"The real problem may be that Kevin Costner was proven correct in 'Field of Dreams.' If you build it they will indeed come. But they came and only found cornfields." - Jerome Kowalksi
When you mention the word "scam blogger" what comes to mind? For most people, it's undoubtedly the image of a young, disgruntled, heavily indebted recent graduate. A self-professed "scam blogger" by the name of Jerome Kowalski recently came across my radar, however. Contrary to being young, disgruntled, and/or unemployed, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Mr. Kowalski was actually an older, successful, and seasoned practitioner. His most recent article, "What If They Built A Law School And Nobody Came?" is the most pointed, well-researched, and damning expose of the law school scam that I have ever come across. I invite you to peruse it here:
http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=6945bcc9-1e12-4ea1-8edf-aec6405d27c1
Frankly, I think the "law school scam busting movement" could benefit a bit more from the maturity, credibility, and guidance of older practitioners. Too often, the criminal cartel law school deans (and their enablers in the ABA) try to brush off legitimate criticisms of their corrupt practices, as the handiwork of a small group of young, rogue, discontented graduates. Clearly, "scam blogging" by reputable/ more established members of the profession can only help shatter this gross mischaracterization. Speaking out isn't necessarily easy, however. As Kowalski notes, there is a certain institutional, self-imposed "wall of silence" against speaking out:
"These conclusions are not mine alone. At least four law firm managing partners, a number of other prominent lawyers and several law school professors have shared these conclusions with me. However, they openly expressed fear about making public statements supporting these obvious conclusions because they all felt they would be seen as pariahs, shunned by the profession, insofar as the practicing lawyers were concerned, they expressed the fear that their firms’ recruiting activities would be hampered at important schools; the academics also expressed the concern of being shunned by their colleagues, since, in effect, they would be encouraging significant unemployment among the academic community."
36 comments:
Support the Franken/Dodd bill (Fairness for Struggling Students Act (S 3219)) and the house version (Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Fairness Act (HR 5043)) which will stop the discrimination and allow student loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy. HR 5043 has been voted out of subcommittee and is now in the house judiciary committee. Call your Congressmen, Senators Franken and Dodd and members of the house judiciary committee to show your support.
A good example of how the banks actually write legislation is the bankruptcy reform legislation of 2005. In the bill Congress produced, private student loans were no longer dischargeable in bankrupcty. The banks were able to write this bill because students have no organization or lobby paying favors to congressmen. I have seen it done with mine own eyes. The bank's inside counsel draft the legislation and then pass it on to congressional staffers that they have quid pro quo relationships with, often the staffers and bank's attorneys went to the same schools, and the bills are then introduced into committee in the form drafted by the banks. No national purpose was served by this legislation. In fact, the bill has served to cause many who tried to better themselves through higher education to wind up as indentured servants slaving away for banks. American's families are impoverished and generations will live in poverty because the banks pay legislators lucrative rewards in the form of campaign contributions and high paying jobs. These private loans, because of little regulatory oversight, often become unpayable because the interest and fees increase to an amount larger than the original loans. The only reason former students are discriminated against in bankrupcy (other bank loans are dischargeable) is because students have no lobby, and the corrupt political process favors the disproportinate influence of the banks which use the legislative process to do their own bidding.
Americans should not have to live in indentured servitude because the economy cannot provide a job for them at a living wage, often because the banks and corporations use their undue influence in the political process to shape the economy for their own purposes, not for the good of the country.
Add this man to the list. We have seen that several "law professors" also agree with some of the premises of these blogs. The reality is that the student loan bubble is so obvious, that those in the industry can no longer ignore it. If they fail to take notice of this, then will look like COMPLETE fools in a few years. I guess they figure that they are better off now pointing out that the ship is sinking- rather than mention it after the fact.
Wow! Kudos to Mr. Kowalsky! Once upon a time, on sites like this one and the formerly great JDU, back in its infant heydey of 2006-2007, I, the lawland prohpet, freqently used the terms "scam" and "ponzi scheme" to describe not only the law school industry, but rather, and more pointedly, the entire legal so-called 'profession' and the "Law Scam Profession" that flourished by the scam known as the billable hour scam.
The heat that the terms 'ponzi scheme' and 'scam' would generate was often times shocking and amusing. An anti-prophet poster even amusingly called himself 'Arthur Ponzerelli' He would often provide the technical definition of what a ponzi scheme was and stammer on about how my lawland analogy did not apply. He would, quite often amusingly, write scribes using the term 'ponzi' in teasing me for my 'nutty' ideas that law was somehow a scam or ponzi scheme.
And, with the exception of a few posters like the Great Former Lemming, Scotty Bullock, John Doeee and a few others, many of you were silent or even hostile to such notions that the prestigous so-called 'profession' of the law could be a scam or ponzi sceme.
I find it funny how the terms ponzi scheme and scam are now thrown around on the so-called scam blogs as though they were codified in the ten commandment tablets or the US freakin Constitution.
It amazes me how now the there is even the reference to a law scam busting movement or "scam" blogs but time and time again they seem to not want to address who are the ones who perpetrate the scam. The PEOPLE as opposed to institutions that they control. Their motives. Their elitist, often racist, often classist and often ethnic or 'religion' based motives for making law a living hell for most of those poor lemming souls who are not they. The evil and vile people who also happen to be many of the same folks who have systematically destroyed the middle classes of this once great nation.
The scam blogs rarely, if ever address this. Sometimes they make brief mention of the 'elite'.
Back in the day when I and a few others used the 'nutty' terms 'scam' and 'ponzischeme' I also took the obvious step in identifying who the perpetrators of the scam were. That's probably why my early assertions of law being a scam were summarily dismissed.
I correctly predicted that the law was a house of cards that was shabbily built on a scam that would surely impode. But because I identified the people who were responsible for the scam and lawland foundation known as the billable hour scheme, my prophecies were pooh poohed or met with outright hostility.
Now I am amazed at, and somewhat pleased with, the preponderance of so-called 'scam blogs'. I am amazed at how the word is being spread to the point that those who were once a part of the scam, who advised their bretheren in how to more efficiently engage in the scam, are now, correctly, pointing out the scam and validating the so-called scam busting movement.
And yet, with the exception of the occasional mention of this opaque group of folks known as the 'elite', I see that the recently emboldened scam busters still have not the courage to identify the people who run the law scam.
Its also amusing that the scam busting movement is really only taking off recently when there are now tier I grads bitching about the scam. Before that it was mostly thought of a bunch of whiny tier II toilet school grads who went to the wrong schools and deserved their fates. The ones that didn't 'do everything right!'.
God bless Jerome Kowalsky for turning on his bretheren. God bless the recently annointed 'scam bloggers' for belatedly shining more light on and codifying the law scam and god bless the lemmings who still fail to heed their message and that of their predecessor, The Great Prophet, The John Bungsolaphagus!
Those beauty school graduates knew they were hoodwinked, and blew off their loans. How many law school graduates will have the balls to do that? Since they were in diapers and throughout college and graduate school, it has always been Mommy says, baby do. Perfect group of people to exploit.
It's the Fed.
The whole monetary system is based upon the idea that in order to stimulate the economy you have to extend credit (invisible money) to the masses. Bernanke has released a torrent of pent up invisible money that has to go somewhere. Since Barry Obama brands education as good and business as bad, where do you think all the invisible money is going to flow?
Also, why law schools require 80-85 credits is also beyond me.
Law School should be no more than 36 credits, tops, with students being able to choose a litigation or transactional path, they can then bifurcate state licensure accordingly. There is no need for so many credits in law school curriculum.
The American Bar Association is already tasked by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit U.S. law schools. Now an ABA committee has recommended that it should seriously consider expanding that power to overseas law schools that follow the U.S. model.
In June, the ABA’s Council of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar appointed the committee of law professors, attorneys, judges and law deans to examine whether foreign law schools should be allowed to seek ABA accreditation. The council is scheduled to consider the committee’s recommendations in December.
The committee cited an earlier ABA report’s conclusion that state supreme courts and bar associations are under more pressure than ever to make decisions about admitting foreign lawyers as the legal profession becomes more globalized.
“Such an expansion would provide additional guidance for state supreme courts when lawyers trained outside the United States seek to be allowed to sit for a U.S. bar examination,” the committee said in its report. “Since that is a key function of the accreditation process generally, the expansion would be consistent with the historic role of the section in aiding state supreme courts in the bar admissions area.”
Completely absent from this rationale is the ever growing amount of legal work that is outsourced offshore. Hitherto, work outsourced offshore had inherent limitations precluding offshore outsource vendors from performing substantive legal work. Work performed offshore was limited largely limited to document review, preparation of largely rudimentary documents, subject to review by lawyers admitted to practice in the United States and some basic legal research, again subject to review and analysis by U.S. lawyers.
Should the ABA grant such accreditation, the result will ineluctably be significantly greater offshore outsourcing, this time, work of a substantive nature. In short, an increasing number of legal work will be handled by non-U.S. lawyers. Jingoism aside, with the legal profession now at its lowest level of employment since 1991 (think about what that means: the profession as a whole literally lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in two decades) and there being no likelihood that the profession will be able to absorb at least 20%, if not more, of new U.S. law school graduates in the near term, the wholesale shipment of legal jobs overseas, the inevitable result of accreditation of foreign law schools will be akin to the virtual abdication of United States preeminence in automobile production to other nations. Only here, there assuredly will never be any federal bailout.
http://kowalskiandassociatesblog.com/2010/08/17/do-we-really-have-a-shortage-of-aba-accredited-law-schools/
Life isn't easy when there aren't many jobs, and the jobs that are available barely pay enough to cover cost of living, let alone student loan payments. The U.S. Power Elites don't care. Their vision of the future is one where national boundary lines are blurred and eventually erased; "GLOBALIZATION" is what they call it. They don't care where the profits are coming from, so long as the profits keep coming. This is why they continue to do things like offshoring jobs and running up the national debt while cutting taxes for the rich that run counter to their coundtry's national interests. When you realize that their goals are the weakening and eventual melding of the U.S. into a one-world government controlled by financiers, it makes more sense. See the big picture and the details will fall into place. Call it"conspiracy theory" if you want, but the facts speak for themselves.
What's to stop the Elites' plan? In my opinion, the U.S. people are WEAK. They're bloated, lazy, and unwilling to take risks and do things to challenge the status-quo. Revolution? HA!! Hard to be a revolutionary when you're weak and afraid. Let's see if prolonged unemployment and a drastic lowering of the standard of living turns the U.S. Common Folk into lean, mean fighting machines ready to pounce, instead of weaklings who are easily led to slaughter.
The Elites need to be put in fear, similar to the fear they were put in during the French Revolution. Imminent fear of bodily harm. Very basic, very crude.
We've been brainwashed to find "peaceful solutions" to everything, that in 'civilized society' violence is never an answer, but peaceful solutions don't always work, especially in life-or-death situations. A good example of when a "peaceful solution" won't work is when you've backed an animal into a corner. I can guarantee you that there will be violence in that situation, that taking the so-called "high road" will be useless and will result in the passive death of the cornered animal. The only chance that cornered animal will have to survive is to violently attack whoever or whatever is cornering it. No guarantee of success, but at least they're going down fighting, rather than taking the "high road" that's useless in this situation.
Richard Matasar, piece of human excrement.
When I first started this blog, I wrote about Matasar's hypocritical behavior. He said in a speech that law schools should be shut down if the students weren't getting jobs, and then enrolled an additional 250 students last year to allegedly pay for remodeling. The school claimed that there was an admissions error.
Well, either the head of admissions can't count for shit, or the school is full of shit, because according to my source there, this year they admitted 750 1Ls again! Why would a school continue to admit 750 students a year, when almost none of their students from the classes of '09 and '10 got jobs? Oh right, for the money.
http://www.notolawschool.com/2010/09/ttt-packs-them-in-and-rakes-it-in.html
The "Elites" who Bungsophplous refers to are the elite members of "God's Chosen People." (NOT non-elite members of this group, which is why it's wrong to lump all of them together.)
Take a look at the facts. Who runs almost every single large investment bank? The Fed? Which group has a disroportionate number of equity partnerships in large law forms? 13 of 100 US Senators? 3 of 9 Supreme Court justices? God knows how many House seats. All this while representing less than 1.5% of the US population.
Look at the facts.
My law school was 90 credit hours and I feel grateful because I do not think I could effectively code irrelevant documents without the full 3 years of graduate law degree preparation.
Those who can, can. Those who can't become teachers and lawyers.
3:19: You are correct, more and more, there are those chosen ones who somehow have fallen from or never made it into the elites. Its not fair to lump them in and I do have pity for anyone of the chosen folks who still somehow are left out of the typical benefits that many chosen enjoy.
It must really, really suck to be a member of such a small, dominant and wonderfully powerful and wealthy club and still yet be a failure. Its got to hurt real bad just like it hurt all of those psuedo white ethnic types and some misguided black folk who thought that a JD would gain them admission to the hallowed halls of the elite.
But lets not forget that its not just the chosen ones. Its the elitist WASPY types along with their recently minted overlords who are the chosen and their token minions.
The elite who control lawland and most of the wealth and resources of this country have nothing but disdain for americans who are not they. They believe that they are superior by the virtue of genetics and the blessing of God almighty. They belive that their blantant destruction of the lives, aspirations and careers of americans who are not among the elite is totally justified by their supposed superiority.
You can all talk about the law school institutions, scams, professors, deans, career centers, lawfirms, partners or others all you want...the Fed..the elite..whatever.... but the fact is one must admit that its all about the real world, real live flesh and blood people that are the root cause of most of the wickedness that you whine about.
Before you can do anything about the wickeness of others you must identify who are the perpetrators of such wickeness and then you must go about fighting them one way or another.
It's amazing how cultural opposites like progressives and tea partiers basically want the same thing (a big revolution) but still hating each other over "left" and "right" politics. The comments here reflect this.
This Nando character seems to cruise this site 24-7 JUST WAITING for a new post - so he can be the first or second or third. Get a life dude.
The rulers should reconsider their headlong rush towrd globalization. In the long run, the bankers' conceived globalization is impossible because of resource depletion, food scarcity, environmental pollution and degredation and, ultimately, war. In the short run, it is destabilzing and not without highly uncertain consequences. Vladimir Lenin was a pissed off lawyer, as well as Ghandi, Castro and many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
And your point is....? Do you believe that you somehow have more legitimacy to post here than he or anyone else?....sheesh....self-entitlement reigns supreme as per the assclown law professor in the post right above....
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Anonymous said...
This Nando character seems to cruise this site 24-7 JUST WAITING for a new post - so he can be the first or second or third. Get a life dude.
10:58 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/21/todd-henderson-rich_n_732813.html
Does anyone know if there are any good statistical studies on students who went to law school but are currently struggling? (i.e., what types of jobs they are in, what their salary is, whether they are practicing, etc.)
I've come across some statistical studies but they mostly relate to the practice of lawyering in a traditional manner; see also:
http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2010/10/04/thinking-of-going-to-law-school-and-becoming-a-lawyer-read-these-stats-first/
I think that the use of statistics can greatly help out bloggers who are researching the current law school condition.
I always say that the biggest beneficiaries of law schools are NEVER the law graduates, but the law firms and other employers of law graduates.
Another beneficiary of law schools is the faculty and the administration running the law schools.
In this capitalistic society, why would the law school industry in general make the law graduates the biggest beneficiaries, when the people running the law industry are law firms, employers of law graduates, and the faculty??
As a corollary, college education in the US mainly benefits corporate America, who are the employers of college graduates. Education in America produces workers for corporate America, not citizens for the society.
It has always been at the point that many law students were taken for granted by most of the firms. They thought that these students are not enough capable of performing well. But as well then newly graduate students are trying out their best just to prove that they are really worth for being a lawyer.
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Xebastion Ouyang is a scamster. He creates fictiticious news among many others so to make believe he is a credible punter who has a sure-win strategy and he tries to entice vulnerable people in Singapore to click on this socalled “sure-win” strategy / tips. He also try to create familiarity with punter psychology by identifying with the punter weak mentality. His preys are those who manages to locate these news when “Singapore Pools” are googled, and create a kind of “I found a super winning tip” in older people who are not so knowledgeable about the internet. This trail will lead to a website named singaporepools.org. This is not a accredited website from the real Singapore Pools. It is a domain most probably created by this scamster trying to make believe that this is an official website from Singapore pools and the strategy books is real but at this site, you would not know there are strategy books for sale and if you have come to this site, you would only have read the fake news about him and about him “sharing” secrets among his “close” friends, thus creating a desire in people craving to be part of this circle. At the fake website, there is a signup box where one would signup hoping to get some of his socalled secrets. Once your email is entered, you would received “tantalising” emails like the group has reached maximum number and you must wait, followed by Yeah! there is one who have left and you are so lucky. And there he promotes his two books and tries to identify with one’s typical betting psychology. If you are not enticed yet by his emails, you would still receive more tandalising mass emails about congratulating "winners".
So I want to say, beware if you are curious about him. I not stopping you from buying his books if it is really cheap, but beware if your credit cards details are given to scamsters. I have posted his fictiticious news links below too.
Oh yes, he gave his address which is so similar to 4D lottery outlet in Ang Mo Kio in Singapore. One hilarious information.
http://beforeitsnews.com/sports/2012/11/xebastian-ouyang-makes-history-as-singapore-pools-champion-2480404.html
http://www.freepressbox.com/friends/197182
http://www.pressbox.co.uk/cgi-bin/links/page.cgi?g=detailed%2F1015738.html;d=1
http://www.prlog.org/12029935-xebastian-ouyang-makes-history-as-singapore-pools-champion.html
http://www.release-news.com/arts-entertainment/xebastian-ouyang-makes-history-as-singapore-pools-champion
http://africanewswire.net/story.php?title=xebastian-ouyang-makes-history-as-singapore-pools-champion
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