http://finance.yahoo.com/news/guy-170-000-law-school-204811509.html
TL;DR
Guy takes a $170k student loan for a no-name law school degree, can’t pass the bar after multiple attempts, is surprised he can’t find a job in the law profession and is suing the law school for inflating post-grad employment statistics.
Lesson learned: don’t be a dumb ass for 5 years straight
Apparently the school claims that its postgraduation employment figures are over 90%, but that includes part-time pool cleaners and Victoria’s Secret sales clerks. The school says that it compiled its statistics in full compliance of the law.
Apparently Thomas Jefferson School of Law is a for-profit school.
My .02 - a law degree from a for-profit school is still a law degree (assuming the school is accredited, which it is). If you pass the bar, you will almost certainly find work. Just pass the exam and stop whining.
Agreed. He clearly is just unwilling to put in the time to pass and needs someone else to blame/fix his problem. I feel bad for his family, but this guy has nobody to blame but himself.
I wonder how Thomas Jefferson would feel about people naming random sketchy for profit law schools after him.
Wouldn’t care. Too busy tapping “the help.”
Change the name of the school!
I don’t get all these stories where seemingly smart people (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt…4.0 GPA, got through law school) end up on welfare or end up in extremely low paying jobs.
Why not take up a sales job? It’s possible to make substantially more than $25k/yr selling cars. If his path would have worked out, he would have stood up in court, presented cases, negotiated terms and agreements, ect. Why not use those skills elsewhere?
Half the day, you’re waiting for customers to come in. You could study for the bar 4 hours a day and no one would care. You gotta hustle, especially with a family.
The fact that he failed the bar exam (lots of people pass), really kills credibility to his story
and plus he looks like a total slacker
As a human, I feel some compassion for what is a really terrible situation in which this guy has landed.
As a competitor, I am glad that people like this guy exist.
edit: Love this quote, where he tactfully side-steps any blame at all – whether or not TJSL screwed him over like he is now claiming.
“For the longest time, I just thought I was unlucky — life had dealt me a crap hand postgraduation,” he said. “I came to the realization maybe I wasn’t just unlucky. Maybe there was something bigger afoot.”
lol what a dip sh*t
Well, part of the reason that for-profit schools exist is to absorb funding from federal grants and student loans. When the students default, the school retains the profit and the taxpayer pays the bill. As long as running costs are not too high, this might be an “alpha” generation facility. So who is the real loser here?
Ah, I actually missed that part… what an idiot.
“The harder I work, the luckier I get.” That’s what I go by and if there are people like this in the world, makes it that much more easy for me.
This guy’s an idiot, bet TJSL has a huge acceptance rate and he took the easy route.
/thread
I don’t think this is really that bad of a deal. If they basically have an open-enrollment policy, so be it.
There are probably a lot of law firms or legal departments of big companies that need attorneys.
Heck, every single time a person buys a house, a lawyer has to sign the paperwork. This kind of work isn’t difficult, and it doesn’t require a person to go to Yale and graduate magna cum laude, with honors, and make Law Review. All you have to do is go to an accredited school, pass the bar, and find a job where lawyers are in demand.
Sure, if you want to be in the US Senate, or be on a superpowered, hard-charging law firm doing M&A work in lower Manhattan, you need to be high speed. But to be the local guy writing Joint Operating Agreements for the big oil company in town, Yale is probably overkill. TJSL will do just fine.
my bet is that TJSL is about in line with U of American Samoa that our good friend Saul Goodman went to. to be a champ like Saul, you must both be the proprietor of a failing law practice and a Cinnabon manager.
If a person skips law school but spents some 1000 hours learning the law and learning how to game the bar exam, in case this person passes the exam does he get a license?
Excellent point. Note that this is not limited to for-profits. There are other non-profit/public schools catering to minorities (e.g., HBCU) which have similar issues. However, it is not PC to talk about those…
depends on the state. A few states (I think California is one) will allow you to take the bar if you have been working in a law firm under a lawyers supervision for a long time (15 years or so). But I seriously doubt any other states would recognize that law license.
