methods outside of the court and actually transubstantiate lawyer theater into reality? Bugliosi believes so, as he now declares himself an historian, advanced logician, and scientist.
What about you: do you believe? Sometimes I have to thank God for apostasy.
Friday, July 23, 2010
The Baby Bar
Chances are, if you went to an ABA accredited law school and graduated in good standing, you have never heard of the “Baby Bar” in California. My blog has been dedicated to complaining about law schools today, and because I have spent a lot of time preparing for California’s Baby Bar these past months, I have been taking some time off. My apologies to the cause!
The Baby Bar is a nickname for the First-Year Law Students Examination. You only have to take it if you did not go to an ABA accredited law school or were academically disqualified after the first year at an ABA accredited law school. It covers only torts, contracts, and criminal law/procedure.
I spent months preparing for it and finally took it at the end of last June.
It costs over $600 and, like any other law exam, you can see that much of the money you have expended is spent for rather outmoded security precautions. They’re always trying to catch people taking the exam for someone else, but you get the impression they also just use the stodgy security precautions as a sort of intimidating ritual. How many people do they actually catch each year trying to take the exam for someone else?
My most shocking revelation with the California Baby Bar is that so many non-Californians were taking it. I first met a guy from Utah who was a student of a correspondence school based in California. Then I met a guy from Missouri, who was retired and had no intention of ever practicing law in California. The woman I sat next to during the test was from Wisconsin.
I am told only 20% of the testers will actually pass the Baby Bar, but that isn’t because it is so difficult. The low passage rate is attributed to the fact that these are mostly self-taught legal minds—the people who are just itching to practice law, but whose grades and LSAT scores aren’t good enough to get into an ABA accredited law school.
The most vicious rumor I heard about it is that California considered long ago discontinuing this exam, but they keep it going because it generates a lot of revenue. That’s a cynical assessment, although I can only imagine that it’s true.
I have used this blog to hash out the theory that the only reason I ended up in the bottom 10% of my law school is that I failed to learn how to write the essays. I think I might have even missed an important Saturday lecture when this was explained to the other students.
For the Baby Bar, I picked up a Fleming’s legal writing workbook that clearer than any other source shows how legal essays should be written, using IRAC, but using the legal term for the “I” (or “Issue”) all in capital letters and underlined. The “R” (or “Rule”) should have specific elements to it, if possible. Otherwise, the multiple-choice section of the Baby Bar was much easier than the Multi-State multiple choice questions that I used to prepare with.
I’m almost willing to say that this is my last hurrah with law, and if I don’t pass this Baby Bar, there really is something beyond my reach to law and I should take back all my complaints and let the world be run by the youngsters that are outdoing me. Then again, I do have three chances to pass this thing.
Meanwhile, I find myself believing that I really do respect the law more than most of the colleagues that I have talked with. I really can’t bring myself to say “I want to be a lawyer,” but find it easier than others to say that justice is important and corruption is bad. When there is no justice in the legal system and corruption is rampant, we have every right to complain about law schools and all the other legal institutions beyond law school. That’s a different breed than many successful lawyers.
In the meantime, for my own purposes and desires, I am probably preparing for my legal career where I’m going to be at my best—among all the other Baby Bar slackers. Calling the legal education system dysfunctional and even corrupt is not the task of a law school brat whose feet never touch the ground.
Working for justice and against corruption takes some real work and sacrifice. To that end, I am proud to be the bad boy of law.
The Baby Bar is a nickname for the First-Year Law Students Examination. You only have to take it if you did not go to an ABA accredited law school or were academically disqualified after the first year at an ABA accredited law school. It covers only torts, contracts, and criminal law/procedure.
I spent months preparing for it and finally took it at the end of last June.
It costs over $600 and, like any other law exam, you can see that much of the money you have expended is spent for rather outmoded security precautions. They’re always trying to catch people taking the exam for someone else, but you get the impression they also just use the stodgy security precautions as a sort of intimidating ritual. How many people do they actually catch each year trying to take the exam for someone else?
My most shocking revelation with the California Baby Bar is that so many non-Californians were taking it. I first met a guy from Utah who was a student of a correspondence school based in California. Then I met a guy from Missouri, who was retired and had no intention of ever practicing law in California. The woman I sat next to during the test was from Wisconsin.
I am told only 20% of the testers will actually pass the Baby Bar, but that isn’t because it is so difficult. The low passage rate is attributed to the fact that these are mostly self-taught legal minds—the people who are just itching to practice law, but whose grades and LSAT scores aren’t good enough to get into an ABA accredited law school.
The most vicious rumor I heard about it is that California considered long ago discontinuing this exam, but they keep it going because it generates a lot of revenue. That’s a cynical assessment, although I can only imagine that it’s true.
I have used this blog to hash out the theory that the only reason I ended up in the bottom 10% of my law school is that I failed to learn how to write the essays. I think I might have even missed an important Saturday lecture when this was explained to the other students.
For the Baby Bar, I picked up a Fleming’s legal writing workbook that clearer than any other source shows how legal essays should be written, using IRAC, but using the legal term for the “I” (or “Issue”) all in capital letters and underlined. The “R” (or “Rule”) should have specific elements to it, if possible. Otherwise, the multiple-choice section of the Baby Bar was much easier than the Multi-State multiple choice questions that I used to prepare with.
I’m almost willing to say that this is my last hurrah with law, and if I don’t pass this Baby Bar, there really is something beyond my reach to law and I should take back all my complaints and let the world be run by the youngsters that are outdoing me. Then again, I do have three chances to pass this thing.
Meanwhile, I find myself believing that I really do respect the law more than most of the colleagues that I have talked with. I really can’t bring myself to say “I want to be a lawyer,” but find it easier than others to say that justice is important and corruption is bad. When there is no justice in the legal system and corruption is rampant, we have every right to complain about law schools and all the other legal institutions beyond law school. That’s a different breed than many successful lawyers.
In the meantime, for my own purposes and desires, I am probably preparing for my legal career where I’m going to be at my best—among all the other Baby Bar slackers. Calling the legal education system dysfunctional and even corrupt is not the task of a law school brat whose feet never touch the ground.
Working for justice and against corruption takes some real work and sacrifice. To that end, I am proud to be the bad boy of law.
Friday, June 25, 2010
The Great American Number Crunch
A few months ago, I went to the orientation for prospective students at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. My interest was piqued right off the bat, when Assistant Dean Adam Barrett claimed during his welcome that McGeorge had a “95.1% placement rate.” I wrote that number down in the folder they handed out to us. I still have that folder.
Not more than 20 minutes later, when a student was giving about 15 of us a campus tour, I heard her say that McGeorge had an 85% placement rate (she thought, at least). I opened my folder and wrote that number down too. A few hours after that, I was at yet another lecture about careers in law, and the lecturer said that McGeorge had a placement rate of 92.8% in 2007, 90% in 2008, and "they" (whoever that may be) didn’t yet have the numbers for 2009.
Well, as you can possibly imagine, I kept singing that Stephen Stills song that goes “… nobody’s right, if everbody’s wrong…”
But still I have to say it: isn’t it more than just ironic that the professors in these law schools are going to be teaching us all about the torts of misrepresentation and negligent misrepresentation, all the while undoubtedly aware that the little tykes they are teaching are being misrepresented right and left by their own law schools?
A young New York Times reporter named Catherine Rampell (who, based on her photos, is also very attractive, young and charismatic) reported in an article a few days ago that some law schools are implementing policies of deliberate grade inflation, to make their JDs more attractive on the job market. Rampell also runs a blog for the New York Times called “Economix.”
It’s refreshing to see a new face tackling these issues, although Rampell probably doesn’t yet realize the nature and how big this tiger she has by the tail is. Our American business culture has gotten so used to lying and false public statements that sometimes I wonder what journalists are even for anymore.
We don’t need to be uncivil about this, but a façade of civility certainly keeps us from confronting the lies coming out of law schools, not to mention the forces that gave us our present financial disaster. Then again, isn’t there some sort of place where we can make hard legal analysis of this? What are the essential elements of a lie? Let’s IRAC this and determine if Barrett is lying about his numbers, or is number crunching an acceptable form of advertisement puffing?
I wish there was a forum where we could challenge people like Dean Barrett and catch him red-handed playing the number crunch game. I can only imagine a follow up by Ms. Rampell involving some serious telephone grilling of Dean Barrett to cough up the sources of his numbers.
Meanwhile, maybe chiming in on Rampell’s blog might start a miniscule ball rolling. Let’s give her story some legs and get it walking on its own inside the pages of the New York Times where it belongs.
Not more than 20 minutes later, when a student was giving about 15 of us a campus tour, I heard her say that McGeorge had an 85% placement rate (she thought, at least). I opened my folder and wrote that number down too. A few hours after that, I was at yet another lecture about careers in law, and the lecturer said that McGeorge had a placement rate of 92.8% in 2007, 90% in 2008, and "they" (whoever that may be) didn’t yet have the numbers for 2009.
Well, as you can possibly imagine, I kept singing that Stephen Stills song that goes “… nobody’s right, if everbody’s wrong…”
But still I have to say it: isn’t it more than just ironic that the professors in these law schools are going to be teaching us all about the torts of misrepresentation and negligent misrepresentation, all the while undoubtedly aware that the little tykes they are teaching are being misrepresented right and left by their own law schools?
A young New York Times reporter named Catherine Rampell (who, based on her photos, is also very attractive, young and charismatic) reported in an article a few days ago that some law schools are implementing policies of deliberate grade inflation, to make their JDs more attractive on the job market. Rampell also runs a blog for the New York Times called “Economix.”
It’s refreshing to see a new face tackling these issues, although Rampell probably doesn’t yet realize the nature and how big this tiger she has by the tail is. Our American business culture has gotten so used to lying and false public statements that sometimes I wonder what journalists are even for anymore.
We don’t need to be uncivil about this, but a façade of civility certainly keeps us from confronting the lies coming out of law schools, not to mention the forces that gave us our present financial disaster. Then again, isn’t there some sort of place where we can make hard legal analysis of this? What are the essential elements of a lie? Let’s IRAC this and determine if Barrett is lying about his numbers, or is number crunching an acceptable form of advertisement puffing?
I wish there was a forum where we could challenge people like Dean Barrett and catch him red-handed playing the number crunch game. I can only imagine a follow up by Ms. Rampell involving some serious telephone grilling of Dean Barrett to cough up the sources of his numbers.
Meanwhile, maybe chiming in on Rampell’s blog might start a miniscule ball rolling. Let’s give her story some legs and get it walking on its own inside the pages of the New York Times where it belongs.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Learning the Secret Handshake of Legal Writing
As I get deeper into my studies and wonder why I’m not excelling as quickly as the other 1Ls, I’m constantly getting advice from those 1Ls that have moved on. I probably just need to learn how to write the exams, they say. Not learn to write them better, mind you, but learn to write them, period.
Oddly enough, I am beginning to see the logic to this criticism. There is definitely a trick, or perhaps more a knack than a trick, to writing law exams.
If your writing style tries to go off on its own narcissistic footing as something worthy of attention on its literary merits, expect your law professor to be intimidated and insulted. After all, you can read and enjoy everything from Hemmingway to Pynchon, but please don’t try to impress anyone with your writing style if you are about to send someone to the lethal injection.
But we’ve all read enough cases by now to know that judges go off on their own narcissistic binges of bloated and self-indulging writing styles. So just what is it about writing in an individual style that genuinely pisses off law professors?
Anyone who has taken the time, and perhaps even the pains, to read anything on my blog, probably sees that I like to write and with lots of density, wringing out thoughts with as much grueling effort as wringing out a giant, sopping wet beach towel. I normally avoid brevity and clarity, since it’s artificial compared to one’s actual thought process. Then again, if it is effectively forceful—like a Karate chop—those short quips can be useful.
With my questionable but individual style, I have spent several decades trying to keep a freelance writing career going. I’m familiar with every Perry White wannabe editor who keeps carping about consistency, diction, and writing so the readers can understand. I’m a writer who late in his career also understands that sometimes those rejections can be the best of compliments. It’s not sour grapes at all to know that you are not part of an elite group of writers whose stuff you don’t like to read anyway. Any writer who doesn’t write the way he or she wants to write isn’t writing at all. Even if you will lose sympathy with the majority of readers reading your stuff, someone out there is going to pick up what you’re trying to say by the way you are trying to say it.
When I began studying law, one of the first lessons I undertook was a humorous seven-CD set on torts by a crusty New York lawyer who absolutely doted on the writing style of Benjamin Cardozo. I took that to heart at the time, but years later and reading more Cardozo opinions than I care to think about, I have even come to despise his writing style. It is a pretentious effort at elegance and flows off the tongue like syrup that is both too sweet and too thick.
Another approach to legal writing that I have heard another lawyer espouse is that it should not be stylish at all. He compared proper legal writing to the radio transcripts of Sully Sullenberger’s transmissions with air traffic controllers during his crash landing into the Hudson River. Lawyers should only say things like “can’t land there” or “must try a different spot.” “Avoid needless words,” said Strunk and White several generations ago, although probably scoring more points for being cleverly self-referential, I think, than for stating a maxim that should be worshiped like the Holy Grail.
Up to this point, these are all nitpicking observations about writing and style. What do law professors actually look for these days when they are grading an exam? A possible answer does raise valid reasons for concern. For example, one thing I’m told they look for is spaces between each element of your analysis (IRAC) and bigger spaces between each analysis itself. Is this really a reason to fail a 1L? Of course, you’ll never actually hear a law professor tell you to your face that the content of your legal analysis was OK, but he actually didn’t read it because it was a bit harsh on the eyes. In other words, he won’t actually take the trouble of distinguishing this rule from that analysis or that conclusion, if it means squinting, or taking the time to read it over if he didn’t get it the first time. Alas, there are no manuals of style that state rules for making your exams easy on the eyes of the law professor.
In fact, what law professors want to see on exams but won’t admit is a dumbed-down style. There is a shorthand to legal writing that they insist upon, but can’t actually describe. If they actually have to read something in the form of a well-structured sentence or a complete thought, they will be irritated. Even if you had the ability to memorize codes and rules verbatim, that won’t help you. Law students must write fragments of sentences that bluntly mention the words and phrases the professor wants to read to score points. Any complete thoughts will obfuscate this process and waste the professor’s precious time.
Even worse. If you write with any style whatsoever or with the idea of fleshing out an idea so that it actually makes sense to you, your professor will think you are faking it. Even worse. Your professor will think you are not trying to be a lawyer at all. Your professor will think you’re making fun of him and the entire legal profession. Lawyers have to make decisions quickly, and don’t want anyone to dwell on the fact that if you actually spend some time thinking about what they have written, it sometimes doesn’t make any sense.
I recently saw a video of famous lawyer Lawrence Lessig giving a lecture with the assistance of a Power Point presentation. Like Tom Hanks at the beginning of the Da Vinci Code, Lessig talks while basic words he uses appear on the screen. It creates a stylish sort of reverie, almost hypnotic in its power to force you to look past the meaning of what’s being said into a form of pure persuasion. It is lawyer theater.
It is also rock ‘n’ roll, with a rock star on stage. We should be learning to understand their theater much more. This is hermeneutics at its most tricky form: pure prestidigitation as a method of persuasion.
I can almost get the knack of today’s approach to legal writing if I think of it as a secret handshake. The professor won’t show you what it is, but until you learn it and then respect the secret with your life, you won’t pass your 1L exams, let alone a State Bar Exam.
My hat’s off to my colleagues who picked up on this handshake right away without thinking about it. I just hope they do think about it at some point.
Oddly enough, I am beginning to see the logic to this criticism. There is definitely a trick, or perhaps more a knack than a trick, to writing law exams.
If your writing style tries to go off on its own narcissistic footing as something worthy of attention on its literary merits, expect your law professor to be intimidated and insulted. After all, you can read and enjoy everything from Hemmingway to Pynchon, but please don’t try to impress anyone with your writing style if you are about to send someone to the lethal injection.
But we’ve all read enough cases by now to know that judges go off on their own narcissistic binges of bloated and self-indulging writing styles. So just what is it about writing in an individual style that genuinely pisses off law professors?
Anyone who has taken the time, and perhaps even the pains, to read anything on my blog, probably sees that I like to write and with lots of density, wringing out thoughts with as much grueling effort as wringing out a giant, sopping wet beach towel. I normally avoid brevity and clarity, since it’s artificial compared to one’s actual thought process. Then again, if it is effectively forceful—like a Karate chop—those short quips can be useful.
With my questionable but individual style, I have spent several decades trying to keep a freelance writing career going. I’m familiar with every Perry White wannabe editor who keeps carping about consistency, diction, and writing so the readers can understand. I’m a writer who late in his career also understands that sometimes those rejections can be the best of compliments. It’s not sour grapes at all to know that you are not part of an elite group of writers whose stuff you don’t like to read anyway. Any writer who doesn’t write the way he or she wants to write isn’t writing at all. Even if you will lose sympathy with the majority of readers reading your stuff, someone out there is going to pick up what you’re trying to say by the way you are trying to say it.
When I began studying law, one of the first lessons I undertook was a humorous seven-CD set on torts by a crusty New York lawyer who absolutely doted on the writing style of Benjamin Cardozo. I took that to heart at the time, but years later and reading more Cardozo opinions than I care to think about, I have even come to despise his writing style. It is a pretentious effort at elegance and flows off the tongue like syrup that is both too sweet and too thick.
Another approach to legal writing that I have heard another lawyer espouse is that it should not be stylish at all. He compared proper legal writing to the radio transcripts of Sully Sullenberger’s transmissions with air traffic controllers during his crash landing into the Hudson River. Lawyers should only say things like “can’t land there” or “must try a different spot.” “Avoid needless words,” said Strunk and White several generations ago, although probably scoring more points for being cleverly self-referential, I think, than for stating a maxim that should be worshiped like the Holy Grail.
Up to this point, these are all nitpicking observations about writing and style. What do law professors actually look for these days when they are grading an exam? A possible answer does raise valid reasons for concern. For example, one thing I’m told they look for is spaces between each element of your analysis (IRAC) and bigger spaces between each analysis itself. Is this really a reason to fail a 1L? Of course, you’ll never actually hear a law professor tell you to your face that the content of your legal analysis was OK, but he actually didn’t read it because it was a bit harsh on the eyes. In other words, he won’t actually take the trouble of distinguishing this rule from that analysis or that conclusion, if it means squinting, or taking the time to read it over if he didn’t get it the first time. Alas, there are no manuals of style that state rules for making your exams easy on the eyes of the law professor.
In fact, what law professors want to see on exams but won’t admit is a dumbed-down style. There is a shorthand to legal writing that they insist upon, but can’t actually describe. If they actually have to read something in the form of a well-structured sentence or a complete thought, they will be irritated. Even if you had the ability to memorize codes and rules verbatim, that won’t help you. Law students must write fragments of sentences that bluntly mention the words and phrases the professor wants to read to score points. Any complete thoughts will obfuscate this process and waste the professor’s precious time.
Even worse. If you write with any style whatsoever or with the idea of fleshing out an idea so that it actually makes sense to you, your professor will think you are faking it. Even worse. Your professor will think you are not trying to be a lawyer at all. Your professor will think you’re making fun of him and the entire legal profession. Lawyers have to make decisions quickly, and don’t want anyone to dwell on the fact that if you actually spend some time thinking about what they have written, it sometimes doesn’t make any sense.
I recently saw a video of famous lawyer Lawrence Lessig giving a lecture with the assistance of a Power Point presentation. Like Tom Hanks at the beginning of the Da Vinci Code, Lessig talks while basic words he uses appear on the screen. It creates a stylish sort of reverie, almost hypnotic in its power to force you to look past the meaning of what’s being said into a form of pure persuasion. It is lawyer theater.
It is also rock ‘n’ roll, with a rock star on stage. We should be learning to understand their theater much more. This is hermeneutics at its most tricky form: pure prestidigitation as a method of persuasion.
I can almost get the knack of today’s approach to legal writing if I think of it as a secret handshake. The professor won’t show you what it is, but until you learn it and then respect the secret with your life, you won’t pass your 1L exams, let alone a State Bar Exam.
My hat’s off to my colleagues who picked up on this handshake right away without thinking about it. I just hope they do think about it at some point.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Spook Law for the Invisibile Government
Here’s a tidbit with plenty of room for cynical spin to share with all those out there with a skeptical eye towards law school. I just found out that McGeorge Law School in Sacramento is run by a powerful woman with one leg firmly planted into the world of spooks.
McGeorge’s Dean Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker used to be “the General Counsel” of the NSA under the Reagan Administration, and “the General Counsel" of the CIA under the George Herbert Walker Bush Administration. These are powerful positions that are nominated directly by the President and must get approval from the Senate. Finding this out sure made me wonder how these conservative Presidents would have had enough knowledge and wherewithal to nominate such a lawyer. During the Reagan/Bush Sr. Era, the U.S. Intelligence community was challenging the status quo of legality for paramilitary operations around the world, from bombing Libya to occupying Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega.
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker probably first entered the U.S. intelligence community in the first half of the 1980s, working for the powerful Washington law firm Surrey & Morse (this law firm was absorbed into Jones Day). One of its co-founders, Walter Sterling Surrey (1915-1989), has been described by at least one U.S. intelligence community researcher, John Cummings, as “a charter member of the old boy network of U.S. intelligence.” (see Pete Brewton, The Mafia, CIA and Bush (1992)). In 1971, Surrey was one of the original founders of the infamous World Finance Corporation (WFC), which under the dubious leadership of its founder, Cuban Guillermo Hernández-Cartaya (b. 1932?), ran amuck into illegal activities, including money laundering for Colombian cocaine and international arms dealers. There were even connections to the banking scandals of Italy’s Propaganda Due (“P2”) and the Vatican Bank, as depicted in the movie Godfather Part III. Surrey resigned shortly before the collapse of the WFC, denying any knowledge of wrongdoing or criminality.
Although perhaps an obscure fact, it was by no means a State secret that Surrey apparently used his law firm to vet lawyers for future positions in the U.S. Intelligence community. Apparently he did this for at least Rindskopf Parker for the NSA General Counsel, as well as her successor (apparently his own son, Richard Sterling Surrey, although I can’t verify exactly who this and many others on these lists are). Here’s as complete a list of past NSA General Counsels as I can muster for this blog:
Sidney Smith 1953-1959
Roy R. Banner 1959-1978
Daniel B. Silver 1978-1979
Daniel C. Schwartz 1979-1981 Bryan Cave LLP
Jon T. Anderson 1981-1984
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker 1984-1989 Dean, McGeorge Law School
Richard Sterling Surrey 1990-1992
Stewart A. Baker 1992-1994
Ronald D. Lee 1994-1998 Arnold & Porter LLP
Robert L. Deitz 1998-2006 currently George Mason University
Vito T. Potenza (acting general counsel)
These general counsels were supposed to know about and completely analyze every NSA operation to determine the legality of it. Rindskopf Parker took over at the NSA less than a month after the La Penca bombing in May 1984, and the Iran-Contra Affair was in full gear. Much of Lt. Col. Oliver North’s operations (including the infamous diversion of funds to the “Contras” in Nicaragua) ought to have come across her desk, but she never emerged as a prominent figure in this scandal or any other scandals for that matter.
She then was nominated to be the General Counsel of the CIA (head of the Office of General Counsel or OGC) and took over that post in 1990. The following is an incomplete list of people holding this position (please help me complete it):
Lawrence R. Houston 1947-1973 (died 1995)
John Warner 1975?
Anthony A. Lapham 1976-1979 (died 2006)
Daniel B. Silver 1981-1982 (see above)
Stanley Sporkin ????-1986 Gavel Consulting Group
David P. Doherty 1988 retired, NYSE Euronext, Inc.
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker 1990-1992 (see above)
Jeffrey H. Smith 1995-1996 Arnold & Porter LLP
Robert M. McNamara, Jr. 1997-2000 OmniTrust Security Systems(?)
Scott W. Muller 2002-2004 Davis, Polk & Wardwell LLP
John A. Rizzo (acting) 2002-2005 currently in the news about destroying tapes
Stephen Preston 2009-
This would have been an interesting transitional period for the CIA, since the major reason for the Agency’s existence, the Soviet Union, had just collapsed. Still, her extracurricular activities in the U.S. Intelligence community include being a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and being a member of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security. When she makes public appearances as a pundit, her views strangely lean towards the liberal side.
I think Rindskopf Parker and other lawyers on these lists demonstrate that there is a deep connection to be drawn between the American Bar Association and the U.S. Intelligence Community. It’s no secret that the legal world has become one of the most important forces in the world of politics, but this means that setting public policy is not always a matter for the Courts or any other official procedure within the confines of our visible Government.
Talk of the “Shadow Government” reveals its implements in the U.S. Intelligence community. I lived through the 1980s watching Reagan and Papa Bush break one law after the other, using spin and control over the media to make it all seem like they were doing nothing wrong. In the 1990s, we then watched the exact opposite: every scandal possible stuck to the Clintons, including one of the most farcical sex scandals in political history, leading to only the second impeachment of a President in U.S. history. Then came Baby Bush, and pure lawlessness returned.
Make it through law school and into your cushy job and you’ll get to be one of the brats. For the rest of us, we need to stand up to the spooks, the ABA, and whatever other shadow entity tells us that we have been “eliminated,” for little other reason than “the tribe has spoken.”
Learn the law. Keep Government visible.
McGeorge’s Dean Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker used to be “the General Counsel” of the NSA under the Reagan Administration, and “the General Counsel" of the CIA under the George Herbert Walker Bush Administration. These are powerful positions that are nominated directly by the President and must get approval from the Senate. Finding this out sure made me wonder how these conservative Presidents would have had enough knowledge and wherewithal to nominate such a lawyer. During the Reagan/Bush Sr. Era, the U.S. Intelligence community was challenging the status quo of legality for paramilitary operations around the world, from bombing Libya to occupying Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega.
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker probably first entered the U.S. intelligence community in the first half of the 1980s, working for the powerful Washington law firm Surrey & Morse (this law firm was absorbed into Jones Day). One of its co-founders, Walter Sterling Surrey (1915-1989), has been described by at least one U.S. intelligence community researcher, John Cummings, as “a charter member of the old boy network of U.S. intelligence.” (see Pete Brewton, The Mafia, CIA and Bush (1992)). In 1971, Surrey was one of the original founders of the infamous World Finance Corporation (WFC), which under the dubious leadership of its founder, Cuban Guillermo Hernández-Cartaya (b. 1932?), ran amuck into illegal activities, including money laundering for Colombian cocaine and international arms dealers. There were even connections to the banking scandals of Italy’s Propaganda Due (“P2”) and the Vatican Bank, as depicted in the movie Godfather Part III. Surrey resigned shortly before the collapse of the WFC, denying any knowledge of wrongdoing or criminality.
Although perhaps an obscure fact, it was by no means a State secret that Surrey apparently used his law firm to vet lawyers for future positions in the U.S. Intelligence community. Apparently he did this for at least Rindskopf Parker for the NSA General Counsel, as well as her successor (apparently his own son, Richard Sterling Surrey, although I can’t verify exactly who this and many others on these lists are). Here’s as complete a list of past NSA General Counsels as I can muster for this blog:
Sidney Smith 1953-1959
Roy R. Banner 1959-1978
Daniel B. Silver 1978-1979
Daniel C. Schwartz 1979-1981 Bryan Cave LLP
Jon T. Anderson 1981-1984
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker 1984-1989 Dean, McGeorge Law School
Richard Sterling Surrey 1990-1992
Stewart A. Baker 1992-1994
Ronald D. Lee 1994-1998 Arnold & Porter LLP
Robert L. Deitz 1998-2006 currently George Mason University
Vito T. Potenza (acting general counsel)
These general counsels were supposed to know about and completely analyze every NSA operation to determine the legality of it. Rindskopf Parker took over at the NSA less than a month after the La Penca bombing in May 1984, and the Iran-Contra Affair was in full gear. Much of Lt. Col. Oliver North’s operations (including the infamous diversion of funds to the “Contras” in Nicaragua) ought to have come across her desk, but she never emerged as a prominent figure in this scandal or any other scandals for that matter.
She then was nominated to be the General Counsel of the CIA (head of the Office of General Counsel or OGC) and took over that post in 1990. The following is an incomplete list of people holding this position (please help me complete it):
Lawrence R. Houston 1947-1973 (died 1995)
John Warner 1975?
Anthony A. Lapham 1976-1979 (died 2006)
Daniel B. Silver 1981-1982 (see above)
Stanley Sporkin ????-1986 Gavel Consulting Group
David P. Doherty 1988 retired, NYSE Euronext, Inc.
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker 1990-1992 (see above)
Jeffrey H. Smith 1995-1996 Arnold & Porter LLP
Robert M. McNamara, Jr. 1997-2000 OmniTrust Security Systems(?)
Scott W. Muller 2002-2004 Davis, Polk & Wardwell LLP
John A. Rizzo (acting) 2002-2005 currently in the news about destroying tapes
Stephen Preston 2009-
This would have been an interesting transitional period for the CIA, since the major reason for the Agency’s existence, the Soviet Union, had just collapsed. Still, her extracurricular activities in the U.S. Intelligence community include being a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and being a member of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security. When she makes public appearances as a pundit, her views strangely lean towards the liberal side.
I think Rindskopf Parker and other lawyers on these lists demonstrate that there is a deep connection to be drawn between the American Bar Association and the U.S. Intelligence Community. It’s no secret that the legal world has become one of the most important forces in the world of politics, but this means that setting public policy is not always a matter for the Courts or any other official procedure within the confines of our visible Government.
Talk of the “Shadow Government” reveals its implements in the U.S. Intelligence community. I lived through the 1980s watching Reagan and Papa Bush break one law after the other, using spin and control over the media to make it all seem like they were doing nothing wrong. In the 1990s, we then watched the exact opposite: every scandal possible stuck to the Clintons, including one of the most farcical sex scandals in political history, leading to only the second impeachment of a President in U.S. history. Then came Baby Bush, and pure lawlessness returned.
Make it through law school and into your cushy job and you’ll get to be one of the brats. For the rest of us, we need to stand up to the spooks, the ABA, and whatever other shadow entity tells us that we have been “eliminated,” for little other reason than “the tribe has spoken.”
Learn the law. Keep Government visible.
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