New York Law School is one stinky toilet. Despite the fact that it is a tier 3 school and provides little in the way of opportunity for its graduates, New York Law School has the audacity to charge one of the highest tuition of any law school in the United States -- higher than even NYU and Columbia!
The dean of the school, Richard Matasar, is a scumbag of the worst kind, making a comfortable living by destroying the lives of naive 21 year olds. (Matasar has a reputation of maximizing profits and endowments, at the expense of students; during his tenure at Chicago-Kent College of Law (1991–96) , while tuition soared, the school’s endowment rose from $5 million to more than $17 million.) As someone else so aptly put it, Matasar takes the hope, optimism, and vulnerability of young people and wipes shit all over it.
One of Matasar's victims recently graduated from the NYLS toilet with over $198,000 of student loan debt. He makes only $48,000 a year, and over 60% of his after-tax income goes to pay for student loans. He is considering suicide and is trying to decide whether bullets or carbon dioxide would be a better way to carry it out.
I suppose going to work for the Legal Options agency could be an option for him, but if he did undertake this "opportunity," he would have to bill 48 hours a week (every week, no holidays or unexpected unemployment) just to make his minimum monthly loan payments. Only then could he even begin to think about paying for such necessities as food, rent, and health insurance.
College grads, be forewarned! When you sign up with Matasar, you sign up with the devil!
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Ode To The Valvoline Dean
In the tradition of a Seton Hall dean,Scrub your stats squeaky clean,
Send 'em glossy brochures,
Lots of big firms out there willing to hire,
Milk all you can out of college kids' desire,
And in a few years, they'll cry out:
Doc review!
--Author Unknown
24 comments:
Law school is an institution that churns out 10% of their students as winners (Law Review) and 90% of their students as losers (everyone else who is not law review). So 90% of the students spend $100,000 to get an education and are looked down upon and cannot count on jobs to pay back those loans.
DON’T go to a private school without a decent reputation. There’s literally hundreds of these schools out there now and their tuition rates are oppresive. Avoid them like the plague. People attend these schools thinking that a law degree is the ticket to riches and good career. It’s not. I would be very leary of attending any private law school outside of the top 25 or 30.
What is calling NYLS a toilet law school supposed to do for NYLS grads who use this website? Your main audience, I think, is not law students who are trying to decide which law school to attend. This website is geared towards people who have already graduated and are now temping, no?
I would like to see more in the way of suggestions as to how to overcome the obstacles we're all faced with, as opposed to constant brooding and anger, which goes nowhere.
History is filled with people who have overcome obstacles. Michael Jordan was kicked off of his high school basketball team; Jackson Pollock was told that he would never be a great artist; Jackie Robinson could have chosen to be crippled by stereotypes.
Which path are we going to take?
Carbon dioxide would be a bad idea.
The more debt law graduates carry when they come out of law school, the worse it is for contract attorneys. More people are going to flood into doc. review to pay their loans, and people will be desperate enough to work in any conditions. I predict that with these debt loads contract attorney work is going to get pretty miserable in the coming years.
I was on a project where temps and perms had access to different bathrooms. Perms (many of whom were doing the same doc. review that we were doing) also had access to the firm meal allowance.
It soon dawned on me that the people going up to the perm. bathroom and the people that were eating the firm food were disproportionately white, compared to the general temp. population.
I guess the firms can get away with this by somehow creating a different classification of employee.
It's a form of apartheid.
This is why you go to a good law school and not some diploma mill that takes away $150k and three years of your life for a piece of used toilet paper.
Exactly, these shit schools need to be investigated. They are nothing more than diploma mills. When all these kids default (which they eventually will), it will be us taxpayers who will have to bail the whole system out, while these overpaid administrators are basking in the Florida sun.
I completely disagree and suggest that you should consider the source of the rant. Seems to me that the writer is nothing more than a disgruntled alumnus who didn’t graduate with good enough grades. Remember, law school is what you make of it. The person accuses NYLS of being a third tier school, yet fails to acknowledge that the third tier law school was the only one they were good enough to get into. That’s not the fault of NYLS. When I went to NYLS from 1990 to 1993, I spent more time at Puffy’s bar down the street playing darts than in the library studying, and my grades reflected that. That was my fault, and I had only myself to blame for graduating with a lousy GPA, $60,000 in student loans, and no job prospects. Some of my friends were good students and got interviews and offers from large firms. I too worked as a temp attorney after I graduated. I realized it wasn’t for me and moved to another state. The rest, as they say, is history.
Although the ranter may have a point about the high tuition cost compared with the low rate of return in the job market, it’s easy to take pot shots at your law school if you are toiling as a temp attorney for lousy wages in a city with an astronomically high cost of living. You've made your bed. Now either they lay in it, or do something to change your situation. What ever you do, stop your whining.
OP = NYLS administrator. So obvious.
Well Judge Judy did go there. She probably has paid off her student loans by now. :)
Right, pay $60k a year and you too could be the next Judge Judy.
Matasar does a much better job than the former Yale law school dean who was in there before him. There are a lot of market forces that he does not have control over.
"When I went to NYLS from 1990 to 1993, I spent more time at Puffy’s bar down the street playing darts than in the library studying, and my grades reflected that."
And I know people in my graduating class at a substantially higher ranked law school who spent more time drinking at undergrad frat parties than studying in the library and still pulled top third grades (and got jobs). Others studied diligently and still ended up C students. For most people, law school is a gamble.
I see this blog as a warning to prospective law students -- many schools out there are not worth the cost. Someone needs to get the word out.
Just send them the chart that is printed below. I found it very eye opening. Law Schools maxed out in their value about twenty years ago.
According to the latest US News, the median starting salary for NYLS graduates in 2005 was $110,000.
$110,000??????? How do they get away with reporting these kind of fradulent numbers? Who would believe these statistics?
Mostly just kids and dreamers who'll believe any pie-in-the-sky number thrown at them.
They have no experience "after the JD" so they have no real frame of reference.
The scam works. And it works year after year, class after class.
Lastly, and most importantly, they refuse to believe anything said to the contrary could possibly be true. They do this because they choose not to believe it and would rather let their (false) hopes and dreams remain intact."
F US News. One way to take the stress out of US News figures is ... Drum roll ... DON'T READ IT! It's all crap.
What do y'all think about U of Iowa law school?
If NYLS is a toliet school, why does a firm like Sullivan & Cromwell recruit there, or why is it that many alums are now associates and partners at firms like Skadden, Latham, Cravath, and Watchell? Anywhere outside the top 30 or so schools, it doesn't matter where you go but more how your grades are and how diligent you are after you graduate. Personally, the person who started this is angry because they're working as a temp and don't know who to take it out on.
This is bullshit, the numbers don't add up. I have 200k in debt and I will be paying at most 1300 per month! Another 1500 for basic expenses and that brings you to only 2800 per month, which leaves you about 800-1000 in savings a month depending upon your tax deductions.
$110K at NYLS!!!!! And pink pigs are flying over my house.
Take a look and see who is on Access Loan's Board of Directors. Why, it's Richard Matasar! Now take a look at NYLS financial aid page, click on Lender Information and guess which loan company pops up first on the list? Yep. Access.
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