When one takes the helm of so august a group as the American Bar Association, it’s wise to pick one’s enemies carefully.  It’s not like there aren’t plenty of darn fine choices, assuming getting invited to  official cocktail parties isn’t your primary goal, in which case the enemies list gets much smaller.

However, one group of people that you really don’t want to piss off is, well, lawyers. In particular, young lawyers.  Even more particularly, young lawyers who are feeling particularly crappy at the moment for having taken on a ton of debt to become lawyers.  And if we could put a head on it, the ones who can’t find a job in the law, despite their expensive edumacation, ton of debt and vision of a long life of misery ahead of them.  Yet this is who William Robinson, President of the American Bar Association, chooses to blame.

From an interview with Reuters :

Robinson, a lawyer in Kentucky, said anyone entering law school has already completed an undergraduate degree or more.

“It’s inconceivable to me that someone with a college education, or a graduate-level education, would not know before deciding to go to law school that the economy has declined over the last several years and that the job market out there is not as opportune as it might have been five, six, seven, eight years ago,” he said.

Not as opportune?  Well, that’s a nice way to say it’s in the toilet, with ABA approved law schools dumping about  15,000 new lawyers into a market that can’t absorb them.  But what about the ABA, Will?  What about its role in this fiasco? What about the studies showing that the ABA’s “management” of law schools has been a primary cause of their absurdly high tuitions, and cause for the huge debtload carried by new lawyers?

“None of the studies show that the ABA rules of certification are what’s responsible for the cost of legal education,” he said. Other factors, such as competition for professors, are driving the increase in cost, he said.

Robinson recalled his own experience paying for law school at the University of Kentucky, where he got a degree in 1971.

“When I was going to law school, and I sold my Corvair to make first-semester tuition and books for $330, a sizeable portion of the faculty had tenure. They had tenure then and they have tenure now,” he said.

That Corvair was one cool car, gas tank issues notwithstanding.  But still, Will, shouldn’t the ABA do what it can to smooth the profession through tough times?

“I should take the lead in telling these schools that they should reduce their tuition to $25,000 a year? No, I don’t think I should do that. I don’t think it would be purposeful. I don’t think it would be meaningful. I don’t think it would accomplish anything for me to do that,” Robinson said.

He said “it’s a complex question as to whether the cost is higher than it should be or is justified.”

Yeah, Corvairs were really cool back then, before Nader went and screwed them all up with that unsafe any any speed crap.  And William Robinson’s insensitivity and crass denial of responsibility is outrageous.  It’s complex?  Great! You’re the President of the ABA, presumably capable of dealing with complex issues. Deal with it.

Is there some merit to the “they should have known better” argument? Sure. Some. But his overt disclaimer of ABA responsibility isn’t merely wrong, but offensive.  Too many law school with too many seats pushing out too many lawyers whose primary purpose for being there is to take their rightful place among the wealthy and important in society.  Too many law professors doing too little teaching and too much whining, getting paid more than they would if they had to  work for a living on the backs of students fed doctored stats by law schools in their glossy, 17-color law porn.

Anything in there strike you as curious, Will?  You know, like something the ABA could have an impact on?

Naturally, disaffected young unemployed lawyers have  not taken well to Robinson’s comments:

ABA President William Robinson is stupid, a dick, and a big stupid dick.

And persuasive voices like this can’t find work?  Inconceivable!  Yet Robinson’s knee-jerk defense of the status quo is not merely equally unconvincing, but utterly wrong.  Sure, there’s some blame to be levied on the young lawyers for closing their eyes and diving head first into a pool of feces.  But that’s your pool of feces, Will. Don’t deny it stinks. Clean it up.

You took the reins of an organization that putatively reflects the voice of the legal profession. The job is more than going to official cocktail parties and getting a plaque at the end of the term.  The job is more than insipid defense of the way things always were, and shifting blame to the victims.  

Lawyers see what’s going on, and we realize that we’ve got an untenable system. At best, we can call it structural unemployment. At worst, we’re running a scam.  Regardless of how it’s characterized, we know it’s a disaster.  Are you seriously claiming that you, Mr. ABA President, don’t see a problem here?

These young lawyers, for better or worse, are the future of our profession.  They’re turning to mush before our eyes. They consider our ethics and obligations archaic remnants of the once-noble profession because they are being crushed by their current circumstances.  Desperate people don’t have the latitude to worry about which club tie they wear; they’re hungry.  And you, Will, are telling them to eat cake?

Much as I hate to use such profane language here, there is no escaping one conclusion based upon the myopia and insensitivity reflected in these statements.  William Robinson is a stupid dick.  More importantly, his thoughts do not reflect those of any lawyers I know, who fully recognize that the ABA is a primary source of  the problem, and thus a primary source of solutions.  

And instead of trying to fix the problem, the president of the ABA blames the victims.  What a disgrace.  What a stupid dick.