That there are too many students entering law school, and thus too many leaving three years later to try their hand at becoming fabulously wealthy as a first year lawyer, is a given. But is meanness the appropriate way to vet the weak from the profession?
From the ABA Journal, Sarah Allen had a dream, to go to law school and (if you’re going to dream, dream big) survive debt-free. She made a video to win $10,000 in tuition from a contest, and started a blog to solicit funds to pay the balance.
Allen’s video explaining her pursuit of a debt-free life—and a debt-free legal education—is no longer on the Upromise site. Her blog, Going to Law School Debt Free, is no longer live. “I’ve just shut everything down,” Allen tells the ABA Journal.
Allen withdrew from the contest on Monday because stories about her quest drew mean-spirited comments on several blogs. “When I read certain things, it was just so much hate, and coming from nowhere,” she says. “It stunned me.”
Allen had hoped that donors would pay the $105,000 cost of her legal education at the University of North Carolina, and had set up a PayPal account for the purpose. She had explained in the Upromise video that she hoped to use any money she raised not only for herself but also to fund scholarships for others. Her thinking was that thousands of donors, each contributing a small amount, could together make a big difference.
Reporting of Allen’s efforts brought out the knives at JD Underground, where failure is celebrated daily. Naturally, those who attend or graduated law school but have nothing to prevent them from spendingtheir days making fun of others, took unkindly to Allen’s dream, and ripped her to shreds, suggesting that if she wants money for law school, she had the wherewithal to earn it quickly on her own.
At Above The Law , Allen explains what came next.
Since the story was first published in the Raleigh News and Observer, a wave of extremely unkind and at times quite vulgar criticism has appeared online – some of which has been by attorneys and current law students (the most vulgar and completely inappropriate has been by law students on JD Underground at http://qfora.com/jdu/thread.php?threadId=10622). Both articles completely under-emphasized my intentions to start a debt-free scholarship fund and made me out to be a beggar – which I am not.
The media attention has been eye-opening, however, it has also made me realize how lucky I am to have already have job that I love and that affords me a good quality of life. For now I am better off enjoying my life and pursuing things that will bring further joy to my life and that of others. I have since returned the 3 donations that I received, deleted my blog and Facebook sites, abandoned any plans to attend law school at any time in the near future, and withdrawn my entry from the Upromise contest…
It’s no wonder that she drew the fire of the Slackoisie, who suffer the dual indignities of debt service and unemployment, since her quest to make it through law school debt free would have made the crowd at JD Underground look awfully foolish. If only they were as good at law as they are at snark.
On the other hand, Allen’s Pollyanna vision of what it means to be a lawyer likely would have made her future one of misery, had she in fact become a lawyer and served outside the small coterie of online lawyers who wear the happy face of self-promotion and technophilia, remaining aloof from the hardscrabble life of lawyers who actually practice. Practicing law is hard, and suffering some abuse in the process is part of the deal.
That the attacks were vulgar and certainly unkind was unfortunate, and inappropriate. It’s more a reflection of childishness than anything having to do with the legal profession. But the ability to withstand attacks and endure is a key character trait that any decent lawyer must possess. There’s no crying in baseball. Or in court. Better to find that out before wasting $100,000, an absurdly high sum of money whether it’s yours, the bank’s or the donations of 100,000 friends.
As with most lawyers, I’m asked fairly regularly by students (or their parents) whether they should become lawyers. I always say “no, absolutely not,” and give them a laundry list of reasons why they should reject the law and consider becoming cowboys or such. Others do the opposite, and think I’m dead wrong.
My reasoning is that if a person wants to become a lawyer because they truly want to be a lawyer, their zeal will compel them to ignore me and do it anyway. If they have sufficient desire to be a lawyer, who cares what some old guy says? But if they are really asking for my advice, and inclined to be persuaded by what I say, chances are good that they will be miserable if they become lawyers. The purpose of my negativity is to save them from a life of misery. If you don’t really want to do this, you’re not going to be happy.
Sarah Allen went through the ringer for wanting nothing more than to beat the tuition system, itself a perfectly reasonable goal. That anyone should leave law school carrying more than $100 grand in debt is nuts. But that a bunch of yahoo losers at JD Underground put her through the wringer, the gauntlet of vulgarity and so dissuaded her from her “dream”, while ugly and nasty, inured to her benefit. If she couldn’t take the abuse, she would have been miserable as a lawyer.
Since law schools won’t do it, and lawprofs are busy blowing baby kisses at law students lest their feelings be hurt, somebody has to let these kids know that it’s not all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. Maybe the jerks at JD Underground serve a purpose after all?
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Lawyers have infiltrated all branches of gov’t disolving the Firewalls and corrupting the Judicial Branch. More laws to fine, fee and pressure the accused to take the state’s deal or be penalized with months and YEARS of continuances, suppressed evidence, tainted he said/ she said testimonies railroad the innocent. The Guardianship Racket scams operating out of the family court system bankrupts and renders parents and family’s destitute. Displacing elders, children and the disabled for the Federal funding and then billing family’s. AGs, DAs, Judges work in collusion with these legal criminals as do the court’s ‘experts’ approved by CPS and protected by governance to do their crimes.
Immunities and self governing review boards protects the legal criminals.
Have you checked your dosage?
You should set up a “Red Herring Comments Hall of Fame” page…
Yes we JDU based Slackoisie do serve a purpose, even if its an ignoble one.
And never get the appreciation you deserve.
I can’t believe the comments I’ve seen in response to this story. I understand it’s a good story to use to talk about the cost of law school and how lawyers need thick skins and personal toughness and all, but to just say “well, if you can’t take a few negative comments…” is focusing on the wrong end of this story.
These attacks are a reflection of childishness by members of the legal profession, and that is a much bigger deal than one idealistic girl coming to terms with her pie-in-the-sky view of being an attorney.
That JDU thread includes insults about this person’s appearance, and what anonymous posters would allow her to do to them for money. Then there’s this thread: http://qfora.com/jdu/thread.php?threadId=10803, where they split their time congratulating themselves for 1) convincing her to drop out, and 2) hitting “the bigtime” by being mentioned on the ABA Journal’s website.
While Ms. Allen is not a lawyer (probably to her benefit), these people are, or are supposedly on their way. Nothing – not checking idealism, not internet anonymity, not personal failure – nothing could ever excuse a lawyer or law student for treating someone so horribly. That they then take pride in berating a woman because it got picked up by the legal press is more than I can stomach.
Yes, lawyers should be honest with would-be law students about their futures. But that’s not what happened here. Allen didn’t learn that “lawyers can be really mean.” She learned that lawyers will ridicule you to the point of calling you a prostitute if you do something that they can make fun of.
I don’t think it takes idealism to expect more from the profession than that.
For better or worse, the JDU crowd is also a part of the profession, crude and rude as they are. If one is going to be a lawyer, one has to be tough enough to deal with the harshest amongst us. It’s an unpleasant fact, but still a fact.
Well, we should probably get our* own Hulu/HBO special, but I guess this will do.
*Not me particularly. I’m scared of lights.