Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Pace Law School hustlers have a plan for those whose "current LSAT score is not competitive enough to secure. . . admission to law school."


Pace Law School has an exciting new "pipeline program." It works as follows: Pace directs potential applicants whose "current LSAT score is not competitive enough. . . to secure admission to law school" to an LSAT prep course ("LSAT Focus Approach"). Simultaneously, the school enrolls these hopefuls in a six-week Legal Writing course taught by a Pace law professor. If, after all that coaching and prepping, a kid manages to lift his or her LSAT score to 153 or above (i.e. the 55th percentile among test-takers), Pace guarantees his or her admission to law school. And, should he or she actually enroll, Pace pays for that pre-application LSAT prep course. ("[Y]ou will receive a one-time tuition reduction to cover the cost of the program").

Understandably, the Pace admissions crew cannot contain its enthusiasm on behalf of prospective pipeline program students, those diamonds-in-the-145-LSAT-rough [1], who now have a fair chance to take their rightful place among the the juris elite. Thus, Pace Law's website bolds the following exclamation, with the final word in caps: "Seize the opportunity. Start your future NOW!"

Seize NOW! Compared to Pace Law School's admissions hustlers, a carny barker's "hurry, hurry, hurry, step right up" is a model of restraint and dignity. Though, admittedly, Pace's come-on does include a cute touch--touting its pipeline program using an I-R-A-C format. (above) Well, since precocious Pace Law wannabes now know I-R-A-C, perhaps they can move on to a second helpful mnemonic.

SINKING: Pace University School of Law’s median LSAT score is sinking. For the entering classes of 2013 (and 2014), the median LSAT at US News's 133rd finest was 151. In 2011, only a couple years earlier, the median was 154. For 2013, Pace's 151 median LSAT was the second worst among New York State’s 15 accredited law schools, besting only Touro. Sinking also describes the feeling a Pace grad will experience when entering a glutted job market with a degree from this joke law school while carrying a six-figure interest-accruing educational debt.

COUNTING: Pace is counting on poorly qualified applicants to enroll so that its faculty and administration can keep counting their loot. Pace’s non-discounted tuition is a hefty $45,364/yr., i.e. $28,000 more than CUNY Law School, which has marginally better employment outcomes. [2] A few years ago, Third Tier Reality reviewed the school’s IRS Form 990 and found three Pace lawprofs (Steven Goldberg, John Nolon, and Nicholas Robinson) listed among the University's top earners, each pulling down more than a quarter-million dollars per year. [3]

ADMISSION, AUTOMATIC: See above.

MISERABLE: Job prospects with a Pace law degree. Pace’s placement record is the worst of New York's 15 law schools (couldn't even beat Touro), with only 38.6% obtaining bar-required FT, non solo, non-school-funded jobs within 9 months of graduation. And of these, the vast majority landed in firms of 2 to 10 attorneys. Oh, Pace's bar passage rate is several points below the State average too.

"Seize the opportunity. Start your future NOW!" Translated from scam-speak, that means "Enroll in Pace Law School as soon as you can because Pace's predatory faculty and administrators are impatient to seize your borrowed fortune. But what you will be seizing for yourself is the contents of a waste pipe."

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notes:

[1]  From the linked Pace Law pipeline program recruitment video:
Kid #1: "I ended up getting a 145 and applying to law schools and got rejected from every single one. . . .This course led me to go from a 145 to a 154, which, you know, that was the difference between going to law school and not." (Video at 0:24-0:30, 2:00-2:07) 
Kid #2: "I am very grateful for taking this class because I wouldn't be here in law school if it wasn't for it." (Video at 2:07-2:14)
[2]  But then Pace Law's new Dean, David Yassky, offers his assurance that his underlings will make an effort to learn your name, a personal touch that is well worth the additional tuition. ("Pace Law School takes an individualized approach to student needs and concerns. Staff members in the Office of Student Services, Office of Admissions, Registrar, and Center for Career and Professional Development make an effort to know each student by name").

[3]  Which pales in comparison to the million dollar premium that Pace Law grads will likely earn over their careers, according to an interview a few days ago with Dean Yassky, as well-heeled employers in "[j]obs like compliance at banks or pharmaceutical companies, [and] jobs at big accounting firms" bid for the services of 153 LSAT-scoring graduates of, arguably, New York's worst law school. Mind you, Dean Yassky scrupulously explains that a Pace law degree is only worth a single million bucks, not tens of millions-- no embroider, he:
"Law school and legal education remains highly valuable," Yassky told the Business Journal, “There was a recent paper several months ago that the expected increase in lifetime earnings owing to a law degree is roughly a million dollars — over the course of a career — which I think is about right." 
"A law degree, [Yassky] said, is “a material increase in earning power; it’s not the tens of millions that some people thought it might be, but it’s still a big number."


23 comments:

  1. Pace Law School is a pipeline alright - a pipeline that leads from toilet to the sewer. And when you graduate and come out the other end of that pipeline, you will be in a world of shit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. THIS IS WHY PACE WILL DO ANYTHING FOR YOUR BLOOD, LEMMINGS:

    Standard & Poors, December 2013:
    "Weak law school demand, as indicated by applications and enrollment, is apparent at
    ...Pace University..."

    Pace Bond Debt: 124,539,721

    Pace 2013 Student Loan Revenue: 13,146,825

    Pace 2013 Cost of Instruction: 5,602,037

    Pace 2013 Interest & Other Debt-Related Expenses: 5,125,681

    https://www.pace.edu/finance-planning/sites/pace.edu.finance-planning/files/Graphic_File/FY13_Pace_University_Financial%20Statements.pdf

    Pace refinanced its bond debt in March 2013, and then by February 4th, 2014, their bond debt got downgraded again...

    "NEW YORK (Standard & Poor's) Feb. 4, 2014--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services
    has corrected by lowering its rating on New York State Dormitory Authority's
    series 2013A tax-exempt revenue bonds and 2013B taxable revenue bonds issued
    for Pace University to 'BB+' from 'BBB-'. The outlook is stable."

    The term "junk" is reserved for all bonds with Standard & Poor's ratings below BBB.

    Pace doesn't think you can be a lawyer. Pace isn't excited about your future or your mind. THEY NEED YOUR CASH, THEY'RE GOING DOWN!!! The buildings, the furniture, it's all pledged to creditors already.

    *****Do Not Get On The Titanic*****

    ReplyDelete
  3. They should call it the "Take the Pipe Line Program," because you'll feel like taking the pipe once you graduate with 6 figures in debt and even worse job prospects than you had going in.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Or the "Take it up the Pipe" program, because that's what those "educators" want to do to those students - metaphorically and financially, at least.

      Delete
  4. There is something perverse is in this desperate law school market about making 0Ls take a garbage LW&R course + LSAT prep course just to attend your worst-in-state 4T school. Prospective Pace 0Ls could just as easily attend NYLS or Touro, which have similar 0L profiles but somehow better job placement results.

    Pace might be a dark horse candidate for first law school to close its doors.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nah, it will be an Indie
      in a remote area with no natural commuter student base.

      Delete
    2. This reminds me of a Three Stooges film in which the Stooges were employed as exterminators. They headed out with cases containing various types of vermin which they would release at a house before ringing the doorbell and offering their services.

      Delete
  5. ". . . only 38.6% obtaining bar-required FT, non solo, non-school-funded jobs within 9 months of graduation. And of these, the vast majority landed in firms of 2 to 10 attorneys."

    And I bet the vast majority ended up in firms of 2 attorneys: solos who take on new lawyers occasional on an eat-what-you-kill basis, which turns them into small two person firms.

    A tactic, incidentally, of many small firms these days. Older attorneys, probably were more successful a decade ago when the internet hadn't quite robbed them of their livelihoods. They had decent offices, a little space to spread out. Now they take on new grads as a means to share their now-vacant office space and pay the rent. The newbie fails? Who cares. There's plenty more suckers who'll fall for the "come on in and you can use my firm's established name and I'll mentor you and maybe throw you some referrals and you can pay half my rent" bullshit.

    Scam after scam.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some of those "in firms of 2 to 10 attorneys" may be recent graduates who are playing at running a law firm together.

      Old Guy

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    2. I think it is way worse than that. None of these numbers are audited. They can pull them right from where the sun don't shine, and no consequence will follow.

      As anyone who has graduated since the crash is likely to tell you - as I will tell you - the statistics put out by my law school in no way passed the smell test. I know many of my classmates and peers; I know what morale was like; I know who did not have a job and never found one. The numbers my law school put out for my class bore ZERO resemblance to the more than anecdotal evidence.

      In fact, my law school never sent me a survey which based upon their numbers I must have been counted in. I have good reason to believe the employment statistics put out by my school were fabricated on a grand scale. Additionally, when I was a 3L, career office minions were telling rising 2L's something very different than they were telling prospective students: namely, they were admitting that almost none of the most recent graduating class was finding JD-required, bar-passage required work, or jobs at all, for about one year, but to not fear because the employment statistics really took after one year out!

      All this is from a school that has shall we say considerably more "prestige" than Pace University.

      I suspect the fraud when it comes to numbers put out by schools is much, much worse than a mere fudging or massaging of data. I think it is outright, flagrantly, completely fabricated.

      Delete
    3. It might be the case that solo lawyers are hiring recent grads for access to Lexis, Westlaw, or Bloomberg. Becoming firms with two lawyers. Then becoming firms with one lawyer again when the recent grad's accesses run out.

      Delete
  6. I'm pretty sure anyone with an LSAT above 130 and B.A. with a 2.0 G.P.A. can gain admission to some ABA approved trash pit - sorry law school, my bad --- at this time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with you. I think the LSAT medians at the worst schools have largely bottomed out, as there simply aren't a lot of LSAT takers with scores in the 120s or 130s, similar to how there are a tiny number (relatively) that score in the 170s.

      The worst schools are simply admitting anyone with an undergrad degree, a reportable LSAT score, a completed application, student loan eligibility, and no recent violent felonies.

      Delete
  7. Oh, heaven help us. It's hard to know where to begin. But I'll try.

    First of all, "IRAC" is crapola. I never once used it during law school and have not used it since. It's a gimmick sold to Pace-grade simpletons who can barely juggle its four letters in their pea-brains. In the real world, and even in first-year courses at any law school with a ha'p'orth of dignity, legal issues are usually too complex to be resolved by trotting out a single handy-dandy rule and applying it through a mindless "analysis" that any three-year-old could perform.

    But the advertisement doesn't even demonstrate "IRAC" at all. The "ANALYSIS" and "CONCLUSION" are anything but. And even the "RULE" is irrelevant, as it doesn't help to answer the "ISSUE". Any of my LSAT students could tell you why.

    "Kid #1" is unrealistic nowadays. It's been several years since someone with a 145 could not get into a law school. Today a 145 might even earn a "scholarship" (discount funded by mooncalves with scores even deeper in the abyss). Unless "Kid #1" applied only to schools that were plainly out of reach (you mean that I'm not headed for New Haven next autumn?), we're dealing here with a fictional character or someone from a previous class.

    yASSky knows perfectly well that a degree from his toilet does not confer a million-dollar premium on the nincompoop who holds it. The article to which he alludes has been roundly criticized; it is so plainly off base that it never should have been accepted for publication. Of course, the toilets are only too happy to send copies out to prospective students. Earlier this year I received a copy from the dean of admissions at a certain law skule on the Wabash (not to name any names).

    Finally, as several jokes above suggest, law-school touts are foolish to describe their institutions with metaphors related to plumbing.

    Old Guy

    ReplyDelete
  8. Are alumni from this school called "Pacers"?

    ReplyDelete
  9. BTW, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, etc., you magnificent bastards! Keep up the good work!

    - One of the Lucky Ones

    ReplyDelete
  10. Pretty funny to watch that professor try to hide his disgust for people who can't crack 153 on the LSAT.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Wikipedia says law school is worth a million dollars:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_in_the_United_States

    "In recent years, several blogs collectively referred to as "law school scamblogs" have been established on the internet. Such blogs frequently feature ad-hominem attacks on law schools and individual law professors and law school administrators, foul-language, and sexual innuendo; referring to law schools as "toilets" and to law school deans as scam artists. Scambloggers attempt to dissuade students from pursuing legal education by pointing to examples of individuals who attended law school and did not have attractive employment outcomes. Many of their authors are current for former attorneys who dislike their jobs and use the blogs to air their grievances about the practice of law."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gee, I wonder who wrote that???

      Delete
    2. Sure, the 760,000 lawyer jobs, as compared to the 1.268 million licensed lawyers and the 1.65 million graduates of ABA accredited law schools in the last 40 years are good numbers?

      Delete
    3. Did you know that Brian Leiter's notorious blog recently featured foul language? He claimed it was essential to preserving the First Amendment that he expose himself in public as a filthy-minded fool.

      The unlikely pretext for Leiter's juvenile histrionics was his supposed solidarity with an attention-seeking "tweeter" named Steven Salaita. So how is it that, out of all the earnest civil libertarians with blogs, only Leiter chose to make a fool of himself over the Salaita incident? I suspect it has to do with Leiter's own predilections for bullying, attention seeking, and mindless defiance of everything and everyone.

      Delete
    4. The text as quoted by 0930 showed up on 30 Sep, edited by someone calling himself "Wikeditor" who seems to confine his contributions to LS information.

      Here's the text as of 28 Sep, which you can see is much more neutral in tone.

      "In recent years, several blogs collectively referred to as "law school scamblogs" have been established on the internet. Such blogs discuss the risks of pursuing legal education in America, and include information about the debt loads of law school graduates, the inability to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy proceedings, the difficulties law graduates experience finding legal careers, and the realities of working as an attorney. "

      Other differences include gratuitous swipes at Campos and the like.

      The Wikeditor seems to have been a short-term ID (ca. 5 weeks) but as near as I can tell no longer exists (Wiki says no such user, but it's contributions are saved). I don't know much about Wiki's editing rules but it seems if you create an ID, then use of the ID to perform the edits keeps your IP address from being publicly viewable.

      But I'd bet my left lug nut it might have otherwise shown an UChi IP address....

      Delete
  12. For better or worse, Wikipedia is now the main source of information for college kids. When it comes to non-technical matters, it's very partisan and bogus. This is because there are PR firms that can be hired to police and be the gatekeeper of certain Wiki pages.
    Someone from the movement must get on this...It may be more effective than manning this blog...

    ReplyDelete