News of the World

Boy it's nice to open up the paper and read some good news for a change:

For a peek inside an economic slowdown, step into downtown Miami's Burrito Express and look for sandwich bags and tinfoil.

''They're bringing their own lunch,'' cook John Sierra said as he stood by an idle grill. ``They're not spending the money. People will come in, ask for a drink and eat their own lunch.''

With sales down for the year, Sierra has watched his parents' restaurant suffer through an economic slowdown punishing businesses throughout South Florida.

To measure the fallout, Business Monday recently dispatched eight reporters to survey 151 shops, restaurants and salons on how their sales are shaping up this year.

The results: a broad consensus that South Floridians are cutting back on spending and that tourist dollars aren't making up the difference.

But sandwich bag sales are up!

Then I read George Will's column on Sunday, and thought that perhaps the apocalypse was upon us, and that the Grim Reaper had finally extended his cold dark fingers into my soul, because for once I actually partially agreed with him:

The denial of annual increases, Roberts wrote, "has left federal trial judges -- the backbone of our system of justice -- earning about the same as (and in some cases less than) first-year lawyers at firms in major cities, where many of the judges are located." The cost of rectifying this would be less than .004 percent of the federal budget. The cost of not doing so will be a decrease in the quality of an increasingly important judiciary -- and a change in its perspective. Fifty years ago, about 65 percent of the federal judiciary came from the private sector -- from the practicing bar -- and 35 percent from the public sector. Today 60 percent come from government jobs, less than 40 percent from private practice. This tends to produce a judiciary that is not only more important than ever but also is more of an extension of the bureaucracy than a check on it.

So federal judges are badly unperpaid, but how about our state court system? Rumpy cogently explored this issue a few days ago, but I found this comment from Victor Crist to be flat-out laughable:

The committee chairman, Sen. Victor Crist of Tampa, said the justice had a legitimate concern, but that the judicial branch could be spared the most because courts and county clerks could raise court fines and fees and do a better job collecting them -- especially in Miami-Dade County, where millions haven't been collected in some years.

So let me get this straight: downtown workers are so strapped that they are bringing in their own sandwiches for lunch, the economy is in a deepening recession and millions are losing their homes, but Victor Crist thinks the County can recover fines and filing fees that have thus far been uncollected?

Just what did they put in ole' Victor's barbeque sauce?

Question -- if the federal and state criminal and civil justice systems are choked, shriveled, and incapable of functioning properly, who benefits?

Answer -- those who can game the system.

Which leads to this question: who can best game the system, those who money, power, and access, or those who are bringing in their own lunches and who can't afford to pay a fine or get their car out of the repair shop?

Just asking.

Read more from this post in Online law articles »

Good Lord -- Unintended Positive Effects of The Recession

Sure for us in the legal profession we can expect cheaper gifts and crappier wines, and no year-end bonuses this year.

Things are not all bad, however. Specifically, columnist David Brooks has hit on one unabashedly positive effect of our bleak economic times:

Recessions breed pessimism. That’s why birthrates tend to drop and suicide rates tend to rise. That’s why hemlines go down. Tamar Lewin of The New York Times reported on studies that show that the women selected to be Playboy Playmates of the Year tend to look more mature during recessions — older, heavier, more reassuring — though I have not verified this personally.

So "ladies of a certain age" are due for a comeback?

This is long overdue. Dear South Florida lawyers, if cheap wines and no year-end bonus (here's another take on that) is the price we have to pay, then by golly we will all just have to suffer through this together!

Read more from this post in Online law articles »

A response to ‘Is law school a losing game?’

On Jan. 8 the New York Times published a much-discussed article called “Is Law School a Losing Game?” The article’s author, David Segal, is critical of a law school system that he alleges overstates employment prospects to prospective students, all in the name of packing classrooms with students who pay high tuitions.

The Lawrence Journal-World linked to the article on Jan. 13 and asked about the employment picture at KU Law.

Let me partially answer that query by referring to two specific criticisms leveled by the article and then explaining how KU Law does business.

• Segal refers to the “Wonderland” of law school employment statistics and states that many schools — even some outside the top 40 — list the median starting salary of their graduates in the private sector at $160,000.

  As a prospective law student, it’s imperative to carefully scrutinize employment stats. For example, there’s a significant difference between private practice and public sector salaries. Statistics that blend private practice and public interest salaries together are relatively meaningless.

  So are private practice salary stats based on only a small percentage of graduates. It’s likely that schools outside the top 40 listing a median starting salary of $160,000 for grads in the private sector have not accounted for even a majority of those graduates when calculating the average.

  For the class of 2009, 79 KU Law students reported a private practice salary. This represented 80.6 percent of 2009 graduates employed in private practice. The average salary was $72,660.

• Segal also alleges that schools massage employment data to produce numbers that are inciting to prospective students and palatable to current student and alumni. In doing so, he notes that “a school with the guts to report, say, a 4 percent drop in postgraduate employment would plunge in the rankings, leaving the dean to explain a lot of convoluted math, and the case for unvarnished truth, to a bunch of angry students and alums.”

  The decision to come to law school is an important one that ultimately involves three years of intense study and, in some cases, significant borrowing. Prospective law students should be afforded every opportunity to review accurate employment data. The following information for graduation years 2006-09 is available on the KU Law website.

  Graduation Year	% Employed at Graduation	% Employed Nine Months after Graduation	US News Ranking
  2009	63.2	89.0	TBD (April 2011)
  2008	69.4	93.6	67 (April 2010)
  2007	67.1	95.5	65 (April 2009)
  2006	65.9	94.7	73 (April 2008)

  In the midst of the recession, our numbers took a hit, but we were upfront about reporting the losses accurately.

• One statistic not touched upon in the article, and not often discussed by prospective students, is the percentage of students employed in “bar admission required” positions.

  Most law students enroll with the goal of practicing law after graduation. By graduation, some have decided to pursue less traditional, “J.D.-preferred” or other professional positions that do not require the passage of a bar exam.

  During the recession, we’ve seen the percentage of recent grads employed in “bar admission required” positions decline as an increased number of graduates who do want to practice law have been unable to secure traditional legal positions and have been forced to look elsewhere.

  Here’s the percentage of KU Law graduates from the last eight classes who were employed in “bar admission required” positions nine months after graduation:

  KU Law Class	Ratio	Percentage
  2002	117/162	72.2%
  2003	96/146	65.8%
  2004	133/184	72.3%
  2005	124/179	69.3%
  2006	117/170	68.8%
  2007	115/157	73.2%
  2008	120/161	74.5%
  2009	97/156	62.2%

  (Note: Other categories are J.D. Preferred, Other Professional, Non-Professional, Pursuing Degree FT, Unemployed-Seeking and Unemployed-Not Seeking.)

The recession has certainly put a damper on graduates securing traditional legal positions, and prospective students deserve access to this information from all schools they’re considering.

Todd Rogers, Assistant Dean for Career Services

Read more from this post in Online law articles »

The power of positive psychology: part one

The recession is lingering like an unwelcome house guest. The legal job market is improving, but slower than anyone wants. The honeymoon stage of the fall semester is over. Law school reading assignments are likely piling up. Days are getting shorter.

What’s a stressed out law student to do? How can you cope with pressures of law school while maintaining some semblance of a balanced life?

Psychologists in the field of Positive Psychology study exactly these questions and lucky for us, some have even turned their attention to the well being of lawyers and law students.

In a three-part blog series, we’ll hone in on some on the tenants of Positive Psychology, which is simply the study of conditions that lead to optimal functioning. Put another way, it’s a shift in focus from a traditional psychology model of bringing individuals from -5 to zero to getting them from zero to +5.

Last year, a law professor at George Washington and a psychology researcher from the University of Pennsylvania collaborated on an article called Stemming the Tide of Law Student Depression: What Law Schools Need to Learn from the Science of Positive Psychology (www.abajournal.com/uploads/2010/06/PetersonArticle.pdf).

What they discovered, and what other researchers in the field have confirmed, is that lawyers are almost four times more likely to suffer depression than employed persons in general. Law students are more anxious and depressed than the general population, and even when compared to medical students.

These levels of depression and anxiety appear to increase during law school, contrary to popular belief. And law students show a higher regular use of alcohol and drugs than high school and college graduates of the same age.

What’s going on? Is the Socratic method to blame? The famously strenuous workload? The competition?

The authors of Stemming the Tide theorize that none of these easy targets are actually to blame. They cite research that identifies the problem, at least in part, as a shift in the motivation and values of law students away from community service and values and toward a focus on appearance and things. Research suggests that many law students begin to pursue goals less for their own enjoyment (intrinsic motivation) and more to meet the expectations of others (extrinsic motivation).

Other Positive Psychology researchers have pointed to the prevalence of a pessimistic explanatory style in law students as the underlying factor in student depression. Such an explanatory style attributes the causes of negative events to stable, persistent, global factors rather than those that are temporary and changeable. In other words, a reaction of “It’s going to last forever and undermine everything” rather than “It’s not that bad, and it will get better.”

The question then becomes harder to answer—if law students are at risk of depression, what can they do to better set the table for happiness? What makes people happy?

In our next Career Services blog posting, I’ll suggest some specific, practical ways of coping with the rigors of law school that have nothing to do with taking good notes or preparing more diligently for class. And in our final posting in the series, we’ll tackle a trio of more theoretical but equally effective ways of moving from zero to plus five. Throughout these two postings, the focus will be on openly acknowledging and combating the two problems identified by the relevant research—(1) a shift in motivation from intrinsic to extrinsic and (2) a pessimistic explanatory style.

Todd Rogers, Assistant Dean for Career Services

Read more from this post in Online law articles »