Infinite Loathing

Rumors about the legal profession’s demise have become so common lately that one can almost be faulted for not knowing its dismal state. The WSJ legal blog and Above the Law were among the earliest and most vocal critics of the profession’s future, but recently even the mainstream media have started banging the drum. Both the Los Angeles and New York Times have run a variety of stories about the dearth of jobs for law school graduates, their mountains of non-dischargeable debt, and the responsibility law schools have to reduce their admissions.

I’m not sure if it’s that I like a good challenge or that I can’t stand to be on the winning side of an issue, or simply that I don’t want to have friends, but I’d like to take on the whole world in this debate. I think they’re a bit myopic and unduly alarmist about the relative state of the legal profession.

The second episode of The Deep End aired last night and whereas the premiere was so bad it was good, this week’s installment was merely mundane.

After watching the last week’s episode, I’d expected that the show might turn into a drinking game, in which after each legal error that a seven year-old could spot one took a shot (though one would probably have died of alcohol poisoning by the first commercial break). However, this week simply built on last week’s ridiculous assumptions and failed to add further hilarity.

Last night ABC aired its new legal drama, The Deep End. I could argue that The Deep End demonstrates that screenwriting as a serious craft is dead, but if you’ve watched any three-letter network lately (other than HBO), you know that already.

Every decade or so, someone in TV land who narrowly escaped a career in law decides the world would be fascinated by watching the lives of lawyers. In a better world, we would cast stones at such people and leave their utterly implausible and trumped up shows unwatched. In our world, LA Law was a Thursday night staple for nearly a decade in the late 80’s and Ally McBeal helped establish Fox as a serious network in the late 90’s.

I wanted to write about why the couple that crashed the President’s first state dinner should be strung up and publicly flogged for days on end. But editorial rejected it because they wanted to me write something about the LSAT.

So then I offered to write an analysis of why our failure to punish a couple who crash a President’s state dinner in hopes of landing a Bravo reality show indicates that the post WWII American empire is dead, dead, dead. That was rejected by editorial on grounds that it was the same as the first story (which it kind of was, but still), and because they wanted something about the LSAT.

Instead, I’ve been ”asked” to write a piece far more complicated, which will inevitably be rife with speculation and controversy. Thus, I wade into the sordid issue of averaging LSAT scores.

I had already written the following when I read Colin Elzie’s rebuke, published late yesterday. He claims my topic selection as wandering into irrelevance. Of course, he’s right and I must apologize. But not all of us can author seminal pieces like Elzie’s Pterodactyl Time!, an exploration of dinosaurs on the LSAT, or Outback LSAT, providing completely relevant information about taking the LSAT in Australia.

Glass houses, my friend.

I want to make three responses to Mr. Elzie’s comments.

The first is a new poll that I believe Mr. Elzie will find far more relevant than my prior writings.

Second, in anticipation of the results, I’ve attached a google map with helpful information for Colin.

Last, I ask the reader to consider whether Mr. Elzie would more properly be the subject of the following post than David Letterman.

I thought I was a veritable Thurgood Marshall when I pointed out the apparent disproportionality of Plaxico Burress’ sentence when compared with other celebrities who’ve acted badly.

And then someone at the justice department decided it was time to reel in Roman Polanski. Gold. Solid gold.

I’ll just set the stage quickly, as I’m sure readers know at least something about this already.

The facts:

Roman Polanski had already directed Chinatown (which, if you haven’t seen, you need to rent immediately) when, at the age of 44, he invited then 13 year-old Samantha Geimer to a photo shoot at Jack Nicholson’s house. Long story short, after plying her with champagne, a hot tub, and Quaaludes (the rufi of the 70’s for younger readers), Polanski raped her twice (vaginal and anal, just to ruin your day) and then forced her to engage in oral sex. Geimer has consistently claimed that she objected and asked to be taken home.

As depicted in the 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, some believe the presiding judge was motivated by his own vanity when dealing with Polanski’s high-profile case. Because Geimer was reluctant to undergo a trial, the district attorney and Polanski’s lawyers had apparently reached a plea bargain in which Polanski would plead guilty for unlawful sex, the other five charges would be dropped, and Polanski would serve no jail time in excess of a 42 day psychiatric evaluation.

I know that you all have been waiting with bated breath for the continuation of my analysis of how the Lost castaways would fare on the LSAT. Without further ado…

The 150s:

John Locke: 159

Background: No, he isn’t the 17th century British empiricist risen from the dead. Nor is there much reason to believe that he bears any important resemblance to the author of The Two Treatises of Government and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. His pre-crash life was mundane and quietly tragic. He only met his birth father when the man tricked Locke into giving him his kidney. He was paralyzed before the plane crash, only to mysteriously recover on the island. He was employed as a regional sales manager for a box company (hand me a gun now, please) and before that as a building inspector. There’s no suggestion that Locke attended college.

LSAT Analysis: Though not formally educated, Locke is clearly intelligent and has substantial problem solving skills. He can track anything on the island, was the one who originally found and opened the ‘hatch’, built a battering ram that looked like it was torn from Da Vinci’s notebooks, and made glue out of sap. The guy is a bald MacGyver.

Very recently, I was in one of the world’s most beautiful places (Kauai), when regrettably, I got really sick. As in ten days of not being able to get up and walk outside sick. As in I was stuck in a room staring at the walls like a POW sunrise to sunset. It sucked.

By the fourth day in this miserable (albeit well appointed) prison cell, I had read every book I’d brought, twice. I’d read the entire internet. I’d even acquiesced to reading the fairer sex’s tripartite news lifeline: People, Us, and Life & Style. (The last of these experiences was profoundly damaging, and looking back at it, I now believe that it exacerbated my illness).

I was clawing the walls when a friend asked if I’d ever seen ABC’s Lost. I told him that I hadn’t, and in all honesty, I’d quietly put it in the same mental box as Grey’s Anatomy, American Idol, and Everybody Loves Raymond: pieces of popular culture that left me cold.

But because I was laid up, and because iTunes sells seasons I, II,III, and IV, I gave it a try. By try, I mean eight to ten hours of Lost viewing daily, not including the obligatory post-episode discourse with my fellow ailing friends. I’m nowhere near current (since, as I was surprised to learn, Lost seasons contain as many as 25 episodes), but during my confinement, I saw more of these characters than anyone should.

Apologies for my inattention to this blog. I got married (to a lovely girl) in Kauai and then got swine flu. I’m happy to report that the former was a much more pleasant experience.

The following doesn’t really pertain to the LSAT directly (or even indirectly), and because any attempt to relate it might seem disingenuous, I won’t try. But some familiar news has irked me and the people I ask don’t resonate my concerns, so I’m going out to you, our loyal MSS readers. You’ve probably considered this in passing, but in the way many thoughts are, it was likely lost in tumult of your daily life.

I’m talking, of course, about the sentencing of Plaxico Burress, the (former) New York Giants wide receiver. If you don’t follow the NFL, then you should know that he was indicted on two counts of criminal possession of a weapon for carrying a concealed handgun into a club. He inadvertently discharged the gun into his thigh, injuring only himself.

Verdict: Burress accepted a plea which requires him to serve two years in prison, with another two years of supervision afterward.

Okay, so I’m not the first to get to this. Or the second. In fact, it kind of feels like everyone I know or read on the internet has commented on the NYT piece about the guy who was denied admission to the New York bar because he had too much debt. But it’s very appropriate for MSS’s readers, and I have my own reasons for following this story with some interest, so here goes.

The apparent facts, such as they are:

Robert Bowman apparently didn’t have much money. He thus had to work and borrow for his education, from community college to Hastings Law School, accruing some $230,000 in student loan debt along the way. While this might sound like a large sum, it isn’t unimaginable when tuition alone for graduate schools is creeping towards $40,000 a year.