Joan Wexler Of Crooklyn Law School

"TTT,

I am highlighting Joan Wexler and her in$TTiTTuTTion this week on my blog. I was tipped to this PDF by a commenter on my site. Here is Brooklyn Law School's IRS Tax Form 990, i.e. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, for 2007.

http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2008/237/227/2008-237227990-050fa431-9.pdf

Go to page 18 of Crooklyn's IRS Form 990 to see Joan Wexler's salary and compensation for 2007.

As a dean who devoted 50 hours per week to her position, Joan G. Wexler took home $529,293 in salary; $40,146 in contributions to employee benefit plans & deferred compensation plans; and $50,580 in expense account and other allowances. This brings her TOTAL COMPENSATION for 2007 to $620,019.

Look at line 12 on page 1. The sewer of law took in $69,029,620 in total revenue that year. After total expenses, the "non-profit" school made a nice gain of $9,052,403 this year. On line 21, we can see that Crooklyn had $143,063,841 in total net assets. Line 59 shows the school had $244,
710,030 in total assets.

This lady and her institution have consigned LEGIONS of lawyers to a lifetime of debt servitude, anxiety and doc review hell. Tom, please provide the link to the IRS form, so your readers can see the figures for themselves. Thank you.

Nando"

http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2010/07/profiles-in-flatulence-crooklyn-dean.html

Another great find by Nando. There are legions of underemployed document reviewers slaving away in unventilated basements, so that morally bankrupt individuals like Joan Wexler can continue pulling down half a mil a year by scamming unsuspecting college graduates with all those "inadvertent" errors to US News. The woman is a sham/con artist and she needs to be carted away and locked up before she destroys anymore young lives.

Evelyn

"Tom the Temp,

Just so you know, De Novo is still an awful place to work. From what I hear, Evelyn and Mr. Singer are still using mind tricks to control and exploit their slaves. They are driving down the rates close to the twenty dollar range and stuffing all the extra money into their pockets. Anyone who objects, or in anyway displays a 'negative attitude' is immediately blacklisted. It's bait and switch central. She acts all sweet and tries to put the blame on the client for being the bad guy, but everyone knows she is full of crap. Evelyn is constantly lying about the terms and conditions of the projects, and anyone who objects is immediately put on the shit list. It's simply not right. It makes me sick to think that during this economic calamity De Novo and all these record profiteering law firms are using their extraordinary market power to exploit and terrorize everyday Americans who are just trying to survive and put food on the table. I'd rather live in welfare housing than put up with the deceitful shenanigans of these unethical business people."

25% Of Recent Law Graduates Work As Office Temps; Most Make Far Less Than $70,000 A Year

The NALP is finally starting to come clean. Their numbers are grossly distorted and flat out fraudulent.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/median_salary_of_2009_law_grads_is_72k_but_job_picture_cloudy_nalp_stats_sh/

Minneapolis, Where Recent JD's Work For Dirt Cheap And Scrounge Through Garbage Cans

"Need document review done? Come to Minneapolis!

We offer: plenty of attorneys that are hungry with student loans.
We have four law schools pumping out attorneys faster than BP can spill oil
Employment-at-will statutes
Overtime starting at 48 hours vs 40 hours. (In other words, you'll never need to pay it)!
Firms from anywhere in the country can fly a partner in and out in the same day for a quick training.
Low wages, one major employer pays attorneys $17/hour with no benefits."

Overbilling In Los Angeles

"Hey Tom The Temp,

Big fan of your blog! Keeping it real, man, keeping it real.

Here's one more crappy story for the Wall of Shame. Probably not the worst, by far, but I think it kind of stinks.

So I was working on an easy little project at a big Los Angeles firm. Some kind of breach of contract nonsense, really easy. Within a week, I finish two batches adding up to about 1700 documents. No big deal, right? Actually kind of a slow pace for many of the projects in L.A.

Without much warning, the project leader (another temp) gets ticked off at me. Because her friends on this deal, who came with her from a prior project, hadn't finished even their first batch, and that looked bad. Makes little sense to me, either, actually, since I would be hard-pressed to match names with faces . . . never saw much of those folks, or really cared anything about them way down at their end of the hallway.

Guess who gets let go?

LOL, apparently working up to spec at a marginally competent level gets you fired these days.

What makes it ironic is that I thought I was the lazy one . . . I mean, we're talking about assignments that had nothing but junk e-mail and review criteria along the lines of "Is it a contract? Mark it with the "contract" tag. The end." And they were handing out massive unplanned break time, every day, for computer crashes and all sorts of administrative what-have-you."

Yes, unfortunately this is all too common. Sadly, certain temporary attorneys blatantly overbill and milk the projects for all they are worth. Certain attorneys even steal hours by knowingly not working for the times they jot down. The agencies & firms know this. Sadly, quality and professionalism often times take a back seat to cheap/incompetent labor, profitability, and wide partner billing margins. Stay away from dehumanizing billing machines that skirt around the fringes of legal ethics by hiding under the banner of elite law firm name.

Labaton Sucharow Sweatshop Sued For Failing To Pay Overtime

"A lawyer is suing his former New York-based employer, alleging that the law firm violated federal labor laws by not paying time-and-a-half for overtime.

In a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, the lawyer, Moshe Koplowitz, said that the firm he did temporary work for, Labaton Sucharow, did not pay him at a higher rate when he worked more than 40 hours in a week. . .

'People are afraid to bring these kinds of cases because they don’t want to be blacklisted,' Mr. Kirschenbaum said. 'I would hope people use this as a wake-up call to get the money that’s clearly owed to them.'"

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/lawyer-sues-firm-for-failing-to-pay-overtime/

Carolyn Lamm's Political Pet Projects

It has been over 154 days since Carolyn Lamm and the ABA said they would "look into" the massive fraud being perpetuated upon the public by out of control tuition gouging, federal student loan abusing esteemed "institutions" of higher learning. Despite the exclusive authority granted to it by the Department of Education to oversee and regulate the law schools, the ABA thinks of itself more as a special interest lobbying organization for hot button left wing political issues.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/aba_files_amicus_brief_with_district_court_opposing_arizona_immigration_law