Burn, Baby, Burn

General

Talk about burning your bridges! An attorney in Virginia was charged with setting a fire at her former law firm in 2007 and again in 2008.

Ashely Shreve, an attorney and graduate of West Virginia University College of Law, was charged with second-degree arson and attempted arson in West Virginia. She started the blaze by torching a box of legal documents in her assistant’s office, as well as a burning wad of tissue in the bathroom.

She also sent in two bomb threats to the law office and one to an insurance company. DNA did her in the police found her DNA on an envelope that she used to send in the threats.

I think I understand how people can snap and do crazy things like this. What if one day that voice that says, you’ll regret it, don’t do it, doesn’t kick in when a jerk on a bicycle almost runs into you and you push him off in a moment of insanity? What if you just have had enough crap and you can’t take it anymore? I think this is something we’re going to see more and more of as more people are left without employment and hope.

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Law Schools Rankings Malpractice?

General, Law School

Did he even have to ask? The Taxprof blog is asking if law schools committed rankings malpractice by not reporting their employment statistics for nine months after graduation. Everything a law school does is suspect if you ask me. He explains:

As U.S. News rankings aficionados know, the methodology used in the 2011 U.S. News Law School Rankings gives 18% weight to employment statistics: 14% to the percentage of the Class of 2008 employed nine months after graduation (which is reported to the ABA as well), and 4% to the percentage of the class employed at graduation (which is not reported to the ABA).

74 schools did not supply U.S. News with the percentage of the class employed at graduation. Well, that’s about as shocking as finding out it’s easy for George Clooney to get laid.

The 74 nonreporting schools presumably had an employed at graduation number more than 30 percentage points below their employed at nine months number and thus benefited in the rankings by not reporting their employed at graduation number to U.S. News.

Oh yes, they benefit by not reporting their employment numbers to U.S. News. Prospective students read that, do you think the schools want to advertise that none of their graduates find work after shelling out over $100,000? Not so much.

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Attorney Gets Jail For Stealing

General

Jessica Miller, a Florida attorney, was disbarred for stealing $70,000 from her clients. The judge tried to give her some helpful advice for her sentencing: “It really goes a long way in these types of cases to have some money at sentencing.” She didn’t take the advice; instead she had a garage sale and came up with a measly $250.

The judge wasn’t impressed with her fund raising skills and gave her 4 ½ years in jail plus 10 years of probation.

Miller and her paralegal took the money from clients’ trust funds and billed them for work that they didn’t do. They used the money for shopping sprees and meals. The clients were paid back from a special fund from the Florida Bar, but now Miller and the paralegal have to pay back the fund.

Miller apologized for harming the reputation of the legal profession:

“I am deeply apologetic to the court, to the profession as well as my former colleagues for this entire issue, situation, whatever you want to call it,” Miller said. “I’m very, very sorry for the publicity this has brought on the profession.”I had a responsibility to protect my clients … and I failed to do so.”

I think she should be more concerned with her own reputation than that of the legal profession. Not for stealing and billing extra,(clients seem to expect that) but for only coming up with $250 and bringing it to court. Pathetic. Better to have not brought anything. Too bad the criminal below is in England, they could have hooked up in prison and done stupid things together.

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MSU Pays Students To Praise It

General

Michigan State is paying its law students $250 to post two positive comments per month on a new school blog to persuade applicants about the benefits of going to law school there.

Hey, Michigan, I’ll write something positive for $200, but only because I’m about to be evicted from my apartment.

The school’s director of marketing and communications came up with this asinine brilliant idea. Here’s the problem genius marketing idiot guru: this story is all over the internet now. No one will believe the posts, not when everyone knows that you pay students to write positive things. When you pay someone to say positive things, that’s called advertising. Cheap false advertising, but still advertising. It’s like paying a whore, it’s sex, not love, no matter how much she moans and pretends to enjoy it while she’s doing it.

Could this mean that the scam bloggers are getting through to OLs stubborn little brains that law school is a waste of time and money for at least the next ten years? Could the law schools be finally taking notice that their scam is almost up?

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