The material below is from the "JD UNDERGROUND." It comments on a law review article I published in 2009. If, and I think it is a big "if," the sentiments reflected below are typical of prospective, current and former law students, then I am most definitely in the wrong profession. I am in the wrong profession! Also, I don't think I will be driving to Detroit anytime soon.
"dybbuk (Oct 16, 2012 - 12:50 am)
In 2009, Quinnipiac Law Professor Leonard Long wrote a law review article expressing his opposition to the instrumentalist barbarians who believe the purpose of law school is to train lawyers. Leonard J. Long, “Resisting Anti-Intellectualism and Promoting Legal Literacy,” 34 S. Ill. U.L.J. 1 (2009). As Long puts it, “For the anti-intellectual traditionalists in legal education, the dominant purpose of law schools, and the nearly exclusive aim of legal education, is training law students to become practicing lawyers.” Long, at 5. Long asserts, to the contrary, that law school should “cultivate [the] humanity” of law students, by offering instruction in “philosophy, history, literature, and the classics,” thereby allowing them citizenship in the “republic of ideas.” Long at 4, 18, 24. The full article is linked here:
http://www.law.siu.edu/journal/34fall/1%20-%20Long.pdf
As I read Long’s law review article, I kept waiting for him to address the question of cost-to-outcome. Should a law grad not feel angry and cheated if, after three years of expensive study in a professional school, he or she has no practice skills, a mountain of educational debt, and no job? Long consigns the question of costs to a few dubious and self-serving lines about how apprenticeships would ultimately be more expensive than law school tuition because starting salaries would be lower. See Long, note 33 at 14, 16, note 92 at 34. As to those law graduates who are never hired, Long explains that the fault lies in the students’ own vulgar desires for jobs and careers. He writes: “Does anyone doubt that the atmosphere and dynamics of legal education would be so much different were the acquisition of legal knowledge valued independent of its job, career, and livelihood utility?” Long at 36.
Long then pricelessly suggests that law school should be valued for its own sake, even if it does not lead to a job, much like one might value the memory of a pleasurable three year romance that did not lead to marriage:
“First, assume that upon the law students’ successful (very good grades, honor societies, etc.) completion of law school, job market for entry-level lawyers shrinks such that their law job prospects approach zero. From that vantage point, will those graduates still view their legal education as a good investment or not? If a legal education’s only, or dominant, value is that it prepares students to be lawyers, then it seem that three years of law school turned out to have been a poor investment. Contrast our law students with persons who happily (that is, successfully) date someone for three years, with plans to marry that someone at the end of three years (say at the end of law school) but, due to some external factors or events, that someone is no longer able or willing to marry (e.g., that someone’s job requires them to relocate to another country). Even though things did not work out on the marriage front, would these star crossed lovers view the last three happy years of dating as a poor investment and a waste? In some instances, yes; but in most instances, probably not.” Long note 97 at 36.
Given the disrespect towards law students expressed in his law review article, it should come as no surprise that Professor Leonard Long was written up in the University newspaper for offensive behavior towards his students. According to the Quinnipiac Chronicle’s February 28, 2007, article: “Professor offends law students,” Long sent an email to his students stating that, “several QUSL students will go off to be smug little assistant district attorneys and such, wearing ill-fitting power suit, and thinking themselves as doing justice.” Long then refused to respond to students who wished to continue the discussion he himself had initiated.
http://www.quchronicle.com/2007/02/chronicle-exclusive-professor-offends-law-students/
Notably, Long, during his brief three year career as a practitioner, did not do public sector or public interest law. Rather, Long launched his career in Big Law. After getting a JD from the University of Chicago in 1988, he spent a single year as an associate with Chapman and Cutler, LLP, and then two years with Wildman Harrold. (On the website of Edwards Wildman, the post-merger name of Wildman Harrold, the firm boasts of being a top 10 firm in closing private equity and venture capital deals). Since 1991, Long has been a law school professor, and has spent the last 16 years at Quinnipiac. I wonder if Long felt he was “doing justice” in Big Law, in contrast to the “little assistant district attorneys” whom he derides?
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/leonard-j-long/6/846/548
Recent job placement statistics should reassure Prof. Long: the vast majority of his students will never practice law of any sort, and therefore will not harbor thoughts offensive to Long about the value of their legal careers. The Law School Transparency site indicates that only 33.1% of Quinnipiac’s 2011 graduates got bar-required long term jobs within nine months of graduation. (Cf. Florida Coastal School of Law, 34.8%, Barry University, 34.4, John Marshall of Chicago, 41.1%)
http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/clearinghouse/?school=quinnipiac&class=2011&show=ABA
As for “doing justice,” I can think of one way: close Quinnipiac’s law school. But a small step in the right direction would be to replace Leonard Long with a professor who will treat his students with respect, and who will give his students practical training that they expect and pay for.
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johnnycakes (Oct 16, 2012 - 1:09 am)
I like reading these posts. Good work, as always.
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diligentsolo (Oct 16, 2012 - 7:57 pm)
Great post.
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redbirds (Oct 16, 2012 - 1:12 am)
You just can't make this nonsense up.
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dtejd1997 (Oct 16, 2012 - 3:06 am)
"professor" Leonard Long's law review article is sort of like free flowing consciousness.
He got a seed of an idea and just went with it...
Who reads this stuff?
Of what societal value is it?
I pray this skam ends before too many more people get enmeshed in it.
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dupednontraditional (Oct 16, 2012 - 6:47 am)
"It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all...by the way, that will be $150k. Thanks."
What a smug prick. dybbuk, keep up the good work. You should do a full-up blog on this stuff, or publish a book given the amount of work you're doing here.
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dybbuk (Oct 16, 2012 - 10:07 pm)
Would a blog really reach more people?
One thing I like about JD Underground is that old threads can be bumped to the top, though I understand that this should be done sparingly. So... next time, following their natural inclinations, Princess Nancy Leong says something supercillious, or SpearIt says something idiotic, or Paul Horwitz makes a jackass of himself, or Michael Sevel reaches into the pockets of law students to fund his studies in philosophy and theology, I, or anyone, can revive and update the old threads.
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vanity (Oct 16, 2012 - 10:42 am)
Love these posts.
To a southern woman, three years of dating that does not turn into marriage is a rotten failure.
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lolskewl (Oct 16, 2012 - 11:21 am)
If law school has some inherent value, than why wouldn't Professor Long volunteer his time to teach students?
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onehell (Oct 16, 2012 - 11:35 am)
I can't fault professors for responding to the incentives that are placed in front of them, as any rational human would do. If you have the credentials, being a law prof is a fantastic job and there is no good reason not to pursue it if you're interested in an ultra low-stress "life of the mind."
Of course, no one wants to think of themselves as part of a problem, especially not people like law professors who have been good, law abiding overachievers their entire lives. As humans, they are good people, and good people don't generally like to do bad things so they need to come up with rationalizations for their endeavors. Law (and the liberal arts in general) as an end unto itself, rather than a means to an end, is one very common such rationalization.
In fact, at the UG level the "end unto itself justification" is one I can actually buy into. The traditional college experience (not this online or for-profit nonsense) is very enriching socially and, if you put real effort in, intellectually as well. If it works as it is supposed to (which it often doesn't due to the dumbing-down of undergrad, but that's another discussion) you emerge with a broader perspective, able to think critically and write well, and this will serve well in most any endeavor. And, with an average debt of 20k, the price is actually still somewhat reasonable. I get all that.
But law school is simply too expensive, too focused, and too much of an assembly line (based as it is on large class sizes and no research component) to be thought of as an end unto itself. Law professors cannot, much as they understandably want to, regard themselves as do other professors who teach and work with undergrads and a few masters and PhD students. Law school is not real grad school. It is professional school. If it were grad school, it would be largely funded, would provide teaching opportunities for students, and would be research-based (with peer review) like any other PhD program. It would, in other words, look like the SJD programs that are offered at a tiny handful of universities.
As it is, law school, like med school and business school, is professional school. It may not be as lowbrow as full-on trade school, but it is and will remain a means to an end. If its students cannot reach those ends, it is failing.
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lawlawtemp (Oct 16, 2012 - 11:42 am)
Law students had 4 years in undergrad to dilly-dally around in the liberal arts, it doesn't belong in law school.
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onehell (Oct 16, 2012 - 11:47 am)
That's true. The more theoretical, intellectual side of law school is really just philosophy-lite. People who would go to law school as an end unto itself would probably be better served pursuing a philosophy PhD. Of course, that would be infinitely harder to get into and would come with funding, teaching opportunities and research expectations, which illustrates precisely the folly of thinking of law school as the graduate school the profs want it to be, rather than the professional school it is.
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onehell (Oct 16, 2012 - 12:02 pm)
Oh here's another thought. I actually like the prof's analogy to dating and whether it is purely a means to an end, namely marriage. It's more apt than he realizes. Think about it. It's absolutely true that when you're 18-22 (college undergrad years) you date for the fun of dating with no expectation of marriage. The relationship is not a means to anything, it is an end unto itself and indeed both parties are aware that they will in all likelihood break up eventually. BUT look at what happens when people hit 30. At that point, dating IS purely a means to an end and no one wants to waste time if it isn't going anywhere. Indeed, if someone in their 30s spends 2 years in a relationship that does not end up leading to marriage, that is some serious wasted time lost to a major ticking clock.
Law school is the same. These kids came to LS because it's time to focus and get a career. College was fun, but now it's over and the clock cannot be turned back.
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dupednontraditional (Oct 16, 2012 - 5:36 pm)
Bam! 180.
Unfortunately, onehell, your observations are entirely too logical and reasonable, so they will be essentially ignored by the establishment. Money talks, you know.
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dybbuk (Oct 16, 2012 - 9:57 pm)
Great comments, onehell. I completely agree with the distinctions you draw between the purpose and value of an undergrad education and a law school education.
One more distinction: Though the professors one encounters in undergrad generally earn much less than law professors, they are far, far more likely to be authentic, or even renowned, scholars in areas such as “philosophy, history, literature, and the classics.” (as Long puts it). In law school, you tend to encounter intellectual dilettantes who teach their law and literature courses and do their "critical studies" as a fig-leaf for their overall lack of ability to train students to practice any kind of law.
Here is my counter-proposal to Long, to prove that I am not anti-intellectual and that I actually do treasure "philosophy, history, literature, and the classics.": Allow and encourage law students to walk over to the other side of campus and audit any undergrad course or graduate seminar they want free of charge. Hell, for what law schools extract in tuition, perhaps the right to audit courses in these areas should be a lifetime perk that comes with the JD.
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onehell (Oct 17, 2012 - 11:34 am)
Yes, definitely. "Law and..." profs are not generally recognized as much by the "and" discipline. For example, a world-renowned scholar of "law and economics" will be very well-known in legal academia, but would never be hired by an actual economics department because his scholarship isn't peer-reviewed and is therefore not real scholarship.
It's a good idea to say that intellectual students should be free to take other courses at the university, and I think proposals like that more importantly demonstrate the choice that needs to be made: Law school can be grad school, or it can be professional school, but it cannot be both. Well, a very small number of schools at the absolute tippy top of the rankings are able to pull off being both, but that has more to do with the high intelligence of the students than anything else.
For the rest, if law school wants to be grad school, then the programs would get a lot smaller, heavy on prerequisites, become tuition-free (with the students teaching undergrad law courses as other PhD students do), and the students' success would be based on peer-reviewed research and not test scores. If, OTOH, it wants to be a professional school, it needs to hire a lot more adjuncts with actual practice experience and concentrate much more heavily on clinical experiences. It will then continue to be able to charge somewhat high tuition, but it will still be cheaper without all the prof salaries and research activity.
There is room in our system for both modalities. Higher rank of school would generally correlate with more likelihood of adopting the PhD model, while low ranked schools should probably be staffed primarily by practicing adjuncts. Freedom to take undergraduate courses could enable them to hang on to some intellectualism in even those programs.
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moviegoer (Feb 7, 2013 - 10:17 pm)
"I can't fault professors for responding to the incentives that are placed in front of them, as any rational human would do."
I absolutely fault them for responding to those incentives. They are tremendous beneficiaries of a system that uses tremendous deceit to destroy the careers and financial solvency of some of a generation's best and brightest, at tremendous cost to both the individuals and society at large.
How is this unworthy of fault? If law professors were presented the same incentives, but earned it by torturing kids rather than doing...well, whatever it is they...should they still be held faultless?
Not trying to be a dick, just trying to understand this seemingly nihilistic attitude. It's strange to me that it's common, and even more strange that it's unremarkably so.
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dopesmokeresquire (Oct 16, 2012 - 4:21 pm)
professor Leonard "let them eat cake" Long...what a fuckface.
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ballsnottt (Oct 16, 2012 - 4:26 pm)
This guy is a true PIECE of TRASH. Fuck him. Yes, let's go to Quinnipac fuckin' Law School to hang out and shoot the 'academic' shit for three years and even if we are unemployable after and it cost 210k, it was still a fun time. Right. This shitstain of a school was just on 3TR, apparently it costs 46K per year for tution (HLS is 49K). So 70K a year factoring COL sounds like a great deal to listen to this jerkoff and his ilk wax poetic for three years.
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shithead (Oct 16, 2012 - 4:32 pm)
I had a great time in law school. Was it worth the money? Absolutely not.
I hope this law professor dies in the gutter without a penny to his name.
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moviegoer (Feb 7, 2013 - 10:19 pm)
To each of your sentences: Me too, me too, me too, and me too x 10000.
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thedetroiter (Oct 16, 2012 - 5:04 pm)
I hope his car gets stolen if he's ever in town.
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shithead (Oct 16, 2012 - 5:41 pm)
Do you think the average law professor like this has any idea how much they are despised by a large number of law grads?
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shad246 (Feb 6, 2013 - 9:50 am)
I went there for UG. Some pretty nice cars in the law school parking lot that were most likely faculty. One guy had a 93-95 Supra Twin Turbo T-Top, don't see many of those.
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lurktastic (Oct 17, 2012 - 12:37 pm)
1. Law school is generally NOT pleasurable (as opposed to hopefully most relationships).
2. Law school debt is NOT dischargeable in bankruptcy unlike consumer debt incurred for romantic dates, vacations, and gifts.
3. Law school takes up the majority of one's life, especially during 1L and does not allow for working or earning very much while enrolled. Relationships not only permit one to work; generally, most people prefer that their significant others have a job during the entire duration of a relationship.
Law school is nothing like a romantic relationship. I think this law professor is an idiot. And horrible at comparisons.
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onehell (Oct 17, 2012 - 4:24 pm)
1. Law school is quite pleasurable if you're the sort of person who was essentially looking for a "philosophy-lite" grad program. Lots of the "international human rights law" tools I knew LOVED law school.
2. True dat, but with IBR who cares? (says the naive 0L).
3. Law school does not take up the majority of one's life. It is frickin' easy. All you do is skim a textbook and - if called on - talk about it the next day, followed by a brief cram-fest for your one and only test at semester's end.
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sparky (Feb 6, 2013 - 10:44 am)
I had around three years of romantic "bliss" and when it was over, it cost me a hell of a lot more than law school did.
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secondcareerlawyer (Feb 8, 2013 - 9:31 am)
It's fairly easy to make these judgment calls when you have a 6 figure paying, 15 hour a week work schedule, w/tenure."
