I think the article says the plan is for the trains to start running in 2027, not to start building in 2027.
Guest
Anonymous
March 10, 2023 5:29 pm
Re the case against the CCSD teacher that threatened the student – does the teacher's conduct qualify as IIED? I was of the opinion that, generally, insults or threats are not enough to establish IIED.. anyone have insight on this? (or the civil rights claim, as that is far beyond my wheelhouse)
Newsflash, if you entrust your kid to CCSD, it is you who is negligent. Whenever I travel and people ask about living in Las Vegas, I say it's great if you can afford private school. If not, stay where you are.
Guest
Anonymous
March 10, 2023 5:38 pm
Just watched the entire Robert Telles interview on the KTNV website. He says some pretty inflammatory stuff about Judge Leavitt. What an idiot.
Guest
Anonymous
March 10, 2023 5:57 pm
You know what wasn't in the press release? — the train terminates at Victorville.
I think this is a huge boondoggle. That said, I think the bigger benefit would be on the way back. Bypassing all the I-15 traffic Sunday afternoon to Victorville would be pretty OK.
Guest
Anonymous
March 10, 2023 6:34 pm
That ABA article was terrifying. We are on a bullet train heading into the abyss. I had hoped not to live to see the legal profession gutted like a fish, but here we are. That article was textbook Stochastic Terrorism. Now I really detest the young attorneys. Go ahead, grab your blinky and head towards your safe room, snowflake, I'll go ahead and represent the clients' interests while you surf tiktok and tinder.
Young attorneys, you heed the notions of that ABA article at your own peril. We are very near a point where grinding out briefs and discovery will be done by A.I. It will become harder, not easier, to pay your dues.
I agree that a lot of young associates will exit Biglaw soon, but not because of a Tinder addiction or a lifestyle preference. Instead, young attorneys will exit Biglaw firms en masse not because they want to, but because rapid technological advancements will force them out. Those advancements mean that no one needs strength in numbers anymore, nor will corporate counsel be willing to pay current Biglaw billable rates for anything other than bet-the-company work or lobbying muscle when GPT platforms can already write a passable legal research memo for $50 and judges have begun using these platforms to draft opinions. A lot of the FBU churn that lines the partners' pockets is going to disappear, and it isn't coming back.
But the real problem for what remains of Biglaw is when the young associates kicked out the door in "right-sizing" efforts turn around and undercut what remains of the Biglaw market. A fiscally responsible solo practitioner can make a good enough living while billing a fraction of what Biglaw firms typically demand, and once those younger attorneys have the practice skills to undertake the more challenging types of representation, they'll be able to offer competitive discounts to steal corporate clients from the former employers who cast them aside.
The good thing for our market is that "Biglaw" has never really become predominant here the way it has in other places. Pair that with the lack of reciprocity with other states, and I think the chances of significant market disruption from AI are less here than they will be elsewhere.
I got news for all those attorneys who are associates at big-personal injury firm doing claims: AI is taking your job soon. Handling claims as an attorney is nothing more than paper-pushing, which AI is going to fix. I know a lot of attorneys who make a bunch of money doing pre-lit work at the big personal injurie firms in town, I would be nervous if I were them. However, if you are the Naqvis, Kutners or Lerners out there, then you can be optimistic about the future because soon you don't have to pay some 10-year attorney (with zero litigation experience) $250k a year to have policy limits tendered on every case from USAA.
In addition to AI, third-world countries are coming for your jobs. There is at least one PI firm in town that does all of its claims work out of the Philippines. None of those claims assistants are local. Fraction of the cost.
The elders at the State Bare are happy to offer that CLE, however, the presentation will occur at an expensive out of state location and will include an expansive DEI component.
I've heard you can hire Colombian JDs, fluent in English, who will work for about $12 an hour. Depending on one's clientele, having a bilingual attorney performing intake and other non-attorney tasks might be advantageous, and $12 an hour is already cheaper than most American support staff.
The third world threat has been around for about 20 years, maybe a little longer. It is not a new or emerging option. There was a time when many felt that Indians would be doing large portions of American legal work, causing significant displacement. Didn't happen.
Similarly, neither will AI displace attorneys. Are folks actually worried, or is the same "the sky is falling" person keep posting these fear-mongering posts?
2:06, just about every attorney I know who has actually tried one of these GPT platforms has recognized how it will transform the practice of law. If you've already tried Chat GPT and don't believe tools like this won't displace attorneys, I'd be curious to know your rationale for why.
Some perspective from a "young attorney" (less than 30 y/o): the ABA article accurately portrays the general attitude of people my age towards work. However, as someone who has always had a Type A personality, I couldn't be more happy about this. If you have the desire to work hard, do a good job, and go above & beyond, your employer acts like they've found a unicorn. My generation has set the bar so low that even putting in a modicum of effort makes you the golden child. Young attorneys should relish in the fact that in today's society, all it takes to set yourself apart is try hard (and get those billables in!).
Plain and simple, mediocre law school graduates is what has brought us to this. The bottom half of ABA-accredited law schools must be permanently closed. That's a hard reality for many lesser universities which feature a law school program; but it's the truth. They're going to need to learn to survive without the tens of millions of student loan-fueled dollars those mediocre law programs provide. And those schools which survive need to continue to be rigorous in admissions and curriculum. Stop allowing the entitled slackers into the profession; they're soft and they erode the integrity of the profession.
No question this country produces too many lawyers and it costs too much to do so. But for those blaming the “idle youth,” it’s worthwhile to remember that before Biglaw’s ascendancy about forty years ago, hourly billable targets were typically a lot lower than they are today. New lawyers were usually paid a lot less than they are at the large firms now, but they also carried significantly lower student debt, and weren’t required to wear golden handcuffs for years just to get back to zero net worth.
There’s no shortage of evidence that lawyers today suffer from some of the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide among the professional class. And AI is going to reduce the raw cash value of legal representation across the board, whether we like it or not. The financial carrot that drove young attorneys towards 2500+ hourly billable targets at the expense of their health and well-being will simply not be available much longer, because no one will be willing to pay $500 an hour for a junior associate to spend six hours drafting a legal memo, when an algorithm can write one in thirty seconds for a cost of $50 (literally the price CoCounsel charges for a memo right now: https://casetext.com/subscribe).
If the business rules we followed over the past forty years have brought us to a place where the “idle youth” refuse to participate, dismissing their rejection as a flaw of character seems too easy. That conclusion presupposes that the current system is perfect and historically durable; and neither of those assumptions can be proven. To me, the withdrawal seems like a collective request for a market correction to a more historically traditional attorney role, which involves less compensation and fewer hours. After all, the small firm / solo practitioner business model worked well enough for a few thousand years before the 1980s, and it still employs a large number of practicing attorneys today.
State Supreme Court rules almost uniformly defer admissions gate keeping to the ABA Committee on Accreditation. See SCR 49.1 for example. The problem is that the ABA Accreditation Committee has been captured by academic administrators who profit off admitting too many, and often unqualified students to law school. The ABA is acting on what is in the financial best interests of the academic institutions and their administrators, often to the detriment of law students, the profession and the public. The ABA has shown an unwillingness to prioritize the latter over the former. It is time for state supreme courts, including our own, to wrest back some or all of the power delegated to the ABA. This is an institutional failure with perverse incentives at play. Similar incentives drive the effort to water down or eliminate other gatekeeping tools like eliminating the LSAT. These administrators act in their own interests, but often use the pretext of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to pull it off. Remember carpet bagger Dan Hamilton at UNLV? He worked to water down the Nevada bar exam under similar pretexts, but his motive was to juice the US News rankings for UNLV. These administrators cannot be trusted any longer and have already done immeasurable damage. It would be great if Nevada acted first by somehow imposing different/additional requirements in SCR 49.1.
For example, SCR 49.1 could be amended to require an LSAT score of at least 145 to qualify for admission in Nevada. That would exclude the bottom 25% of test takers. This is not an unreasonable threshold. As a general rule, people with scores below 145 should not be admitted to law school or the practice of law. Law schools are unwilling to perform this gate keeping function, so the Nevada Supreme Court should intercede.
Huge chunks of this mess would be solved, almost immediately, if Congress would simply sack up and end the failed federal student loan guaranty program. Who is really going to cry if 80 or so law schools like Southwestern, Golden Gate, and Cooley just go away?
What business does our federal government have guarantying student loans? Turn the process over to the banks, which are good at underwriting debt and determining who is a good risk and who isn't. If a kid has exceptional credentials and gets into UCLA law school and needs money for tuition, the private sector will figure out a fair way to make it happen for that kid. The free market is quite fair.
Do we as a country do people a kindness by indiscriminately facilitating their borrowing $250,000 to attend Cal Western law school? The answer is no. For the large majority of people who borrow six-figure sums to attend lower-tier law schools, the result is pain, frustration, and financial disaster. Yet our "well-meaning" government participates in this harm, on a massive scale, each and every day.
Say what you want. But Cal-western and Cooley grads from the 90s are some of the absolute best lawyers I know. Not only talented, smart, but congenial and a pleasure to OC against.
Cooley exists to enrich administrators at the expense of students who have little chance at passing the bar exam or experiencing professional success. The persons that 7:36 AM references are the exception that proves the rule.
Discussion on Cooley/ABA requirements/Admissions: The Nevada Supreme Court almost allowed Western States now known as Thomas Jefferson a 7 year pass on ABA requirements in the late 1990s to open a law school here. The attorneys got together and stopped this. UNLV Law School came along and then it became moot. The ABA got sued over their accreditation so they eased up. If someone wants to go to law school there is a school for them to attend. Whether they will become a lawyer is another story. Interest in legal education has fallen off. There are fewer folks going to college. It seems likely there will be lower standards to get into law school and lower standards on the bar exam. It is interesting to see where this will all end up.
The point is that schools like Cooley and Southwestern would immediately close if they were cut off from the abundant cash flow of federally backed student loans. These are enterprises that could not survive in a free market outside the artificial environment created by those federally backed dollars.
Even the worst law schools in America don't have a failure rate of 100%. That some of our accomplished colleagues attended these schools does not redeem the schools. We only interact with the ones who have defied the odds. We don't see the lives these schools ruin.
Cooley's first time bar passage rate is 37%. A debt financed Cooley degree will run you $2600 a month in payments without scholarships or other discounts. This is not a reputable institution.
Southwestern isn't great either. It has a higher bar passage rate, even after factoring the difficulty of the California bar exam. However, the financial outcome is even worse than Cooley.
I have always thought that the States could do a much better job of "guaranteeing" student loans than the Feds.
It would draw students to those states and they could mandate as a condition of the loans, that the students serve a certain period of time working in those states.
I could be wrong and there may be things I am not considering, but its pretty logical to me.
9:35 is spot on. No sane banker who wanted to keep his job would lend someone $250,000 unsecured to attend Thomas Jefferson or some similar
lower-tier law school. But our brilliant federal government effectively does just that thousands of times year, year after year, decade after decade. And only a fraction of that money will ever be paid back. And many of the people who borrow that money will have their lives ruined. The taxpayer loses, the borrower loses; but the academics and school administrators win.
And for the guy defending Southwestern law school above, it's nothing personal. Southwestern may very well be in the top half of the bottom half, but it's still in the bottom half. It needs to go, along with the other 100 or so bottom half schools. $60,000 per year for just tuition is patently insane when you consider that it takes away three prime earning years from the student's life and does not generate enough income to justify the debt load.
Not sure I can agree that the free market would provide a better solution. Lenders have been collateralizing student loans into ABS products (called SLABS) for years, presumably on the grounds that student loans can never be discharged or forgiven. Seems reminiscent of the collateralization of mortgages before the '08 crash, before which of course we all knew that the value of real estate always went up and always would for all time.
I assume the same moral hazards would apply to the SLABS market if private lenders were fully in charge. And since law school is a cash cow, lenders would push more students to go to law school, not fewer, if the free market had complete control over it. The SLABS market is worth about 200 billion, and its collapse was likely the real elephant in the room when the Supreme Court took up the Biden forgiveness plan. If the Court strikes down student loan forgiveness, it seems logical that the SLABS market will explode.
Guest
Anonymous
March 10, 2023 7:09 pm
I have used the Las Vegas Justice Court's attorney portal in the past, but now when I try to get into it I get a "Sign on failed. Please contact the system administrator" message. I can't find a justice court system administrator number in the legal directory, Tyler Technologies says it is not their problem, stories on the Bar site and in the CCBA magazine about the supposedly wonderful new Matterhorn system don't provide links to anything helpful. Left a message with the Justice Court. Any helpful suggestions as to what I should or who I should call? Thanks.
We can't even e-file without problems. Tell me again how AI is going to replace attorneys?
Guest
Anonymous
March 10, 2023 7:28 pm
This Telles is a real wingnut. He's going to spend the rest of his life in custody anyway; why not get this over with and get out of the miserable CCDC and into a marginally more tolerable penal institution? County time is as bad as it gets. Someone needs to sit him down and tell him the unvarnished truth about his situation. His least-bad option is to plead guilty to all the charges and try to use that at sentencing.
I wish our court and prison system would embrace the scientifically proven mental health benefits of ketogenic living. Eliminate the mental disease that underlies so much crime. Not saying true criminals will suddenly see the light and become born again good citizens, but at least they would look trim and fit while committing their crimes.
11:28-I would agree that CCDC is generally, on a day-to-day basis, even less pleasant, with far more cramped living quarters and far less available activities and distractions, than most prisons.
But on the other hand, prisons are generally more dangerous than county jail, with far greater chance of being physically or sexually attacked by other inmates.
But, at least thus far, I do not speak from experience, so perhaps I am wrong about this point.
Guest
Anonymous
March 10, 2023 8:12 pm
Given his sentence he would be automatically send to ESP for at least a year to see how he adjusts. And I think ESP is generally the worst since it’s a maximum facility so he’s shackled anytime he leaves his cell. And if he ends up in a medium facility, he’s going to need protective segregation given how high profile his crime was. Too many inmates would want to hurt him to raise their own profile
Remember all those comments that the Telles trial should be moved to a different jurisdiction because of how "high profile" it is? What a joke. No one knows about this guy or cares about him. If Robert Murdoch can face his charges in his city, so can Telles.
When a journalist is murdered and the story and its periodic developments make the national news, including the NYT, Foxnews, etc. I am pretty sure that makes it high profile.
The CASE is high profile. 97 out of 100 people are LOW profile and uneducated plebes.
Guest
Anonymous
March 10, 2023 8:39 pm
Robert Telles' motion to recuse Judge Leavitt is now available on attorney corner. His handwriting makes reading difficult, I only made it through 3 of 12 pages. RT accuses Judge Leavitt of multiple violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct. RT also says that because Judge Leavitt allowed another criminal defendant to re engage counsel after waiver, he should be able to as well.
There may be no real need to try and make any sense of his actions or his motivations.
He probably just feeds off whatever attention and publicity he can get from all this.
Plus, he may believe any delays ultimately benefit him, so he takes actions such as attacking and seeking to disqualify a judge.
None of this is considered, planned logical strategy, so we should probably not spend too much time looking for rational explanations for behaviors that on their face do not seem particularly rational.
I'm pretty much with 3:02. I believe he will continue to represent himself, and his approaches and tactics will be perceived by many as increasingly baffling, and even outlandish.
And when that happens, it is probably pointless for us to seek out the method to the madness, or to attempt to determine the supposed skilled strategies behind these approaches, as there probably is no real strategy or skill behind any of these tactics.
It's probably all just extreme desperation with doses of panic, deepening depression, hopelessness, combined with recurring delusions of grandeur etc. That's what may be behind a lot of the antics to come, as opposed to them being motivated by an intelligent , tactical legal approach.
Guest
Anonymous
March 11, 2023 7:27 pm
Can’t wait for ONJ to get their ruling from the Supreme Court. It’s gonna be great when the public finally gets to hear about the damage a certain 2018 appointee and a “high conflict specialist” therapist have done to my client’s kid. You might think family court is bad, but you have no idea exactly how bad.
I think the article says the plan is for the trains to start running in 2027, not to start building in 2027.
Re the case against the CCSD teacher that threatened the student – does the teacher's conduct qualify as IIED? I was of the opinion that, generally, insults or threats are not enough to establish IIED.. anyone have insight on this? (or the civil rights claim, as that is far beyond my wheelhouse)
Newsflash, if you entrust your kid to CCSD, it is you who is negligent. Whenever I travel and people ask about living in Las Vegas, I say it's great if you can afford private school. If not, stay where you are.
Just watched the entire Robert Telles interview on the KTNV website. He says some pretty inflammatory stuff about Judge Leavitt. What an idiot.
You know what wasn't in the press release? — the train terminates at Victorville.
I love taking the family to Victorville!
https://www.victorvilleca.gov/our-city/things-to-do
Someone in Santa Monica will love driving to Victorville to pay for a ticket, wait for the train, wait to screen and board, to go to Las Vegas. …not
I think this is a huge boondoggle. That said, I think the bigger benefit would be on the way back. Bypassing all the I-15 traffic Sunday afternoon to Victorville would be pretty OK.
That ABA article was terrifying. We are on a bullet train heading into the abyss. I had hoped not to live to see the legal profession gutted like a fish, but here we are. That article was textbook Stochastic Terrorism. Now I really detest the young attorneys. Go ahead, grab your blinky and head towards your safe room, snowflake, I'll go ahead and represent the clients' interests while you surf tiktok and tinder.
Young attorneys, you heed the notions of that ABA article at your own peril. We are very near a point where grinding out briefs and discovery will be done by A.I. It will become harder, not easier, to pay your dues.
I agree that a lot of young associates will exit Biglaw soon, but not because of a Tinder addiction or a lifestyle preference. Instead, young attorneys will exit Biglaw firms en masse not because they want to, but because rapid technological advancements will force them out. Those advancements mean that no one needs strength in numbers anymore, nor will corporate counsel be willing to pay current Biglaw billable rates for anything other than bet-the-company work or lobbying muscle when GPT platforms can already write a passable legal research memo for $50 and judges have begun using these platforms to draft opinions. A lot of the FBU churn that lines the partners' pockets is going to disappear, and it isn't coming back.
But the real problem for what remains of Biglaw is when the young associates kicked out the door in "right-sizing" efforts turn around and undercut what remains of the Biglaw market. A fiscally responsible solo practitioner can make a good enough living while billing a fraction of what Biglaw firms typically demand, and once those younger attorneys have the practice skills to undertake the more challenging types of representation, they'll be able to offer competitive discounts to steal corporate clients from the former employers who cast them aside.
The good thing for our market is that "Biglaw" has never really become predominant here the way it has in other places. Pair that with the lack of reciprocity with other states, and I think the chances of significant market disruption from AI are less here than they will be elsewhere.
Maybe our wise elders in the state bar can convene an in-depth CLE to discuss AI and its impact.
I got news for all those attorneys who are associates at big-personal injury firm doing claims: AI is taking your job soon. Handling claims as an attorney is nothing more than paper-pushing, which AI is going to fix. I know a lot of attorneys who make a bunch of money doing pre-lit work at the big personal injurie firms in town, I would be nervous if I were them. However, if you are the Naqvis, Kutners or Lerners out there, then you can be optimistic about the future because soon you don't have to pay some 10-year attorney (with zero litigation experience) $250k a year to have policy limits tendered on every case from USAA.
In addition to AI, third-world countries are coming for your jobs. There is at least one PI firm in town that does all of its claims work out of the Philippines. None of those claims assistants are local. Fraction of the cost.
The elders at the State Bare are happy to offer that CLE, however, the presentation will occur at an expensive out of state location and will include an expansive DEI component.
I've heard you can hire Colombian JDs, fluent in English, who will work for about $12 an hour. Depending on one's clientele, having a bilingual attorney performing intake and other non-attorney tasks might be advantageous, and $12 an hour is already cheaper than most American support staff.
I havent paid less than $18/hour since 2005.
The third world threat has been around for about 20 years, maybe a little longer. It is not a new or emerging option. There was a time when many felt that Indians would be doing large portions of American legal work, causing significant displacement. Didn't happen.
12:22, I am thunderstruck that a PI firm is so far ahead of the curve. To the leaders of that firm: I extend my deepest heartfelt congratulations.
Similarly, neither will AI displace attorneys. Are folks actually worried, or is the same "the sky is falling" person keep posting these fear-mongering posts?
2:06, just about every attorney I know who has actually tried one of these GPT platforms has recognized how it will transform the practice of law. If you've already tried Chat GPT and don't believe tools like this won't displace attorneys, I'd be curious to know your rationale for why.
Has GPT stopped inventing precedent and cases out of thin air yet?
Imagine AI + cheap foreign labor. Finally, all those snot nosed kids will have unlimited free time to enjoy. Bye, punks.
The article was "terrifying" but young lawyers are the snowflakes lol What about the article was terrifying, 10:34?
The navel gazing self-absorbed kids who are not fired up by passion to serve clients and the law; instead, it's all about me me me me.
Some perspective from a "young attorney" (less than 30 y/o): the ABA article accurately portrays the general attitude of people my age towards work. However, as someone who has always had a Type A personality, I couldn't be more happy about this. If you have the desire to work hard, do a good job, and go above & beyond, your employer acts like they've found a unicorn. My generation has set the bar so low that even putting in a modicum of effort makes you the golden child. Young attorneys should relish in the fact that in today's society, all it takes to set yourself apart is try hard (and get those billables in!).
5:29 – I wuv you!
3:23, no, leave it to the solos to do that.
Southpark takes on AI and ChatGPT
https://southpark.cc.com/episodes/8byci4/south-park-deep-learning-season-26-ep-4
Plain and simple, mediocre law school graduates is what has brought us to this. The bottom half of ABA-accredited law schools must be permanently closed. That's a hard reality for many lesser universities which feature a law school program; but it's the truth. They're going to need to learn to survive without the tens of millions of student loan-fueled dollars those mediocre law programs provide. And those schools which survive need to continue to be rigorous in admissions and curriculum. Stop allowing the entitled slackers into the profession; they're soft and they erode the integrity of the profession.
No question this country produces too many lawyers and it costs too much to do so. But for those blaming the “idle youth,” it’s worthwhile to remember that before Biglaw’s ascendancy about forty years ago, hourly billable targets were typically a lot lower than they are today. New lawyers were usually paid a lot less than they are at the large firms now, but they also carried significantly lower student debt, and weren’t required to wear golden handcuffs for years just to get back to zero net worth.
There’s no shortage of evidence that lawyers today suffer from some of the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide among the professional class. And AI is going to reduce the raw cash value of legal representation across the board, whether we like it or not. The financial carrot that drove young attorneys towards 2500+ hourly billable targets at the expense of their health and well-being will simply not be available much longer, because no one will be willing to pay $500 an hour for a junior associate to spend six hours drafting a legal memo, when an algorithm can write one in thirty seconds for a cost of $50 (literally the price CoCounsel charges for a memo right now: https://casetext.com/subscribe).
If the business rules we followed over the past forty years have brought us to a place where the “idle youth” refuse to participate, dismissing their rejection as a flaw of character seems too easy. That conclusion presupposes that the current system is perfect and historically durable; and neither of those assumptions can be proven. To me, the withdrawal seems like a collective request for a market correction to a more historically traditional attorney role, which involves less compensation and fewer hours. After all, the small firm / solo practitioner business model worked well enough for a few thousand years before the 1980s, and it still employs a large number of practicing attorneys today.
State Supreme Court rules almost uniformly defer admissions gate keeping to the ABA Committee on Accreditation. See SCR 49.1 for example. The problem is that the ABA Accreditation Committee has been captured by academic administrators who profit off admitting too many, and often unqualified students to law school. The ABA is acting on what is in the financial best interests of the academic institutions and their administrators, often to the detriment of law students, the profession and the public. The ABA has shown an unwillingness to prioritize the latter over the former. It is time for state supreme courts, including our own, to wrest back some or all of the power delegated to the ABA. This is an institutional failure with perverse incentives at play. Similar incentives drive the effort to water down or eliminate other gatekeeping tools like eliminating the LSAT. These administrators act in their own interests, but often use the pretext of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to pull it off. Remember carpet bagger Dan Hamilton at UNLV? He worked to water down the Nevada bar exam under similar pretexts, but his motive was to juice the US News rankings for UNLV. These administrators cannot be trusted any longer and have already done immeasurable damage. It would be great if Nevada acted first by somehow imposing different/additional requirements in SCR 49.1.
10:45 made me think a bit.
For example, SCR 49.1 could be amended to require an LSAT score of at least 145 to qualify for admission in Nevada. That would exclude the bottom 25% of test takers. This is not an unreasonable threshold. As a general rule, people with scores below 145 should not be admitted to law school or the practice of law. Law schools are unwilling to perform this gate keeping function, so the Nevada Supreme Court should intercede.
Huge chunks of this mess would be solved, almost immediately, if Congress would simply sack up and end the failed federal student loan guaranty program. Who is really going to cry if 80 or so law schools like Southwestern, Golden Gate, and Cooley just go away?
What business does our federal government have guarantying student loans? Turn the process over to the banks, which are good at underwriting debt and determining who is a good risk and who isn't. If a kid has exceptional credentials and gets into UCLA law school and needs money for tuition, the private sector will figure out a fair way to make it happen for that kid. The free market is quite fair.
Do we as a country do people a kindness by indiscriminately facilitating their borrowing $250,000 to attend Cal Western law school? The answer is no. For the large majority of people who borrow six-figure sums to attend lower-tier law schools, the result is pain, frustration, and financial disaster. Yet our "well-meaning" government participates in this harm, on a massive scale, each and every day.
Say what you want. But Cal-western and Cooley grads from the 90s are some of the absolute best lawyers I know. Not only talented, smart, but congenial and a pleasure to OC against.
Cooley exists to enrich administrators at the expense of students who have little chance at passing the bar exam or experiencing professional success. The persons that 7:36 AM references are the exception that proves the rule.
Crapping on Southwestern? The School has been around since 1911 and has produced excellent Nevada litigators, judges, public officials, etc.
Discussion on Cooley/ABA requirements/Admissions: The Nevada Supreme Court almost allowed Western States now known as Thomas Jefferson a 7 year pass on ABA requirements in the late 1990s to open a law school here. The attorneys got together and stopped this. UNLV Law School came along and then it became moot. The ABA got sued over their accreditation so they eased up. If someone wants to go to law school there is a school for them to attend. Whether they will become a lawyer is another story. Interest in legal education has fallen off. There are fewer folks going to college. It seems likely there will be lower standards to get into law school and lower standards on the bar exam. It is interesting to see where this will all end up.
The point is that schools like Cooley and Southwestern would immediately close if they were cut off from the abundant cash flow of federally backed student loans. These are enterprises that could not survive in a free market outside the artificial environment created by those federally backed dollars.
Even the worst law schools in America don't have a failure rate of 100%. That some of our accomplished colleagues attended these schools does not redeem the schools. We only interact with the ones who have defied the odds. We don't see the lives these schools ruin.
https://www.lawschooltransparency.com/schools/cooley/bar
Cooley's first time bar passage rate is 37%. A debt financed Cooley degree will run you $2600 a month in payments without scholarships or other discounts. This is not a reputable institution.
Southwestern isn't great either. It has a higher bar passage rate, even after factoring the difficulty of the California bar exam. However, the financial outcome is even worse than Cooley.
https://www.lawschooltransparency.com/schools/southwestern/bar
No one here would advise their child (or anyone they cared about) to attend these or similar schools by taking out loans.
I have always thought that the States could do a much better job of "guaranteeing" student loans than the Feds.
It would draw students to those states and they could mandate as a condition of the loans, that the students serve a certain period of time working in those states.
I could be wrong and there may be things I am not considering, but its pretty logical to me.
9:35 is spot on. No sane banker who wanted to keep his job would lend someone $250,000 unsecured to attend Thomas Jefferson or some similar
lower-tier law school. But our brilliant federal government effectively does just that thousands of times year, year after year, decade after decade. And only a fraction of that money will ever be paid back. And many of the people who borrow that money will have their lives ruined. The taxpayer loses, the borrower loses; but the academics and school administrators win.
And for the guy defending Southwestern law school above, it's nothing personal. Southwestern may very well be in the top half of the bottom half, but it's still in the bottom half. It needs to go, along with the other 100 or so bottom half schools. $60,000 per year for just tuition is patently insane when you consider that it takes away three prime earning years from the student's life and does not generate enough income to justify the debt load.
Not sure I can agree that the free market would provide a better solution. Lenders have been collateralizing student loans into ABS products (called SLABS) for years, presumably on the grounds that student loans can never be discharged or forgiven. Seems reminiscent of the collateralization of mortgages before the '08 crash, before which of course we all knew that the value of real estate always went up and always would for all time.
I assume the same moral hazards would apply to the SLABS market if private lenders were fully in charge. And since law school is a cash cow, lenders would push more students to go to law school, not fewer, if the free market had complete control over it. The SLABS market is worth about 200 billion, and its collapse was likely the real elephant in the room when the Supreme Court took up the Biden forgiveness plan. If the Court strikes down student loan forgiveness, it seems logical that the SLABS market will explode.
I have used the Las Vegas Justice Court's attorney portal in the past, but now when I try to get into it I get a "Sign on failed. Please contact the system administrator" message. I can't find a justice court system administrator number in the legal directory, Tyler Technologies says it is not their problem, stories on the Bar site and in the CCBA magazine about the supposedly wonderful new Matterhorn system don't provide links to anything helpful. Left a message with the Justice Court. Any helpful suggestions as to what I should or who I should call? Thanks.
This happened to me. You have to renew it annually. Go to the Clerk's Office with a check and I suspect you will be back up and running.
OP here. Thank you 12:23 p.m.
We can't even e-file without problems. Tell me again how AI is going to replace attorneys?
This Telles is a real wingnut. He's going to spend the rest of his life in custody anyway; why not get this over with and get out of the miserable CCDC and into a marginally more tolerable penal institution? County time is as bad as it gets. Someone needs to sit him down and tell him the unvarnished truth about his situation. His least-bad option is to plead guilty to all the charges and try to use that at sentencing.
You think the handful of attorneys he has already cycled through have not told him that?
Agreed. I'm guessing he's heard the unvarnished truth at least 4 separate times.
Betting odds for him pulling the upset of the century?
I wish our court and prison system would embrace the scientifically proven mental health benefits of ketogenic living. Eliminate the mental disease that underlies so much crime. Not saying true criminals will suddenly see the light and become born again good citizens, but at least they would look trim and fit while committing their crimes.
2pm wins the internet today.
11:28-I would agree that CCDC is generally, on a day-to-day basis, even less pleasant, with far more cramped living quarters and far less available activities and distractions, than most prisons.
But on the other hand, prisons are generally more dangerous than county jail, with far greater chance of being physically or sexually attacked by other inmates.
But, at least thus far, I do not speak from experience, so perhaps I am wrong about this point.
Given his sentence he would be automatically send to ESP for at least a year to see how he adjusts. And I think ESP is generally the worst since it’s a maximum facility so he’s shackled anytime he leaves his cell. And if he ends up in a medium facility, he’s going to need protective segregation given how high profile his crime was. Too many inmates would want to hurt him to raise their own profile
Remember all those comments that the Telles trial should be moved to a different jurisdiction because of how "high profile" it is? What a joke. No one knows about this guy or cares about him. If Robert Murdoch can face his charges in his city, so can Telles.
When a journalist is murdered and the story and its periodic developments make the national news, including the NYT, Foxnews, etc. I am pretty sure that makes it high profile.
Nonetheless, 211 is correct that the trial CAN and should occur here. I mean FFS, if the Binion trial can take place here, so can Telles.
I was watching Alaska Daily and it was mentioned
If you asked 100 people from the Las Vegas local streets who Telles is, I would bet 97 would have no clue. It's not high profile.
The CASE is high profile. 97 out of 100 people are LOW profile and uneducated plebes.
Robert Telles' motion to recuse Judge Leavitt is now available on attorney corner. His handwriting makes reading difficult, I only made it through 3 of 12 pages. RT accuses Judge Leavitt of multiple violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct. RT also says that because Judge Leavitt allowed another criminal defendant to re engage counsel after waiver, he should be able to as well.
I was done by page 3 as well. Uggh.
There may be no real need to try and make any sense of his actions or his motivations.
He probably just feeds off whatever attention and publicity he can get from all this.
Plus, he may believe any delays ultimately benefit him, so he takes actions such as attacking and seeking to disqualify a judge.
None of this is considered, planned logical strategy, so we should probably not spend too much time looking for rational explanations for behaviors that on their face do not seem particularly rational.
I'm pretty much with 3:02. I believe he will continue to represent himself, and his approaches and tactics will be perceived by many as increasingly baffling, and even outlandish.
And when that happens, it is probably pointless for us to seek out the method to the madness, or to attempt to determine the supposed skilled strategies behind these approaches, as there probably is no real strategy or skill behind any of these tactics.
It's probably all just extreme desperation with doses of panic, deepening depression, hopelessness, combined with recurring delusions of grandeur etc. That's what may be behind a lot of the antics to come, as opposed to them being motivated by an intelligent , tactical legal approach.
Can’t wait for ONJ to get their ruling from the Supreme Court. It’s gonna be great when the public finally gets to hear about the damage a certain 2018 appointee and a “high conflict specialist” therapist have done to my client’s kid. You might think family court is bad, but you have no idea exactly how bad.