Balkinization: Building Tier-five Law

Building Tier-five Law

Mark Graber

I am thinking of dedicating the next phase of my life to building the nation’s first tier-five law school. Our basic principles will be as follows:

1. The facilities and program of education will be consistent with all relevant ABA and AALS standards.

2. Faculty pay will be substantial. Junior faculty will start at the starting salary at big law firms. Tenured faculty will be paid a minimum of a quarter-million a year. There will be generous summer and housing subsidies. Interest free, possibly forgivable, loans for summer homes are negotiable. And needless to say, as founder and Dean, I will be compensated quite generously.

3. Tier-five Law will have open admissions. Any graduate who applies and pays the tuition will be admitted.

4. Needless to say, tuition will be quite steep, given the need to pay for items 1 and 2.

5. As a condition of being admitted, all students agree to make public their employment history and any other information any critic of the legal academy believes might help prospective applicants decide whether to attend Tier-five Law.

6. Tier-five Law also agrees to make public any additional information that any critic of the legal academy believes might help prospective applicants decide whether to attend Tier-five Law.

Suppose this business model actually works and Tier-five Law becomes a thriving enterprise. Our placement record isn’t great but enough young people decide that, given that the market for low achievers in college is really bad, their best prospects for the middle class is making the substantial investment in Tier-five Law. Given our full disclosure rules, is there anything about the operation of Tier-five that is immoral or otherwise worthy of contempt?

Suppose the good people at Tier-five Law discover we can improve our business model by doing some tuition discounting, offering half tuition to any person who graduated from a set of relatively elite colleges and universities. Again, assuming we are correct in our judgment that these people are more likely to get better jobs than others, is there anything about our operation that is immoral or otherwise worthy of contempt?

Posted 7:56 AM by Mark Graber [link]

Comments:

Shedding "tiers" comes to mind.

And some young legal punk/nerd will come up with a competing "tier-six law school" to be advertised on match books. (Are match books still made?) "Big Little Blue Books" could be revived for nutshell legal texts with apps for downloading to Iphones, Tablets, etc.

Down the road the new lawyers will be dancing with "tiers" in their eyes.

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 8:25 AM

Reminds me of the Dire Straits tune:
"Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Money for nothin' and your chicks for free
Now that ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys ain't dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a blister on your thumb..."

# posted by

Unknown : 11:07 AM

Worthy of contempt? Sure. Whatever the nominal disclosure you'd be a bunch of highly intelligent people disproportionately from upper middle class and outright rich backgrounds preying on those of middling intelligence and below average judgment. The law has to consider most everyone competent to enter into agreements, but there's no reason we as individuals can't have contempt for con artists who cleverly avoid breaking any laws. Think pawn shop owners or payday loan places.

Another issue is how the organization is incorporated. If it was organized as a tax exempt charity, that would be extremely immoral, if again not necessarily illegal under our crazy tax code.

# posted by

Brad : 11:16 AM

What Brad said. Car title and payday lenders are generally held in contempt despite operating in a legal and fairly transparent way. Why is that? It seems very similar to me. Law students may be smart, but they are young, and vulnerable. Smart young people make lots of bad decisions.

People have talked about optimism bias in the context of law school applications, calling it "special snowflake syndrome". If we could somehow prove this to be a real thing, would that create grounds for contempt? That the law schools are exploiting a known psychological weakness?

# posted by

Steven : 8:37 PM

"is there anything about our operation that is immoral or otherwise worthy of contempt?"

Well, you would all be lawyers, right?

# posted by

mls : 6:31 AM

Here's a comment I put up at Econspeak in 2098 regarding a post on lawyers:

***
Shag from Brookline said...

Mell's "Miss Peach" was one of my favorite comic strips. One that I photocopied and placed on a wall in my law office decades ago features a banner: "Future Lawyers of America Meet Here." Student Ira was on a dais, addressing his fellow students, one of whom asked: "What do you hope to attain as a lawyer, Ira?" His response:

"I hope to make my name a household word in the world of law. In other words, my ambition is to sue every man, woman and child in the United States!!"

My caption for this posting was:

"THE PENULTIMATE OF CLASS ACTIONS!"
August 1, 2008 at 7:18 AM

***

Is it time for "THE ULTIMATE CLASS ACTION"?

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 7:16 AM

I think you might have some trouble justifying it at the inevitable Senate hearings about why the taxpayers should fund it.

# posted by

Bored 3L : 3:48 PM

Okay, to get serious, how does Mark's "tier-five law school" project differ from at least sone in the existing higher tiers? Is Mark's project a different kind of law school or merely a variation on at least some existing law schools?

Current and future law school students should read more of "Gullible's Travels" at law school websites before rejecting Mark's project.

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 8:22 AM

The Legal History Blog's Sunday Book Roundup provides a link to Stephen J. Harper's "The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis." Reviewer Michael Ariens believes the title is misleading; also, he doesn't think the book will serve as a helpful guide for students considering law school. But I think such students reading the review may get some guidance. The reviewer views the author's comments on Big Law as well said. [Note: The review is in a three-column format but is relatively short.]

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 9:15 AM

Mell's "Miss Peach" was one of my favorite comic strips. One that I photocopied and placed on a wall in my law office decades ago features a banner: "Future Lawyers of America Meet Here."
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