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I would love to hear her explanation as to why she deserves anything.
She got an education from a college institution. And then, she got an education from the school of reality. She is more educated than many of her peers, which should translate into a competitive advantage. If she can't make it happen, that's kind of on her.
I'll try.
You should first understand that she started attending the school around 2004 or 2005. The economy wasn't doing that poorly at the time. The recession didn't hit until 2008. At that time, law schools generally didn't post much information other than employment stats, which were not sufficiently broken down so that you knew how many were working where and for how much. Nor was there information available on student loans the way there is now.
TJSL had two main recruiting pools at that time. And maybe they still do. But at that time, they recruited about 50-50. 50% of the people had high GPAs and high LSAT, and the other 50% generally came from low income and minority groups that did not have such great performance in undergrad or the undergrad school itself was not so well. In their arguments, they offered this to such people because they wanted to present an opportunity for people to attend law school that would have otherwise been shut out. These were mostly out of state students who were not familiar with the school.
Meanwhile, they offered scholarships to the top 50% for the first year (the higher your LSAT and GPA the more money they offered) and to keep the scholarship, you had to maintain an A- or B+ I forget which) average. When they get there, the class is divided into two groups (two classes of 80 in 2004). Whether or not that divided the classes based on these two groups is unknown. But when students get there, it's only then they explained the grading system. Out of 80 students, there would be only be 1-2 A's, 1-2 A-'s, 2-3 B+, 3 Bs and the rest were B-, C's and D's. 5 classes a semester, reviewed every semester. Which meant that the people who had scholarships had to always be in that 5 person group. I think that comes out to the top 6% of the class. It was mathematically impossible for all scholarships to be kept, and yet one can't drop out of law school after a couple semesters. Those top 50% are not students known for quitting. Hence the initial scholarship.
If you've never attended law school or been subjected to a grading system like that, it's hard to explain how it works. It is designed to cause the maximum amount of competition and stress on the students. In order to be in that group of 5 or so people, your arguments have to line up with exactly what the prof would argue, regardless of the merit. In this way, the grading system of the school was based on one's people reading skills and not technical knowledge.
Just before graduation, they learned that the odds of passing the California bar being a TJSL graduate were about 40%. Therefore, a large % of students planned to take the bar in a different state. In response to being threatened with losing their ABA accreditation due to their poor performance as a school, they mandated that all the students take California law based classes. But told students it was because in 2007, California bar would start testing California civ pro. After arguing for such a change in the TJSL curriculum, a prof there had written the very first student book on California Civil Procedure and commenced to make all students buy his book at the tune of $300 each. Then he used the class as his guinea pig in editing the book. This forced a number of students to "waste" class time and prevented them from studying areas of the law which they knew would be on the bar in states that they planned to practice in or related to their intended field of practice. It also prevented other schools from reviewing the book before they gave feedback to the author and created their own Cal Civ Pro curriculum. This change had a negative impact on the chances of passing the bar in another state.
The school has a very poor alumni pool and no one to help it. There are no benefactors or super successful graduates. The best the school can hope for is a rich SoCal family donating a LOT of money to the school to keep their otherwise not-so-smart child enrolled. A large number of students post graduation were unable to pass the bar in a large number of "easy states" (i.e. Florida and Nevada). They resorted to working low wage jobs because no one wanted to hire someone who couldn't pass the bar or someone who passed the bar but had no real prospects.
The school contacted these graduates and counted them as full time employed in their stats, even if they were only working part time at Starbucks for $8.00 an hour. If you ignored the school's request for information, they still marked you as "full time employed" by default. A large number of graduates, bar passers and failers, have not even been able to obtain $40k a year jobs. The graduates of the school and law students know this stat information now, but at the time she applied, they did not.
About 70 passed any bar. 40 of those 70 are unable to get a job that pays well because the school had a poor reputation in California as being the worst law school (which they did not know prior to living in SoCal). The other 90 are either unemployed or underemployed and a large number of them are not responding. A much as 50% of them.
The school presented it's employment rate at the upper 80% or low 90%, something in that family. A prospective student at that time, had no idea what that % really meant. So of their students during the relevant years:
25% were practicing lawyers, of which only 2-3 are in large law firms earning over $60k a year (they didn't advertise that at the time either).
18% were possibly working in the legal field but for under $60k a year.
56% were either not working or working in non-legal fields for an unknown amount of pay.
Had the students who signed up for TJSL prior to 2009 known all of this at the time they were choosing a law school, they may have chosen differently. Most law schools at that time deprived prospective students of making an informed choice of where to attend school and what the potential pay out of that investment would be. They relied on "general reputation" of the school alone. But if one was not from SoCal, they did not know TJSL's rep. The reason TJSL was targeted and made it so much further than the rest? Because it's a for-profit school with an obscene tuition rate, an outrageously out of control debt and sub-par staff. Students graduated from TJSL with the lowest bar pass rate of California and with the highest amount of debt of any law school in the country for many years running.
BTW, that information was not public at that time either.
Despite all of that, TJSL just opened a new campus in down town San Diego with no means to pay for it other than recruiting more students who have no choice for law school and limited options for grad school.
These students do not come from the same background as the typical WASP. Many are the first to attend college, have no family or friends to guide them, no one to turn to who is already in the field, and they have no idea what information exists or how to get it. These are the prospective students TJSL now almost exclusively targets.
Location: In a city within a state where politicians come to get their PHDs in Corruption
2,907 posts, read 2,067,392 times
Reputation: 4478
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrskay662000
I'll try.
You should first understand that she started attending the school around 2004 or 2005. The economy wasn't doing that poorly at the time. The recession didn't hit until 2008. At that time, law schools generally didn't post much information other than employment stats, which were not sufficiently broken down so that you knew how many were working where and for how much. Nor was there information available on student loans the way there is now.
TJSL had two main recruiting pools at that time. And maybe they still do. But at that time, they recruited about 50-50. 50% of the people had high GPAs and high LSAT, and the other 50% generally came from low income and minority groups that did not have such great performance in undergrad or the undergrad school itself was not so well. In their arguments, they offered this to such people because they wanted to present an opportunity for people to attend law school that would have otherwise been shut out. These were mostly out of state students who were not familiar with the school.
Meanwhile, they offered scholarships to the top 50% for the first year (the higher your LSAT and GPA the more money they offered) and to keep the scholarship, you had to maintain an A- or B+ I forget which) average. When they get there, the class is divided into two groups (two classes of 80 in 2004). Whether or not that divided the classes based on these two groups is unknown. But when students get there, it's only then they explained the grading system. Out of 80 students, there would be only be 1-2 A's, 1-2 A-'s, 2-3 B+, 3 Bs and the rest were B-, C's and D's. 5 classes a semester, reviewed every semester. Which meant that the people who had scholarships had to always be in that 5 person group. I think that comes out to the top 6% of the class. It was mathematically impossible for all scholarships to be kept, and yet one can't drop out of law school after a couple semesters. Those top 50% are not students known for quitting. Hence the initial scholarship.
If you've never attended law school or been subjected to a grading system like that, it's hard to explain how it works. It is designed to cause the maximum amount of competition and stress on the students. In order to be in that group of 5 or so people, your arguments have to line up with exactly what the prof would argue, regardless of the merit. In this way, the grading system of the school was based on one's people reading skills and not technical knowledge.
Just before graduation, they learned that the odds of passing the California bar being a TJSL graduate were about 40%. Therefore, a large % of students planned to take the bar in a different state. In response to being threatened with losing their ABA accreditation due to their poor performance as a school, they mandated that all the students take California law based classes. But told students it was because in 2007, California bar would start testing California civ pro. After arguing for such a change in the TJSL curriculum, a prof there had written the very first student book on California Civil Procedure and commenced to make all students buy his book at the tune of $300 each. Then he used the class as his guinea pig in editing the book. This forced a number of students to "waste" class time and prevented them from studying areas of the law which they knew would be on the bar in states that they planned to practice in or related to their intended field of practice. It also prevented other schools from reviewing the book before they gave feedback to the author and created their own Cal Civ Pro curriculum. This change had a negative impact on the chances of passing the bar in another state.
The school has a very poor alumni pool and no one to help it. There are no benefactors or super successful graduates. The best the school can hope for is a rich SoCal family donating a LOT of money to the school to keep their otherwise not-so-smart child enrolled. A large number of students post graduation were unable to pass the bar in a large number of "easy states" (i.e. Florida and Nevada). They resorted to working low wage jobs because no one wanted to hire someone who couldn't pass the bar or someone who passed the bar but had no real prospects.
The school contacted these graduates and counted them as full time employed in their stats, even if they were only working part time at Starbucks for $8.00 an hour. If you ignored the school's request for information, they still marked you as "full time employed" by default. A large number of graduates, bar passers and failers, have not even been able to obtain $40k a year jobs. The graduates of the school and law students know this stat information now, but at the time she applied, they did not.
About 70 passed any bar. 40 of those 70 are unable to get a job that pays well because the school had a poor reputation in California as being the worst law school (which they did not know prior to living in SoCal). The other 90 are either unemployed or underemployed and a large number of them are not responding. A much as 50% of them.
The school presented it's employment rate at the upper 80% or low 90%, something in that family. A prospective student at that time, had no idea what that % really meant. So of their students during the relevant years:
25% were practicing lawyers, of which only 2-3 are in large law firms earning over $60k a year (they didn't advertise that at the time either).
18% were possibly working in the legal field but for under $60k a year.
56% were either not working or working in non-legal fields for an unknown amount of pay.
Had the students who signed up for TJSL prior to 2009 known all of this at the time they were choosing a law school, they may have chosen differently. Most law schools at that time deprived prospective students of making an informed choice of where to attend school and what the potential pay out of that investment would be. They relied on "general reputation" of the school alone. But if one was not from SoCal, they did not know TJSL's rep. The reason TJSL was targeted and made it so much further than the rest? Because it's a for-profit school with an obscene tuition rate, an outrageously out of control debt and sub-par staff. Students graduated from TJSL with the lowest bar pass rate of California and with the highest amount of debt of any law school in the country for many years running.
BTW, that information was not public at that time either.
Despite all of that, TJSL just opened a new campus in down town San Diego with no means to pay for it other than recruiting more students who have no choice for law school and limited options for grad school.
These students do not come from the same background as the typical WASP. Many are the first to attend college, have no family or friends to guide them, no one to turn to who is already in the field, and they have no idea what information exists or how to get it. These are the prospective students TJSL now almost exclusively targets.
Hope this helps.
Everything that you have written in your eloquent post is true, but irrelevant. A potential graduate student should be able to discern a diploma mill from a decent school. At the end of the day even if the marketing (employment stats) that the school provided were not the full picture, she should have been able to figure it out, even if the information wasn't public. No school "deprives" students of being properly informed as you say, unless a potential student chooses to only make a decision from the information provided by such said school.
I think many here need to do a google search on "law school scam", especially lawschooltransparency.com.
It's been a HUGE scam and law schools have been outed for cooking the books, so to speak. These days, a person interested in law school would have to be living under a rock to have not stumbled across this information somewhere.
The plaintiff in this lawsuit graduated in 2008, meaning that she began law school in 2005. This information was not public at that time. Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson Law School is what's known as a Tier 4 toilet school, meaning that it's extremely difficult to get a job from that school.
I know this because I seriously considered law school when I graduated from college in 2010. Luckily for me, this information had begun trickling out around that time. I found it by doing due diligence and that ultimately stopped me from going to law school.
Had I graduated even 2 years earlier, I may very well have ended up in the same position as this woman.
Ha! This girl was the first lawyer to get this issue as far in the courts as she did. I bet she gets lots of offers now.
Although, she does really need to lose that shirt with the umbrellas on it.
Unlikely. She took her bottom tier academic institution to court because she didn't do her homework. Not only is she proving herself to be litigious, she also isn't doing herself any favors by revealing that she chose to drop $150k without understanding/accepting the risk - and she now doesn't want to take responsibility for her poor choice.
She's not exactly a stellar candidate. Not to mention that aside from all of the above, it does not appear that she qualified for a top rated law school. If she does get an offer, you can bet it won't be from a "good" employer.
Location: In a city within a state where politicians come to get their PHDs in Corruption
2,907 posts, read 2,067,392 times
Reputation: 4478
Quote:
Originally Posted by averagejoe87
I think many here need to do a google search on "law school scam", especially lawschooltransparency.com.
It's been a HUGE scam and law schools have been outed for cooking the books, so to speak. These days, a person interested in law school would have to be living under a rock to have not stumbled across this information somewhere.
The plaintiff in this lawsuit graduated in 2008, meaning that she began law school in 2005. This information was not public at that time. Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson Law School is what's known as a Tier 4 toilet school, meaning that it's extremely difficult to get a job from that school.
I know this because I seriously considered law school when I graduated from college in 2010. Luckily for me, this information had begun trickling out around that time. I found it by doing due diligence and that ultimately stopped me from going to law school.
Had I graduated even 2 years earlier, I may very well have ended up in the same position as this woman.
Internet was available in 2005. Is it easier to research things today than in was 10 years ago? Yes and no. Most of the reviews these days fall into two categories: a.) fluff, and b.) punitive. Volume of information today is huge, but actual factual information is no better today than it was 10 years ago.
Anyways, a potential attorney should have higher than average due diligence skills, especially if one's going to plunk $150k.
Everything that you have written in your eloquent post is true, but irrelevant. A potential graduate student should be able to discern a diploma mill from a decent school. At the end of the day even if the marketing (employment stats) that the school provided were not the full picture, she should have been able to figure it out, even if the information wasn't public. No school "deprives" students of being properly informed as you say, unless a potential student chooses to only make a decision from the information provided by such said school.
I don't see how an industry wide practice of depriving someone of the true facts of what they're purchasing does not deprive them of an informed decision. How are they supposed to "figure it out" if the information was not available and the only way to "figure it out" was after you purchased it?
You wouldn't happen to be Nancy Pelosi, would you? A little "Well you gotta sign it to know what's in it!"
Think of it this way. If you sold a car "as is" to a person and they sign the contract. Before delivery, you remove the engine and tell the person, "As is means 'as is' when delivered, not as advertised!" You'd be sued to high heck and you would lose.
It's only because it was an industry wide practice with interested parties making the final decision that it continued for so many years. Had she succeeded, about 25% of law schools would have been subjected to some form of punishment and eventually closed, I'd wager. In other words, the industry would no longer be able to hire low wage JDs they keep in the basement reviewing documents.
We all want the ability to read an ingredient label before we buy a food product, even if some people choose not to. But even the food industry has laws mandating that trans fat be specifically identified as an ingredient. TJSL is the trans fat of law schools.
Isn't everyone always complaining that there are too many law schools with too many bottom feeders being cranked out? Well here is one way that it could have been addressed. Do you think ambulance chasers and SSDI specialists attended Harvard?
I'm not saying that she deserved some huge pay out because she doesn't. She has failed to take responsibility and mitigate her damages. But her law suit was the first, with a number of others that followed. As a result of her actions, law schools now make that information public and readily available. Before this suit and others like it, they refused to provide the information.
Location: In a city within a state where politicians come to get their PHDs in Corruption
2,907 posts, read 2,067,392 times
Reputation: 4478
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrskay662000
I don't see how an industry wide practice of depriving someone of the true facts of what they're purchasing does not deprive them of an informed decision. How are they supposed to "figure it out" if the information was not available and the only way to "figure it out" was after you purchased it?
You wouldn't happen to be Nancy Pelosi, would you? A little "Well you gotta sign it to know what's in it!"
Think of it this way. If you sold a car "as is" to a person and they sign the contract. Before delivery, you remove the engine and tell the person, "As is means 'as is' when delivered, not as advertised!" You'd be sued to high heck and you would lose.
It's only because it was an industry wide practice with interested parties making the final decision that it continued for so many years. Had she succeeded, about 25% of law schools would have been subjected to some form of punishment and eventually closed, I'd wager. In other words, the industry would no longer be able to hire low wage JDs they keep in the basement reviewing documents.
We all want the ability to read an ingredient label before we buy a food product, even if some people choose not to. But even the food industry has laws mandating that trans fat be specifically identified as an ingredient. TJSL is the trans fat of law schools.
Isn't everyone always complaining that there are too many law schools with too many bottom feeders being cranked out? Well here is one way that it could have been addressed. Do you think ambulance chasers and SSDI specialists attended Harvard?
I'm not saying that she deserved some huge pay out because she doesn't. She has failed to take responsibility and mitigate her damages. But her law suit was the first, with a number of others that followed. As a result of her actions, law schools now make that information public and readily available. Before this suit and others like it, they refused to provide the information.
Sheesh, you followed up a gorgeous post with the one full of hyperbolas.
I'm all in favor of getting rid of diploma mills in any discipline. However, I'm not in favor of doing it by litigation. The reason why schools such as this one exist is because of federal aid. If we remove, or lower the federal aid (student loans), these schools will no longer exist, or will have to charge prices commensurate with their students job prospects.
This lawsuit is trying to solve the wrong problem.
Internet was available in 2005. Is it easier to research things today than in was 10 years ago? Yes and no. Most of the reviews these days fall into two categories: a.) fluff, and b.) punitive. Volume of information today is huge, but actual factual information is no better today than it was 10 years ago.
Anyways, a potential attorney should have higher than average due diligence skills, especially if one's going to plunk $150k.
So you're saying that at the age of 22, you were as smart as you were ever going to be and had the life skills necessary to make good, prudent decisions?
Not likely...
Certainly not in 2005 when neither parent or any family member attended college and the only thing you'd heard from the country leaders from the age of 10 years onward is that you must go to college to avoid being poverty stricken.
So you're saying that at the age of 22, you were as smart as you were ever going to be and had the life skills necessary to make good, prudent decisions?
Not likely...
Certainly not in 2005 when neither parent or any family member attended college and the only thing you'd heard from the country leaders from the age of 10 years onward is that you must go to college to avoid being poverty stricken.
The law school wasn't responsible for her lack of decision making skills.
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