TexJudge

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Are You A BLT?

by TexJudge on August 10, 2010 in Columns

[Ed. Note: The following is a follow-up from “TexJudge,” the former Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge who wrote the highly debated pieces “Are Law Schools Screwing Students?” and “Bitter Judge Strikes Again.”]

I have been reading the various posts on Bitter Lawyer for some time and have found some to be funny, some to be sad and some to be depressing. Apparently, Biglaw is not all it is cracked up to be and the life of a Biglaw associate, in my opinion, is not one to envy. When I was in law school I did interview on-campus with a few Biglaw firms but, because this was my career and life that were at stake, I decided to do a little research to see if Biglaw was for me.  Keep in mind that I always have believed in balance in life and, while in college and in law school, I played football and soccer, worked, and chased a lot of women (and actually caught a few). I got good grades but will be the first one to admit that I would have done better if I had studied more.  But, I had a life.
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[Ed. Note: The following is a follow-up from “TexJudge,” the former Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge who wrote the highly debated pieces “Are Law Schools Screwing Students?” and “Bitter Judge Strikes Again.”]

One of the more rewarding aspects of being an appellate court judge is the opportunity to select law clerks. During my six years on the bench, I selected four. I decided up front to base my selections using nontraditional criteria. I did not want to be like most of the federal appellate court judges and Supreme Court justices who largely limit their selectees to graduates of Ivy League law schools who were law review editors. I did not care whether or not a candidate went to a tier-one school (2 of my choices did; 2 did not).

I did view with favor candidates who, like myself, played sports in college and/or held a job while in college or law school. Such a background, I believe, is evidence of a good work ethic and the willingness to be a team player. It is easy to get good grades if someone is paying your bills and all you have to do is study.

Did I consider grades? Yes, but they were not the deciding factor. Each of my selectees did a good job and each has been successful in their careers, though none of them went to BigLaw. Most important, they were good people who you would want to have as friends. The rigid paper qualifications used by too many judges to select their clerks means a lot of really good people never get a shot, there is less diversity in backgrounds, and the law is poorer as a result.

The comments concerning my bitterness at the lack of Supreme Court justices from the South and from outside the Ivy League were interesting and largely missed the point I was trying to make. I do not want to re-fight the Civil War and did not suggest that Southerners are more qualified than “damnyankees” (only kidding; I went to law school up north, have dated ladies from up north and like Law Firm 10) for high judicial office. My point is that, due to the fact that the national media, the legal punditocracy and the law schools producing Supreme Court justices are all in or near New York City, Southerners are not only essentially excluded from consideration but that they are less likely to be confirmed. Having a law degree from Yale means you are automatically qualified; the presumption of qualification would not be extended to a graduate of LSU, Houston, Alabama or Florida.

The entertainment industry (TV and movies) almost always portrays Southerners as racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes and rednecks who can’t speak proper English and have sex with family members. One of the comments suggested that intelligence levels are higher in the north: Counselor, can you produce evidence of this that meets Daubert standards?

I do take serious offense at the comment that equated honorable men like Senator Cornyn (a former Texas Supreme Court Justice) and Cong. Gomert (a former Texas appellate judge) with racist thugs like Bull Connor and the young George Wallace. That would be like my equating liberals like Obama and Pelosi with radical liberals like Bill Ayers, Stalin and Hugo Chavez. Sir, you should be ashamed.

Finally, I would not vote to confirm Elena Kagan. My reasons are her lack of any experience in the private sector, her lack of legal articles and what appears to be strong evidence that she will be a judicial activist.

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The following is a follow-up from “TexJudge,” the former Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge who wrote the highly debated post, “Are Law Schools Screwing Students?”

I appreciate the comments from all those who responded to my recent article concerning law school tuition. My figures for 1977 lawyer salaries were based on starting pay and, if anything, I may have erred on the high side. I do recall that a large county in Texas at that time was paying first-year assistant DAs around $25K.

One reader does make a very good point that law school tuition inflation may be tied to ever-increasing amounts of federally provided student loans. This is a classic case of moral hazard: People will consume or use more of a product or service if someone else is paying the bill regardless of whether or not the service or product is good for the consumer or society in the short or long term. More loans for law students means more law students and more law schools. The recent takeover of student loans by the federal government (part of the health care bill) will likely make it worse both on the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Can the ABA prevent new law schools from opening? No, but it can certainly make the accreditation process more difficult.  Although it will never happen, the folks now in charge of student loans could decide we do not need, say, another 30,000 new lawyers every year and only authorize, say, 15,000 loans per year for law students. The same restrictions should be applied to undergraduate students who want to major in such “useful” pursuits as 14th century French poetry and womens’ studies—ones that are unlikely to lead to jobs that pay enough to enable repayment of the loans.

It should be noted that California has more lawyers than Japan and France combined.

By the way, I do consider myself to be a Bitter Judge. Why? For one thing, I am a judge in the South, which means there is no way I could ever be on the Supreme Court. In the last 90 years, only one judge from Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia combined (Justice Tom Clark, Texas, nominated by Lyndon Johnson over 40 years ago) has served on our nation’s highest court. Has the South been redlined? Show me the evidence that lawyers who grew up within 300 miles of New York City or went to Ivy League law schools are more qualified than those who are from Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami or Charlotte and attended excellent law schools like Texas or Duke. Yes, we like NASCAR and football and Law Firm 10, but we don’t put people into high office like Eliot Spitzer or allow unions to bankrupt our states like New York, New Jersey and California. Some of us may be rednecks, but we are not that dumb.

As a final point, BigLaw lawyers are no better in court than those who did not go to Ivy League schools or work in less-prestigious firms. If anything, juries are often turned off by BigLaw lawyers who may be technically brilliant and great at document review but lack the people skills needed to connect with the average juror.

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Bitter Lawyer just got classy. The following post is from a former Judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. We’re calling the judge “TexJudge.” Also read TexJudge’s response to this piece: Bitter Judge Strikes Again.

Y’all are great. Funny, informative and well-written. Many of the issues you cover need more attention than they have received, especially from the mainstream media.

I attended a top-25 law school (Boston University) and graduated in 1977. My third-year tuition was $7500, and most law jobs paid around $35-40000 per year at that time. BigLaw paid, if I recall, around $60000. Thirty years later, tuition is around $40000, roughly a 550% increase. BigLaw jobs now pay around $160000, a 250% increase, but most law jobs outside BigLaw, pay around $60000, a less than 75% increase.

Clearly, something is out of whack here. Tuition quintuples over 30 years at both top-tier and lesser-tier schools, but pay, for the 90% of grads who have no chance at a BigLaw job, has not even doubled. No wonder new law grads often have student loan debts well in excess of $100000 with little ability to pay them back—much less have enough left over for rent, food, etc.

Why are not law schools, or universities in general, criticized for their excessive prices? People go nuts if gas goes up 10%, but somehow law schools increase their tuition every year far in excess of inflation and totally avoid scrutiny from the media or the so-called consumer advocates. There are far too many law schools. I realize that folks who decide to go to law school need to do more due diligence to determine if it makes economic sense given the employment market for new lawyers (especially from lower-tier schools). However, don’t the schools themselves have some obligation to warn applicants that going to law school may be a very risky financial gamble? Should schools be required, perhaps as a requirement for their students to be eligible to receive government-backed student loans, to make true and accurate (under penalty of perjury) stats public regarding the employment rates of their graduates for the preceding five years?