high salaried law professor tells law graduates coveting big-money jobs to “get over it”

In a commencement address, the ABA Journal reports that Emory University law professor Sara Stadler told law graduates coveting big-money jobs to “Get over it.”

That this professor or Emory University Law School itself would correspondingly “get over” any decline in the legal market for law graduates and not sunnily market as usual programs lacking real placement statistics to support repaying exorbitant tuition indebtedness born by so many graduates, is less clear. That law career services would “get over” using big-law jobs and salaries as prime bait in their advertised placement metrics for prospective applicants isn’t clear either.

Deserving focus is the role the ABA and these very programs had in producing such supply excesses that leave many newly minted J.D.s in the job and competitive compensation lurch.  Stadler herself stated, “I’m sure Emory has failed you in some way”, saying how she wished she could change this. Presumably she and the university partly could. Via loan forgiveness. Graduates seem ill advised to plan on such change, however.

Here are some excellent comments to the article:

Doctors abandoning evidence-based medicine. Again.

The New York Times reported today that a little medical device company, Biotronik, with 5% market share in pacemakers and defibrillators, is Big Daddy in one certain medical center (some of whose doctors it hired) with 95% market share.  And it got there in 3 years from 0% market share. Technically, that’s a growth rate of infinity. Many a firm is emboldened by 10%. This is a quick change of heart—devices. Plus clinical trial (all expenses paid).

Casualities in this story—at least 3:

• evidence-based medicine
• competition
• ethics

a one-click clinic in branding

This is a tall glass of water in a tumbleweed and cracked dry land: James Hugh Potts II, LLC.

And how bad does it have to be for a law firm and centuries old category of service provider, to differentiate by branding itself as being customer focused and human.  Amazing.  This practitioner brand is, sadly and to my great relief, a shattering exception to the rule.

Kentucky Derby 2010—ever bittersweet

I enjoy the strategy, teamwork and real poetry of a horserace like today’s imminent Kentucky Derby on which I’ve indirectly blogged previously. Jockey Calvin Borel has won me over. This aerial view of his 2007 victory is spectacular and a personal thrill, as is his 2009 victory. I could never tire of watching either. I see great instruction in these races about life, perseverance, odds, and strategy in general. But not without real personal conflict. I do think horses necessarily undergo excessive stresses and abuse. Distanced patrons see nothing of the business or of that leading to the 2 “glorious” minutes of the ultimate race for which the horses’ very conception plus their entire lives have been managed.  Absent humans’ aim at sheer entertainment—as distinguished from fundamental livelihood—they surely wouldn’t be groomed for or in these races and put at the inherent risk.

UPDATE (the sweet): CALVIN BOREL DID IT AGAIN! HE DID IT AGAIN! OH MY!

HOODWINKED. The grad school scam: now spawning an industry of transparency near you (hopefully).

I guess Goldman Sachs isn’t the only one with stuff to explain.

Big ol’ hazard: graduate and professional schools are their own primary marketers to prospective students. 

Schools are by definition good news Charlies. None say “Our program sucks and is overpriced and you won’t get a job, so don’t come.” So who should care what they say? Rather you should care when it differs from the truth by 180 degrees.  And the truth  has some now in a tizzy.

A lawyer emailed me yesterday about “yet another” constellation of disgruntled attorneys lamenting about their fruitless training. But this was more organized.

First this: Law and business schools have 1 customer: industry. Bad ones focus their sales force on students to fill seats and draw revenues now. Good ones focus on the market demands in graduates.

Bad ones think teaching in isolate is their business, and job placement is a student’s personal problem. Bad ones also think the university is for the faculty or administrators, with the students acting as some paying audience. Bad ones manipulate optimism + information asymmetries: they know you want roses in your future and they know you can’t discern the truth of their bad deal conveniently until they have your money. It works short term—or used to.  These people know sales.  They can recruit. Law and business schools are prime revenue generators for a university. And visit any school.  The law school is the most beautiful real estate on the whole campus. And gets more beautiful every few years. Near cathedrals. I don’t care who you are you feel like a Supreme Court Justice when you walk in there. Not accidental either. And generally the more real estate, the more folk they can sell to and the more revenues they bring. Seductive.

But:

1. 44% of the graduating class didn’t have a job at graduation.
2. Of the 56% who “did”  80% came from China, Japan, and India and were legally obligated to work for their sponsor after graduation–they didn’t need a job. Be assured, however, that they were in undifferentiated fashion all counted in the placement statistics as “being employed” by graduation.
3. Some programs have made that very profile their main meal at Admissions. Clever.
4. And there were 3 on-campus recruiters—one of which was the local grocery chain.

But you owe a new hundred grand. Whoa—law school—you owe a new hundred and fifty grand.

So graduates have started to figure they deserve better. The level of complaint is dense and data centric. Law students are doing math and are now armed with stats and charts on “the scam”.  There’s buzz. Frustration. Angst. And the sheer numbers of disgruntled aren’t explainable by a “bad economy”.

Lies got told. Industrially.

Like a CEO restating earnings, grad schools are having to restate placement statistics, according to transparency seekers. Newbies like the Johns Hopkins Carey MBA about which I’ve previously posted have already started misleading and aren’t even accredited yet. It’s a shame for Johns Hopkins, prospective students and higher ed. Their website is typical: beautiful, without making the case. Try to find who prospective employers will be; what the competitive advantage is; what research justifies it’s entry into the market. Nothing.

But that will be $46,000 per year. They’re clear about that. $92,000 for what? To create a job for a JH professor? (And when you start a program, shouldn’t you mostly pay the students to enroll and not the other way around? Must students take on all the risk? On the other hand, don’t be duped by something “free”. Because it’s not. You spend your time and forgo other opportunity.)

Simply listen to the Dean “selling” the program. Heartbreaking. It’s nothing like that credible and distinctive brand you encounter at Johns Hopkins Medical Center from the circulation desk staffers to the Chief of Gastroenterology.

Rumblings like the WSJ law blog aren’t new. But recent higher ed critics have outright formed a transparency non profit. What does it mean when the products of a grad program feel so duped it spawns an industry. The “grad scam” is making lawyers start transparency nonprofits. That’s like a pimp starting an abstinence campaign.

Topic discussions have included these notes from a WSJ story and blog:

• “The 2,300-word story, a page one WSJ story includes lots of data and real-life examples showing how life outside BigLaw has gotten tougher, and how some law schools are doing their best not to let the word out.”
• “Now, debate is intensifying among law-school academics over the integrity of law schools’ marketing campaigns.”
• “Some law-school academics are calling for the distribution of more-accurate employment information.”
• “The only employment data that many prospective law students see come from school-promoted surveys that provide a far-from-complete portrait of graduate experiences.”
• “Prospective students need solid comparative data on employment outcomes, [but] very few law schools provide such data,” says Andrew Morriss, an Illinois Law professor who has studied the market for new lawyers.
• “Universities are starting up more law schools in part for prestige but also because they are money makers.”
• Many students “simply cannot earn enough income after graduation to support the debt they incur,” wrote Richard Matasar, dean of New York Law School, in 2005, concluding that, “We may be reaching the end of a golden era for law schools.”
• “The legal sector, after more than tripling in inflation-adjusted growth between 1970 and 1987, has grown at an average annual inflation-adjusted rate of 1.2% since 1988, or less than half as fast as the broader economy, according to Commerce Department data.”

Too many higher ed consumers think the real  story wasn’t told. They’re right. And they’re fighting back.  It’s a good thing.

Enron on Broadway this April (how about the Met?)

So Columbia pictures picked up movie rights last fall and Enron the musical is a hit currently running in London with a slated American Broadway debut in April. Nancy Coyne and Matthew Serino of Serino Coyne, Inc. are of course the contracted marketers. Oh Enron. Why stop there? Surely there’s enough tempestuousness, euphoria, and damnation here for the Met.

I’m all for the succinct but those who reduce Enron to a simple story of greed are wrong. It’s more. Greed is everywhere; Enrons aren’t.

• Enron is a story of how fabulously packaged, visionary, anointed and touted tragic figures can be.
• It’s a story of free market fail—Transparency: FAIL. Board check: FAIL. FASB and mark-to-market accounting: FAIL. Auditor check: FAIL. Street valuations: FAIL. SEC check: FAIL. Corporate law: FAIL. Media check: FAIL.
• It’s a story of the village lie. The awakening to the fact that you’re a cult—he lied, they’re gone and so is all your stuff.
• Like a viral hijack of the host, it’s a story of escalating fever and hype’s displacement of the real. The madness of crowds. The delusion of brilliance and brilliance of delusion. The “fucking” qualifier—as in “I’m fucking smart”, so said Jeff Skilling.
• It’s a story of strippers and Ivy Leaguers not only dining finely but fleeing on just-in-time jets.
• It’s about how to grow monsters: Reptilian-eyed drooling energy traders beautifully dreaming of California blackouts—because when you’re spanked and promoted for stealing from Enron, robbing California is a line extension.
• It’s a story of heartache. Demotions of the right. Promotions of the sick. Homicidal ideation. Nervous breakdowns on New York streets. Heart attacks. Suicidal ideation. Handcuffs. Rises. Foreclosures–of dreams and homes. In-group injury-laden dangerous weekend motorcycle treks. Weight loss. The sublime. Death spirals. Pep rallies. A ride. From Fortune 7 to zero.
• It’s a story of capitalism, a whole modern civilization’s preoccupancy and dream and all the yuck-yuck + hallucinogenics + heroinesque desperation and ultimate sobriety therewith.
• It’s  debacle, human neuroses, unchecked testosterone, legerdemain, and the art of the lie at its modern finest.

Surely that’s worth some librettist’s pen, a score and 200 piece orchestra, a “And I’m Telling You Ken, We’re Screwed” Sherron Watkins aria, steely staging, costumery and heaping servings of Juilliard. By my judgment at least.

Comments from the 28-year-old playwright Lucy Prebble include these:

“When you’re in a bubble, you can actually be quite surreal because that’s what it’s like before it bursts,” says Prebble of the whimsical performances. “We thought we could get away with people breaking into song.”

Is she kidding? She could get away with certified magic tricks. Book-a-minute classics if it was “play-a-minute classics” would condense the whole play to a glass chest box full of money; hover over it with a black curtain and wave a baton; voilà! No money! Repeat.

“Enron” is her attempt to “show the show business of business.”

Yes.

“I had read a lot about Enron and I didn’t really understand it until I read her play.” —producer Laura Ziskin.

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth. So is the stage, but—as Serino Coyne taught me—in a group in the dark. Or if it’s opera, in a group in the dark, via the classically trained perfectionist bastion of the operatic princely, and our finest bitchery, donning furs and tuxes. My personal preference.

study: Emotions an overlooked key to whistle-blowing

One fantasy I’ve had is to gather up and study prominent whistle-blowers in corporate culture—to quantify and qualify the personal traits that effected their whistleblowing: who were they in kindergarten; how have they socialized; what will they die for; how do they talk to a janitor—interview the janitors; how did deals break with them previously—to learn if any can be actively identified and proactively targeted in managerial talent. Of course my “study” would subject non-whistle-blowers from those same settings to the same analysis. I hardly know what I’d find, but suspect I’d find something—possibly something belief-affirming, and likely, as studies go, surprising.

What I know is that there are people who get up and leave the auditorium (or remain)—without first checking that someone else has. There are people who call the cops and physically intervene instead of just watching the assault, or throw over the bridge like the 50 other bystanders. There are people who stop shopping at the chain. There are those who start the standing ovation. I want this personality matrix and force of person represented on the board of a company in which I’m invested. I want them in management—people who will resign over something; vote for something; and who can be moved to write a candid email—as did Sherron Watkins—that doesn’t win them friends.

Thankfully, there are those willing to be completely bothered with trying to both know the proper course for a firm, and take it. I expect parties like Ira Millstein already know which traits are important and how they get indicated.

According to a study by University of Illinois researchers, whistleblowing is attendant with breach of an emotion and personal-identity based threshold in the whistleblower. Knowledge of ethical lapses or wrongdoing alone appears largely insufficient to trigger the behavior.

But college of business Professor Ruth V. Aguilera of the University of Illinois says that most corporate policies overlook the critical role of both drivers, calling most firms’ ethics policies window dressing aimed at compliance with federal law.

“It’s very difficult to encourage people to blow the whistle if you ignore the role of emotions and personal identity, which most company policies do at this point.”

The article, slated for publication in the Business Ethics Quarterly, states that nearly 90 percent of ethics guidelines are common among Fortune 500 firms, despite those firms’ unique circumstances and culture.

A second researcher stated:

“When I interviewed whistle-blowers, almost all of them cried during the interview.”…”The survey showed that people mostly blow the whistle because they are absolutely angry over something that they feel is unfair or unjust.”

This is consistent with the observation in a previous post about decision making. Professor Aguilera stated:

“Employers need to explain that wrongdoing can cause an Enron-type scandal that could sink the company, or eat into the revenue that covers payroll and raises.”

Intriguing about the article is how flatly the status of current corporate ethics policies appears to lie in light of recent corporate history, and what this suggests for the likelihood of greater and more proactive ethics policies tailored to individual firms. I.e., it’s hardly clear what would be more mobilizing on the ethics policy front than widespread corporate debacle itself. The saddest answer of course is, your own corporate debacle.

the President, the Police Officer and the Professor

America is rich grounds to encounter both cooperation and conflict around race.  The recent story on the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his Cambridge home has lasted surprisingly longer than many expected. Collectively framed by now as a “teachable moment”, it’s a decent occasion on which to revisit one of the best designed experiments on race that I’ve encountered, first published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Though now ten years old, The Effect of Race and Sex on Physicians’ Recommendations for Cardiac Catheterization remains an exceptionally well designed experiment in general, and the best designed experiment around race that I’ve observed in medicine to date. Perhaps most powerfully are its implications for professions beyond medicine where its case is actually made more strongly: medicine is supposed to work by the scientific method (“evidence-based medicine”) and is the profession of longest and most scrutinized apprenticeship, but its better doctors (specifically chosen from a thought leader pool) failed the experiment; other professions thoroughly lack medicine’s scientific methodology, rigorous and lengthy apprenticeship and scrutiny, in addition to its fiduciary linked outcome incentives. The older work of Jane Elliot and her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes experiment represents another study I encountered many years ago that was particularly unique in its design and examination of race.  Both are remarkable for their pioneering illumination and breakthrough inquiry, arguably still unmatched.