Legal Aspects - Noto Law School

Alcoholic Attorneys

January 31, 2011 Alejandro Calderon General, Legal Aspects

Debt isn’t the only downside to getting a law degree; many lawyers ending up turning to booze because of loneliness and stress. Eric Tindal, an alcoholic and an attorney, warned University of Iowa law students about yet another risk in pursuing a JD.

In a speech to law students about substance abuse, he warned that alcoholism is common among lawyers. Nearly 18% of lawyers are alcoholics, compared to 10% of the general population. No surprise, it starts in law school:

The competition with other students ends up as stress. And that develops isolation because the other students are enemies — it creates a breeding ground for addiction.

Many attorneys are high functioning alcoholics, they can show up and get through the day. I knew someone who was able to work 12 hours a day and hide his “secret” from his employer, but went home and drank a gallon of booze a week. You would never have known except that he had a very difficult time remembering events from even a day ago.

While an alcoholic attorney can function, the danger is that an attorney’s work can determine the outcome of a client’s life; their divorce, criminal case, even a will. It all keeps coming back to how badly the law school experience is both financially and as an academic environment. If schools were limited to admitting only enough students to fill jobs, it wouldn’t be so competitive and hostile. Of course, some law schools would have to close, so really, it’s a win-win solution.

Three Toilets Flushed

January 28, 2011 Alejandro Calderon General, Legal Aspects

Finally, some sense in this world. There were plans for THREE new law schools in New York and all have been put on hold. There are already 15 law schools in NY. The schools made the decision not to open because of:
an ailing economy, state government budget woes and doubts about whether there are enough legal jobs to support the new schools in addition to the 15 existing ones.

The three toilets New York was spared are: State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island, St. John Fisher College in Rochester and SUNY Binghamton, which is only on hold until 2017-18.

St. John Fisher spent $25,000 on a study that claimed there was a demand for a new law school. Hell, I could have told them that there’s no need for another law school for $10,000. Or they could have figured it out for free, by reading the scamblogs, or asking the thousands of unemployed JDs roaming the streets of New York.

Deans at other New York law schools sprang to action at the thought of new toilets entering the market and possibly poaching from their pools of available suckers.The hypocrites wondered if, New York’s job market could absorb as many as 1,500 more law school graduates the three new schools could produce each year.

No it can’t absorb them, and we don’t need the 3,750 new graduates NY turns out now:
The state Labor Department has estimated there will be openings for just over 2,000 lawyers a year through 2016 in New York. And law firms have been shedding jobs in the last few years. There now are about 150,000 lawyers in New York, the most of any state in the country.

Eight Times Not A Charm

January 26, 2011 Alejandro Calderon General, Legal Aspects

You just can’t make this stuff up. After graduating from law school 20 years ago, this tool took and failed the bar 7 times before finally passing. Wasn’t Einstein’s definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Well, it took two decades but he finally passed. But he’s still not going to be able to practice. New Hampshire won’t admit him because of both his outstanding debt and a few criminal indiscretions. They also weren’t impressed that he had been unemployed for the past 20 years. He must have been studying for the bar.

I’m going to have to side with New Hampshire on this one, this guy sounds like a total tool. He certainly doesn’t know how to win friends and influence people. Here is what he told the committee:

He didn’t enjoy a brief gig as a bartender, G.W. told the committee, and felt the job “was beneath me.”And, as far as paying off his student loans was concerned, “if I owed a measly $30,000, that’s an amount of money that certainly could be paid off with a, you know, $10-an-hour job or something of that nature,” he said. “But because there’s $120,000 worth of interest on that $30,000 principal, realistically, I need a good job in order to pay that off.”And I was trained to practice law; I wasn’t trained to do anything else. And I have no desire to do anything else at this point.”

Fourth Tier Bottom Feeders

August 14, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General, Legal Aspects

The tuition checks are being cashed and the school doors are about to open wide to another incoming class of blissfully naive students. I’ve blogged repeatedly about the crappy second and third tier schools in New York, but haven’t yet touched on the fourth tier, or what I call matchbook schools, because that’s where you’ll find most of their advertising.

Fourth Tier Albany and Touro law schools are for the truly delusional. Even in the best of times, these are schools with students who have no hope to find work even if they graduate at the top of their bottom of the barrel class.

I knew a woman who graduated from one of the fourth tier toilets “with honors” (which means she showed up sober to most of her classes) and she spent most of her career as a glorified paralegal with delusional aspirations to be an in house counsel. She was extremely impressed with her intelligence, so at least there was one person on the planet who appreciated her. I wouldn’t let her defend me for a traffic ticket.

These schools shouldn’t be accredited and students who go there shouldn’t be offended when asked if they are. It’s a valid question. Here’s what these students missed: If your LSAT score was so low that the only law school you could get into was either Touro or Albany, then you should have either waited and taken the LSAT again, or realized this just wasn’t the field for you.

Frankly, I would have forgotten that they existed if a reader hadn’t asked me to mention Touro. But someone who went to Touro will never be able to forget: They charge $20,475 PER SEMESTER for tuition. Yes, $40,950 big ones a year for a TTTT. Albany is about the same, $39,970 per year just for tuition.

Columbia, a T-5 or 6 depending on the year, charges $48,648. Even going to Columbia in this economy is a risk, going to TTTT Touro or Albany to get a degree that will at best get you a job as a paralegal, is just flushing it down a toilet.

You can still get a refund, the doors haven’t closed yet; grab your money and run out!

NYLS and Cooley Sued

August 10, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General, Legal Aspects

Law School Transparency broke the news that NYLS and Cooley are getting sued by their former students. Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it?

Kudos to the former students of both schools who had the guts to do this.