When bar exam passage fell like a rock last year, fingers were pointed all over the place. This year was worse, but it appears the blame has now been squarely placed on the admission of students unqualified to become lawyers.
At least two studies, including one this year that examined admissions exam scores from 2000 to 2011, have concluded that scores on the test, administered by the Law School Admission Council, closely track later bar passage rates.
[Kyle] McEntee of Law School Transparency, a graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School, said his group’s recent study showed that many schools were admitting students whose lack of legal aptitude made them vulnerable to failing the bar. And, at the same time, they are incurring six-figure student debt that will weigh them down in the future.
So blame the students for wanting to become lawyers? Blame the law schools for having empty seats to fill, salaries to be paid and new buildings to be built? Blame the bar exam for being a barrier to entry when there are people who can’t afford lawyers but still need representation? Blame technology for being worthless unhelpful in solving any problem? Blame society for refusing to accept the premise that if smart students can’t earn a decent living as a lawyer, they’re going elsewhere?
Dot connecting takes a lot of work, a level of knowledge of all the mechanisms that go into the making of a Rube Goldberg machine and a level of honesty about one’s role in a problem that compels the shedding of defensiveness and self-interest. None of the players in this melodrama seem capable of connecting the dots. It’s not that they aren’t smart enough to do so. It’s that they’ve got too much skin in the game which blinds them to their role in this disaster.
But does this matter? Should you find yourself standing before a judge, accused of something heinous that’s going to ruin your life, you bet it does. It’s going to go far better if the person standing next to you knows what he’s doing. Lawyers aren’t fungible, and law isn’t easy. And here’s an inside secret: it’s not fair.
Just because a lawyer had a cool website where he promised to love you long time doesn’t mean he has a clue. Contrary to popular belief, bar exam passage is a puny barrier. That so many fail is extremely telling, because it’s just not that hard to pass. The chasm between passage and competence as a lawyer is huge. Competence requires a whole lot more than mere bar passage.
Before this problem swirled around the toilet bowl, I urged law professors to grow up and vet their classes for students who had no chance of cutting it. Not passing the bar, but being lawyers. Not a chance this was going to happen. Instead, their village law school idiots were demagogued into scholars, as if empty platitudes were going to get a kid past the bar exam, no less qualified to practice law.
As if matters couldn’t get worse, Arstechnica posts that “law firm bosses,” an interesting choice of word smacking of Tammany Hall, see a Watson-type computer taking over much of the scut-work on which new lawyers learn their craft.
That’s according to a recent survey (PDF) of law firm leaders who say that within 10 years, new attorneys and paralegals could be replaced by an IBM Watson-like computer. The study, which included responses from high-ranking lawyers at 320 firms with at least 50 lawyers on staff, found that 35 percent of the top brass at responding law firms envision replacing first-year associates with some type of AI in the coming decade. Less than 25 percent of respondents gave the same answer in a similar survey in 2011. About 20 percent of those anonymous respondents also said second- and third-year attorneys could also be replaced by technology over the same period. Half of law firm leaders said that paralegals could be killed off by computers.
The question isn’t whether a computer can do the work. It’s neither hard nor particularly thoughtful. But without baby lawyers growing up, they’re never going to be big boy lawyers. And without baby lawyer jobs, smart kids won’t go to law school because, well, they’re not that stupid. Plus, they want nice things.
But one enormous factor that goes almost entirely unmentioned in this calculus of failure isn’t the lack of a universe of sufficiently intelligent students from which to draw, but the paradigm shift in the relationship between students and the world, including law school.
And the law professors are just as, if not more, guilty of contributing to this problem.
They have questions, and demand not only prompt answers, but answers that validate them. The will not tolerate the Socratic Method, as it belittles them and reflects a lack of respect. There are no longer wrong answers in law school, but just answers not as right as they could have been. And when a student disagrees, asserting that his answer is every bit as good as the one the professor “suggests,” they have no qualms about informing the professor of her error.
What does not happen anymore is a professor informing a law student that they are wrong. Dead, completely wrong. Totally wrong. There is no Kingsfield to hand Hart a dime. Any lawprof foolish enough to do so would learn that he was “condescending and disrespectful.”
We’re up to our eyeballs in flowery gestures, empty platitudes, microaggressions and social justice. Seats are filled with fragile teacups in need of safe places. Don’t tell students to be hard workers, as that demeans slavery. Don’t tell students they’re too entitled, as even the word “too” is sexist. And don’t tell students they’re not good enough. Even though they aren’t.
When you’re standing in the dock, your lawyer next to you, and the judge says, “denied, move on counselor,” who you gonna blame when Skippy, the Fairy Tale lawyer, too stupid, entitled, fragile, clueless but socially sensitive, starts crying? And nobody saw this coming?
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Speaking from personal experience, some law schools and law professors never gave up the practice of informing students of how very wrong their answers might be, in no uncertain terms. One of the most notorious was the dean for a while, on top of it.
I’m always curious about the point of a comment like this. The overwhelming majority of prawf won’t go anywhere near the problem, which is why it’s a problem, which raises the question of why someone feels compelled to answer, but there’s one guy who doesn’t. To what end? To blunt the point in the hope that the fiasco metastasizes and kills the profession? Is that what your comment hopes to accomplish, or are you trying to exculpate your alma mater at the expense of the whole?
This is pretty much the self-serving lie that allows those responsible to bullshit their way out of being held responsible. Not that others won’t parrot the same lie, but why would you do it here? Is protecting your alma mater at the expense of a profession worth it?
And there is no school that isn’t culpable in this disaster. None.
Sigh. What I meant was to point out the darkness has not completely consumed all of Fantasia, and therefore islands of hope remain which can be built upon. I offered a specific example from my personal experience, so as not to generalize to other situations with which I am not familiar with or educated about. I’m not denying that the problem exists or attempting to minimize it i hopes of killing the profession entirely, since I’m still hoping to have a long and fruitful career in it. Nor am I trying to protect my alma mater specifically (which would seem peculiar, since I specifically omitted the name and I certainly know of professors there who do fall into this mold).
Headline: Cop brutally murders unarmed black child.
Comment: I know a cop who didn’t kill any unarmed black children.
Point of the comment?
Headline: Cop brutally murders unarmed black child.
Comment: I know a chief whose department has a much lower rate of killing unarmed black children.
Point of the comment: What lessons can we learn from the chief and the department that are more broadly applicable in the effort to reduce or prevent killing unarmed black children? What do they do differently than locations where the problems are more pervasive?
And you don’t see the disconnect, even under your analogy? Oh well.
Am I supposed to agree with you that the analogy you decided on perfectly fits what I had in mind, thereby undercutting my explanation for what I had in mind in the first place? I thought you disliked sycophantic “I agree!” comments.
Not at all. I thought your twist on the analogy was a good one, but it remained disconnected from the point, which was about “this is the problem,” and not “can anybody out there think of anyone who doesn’t suffer from this problem as badly as most others.” And you’re always free to disagree with me.
I suppose I’m mostly resisting the worst of the nihilistic thread that runs through some of your more pessimistic posts, of “everything about this problem is awful and irreparably broken with no possible way to ever fix it.” Mea culpa.
Funny thing is, I don’t see it that way at all. I think it can be fixed, but only with an overarching plan that addresses all the problems, works together and involves all of us accepting responsibility for our role in the situation. And that means we have to start being honest about what is wrong rather than pretending we’re all happy.
I’m quite the optimist, really.
The link regarding the word “too” directs to the same page as the one regarding “hard work.” I don’t know if that is intentional; it is quite possible I simply didn’t read the piece hard enough (or, perhaps, adequately peruse it).
Didn’t I recently note that I would appreciate it if people didn’t use the comments to point out a problem in a post? It’s fixed now, but come on.
Sincerest apologies.
Based on what you wrote in September I would have expected you to delete the comment notifying you of the error while remaining silent but appreciative, rather than publishing the comment and criticizing the author. It’s six to five and pick ’em whether you publish my comment or ban me, but that’s part of the thrill of posting to Simple Justice.
Housekeeping: Thanks, But…
That was what I was referring to in my comment to Nigel today.
I think that the employment issue that lawyers (and other skilled professionals) face, isn’t so much that you’ll show up one day and the lost in space robot will be at your desk. It’s that improved electronic tools and improved ways of outsourcing fact-management tools to non-lawyers will let one lawyer do what two or three lawyers used to be able to do. We’ve seen it a little bit with e-discovery (and document review outsourcing) replacing huge human document reviews. It’s not that hard to imagine other more routine parts of the job automated. Like brief writing software that takes key facts and generates a brief template for a particular type motion that could then be revised by an attorney. It would still take work to specialize the argument but not as much. You’d still need an attorney, but he/she would be able to handle twice the caseload (and thus the clients/employer would need half as many lawyers).
This will vary obviously a lot depending on your field of practice. Something like criminal law, where a practitioner is handling a lot of independent fact-specific matters might be less prone to automation, but there are a lot of fields where I could see the labor demand dropping significantly.
So you obsessed on one detail in the post and completely missed the larger picture? Got it.
Let me ask this-do you think that young people as a population are really more fragile and incapable of taking criticism than they were twenty years ago? I’m asking sincerely-not as a complaint.
We see a lot of these anecdotal, anonymous, “kids today” type compliants, but I remember “PC” culture in the 90s on college also being pretty pervasive and lots of older people complaining about it too. I remember lots of fragile kids being outraged by dissenting viewpoints. It’s clear that the Internet lets us find out about individual instances of ridiculous complaints or behavior in a way we couldn’t back then. But are kids really worse on the whole?
Yes, kids are “really worse.” Your point is a common refrain from the idiot children that every generation thinks the one behind is softer, lazier, stupider, etc., which allows them to ignore the complaint. The devolution to entitled, narcissistic, self-absorbed, fragile and intolerant youth has been overwhelmingly proven empirically and continues to be demonstrated to anyone paying attention to what’s happening on college campuses.
If you want an answer, pay attention to what’s happening. It’s all there to be seen if you care to look. This doesn’t mean every student is a teacup or special snowflake or SJW, but most are, and more importantly, it’s become institutionalized in academia.
Mr. Greenfield, by most definitions of “social justice warrior” that aren’t GamerGaters whining in their teacups that girls are getting cooties on videogames, YOU are an SJW. You blog and devote a career to seeing that unpopular minorities (i.e, accused criminals, any color) have their rights respected and you hold up actual color-blind, class-blind justice as an ideal. So why use “SJW” as a term of opprobrium?
Either that, or I’ve completely misunderstood your blog all this time.
Meh. I’ve been called worse.
So yeah, you’re a SJW.
Few folks who aren’t would describe GamerGate thus.
Also…
That isn’t “social justice,” that’s justice justice. Demanding the government be made to follow its own rules is not even remotely the same thing as the people who run around screeching about their feelings, and how we all need to make the world a safe place for their delicate souls.
An example:
What Scott does is try to make sure The State proves it’s claims against his client beyond a reasonable doubt, so that The State doesn’t put someone in prison that shouldn’t be there.
What you do is try to make sure no one says a word that you don’t like.
See the difference?
At some point, most people will come close to sharing a particular concern with one of the variations thereon by SJWs. This could appear confusing, because it almost kinda seems sorta like the same thing. It’s not the same thing at all.
It might behoove to not attribute to me positions I haven’t claimed to hold, Mort. Someone might suspect you of straw-manning.
Lots of people say things I don’t like, but I’m an American who is aware of the existence of the 1st Amendment. There’s no law against being disagreeable, obnoxious, or downright rude. I am not, however, obliged to treat disagreeable, obnoxious, rude people as if they were nice, friendly folks I’d like to have over for dinner sometime.
Hah! For decades I’ve been watching teenage boys whine on the internet that “girls don’t play video games” (they always did, they just didn’t tell the teenage boys because the boys had no manners and no class online) and now the same children are throwing hissy-fits because women aren’t hiding anymore and pointing out that “Hey, we’re paying customers, too!” That, at least, is the point-of-view of someone who has circled the GamerGate cesspit trying to figure out what’s going on, but isn’t going to dive into that mess head-first, thanks but no thanks.
(There have always been actual mature adult men playing, too, but they don’t throw tantrums and object to girls in their games, so they don’t get talked about. When and where I grew up, *men* did not object to women wanting to get involved with the same hobbies they were–only the boys did. Hell, you often married someone who shared your interests; it’s always good to be friends with your spouse.)
If he misstated your position, then you just confirmed his inference by an excess of protest. But this isn’t a post about GG, so your refutation (which I’ve posted, despite it’s being wildly off base) ends the discussion. But you lost this argument big time. You might want to consider this next time you decide to take the dive down the rabbit whole you deny you’re taking.
There’s maybe 100 posts here about what’s happening with youth and why, but rather than read them (if you really want to know), just ask the question to be spoon fed an answer to a question that’s been asked a million times. You’re only as clueless as you choose to be.
Probably far more than 100. But if someone is new here, don’t I owe them an answer to every stupid question? Next up, “my question isn’t stupid and you’re mean for saying so.” Coddle me.
Why do you not ever post my comments?
First, this is a law blog, not a political blog. Second, this isn’t your soapbox to expound upon your view of life at length. Third, you offer nothing of substance, nothing humorous, nothing that would contribute to the discussion here. Fourth, you have no clue what you’re talking about with the law. This isn’t to debate the question, but my determination. I have a rule that this blog will not be used to make people stupider.
Your political views are yours, and you’re entitled to them. But you aren’t entitled to post them at my blawg. That’s as far as I’m interested in discussing it, and I probably will regret having gone this far, but I explain as a courtesy to you. Now I’m done.
I have had the theme song from “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo” stuck in my head all morning. Thanks, mate!
SHG,
I entirely agree: “Yes, kids are ‘really worse.’” And, that is particularly true for the irksome SJWs.
In addition to demanding return to the Socratic method (with a vengenance) in every first year law class, if I were the King I would require that decent law schools abide by a bell shaped curve when grading resulting in a probability of failure for the entire first-year class being roughly 15-20 percent. Life is a test, and there is no damn reason why law students should not confront this reality right out of the box.
As you deftly point out, Skippy, The Fairy Tale Lawyer, may end up representing me, by appointment, in a competency hearing some day. When I scream at him/her that he/she is a fucking idiot for an inept effort to keep me out of the nut house, I don’t want him/her to cry. That just makes want to take Skippy’s Iphone 6s (with a kitty ring tone) and shove it up his/her ass.
All the best.
RGK
You even nailed the ring tone. Have you seen anyone wearing these yet?
SHG,
I have one. I only turn it on when a criminal defense lawyer makes a perfectly valid point at sentencing.
For example, these new headphones are especially useful when sentencing a hard working meat packer for illegal reentry after deportation. That way I don’t have to hear his kids crying way back in the cheap seats about the loss of their father.
All the best.
RGK
Crying kids can be so unpleasant.
I am reminded of an anecdote I heard of a class of engineering students who, while quite brilliant, had all the social graces of a class of kindergarteners. The common element that I see here is that these students don’t know how to work with other people. They are utterly focused on their own feelings, leaving no room to respect other people’s feelings, or other people’s power, or other aspects of external reality. At the time, I thought this was a phenomenon unique to quirky STEM-types (like myself). But if it’s infected the humanities as well, then it’s everywhere.
I can’t let this happen to my own kid. One way or another, I just have to teach her how to deal with reality before reality deals with her.
Thanks for replying to my question – it was pretty classless to do that publicly but I expected none the less. I know who you are. You were on Turleys site and you were an asshole there as well.
I got your socialist partners kicked off the site. Ha Ha.
This is why you’re unwelcome here. First, you left a comment and I replied. If you wanted to ask me a question in private, you could have sent an email. You chose to comment instead, and call me “classless” for replying in the same manner as your comment.
As for Turley, you have me confused with someone else. I may have left one comment there ever, but that’s about it. And as for these “socialist partners,” that’s the sort of inane political crap that eliminates any possibility of your substantive comments ever being posted. You’re the trifecta, and this will be the last comment of yours ever posted here. Bye.