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.

First disclaimer: This won’t live up to it’s billing, because I have a high regard for Ashby Jones at the WSJ Legal Blog and Ellie Mystal and David Lat, the editors of Above the Law. Collectively, they’ve subjected the business of law (especially larger firms) to public scrutiny for the first time. Whereas in days past, layoffs and bonus patterns were only anecdotally known, these blogs have exhaustively chronicled firm behavior, and in the process, literally changed the legal profession. I have no doubt the world’s better off with these blogs, and it’s not that I think they exaggerate or fabricate their statistics. It’s rather that I think they’ve allowed a certain set of phenomena to lull them into myopia.

Second disclaimer: I’m co-owner of the nation’s best LSAT prep company by far, and so it’s natural to think I’m drumming up business. It’s a fair charge, but we at MSS and Blueprint have been far more critical of increasing law school enrollments than any other test prep company, and I’d argue, as critical as ATL and the WSJ. We broke the widely reported story about the record number LSAT takers in September of 2009, we’ve urged students to attend less expensive law schools, and featured stories by law students about how living on loans has changed their lives. I, myself, believe that too many people attend law school and that many attend for the wrong reasons. Nevertheless…

The current legal climate
So much has been written that I’d need far more space than I currently have to take on the brunt of it. In this post, I just want to reexamine the following story:

“…with law schools accepting as many (or more) students as ever in a severely contracting professional market, graduating law school students will be saddled with record high tuition that they’ll have little way to pay back, creating a generational crisis.”

I think that’s just silly, though I agree with all but the last clause. It’s true that while the number of legal jobs is contracting, law schools continue to accept and graduate as many (or more) students as ever. It’s also true that tuition and average student loan debt have reached all times highs and law school graduates will be saddled with this debt for years to come despite their increasingly poor job prospects (unless they’re rescued by some future student-loan, debt relief legislation). Nevertheless, I’m not sure why any of this is really newsworthy. In fact, law school still strikes me as one of the better deals in town.

Law school still a better bang for your buck. Comparatively.
Let’s allow that top paying jobs (those starting anywhere near $160,000) will be largely restricted to students who graduate from top 20 schools (in the top half of their class or better). Let’s also assume that (1) students from third tier law schools might have difficulty finding jobs at any pay rate, and that (2) the great majority of students who fall between these two groups will have some difficulty finding jobs and will generally earn somewhere between 50k and 120k depending factors such as location, practice area, and a substantial measure of luck.

What’s striking about that picture is how much better this situation is than most other graduate-trained professions. Doctoral students in the humanities would commit unspeakably hideous acts for such a rosy professional landscape. It’s similar throughout the humanities, but I know a bit about the job market for Ph.D.s in Philosophy, so allow me to share.

Why there aren’t thousands of professional philosophers
The market for Ph.D.s in philosophy of the mid 1990s was far better than it is currently, but still was far worse that the legal market of today. One widely reported study (from the Review of Metaphysics, September of 1996) showed that of 341 Ph.D.s granted in 1995-1996, only 6 had secured tenure track jobs in top 15 ranked philosophy departments by 1998 and only 11 more had landed jobs anywhere in the top 50 departments. So, of 341 Ph.D.s, only 26 found tenure-track positions within two years of graduation, or a whopping 7.6% placement rate. Put another way, 92% of Ph.D.s in philosophy failed to find tenure-track positions during this period.

Let’s all just agree that if only 7.6% of law graduates had found associate level employment within 2 years of graduation, there would be rioting in the streets. Moreover, those Ph.D. numbers are from the mid-1990’s days of wine and roses. Today it’s far worse. Duke University, a top-30 philosophy department, announced that they’re not accepting students into their Ph.D. program next year (presumably because of the current economic climate). Indiana University of Pennsylvania is requiring its faculty to explain why they shouldn’t eliminate their philosophy major altogether. Anecdotally, I know quite a few recent Ph.D.s from top 15 schools, and the vast majority of them are either severely underemployed or have left the job market all together.

And this isn’t restricted to philosophy either. In History, English and other disciplines in the humanities, the market for tenure-track posts has been extremely constrained for years. With dramatic cuts in government educational spending and corresponding cutbacks in private institutions, market conditions have become downright harrowing. Graduates of institutions outside the top twenty are likely to never find a tenure-track position at all, and even graduates from top 10 schools are likely to spend years on the market taking adjunct and terminal positions as they wait for a tenure-track position to open. Even when you get one, jobs are apparently never safe in academia. Kings College (London) is forcing all of its humanities professors to reapply for their jobs in the coming year, and the same is being required by a small university in Texas.

How many languages did YOU learn for your JD?
Just so we can calibrate the various rigor of these pursuits, I’d like to commend all my friends who rocked the LSAT and then went on to place well at top tier schools. You’re smart, accomplished people who have a lot to be proud of. But let’s not get so confused as to think that this begins to compare to what your counterparts in top-tier Ph.D programs have experienced.

These programs almost always take at least six years, but often upwards of a decade, to complete. It’s common that students learn two foreign languages, though students are required to learn as many as four (e.g. Classic programs frequently require two modern and two ancient languages). By their graduation, it’s expected that students will have a distinguished record of presenting papers in professional conferences and publishing articles in professional journals, in addition, of course, to writing a dissertation which is supposed to be an original contribution to their field. These expectations are part of the reason that so few students actually complete their programs. Whereas almost everyone who enters a top-tier law school graduates, top Ph.D. programs in the humanities often have attrition rates of 50% or more. And again, among these noble few, 92% will fail to find tenure-track jobs. It’s fully expected that a Ph.D. candidate who has any hope of gaining employment anywhere should have a command of her subject that will rival junior professors in her department. How many 3Ls have a command of the law school curriculum rivaling that of junior professors at their law schools? I’m going to go with very, very few.

It’s not uncommon for applications for entry level, tenure-track positions to include five or more published articles and a dissertation published by a noted press (such as Cambridge or Oxford) that’s been reviewed by the leading scholars in the field. And we’re talking about hundreds of these applications for a single job that might pay $40,000 to $60,000. If it ever, ever got this bad for law school graduates, every law school in the country, save a precious few household names, would be burned to the ground.

The contrast grows ever starker
Whereas graduates from top law schools can frequently pick the city in which they’d like to live, even the top ranking Ph.D. applicants from the top schools apply nationally and often internationally. I actually know people, who after years of study at top schools, ended up in Singapore and rural Canada simply because those were the best offers that came in during the years they were on the market. And remember, whereas law students upon graduation are essentially unable to perform almost any task required by their profession, emerging Ph.D.s in the humanities have generally taught a number of undergraduate courses (typically graduate students teach for five or so years as part of their fellowships), published papers, and often books.

The dollars and cents
So, I hear you saying, maybe the jobs are hard to get but the Ph.D.’s debt burden is a fraction of the law school graduate’s. That’s true, but only superficially so. Humanities graduate fellowships are quite modest (tuition + $15,000 a year for a good fellowship) and almost inevitably require students to take out loans or work second jobs to make ends meet (as teaching and/or grading is typically required for the fellowship). Students who take out loans will often borrow $5,000 to $10,000 a year simply to scrape by for as many as 6 to 10 years. It’s therefore common for humanities Ph.D.s to leave with $50,000-$100,000 in total educational debt, and that’s after living close to the poverty line for as much as a decade.

While this total amount is lower than corresponding law school students, this debt looms even larger for these people than law school debt because humanities salaries start off as a fraction of law salaries and never come close to catching up. If you think that owing 200k is a big deal when your salary is $120,000-$180,000 over the course of the next 7 years, think about owing 75k or more when your salary will be limited to $40,000 to $60,000 for the same period.

Initially, you might think that the respective debt to annual salary ratio is similar in both cases. The difference is that the Ph.D.’s pay scale is so low that it allows for virtually no dispensable income, so the percentage of the Ph.D.s salary she can put toward her debt is far lower. This is one of the reasons a relatively lower amount of debt can still shackle a Ph.D. for far longer than the law student. If law school graduates have golden handcuffs, the Ph.D.’s are lead.

(Admission: Because humanities Ph.D.’s are borrowing less money per year (though for many more years) a greater proportion of theirs will be subsidized (Stafford or Perkins loans) and therefore at lower interest rates. Nevertheless, this is little consolation for such blighted souls.)

If we’re concerned with employment prospects, relative debt burden, and the temporal investment in the respective degrees, law is still a cakewalk compared to a Ph.D. in the humanities. The relative debt burden and likelihood of employment both strongly favor law jobs, even though it’s clear that the Ph.D. candidate has invested significantly more time and effort.

And you thought Ph.D. programs sounded bad…
Moreover, the Ph.D.’s aren’t even the worst off. Apparently, and I find this shocking, universities have not yet shut down their journalism departments. You can still go to Columbia or Northwestern and pay law school level tuition (albeit for fewer years) and then try to procure a job in an industry that barely exists any longer. Amidst the dying cries of daily newspapers and weekly news magazines, it’s profoundly hard to understand how one could justify graduate school in journalism, especially since, unlike law and academia, graduate training is not a precondition for a career in the field. And yet, there stand Columbia and Northwestern with their doors still open.

What the hell is an MFA?
If you think that’s bad, there’s a group that’s still worse off (though I do think this is the end of the line). Allegedly, there are these Masters of Fine Arts degrees, which come primarily in two varieties: the artistic and the literary. What they have in common is that each prepares students for jobs that don’t currently exist and have, in fact, more or less never existed. You can still get an MFA in poetry in this country, which prepares you to be… well, a poet laureate and not much else. They also give MFAs in short story writing, modern sculpture, ceramics and, yes, the cherished and ever-relevant printmaking. Top-tier MFA programs cost as much as top law schools (though, again, these are generally two year degrees) and their graduate’s job prospects are among the poorest in the world. Yet, these programs continue to be incredibly competitive, with RISD and Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop easily rivaling top law schools in their selectivity.

Surely, if the current plight of law constitutes a generational crisis, the state of academic Ph.Ds, graduate school in journalism, and MFAs should be nothing short of global cataclysm. Yet oddly, you dear reader, probably don’t think so. Perhaps this is because you believe the law school graduate’s plight affects more people than any of the more exotic pursuits discussed above. But taken as a whole, the number of students graduating from the variety of graduate programs whose plight is worse than law school graduates might well rival or exceed the number of people coming out of law schools. So it can’t be the sheer number of people affected.

Why we don’t hear about the plights of Ph.D. students
Another, more subtle but perhaps more accurate, explanation of our greater concern with law school students’ plight is the sense that these other groups ought to have a tougher road. While reading about these other graduate programs, perhaps you thought, however fleetingly, sure, it’s tough for them, but they love what they do and that should make up for some of this. Presumably people are in these fields, the thinking goes, because they’re pursuing a deep passion, whereas people in law just chose that path because it was an reliable route to wealth and status. A comfortable life, on this view, should be easier for the lawyer than the artist or scholar. After all, if it weren’t, we’d all be artists and scholars…

When the lawyer’s prospects of wealth are severely diminished, we cry injustice because his expectation of wealth was (1) reasonable and (2) a principle part of his motivation for pursuing the career in the first place. The reason that we don’t have similar feelings about the Ph.D. is presumably that that we think (1) he could never really have had a reasonable expectation of wealth and (2) we expect that he must have had different motives for embarking upon the profession. Injustice for the Ph.D., on this view, would occur if he couldn’t pursue his chosen passion. If, for example, he wasn’t afforded conditions that allowed scholarly reflection and time to read. But relative poverty seems to an expected part of the deal for people who indulge such passions.

The Grand Conclusion
There might well be something to this kind of story. But if it keeps us from crying for the Ph.D or MFA, it should also qualify our pity for the law school graduate. It’s not so much that the person who wanted to dedicate his life to representing disabled children, abused women, or indigenous people couldn’t find work. It’s more that the corporate transactional attorney is making less money than he expected.

But then this is less a generational crisis than it is the end of a reliable road to wealth. While certainly that isn’t good news, neither is it the human tragedy that someone seems to be selling every time we read a newspaper or a blog.

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation.

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.

New associates are still arguing in court, making out with each other in the firm during business hours, walking around looking harried and yet not really doing anything, and, of course, procuring justice for incredibly complex legal matters in the course of one day. But whereas last week learning of this silliness was somewhat funny, this week we already knew the joke and began to get bored.

Our favorite first-week associates are still doing an amazing amount of business development, this time with Addy landing a client who claimed he wanted assistance incorporating his business. Sadly, it turned out to be a medicinal marijuana depot that shipped the Sterling law firm a large box of their product, only to have the Feds raid the law firm and discover the contraband. But don’t worry. When they threatened to shut down the business, Hart Sterling, the senior partner, “saved the firm” by claiming it was his and was taken away in handcuffs. Right…

It’s not just that is doesn’t really happen that way, as much as it’s just entirely trumped up drama. It doesn’t even seem minimally plausible to a lay person that being unwittingly shipped a box of marijuana by misrepresenting clients could lead to such a circus.

The only jarring part of last night’s episode for me was that they cut to shots of downtown LA’s Stanley Mosk courthouse. From the outside it was the familiar courthouse, but from the inside it was a clean, modern building with potted plants lining the halls. If you want to know how far The Deep End is from the actual practice of law, you should review its depiction of the courthouse interior and then (if you’re lucky enough to be in LA) go down to the actual 110 N. Hill Street and take a stroll through its halls. Suffice it to say, it’s a place no one’s unhappy to leave and couldn’t be further from the TV depiction.

I won’t darken your day rehearsing the utterly ridiculous resolution to the pot saga, but rest assured that all’s well that ends well. Nevertheless, given its lackluster ratings, one expects The Deep End might be close to its own end. And that would be well enough for many of us.

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation

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.

And they didn’t just invade our minds for an hour each week. Instead, they sent generations of young people to law school in droves. Naïve men simply assumed they too would become promiscuous, sports car-driving divorce attorneys like Arnie Becker and equally naïve women fully expected that, like Ally, they too could weigh 90 pounds, drink every evening away at the bar downstairs wearing provocative skirt-suits, and once in a while pretend to do some legal work (all the while being oddly disconsolate).

Again, better people would have stoned the producers who dreamed up these shows, as all too often we have interpreted their shows as career advice.

Hot off their success in luring people to medical school with Grey’s Anatomy (apparently “Grey’s” for aficionados), ABC is hoping The Deep End will do the same for law. The truth is, it’s not the worst show on television (primarily because Everybody Loves Raymond is still on) but it doesn’t yet have the allure of LA Law or Ally.

It focuses on the law firm of Sterling, someone, someone, and someone, but more specifically on four “brilliant” first-year associates making their initial foray into the legal profession. In the background linger the firm’s partners who, as they torture associates, fight over whether the firm should make money or help people. Really.

The Cast

It’s difficult to tell the associates apart because they’re essentially they same; budding optimists who, on the first day of their careers keep reminding people that they’re “damn good attorneys.” But there are some superficial things we can go on.

Addy Fisher is the somewhat homely (there I said it) ingénue from Case Western who gets arrested in the first episode for breaking through a security checkpoint in order to file papers with the court (because it happens). She reminds people how “brilliant” they all are as she steals cupcakes off other’s desks.

Dylan Hewitt, her male equivalent, attended Columbia Law School before he joined the firm. In the first episode, Dylan sits down with a judge ex parte in chambers and convinces him to reverse his custody ruling for a hot client and later has sympathy sex with the firm’s paralegal who had just failed the bar. Dylan’s played by actor Matt Long who actually attended Western Kentucky University. Really.

Liam Priory attended Cambridge (where they’re apparently now granting American JD’s?) and his only defining feature is that he has a weakness for hot women (because that’s not true of other men). In the first episode, he cost the firm a wealthy client by having sex with the client’s daughter. But don’t worry; he made it up to everyone by bringing in the business of an Israeli fashion maven by having sex with her as well. We also learn that he had his way with fellow associate, Beth, when they first arrived at the firm and they have sex again at end of the episode, just to let us know he’s for real.

Beth Branford, from Stanford Law School, completes a CEO transition at a major company about a week after being hired (it happens). Beth is seen-as attractive, though her face is nearly as wide as Evander Holyfield’s and she’s terribly bow-legged (there, I’ve said it). Beth has daddy-issues, evinced by her father actually telling her that she is too weak to have worked at his firm (again, cut from the headlines).

So that’s our cast. The Deep End’s most notable feature is that everyone is stunningly more attractive than their real life counterparts, and while this is true of most TV shows, it’s especially the case here. The legal secretaries are hot twenty-somethings, the clients are gorgeous, and even the partners would do in a pinch. Nowhere is there an obese slob who bills his life away.

There are worse ways to waste an hour of your life (e.g. The Mentalist), but it’s crucial to recognize that almost nothing you see on The Deep End is rooted in reality. To assist you, dear reader, in distinguishing the show’s unrealistic moments, I made of list of just a few things.

Fact vs. Fiction:

Fiction:
The hallway around the firm office floor is about 15 feet wide and the ceiling is about 25 feet high.
Reality:
If you look, the firm is presented as being housed in the Paul Hastings/ City National towers in Los Angeles where the lobbies are barely this large.

Fiction:
Rowdy Kaiser claims that the firm screened 1000 people for 4 spots.
Reality:
It’s more like 10:1, even at the most selective firms.

Fiction:
We see Dylan combing through books in the law library to look for a way to help a client.
Reality:
Databases Westlaw and LexisNexis essentially replaced law libraries at least 10 years ago. He’d be searching a database alone, not with an attractive paralegal to bounce ideas off of.

Fiction:
Dylan argues in court less than a week after being hired.
Reality:
Attorneys almost never go to court at prestigious firms, let alone in their first week.

Fiction:
In order to make up for torturing her, partner Susan Oppenheim takes Addy Fisher for “$100 pizza at Mozza”.
Reality:
Pizzeria Mozza, sister restaurant to Nancy Silverton & Mario Batali’s Osteria Mozza, serves pizza for $13-22. They’re on the corner of Melrose and Highland, call for reservations.

Fiction:
In the first week, of 4 associates, two have had sex with each other twice (Liam and Beth), one has had sex with a secretary (Liam), and one with a paralegal (Dylan). There’s less sex on Diary of a Call Girl.
Reality:
Varies by case, but expect a good deal less, especially if you’re not hot.

So that’s it for the premiere. See you next week.

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation

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.

Once upon a time, law schools used the average of your LSAT scores in the admissions process, and none of us even bothered to ask why.

Many thought it was unrelated when, in June of 2006, the ABA replaced their longstanding requirement that schools report their students’ average scores with a new requirement that schools report only their students’ highest scores. Mind you, strictly speaking, this change had nothing to do with law school admissions, but rather with the particular data that law schools reported to the ABA. Law schools were still free to consider your average or highest LSAT for admissions.

But the all-important US News law school rankings treat the LSAT scores of admitted students as one of the most important factors in rankings. In fact, US News simply uses the ABA data when calculating their rankings.

It’s all very confusing, but imagine that law schools are considering two people: Ali and Behar.

Ali has taken the LSAT twice and initially scored a 150 and then a 170.
Behar took the LSAT only once and scored a 164.

Were the old ABA requirements in effect, where the schools report accepted students’ average LSATs, Behar is obviously the more attractive student (all things equal) because she has an average of 164, whereas Ali’s two scores average to 160. Because US News weighs LSAT scores so heavily, an incoming class with low LSAT scores literally lowers the law schools’ ranking. So, on the old ABA requirements the schools have a strong motive to take Behar.

With the new ABA requirement in effect, however, schools now have a strong motive to take Ali. After all, the LSAT they now report for Ali is a 170, which is higher than Behar’s 164.

It’s a bit ironic. Schools rank you according to your LSAT score, and it turns out that they themselves are also ranked according to your score. Because the ABA, and more importantly, US News, now cares about your highest score, schools have a very strong motive to do the same.

Accordingly, soon after the ABA decision, rumors circulated that schools would now rely only on your highest LSAT score in admissions. The problem is that there isn’t a great deal of clarity over which schools average and which schools don’t.

So, we at MSS thought that we’d help out by researching which law schools average and which ones don’t. We (that is, our tireless Sarah) asked the top 20 law schools and threw in a couple others for good measure. We got information by checking schools’ websites and (when possible) speaking with their representatives.

Based on the factors described above, we expected almost all schools to rely on your highest LSAT score, not your average. We anticipated that only the most selective schools would consider your average (e.g. Yale) because they can afford to be selective. Well, we were wrong. Quite surprisingly so.

Without any further ado, the results:

Schools that claim to consider the highest score:
Yale
University of Chicago
Northwestern
Cornell
UCLA
Pepperdine
Southwestern

Schools that claim to average:
NYU
Berkeley
Duke
University of Virginia
Georgetown
Loyola

Schools that won’t commit either way:
Harvard
Stanford
Columbia
University of Pennsylvania
University of Michigan
UT Austin
USC

No clear answer
It turns out only about 1/3 of the schools we surveyed take your highest score, another third average, and the last (and most annoying) third won’t say one way or the other. Members of this last, most annoying group often don’t want to go on record. Some claimed that they look at a candidate’s entire LSAT history but didn’t explain how they evaluated the information.

One point of agreement
Schools were, however, unequivocal about their treatment of canceled scores. Just about every school we contacted said that one cancelled LSAT score had essentially no effect on an application. Some recommended, however, that if you have two or more cancelled scores, you include an addendum to your application explaining why (assuming you have a good explanation).

So what’s the deal?
The deal is that the ABA change had some effect on how law schools view LSAT scores, but not the extreme effect some have claimed. Now schools have a motive to consider your highest score, but some are sticking to their guns on principled grounds. The University of Michigan, for example, adheres to the ABA requirement of going with the highest score but “consider the average score… because data provided by the Law School Admissions Council suggests that it has the greatest predictive utility.”

The takeaway
While confusion still exists, the moral of this story is clear. When in doubt, students should cancel an LSAT score instead of taking a low score, since a significant number of schools still average. But if you don’t feel ready on test day, it’s definitely better to have a no-show than either a cancelled or a low score, since law schools (at least those we talked with) don’t care at all about the first of these.

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation

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.

Is David Letterman a Hypocrite?

Someone is trying to blackmail David Letterman for having sex with employees.
Let’s hear it for post-industrial, Western society. Aren’t we doing well…

The facts:

Apparently, David Letterman had sexual relations with some of the women who worked for him. It’s not yet clear if he was married at the time of these affairs, but Letterman’s public apology to his wife on Monday suggests that these relationships may have overlapped with his long courtship of his wife.

Some guy who knew about these affairs decided it would be a good time to extort Letterman, and in high Godfather form, chose to leave a note in Letterman’s car saying “I know that you’ve done some terrible things.” (I’m Italian and this still strikes me as ridiculously over the top).

Letterman gave the man a fake check and later pressed charges against him. Since that time, the man has plead not guilty. Surely, priceless bits are to follow.

Since the news broke, however, a number of people have claimed that Letterman is a hypocrite. Presumably, this charge was made in light of the fact that Letterman had sex with women who’ve worked on his show (perhaps while in a relationship) and yet has made critical jokes about Bill Clinton and others for their sexual indiscretions. This got me thinking that the charge of hypocrisy is levied quite frequently but is sometimes, I suspect, misapplied.

So, what better time for some conceptual clarification?

The Definition(s) of Hypocrisy:

Most people believe that a hypocrite is someone who claims to advocate a certain principle or state of affairs but acts inconsistently. Yet some of the most credible authorities (in particular wikipedia and the noted philologist Hot-For-Words) point out that historically a hypocrite is someone who says something inconsistent with what he or she believes to be true.

According to this traditional definition, if I claim that San Jose is the capital of California when I know quite well that it’s Sacramento, I’m guilty of hypocrisy. In that sense, hypocrisy is just an instance of lying.

Whether this is or was the actual definition, most of us don’t use the word that way. Our colloquial notion of hypocrisy involves action that is inconstant with one’s proclaimed convictions.

Both the Oxford English Dictionary (membership required) and Dictionary.com define hypocrisy in a way that seems to bring these ideas together. They define hypocrisy as a pretense of having virtuous beliefs or principles that one does not really possess, and instances of this.

The last part referring to ‘instances of this’ allows us to see the connection. Whereas the traditional definition focuses on a discrepancy between one’s belief and one’s statements, our colloquial use focuses on a discrepancy between one’s action and one’s statements. We’ve shifted from focusing on belief to action, but this is because a person’s action is being treated as a reliable indicator of his belief. Inconsistent behavior is treated as evidence that we don’t really feel the way we say we do.

In light of one’s self-proclaimed concern for the homeless, one’s inconsistent action (say the failure to donate to any charitable organizations that helps the homeless) is interpreted as evidence that one doesn’t actually care. Strictly speaking, this is a fallacious inference, as one still might care and simply be unable to act on his convictions because he is weak, poor, or irrational. But absent any reasonable explanation, the lack of effort does look inconsistent with a belief in charity.

Still, the question remains, is David Letterman a hypocrite?

The Original Definition:

With regard to the original definition, in which one explicitly avows principles he doesn’t have, Letterman doesn’t come close to qualifying as a hypocrite. Not only has he failed to avow any principles, we don’t know what he truly believes either. His jokes about Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer and others aren’t assertive statements. A joke about Clinton’s infidelity isn’t tantamount to the claim that infidelity is wrong.

Nor do these jokes necessarily imply Letterman’s own attitude. Some claim that this is because he doesn’t write his jokes. But this is beside the point. Even if he does write them, the telling of a joke does not give us insight into the comic’s actual belief. One could make a joke suggesting that Kate Moss is too thin, even if one actually believes that she isn’t thin enough. What is required for the joke to be successful is that the comic believes that the audience would agree that Kate Moss is too thin, or even that they believe that she’s generally believed to be too thin. But the comic’s own beliefs seem entirely irrelevant to the question.

Because one cannot infer anything about the beliefs of the comic from the telling of a joke, one could never discover Letterman’s beliefs about monogamy from his jokes about notoriously unfaithful public figures.

In short, we can’t show an inconsistency between Letterman’s stated views and his actual beliefs, because his jokes don’t give us insight into either. He can’t therefore have been shown to be a hypocrite in the original sense.

The Colloquial Definition:

The question remains whether David Letterman is a hypocrite according to our colloquial definition. Did he say one thing and then do another?

I want to assume that Letterman’s affairs did occur during his marriage, and that it was during this period that he made jokes about either Clinton or Spitzer, just because this would seem to make the strongest case for his hypocrisy.

If Letterman were making jokes about a public figure’s infidelity on the same day he himself was unfaithful, would this make him a hypocrite?

Despite what might be an initial inclination to say ‘yes’, I think the answer has to be ‘no’ for two different reasons.

First is the difficulty we explored earlier with inferring a comic’s beliefs from his joke. Letterman might believe that Clinton acted entirely appropriately, but still joke about it because he knows his audience believes the action was inappropriate. Because we can’t infer Letterman’s belief from his jokes, we can’t know his behavior is contrary to anything he believes. Nor do his jokes constitute assertive statements.

A second difficulty is that there might be an important distinction between the two cases. Let’s assume that when making jokes about a public figure’s infidelity, say Bill Clinton’s, Letterman believed that what Clinton did was wrong. Let’s also assume that at the same time Letterman was having an affair while he was married (though, again, this has not been established). Then we’d have Letterman’s belief that Clinton’s infidelity was wrong and, at the same time, his own unfaithful behavior. Surely, this would have to qualify as hypocritical, right?

I still think this might fall short of hypocrisy. For Letterman might hold that Clinton’s behavior is wrong not just because he was having an affair while married, but because the office Clinton held required him to adopt a more stringent level of moral commitment as our leader or perhaps because such indiscretions might place the US at a strategic disadvantage.

In short, if there were a relevant dissimilarity between Clinton’s infidelity and Letterman’s, hypocrisy might not obtain in this case either. Furthermore, since it’s Letterman’s beliefs that are at issue, he would have to believe there was no relevant dissimilarity between the cases for hypocrisy to obtain.

Though it might seem hard to think of a case that actually satisfies these requirements, they’re out there. Elliot Spitizer seems to qualify. Spitzer, as state attorney general, was outspoken about the abuse of political power and, in particular, condemned the use of prostitutes. Yet he was also a particularly active client of the Emperor’s Club prostitution ring. Because Spitzer was speaking literally (not joking) on so many occasions in which he condemned both the abuse of power and the use of prostitutes, his own behavior seems clearly inconsistent with his often expressed view. So Spitzer seems to be a hypocrite.

Can you think of others? Other than Colin Elzie, I mean.

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation.

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.

Apparently the judge, whether guided by a sense of justice or his own self-interest, was disposed to reject the plea bargain. When Polanski learned of this, he fled to France where he has citizenship. He’s lived there for the 32 years since and has failed to show a great deal of remorse, either for his flight or the rape of Geimer.

In an interview with 60 Minutes a year after the incident, Polanski claimed that Geimer “ …wasn’t unschooled in sexual matters. [Geimer] was consenting and willing.” Given that she was thirteen years old, drunk, on Quaaludes, and asking to be taken home, one wonders what non-consenting would have looked like to Polanski.

What makes this interesting is that a growing number of high profile people in the entertainment industry are demanding that Polanski, picked up by officials in Switzerland, be released. One isn’t surprised that Woody Allen is a supporter, as he had a sexual relationship with his own daughter (adopted, if that makes it better?) and then married her. But over 100 Hollywood figures, from Martin Scorsese to Harvey Weinstein, signed a petition demanding Polanski’s release.

Whoopi Goldberg, surely in a quest to supplant Jessica Simpson as our nation’s dimmest light, reportedly claimed that Polanski’s action wasn’t “rape-rape.” Again, this prompts one to wonder how gruesome, non-consensual and violent an event must be to qualify as “rape-rape.” One also wonders how relentlessly we’d pursue any man who made such an outlandish remark.

There isn’t yet a particularly coherent argument for why Polanski should be released, but it seems clear that his status as a celebrity must be involved. A couple of silly arguments are sometimes gestured at but I haven’t seen them explicated at length. Polanski advocates might be referencing these obliquely because they realize direct examination would show said arguments to be fallacious. So I thought I’d subject these to just a bit of scrutiny. Without further ado…

Apparently, some believe one or more of the following sentiments carry some mitigating force.

• It was a long time ago.

Kind of. I mean, it’s been 32 years, so that is a long time. Perhaps time heals all wounds and/or we should forgive and forget. But there’s a fallacy at work here.

There are at least two different issues in the Polanski case: (1) he raped Geimer and (2) he fled from trial. Even if we granted that the time lapse does mitigate the first (though I’m not suggesting such a view), the time lapse cannot mitigate the second. It has been a long time since the incident, but that’s because Polanski fled the trial.

Polanski’s flight was the cause of the time lapse that prevented this issue from being resolved, and thus it would be incoherent to treat the flight as a mitigating condition for this entire incident. While it has indeed been a long time since this all happened, that’s entirely due to Polanski’s evasion.

As an aside, I’m not even sure if it would change our intuitions if he’d been conscripted into the Army to fight in foreign lands for 32 years, only then to return home and face the charges. In that case, we might have the sense that he was denied that chance to deal with these issues in a timely manner. But in this case, Polanski did something terrible, illegally fled prosecution, and now his supporters are hoping the government isn’t still mad.

Furthermore, the mind shudders when imagining the rippling implications that would result if successful flight from prosecution somehow could reduce the punishment for a crime.

• He’s suffered enough.

Polanski actually offered this justification in the 60 Minutes interview a year after the incident. He actually said that he’d suffered terribly during the months following the event, presumably because of the publicity and the prosecution. But it isn’t clear that he suffered any more than any other well-known figure who committed such an act. It probably sucks to be accused of drugging and raping a young girl. But it kind of goes with the territory if you’ve actually, you know, drugged and raped a young girl.

To be charitable to this argument, I’d prefer to widen the scope to include all 32 years which might have contained suffering that derived from his act. Polanski’s been living in Europe (moving back and forth between France and Switzerland) and making successful movies. He’s beloved in France (if, for some odd reason, you didn’t already hate the French, this gives you ample cause) where he resides in Paris.

He’s wealthy enough to have a home is Gstaad, and I’d like to pause the bio there. Gstaad might be the single most beautiful town in the entire world. I was born and raised in Carmel, California, which, when I was growing up at least, was arguably one of the most beautiful small towns in North America. I traveled through Gstaad in my 20’s, and please let me assure you, Gstaad makes Carmel look like Tijuana. It’s literally the model for those Swiss Miss commercials.

So try as I might, I just can’t see the suffering. If Polanski’s life over the last 32 years constitutes “suffering”, I think it’s a species of suffering for which most of us would gladly swap our tedious passing of days.

• But his parent’s were killed in the Holocaust and the Manson Family killed his wife.

Both terrible circumstances without a doubt. But I’d want to point out that there are many people whose parents were killed in the Holocaust who don’t rape children. In fact, I haven’t ever heard anyone argue that Holocaust survivors or their children are even more likely to rape than the general population (in fact, I think even the suggestion of such a correlation would be considered anti-Semitic). So the parents died-in-a-death-camp bit, as terrible as it is, fails as a causal explanation for Polanski’s action.

About the wife being killed by the Mansons—that admittedly sucks (and what are the odds)? But again, there are other people whose entire families have been brutally slain who don’t drug and molest children. Here again, I’d venture to guess that there isn’t even a positive correlation.

The truth-truth about the rape-rape:

Many feel that the only reason Polanski wasn’t taken into custody years ago is that he’s a talented filmmaker/celebrity. In fact, the most striking part of this story is not that the Nazis or the Mansons murdered his family, but that he’s a famous director whose movies have been watched by many millions of people.

It’s really hard to believe that we’d be talking about this if it were a poor black man that raped a young girl and then fled prosecution. It’s also fairly certain that there wouldn’t be a petition going around Hollywood.

So the question seems to be, can a person’s talent mitigate a serious crime? Or should there be different rules for the rich and famous?

One last thing. I know I’ve beat this drum too much, but can we really reconcile the following: Plaxico Burress is going to prison for two years for bringing a gun into a club and accidentally shooting himself, and at least some high-profile people want Roman Polanski to walk after drugging and raping a 13 year-old girl. I mean, really…

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation

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.

Locke’s case demonstrates that the LSAT doesn’t test intelligence. He’d suffer on the reading comprehension, getting some questions correct but missing others. He’d get the common-man logical reasoning questions right, but would get hurt on the more technical issues of quantification and modality. He might do very well on ordering games that involve spatial relationships, but grouping would hurt him. Nevertheless, he’d have an impressive showing for someone of such meager resources.

Sun Kwon: 157

Background: It’s always the quiet ones. The daughter of a rich Korean industrialist, Sun married the penniless Jin. She covertly learned English from a bald rich Korean guy who attended Harvard (who would have knocked out a score in the 170s without trying, btw…) Sun’s demure and attractive in that dignified Asian way, but she’s also relatively resourceful and knows more about plants than anyone should. She started the garden on the island, and assisted Jack with the ill. Generally, Sun’s shown the penchant for picking things up quickly and quietly.

LSAT Analysis: She’s proficient in English, but not fluent, which suggests that reading comprehension would be tough for her. She’d rock the games and she’d likely do well on logical reasoning, in particular the less language intensive, more analytic questions. Had she not been financially cut off from her father for running off with Jin, she’d likely take Blueprint, in which case she’d be pushing the upper end of the 160s.

The 160s:

Jack Shephard: 168

Background: He’s the guy women dream of bringing home. Before crashing, (but after his stint as the de-facto patriarch on Party of Five), he was a successful spine surgeon who turned his father in for ethical violations. Jack married a patient, who left him because “he’d always need something to fix.” (total hollywood fantasy, btw…) Once on the island, he immediately became the leader of the group without campaigning for the job, and has saved everyone’s life on the island at least once. He’s essentially, George Clooney on ER, but set in the jungle.

LSAT Analysis: Being chief resident at a major LA hospital generally entails that one was an MCAT assassin. Jack went to Columbia (where he was claimed to graduate a year early, even though that doesn’t really happen in medical school) and aced his courses. He’s been a star his entire life and simply won’t except mediocre results. He’d do well.

But we should remember that the MCAT and LSAT draw from different skill sets. The MCAT is a test primarily of substance (biology, chemistry, etc…) that pertain to medical practice. The LSAT is a test of method that doesn’t rely on specific knowledge, but rather on certain cognitive procedures. Jack’s an alpha and he’s really bright, but that doesn’t entail a 180. He sometimes goes off half-cocked, failing to sufficiently think matters through. He’s a bright guy, but we’ve never seen deductive reasoning on his part that would justify much above a 168.

Sayid Jarrah: 164

Background: He fought in the Gulf war, but for the other guys. That’s right, Sayid was formerly with the Iraqi Republican Guard, where he tortured people until the US military converted him to torture his own. But he’s more than just a mean guy with a pair of pliers. Sayid is something of an engineer. He’s the one who repairs radios and antennas (and a particular music box). He’s also particularly industrious, giving one the sense that he could survive in almost any environment.

LSAT Analysis: He’d own the games and fare pretty well on the logical reasoning (especially those questions that required diagramming and formal deduction). His downfall would the reading comprehension. English is not his first language, and although he’s fluent, there’s no evidence that he’s an avid reader. Still, he’d definitely score in the top ten and perhaps even the top five percent.

The 170s:

Danielle Rousseau: 176

Background: Yes, calling her “Rousseau” is another crime against the history of ideas, as she was neither a key figure in the enlightenment nor the author of The Social Contract. But she’s survived on the island for a long time, and at this point is out-of-her-mind insane. Her child was stolen from her by The Others and she’s lived in a makeshift bunker, alone, for years. Nevertheless, she can set the most ingenious traps you’ve ever seen (many involving a doll and a cargo net), and can track anyone.

LSAT Analysis: You’re wondering how she could possibly attain such a high score, but you have to think about the demographics of people who score in the 170s. As a group, they’re not supermodels, or even socially adroit people. In general, they tend to be socially awkward at best and downright crazy at worst. In other words, Danielle. If nothing else, she’s clearly had time to study (that’s just mean), but also has uncanny focus. We’ll never quite know how, but when she busts out a 176, we’ll be afraid, but not surprised.

So what does this tell us about LSAT preparation? Not a whole lot. Except that the LSAT tests a specific set of reasoning and doesn’t care if you’re thin, or glamorous, or a surgeon. You need to be able to evaluate arguments quickly and assimilate passage information. Which is learnable with practice, even if you did get the swine flu.

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation

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.

I actually began relating to them. Their lives had been interrupted and so had mine. They were trapped on an island, and so was I. Their island was even next to mine. Really. Lost is filmed in Oahu and I was on Kauai, so I kind of saw them as neighbors. (Disclaimer: I was running a fever during this period).

At a certain point, I knew I was neglecting my responsibilities back in the mundane world of the LSAT, but I had given myself over to the consuming world of Lost. In a certain nausea induced blur, I began to wonder how the characters in Lost would fare on the LSAT. The following are my considered reflections on the matter.

The 120s:

Claire Littleton: 121

Background: Chick who gave birth on the island best known for irrationally screaming “My baby!” at every turn in a really annoying and self-righteous manner. Claire’s essentially helpless, possessing no talents or work ethic, and thus entirely dependent on others. Nevertheless, she spends most of her time telling people how little she needs them, only to fall immediately afterward and cry for help.

LSAT Analysis: Claire would collapse and start crying on the games. She might stumble over a couple of correct answers in reading comprehension, but would commit every fallacy known to man on the logical reasoning. I’d also vote her most likely to make interesting shapes with the bubbles on her answer sheet.

Shannon Ruthorford: 121

Background: Killed off mercifully early, Shannon used her time on the island to work on her “base tan.” Before reaching the island she actually had sex with her (half) brother and was in the habit of serially extorting him. Her survival skills make Claire look like a Navy SEAL. (Unsurprisingly, the two actresses are, according to IMDB, friends off-set). Even two seasons in, almost all of Shannon’s time was spent reading magazines she’d brought on the plane and lounging in her bikini. Men everywhere should be ashamed that this character earned actress Maggie Grace spot #27 on Maxim’s Hot 100 List of 2005 and #44 of FHM’s 100 Sexiest Women in the World in 2005. Fellas, if that’s what you’re looking for, it’s going to be a painful life.

LSAT Analysis: She’s literally too lazy to actually read the questions or bubble in answers. If she were to somehow muster the strength, she’d still be in Claire territory (Did I mention that the actresses are friends off-camera? To be a fly on the wall…) If she actually made it to a testing center, a siege of confusion would descend and she’d end up crying, pouting, and interrupting everyone else’s test as she stomped out of the room.

Charlie Pace: 125

Background: Charlie had one hit with his English rock band before he got addicted to heroin and the band broke up. The only lyric we hear (and we hear it repeatedly) is “You are everyone, You are everyone”, which might be his sensitive investigation into the subject/object distinction. Or it might not mean anything, because Charlie’s a bit of a fool. He worships Claire (a character defining weakness if ever there were one), always wants to hold “the baby”, and has been established time and again as the omega-male of the island.

Charlie doesn’t hunt, fish, fix electronics, or heal the ill. He can’t fight, negotiate or solve any problem on the island.

LSAT Analysis: Not that the washed up band-member/heroin addict doesn’t make this fairly clear, but he’s no great mind. I’ve actually known other washed up band-members/heroin addicts who were far brighter than Charlie. The image of him setting up a game is as painful as your grandfather break-dancing. He’d probably just give up on the test and go over to see if he could fan Claire, or wipe the sweat from her brow. Even if he did finish, his score would be a crime against reason.

The 130s:

Kate Austen: 136

Background: She kills a lot of people. Kate knocked her father off because he beat her mother, accidentally killed “the only man she ever loved”, and ridiculously killed/injured a bunch of people in a bank to recover a model airplane her lover once had.

She’s perpetually playing all the alpha-males against each other by flirting relentlessly with everyone (except Charlie, of course, because no one flirts with their lessers). To be fair, Kate is crafty: she works hard and can track animals and people in the forest. But she was born in a trailer, grew up in a red state, and does not appear to have attended college. She’s stranded-on-a-desert-island hot, but not real life hot. With her low-rise jeans and her emaciated body, she kind of looks like an anorexic with a sunburn. But I digress…

LSAT Analysis: It’s hard to overcome the upbringing, especially because she’s a fan of shortcuts (robbing banks, living on the run, etc…). It’s hard to imagine her studying for the LSAT, and it doesn’t seem that her current faculties would get her far. Also pouting and flirting don’t count for much on the LSAT.

Still, Kate would at least complete the exam, which puts her head and shoulders above the others discussed thus far. But her score would be a disgrace.

James “Sawyer” Ford: 132

Background: Sawyer’s father committed suicide after discovering his wife was having sex with a con man who’d stolen the family fortune. So of course Sawyer became a con man. But don’t feel bad for Sawyer; he’s a monster. Immediately upon arriving on the island, he established himself as the most amoral and self-interested of the group, hoarding all the guns and selling people medicine.

Sawyer also speaks in a profoundly annoying southern drawl, though his names for his fellow castaways are admittedly witty. Indiscriminating female watchers sometimes find him to be alluringly dangerous, but such women are analogous to the men who lust after Shannon Rutherford

LSAT Analysis: One might argue that the LSAT isn’t a test of morality, so Sawyer’s nasty ways shouldn’t count against him here. But Sawyer seems not to have graduated from high school, let alone college. He’s accustomed to finding the easy way out, even if ugly behavior is required. He might buy or barter his way to a high score, but if he actually had to take the test, he’d be massacred. He’d smirk at the games and say something clever, but then get every question wrong. His reading comprehension score would suggest total illiteracy (One will recall, he was spotted struggling through Judy Blume books on the island). Sawyer would eke out a few points on logical reasoning, in particular on those questions that really only test animal intelligence. But overall, it would be drubbing.

The 140s:

Hugo Reyes: 141

Background: To say, “It’s complicated”, is to woefully understate the matter. Apparently, Hugo was in an asylum because he saw people who weren’t there. No biggie; happens to all of us. After being released, he got a job at a chicken shop (again, we’ve all been there), played the lottery with numbers he’d heard a schizophrenic repeat endlessly, and won (though he’s been cursed ever since). But again, he didn’t go to college and lacks the practical talents that others have.

LSAT Analysis: One’s sense of cosmic justice would suggest that Hugo ought to be good at the LSAT, ‘cause he ain’t exactly easy on the eyes. But he’s never shown any propensity for disciplined reasoning. He couldn’t even organize a system to preserve the clan’s food, though admittedly this task was might have posed special challenges for Hugo. He’d fare better than those discussed thus far. However, the games would kill him, reading comprehension would put him to sleep and his only hope would be gobbling up some of the easier logical reasoning questions.

Jin-Soo Kwon: 147

Background: Jin has a rags-to-riches story that would make Dickens blush. Born the son of a fisherman, he briefly worked as a bellman in an expensive Seoul hotel. During his tenure, he fell in love with daughter of a wealthy industrialist who happened by the hotel on a failed date. In order to win the approval of her father, he entered the man’s employ and reluctantly became his hitman. After several brutal episodes, he and his bride tried to escape to the US, only to be lost on our island.

LSAT Analysis: The son of a fisherman thing doesn’t hurt his chances on the test, but the lacking any formal education does. Then, there’s the not inconsiderable fact that he doesn’t speak English, even after seasons of being stuck on the island. However, he is industrious as evinced by the fact that he built the world’s most impressive looking raft in an early attempt to escape the island. But still he doesn’t speak the language in which the LSAT is administered.

Here’s the way it would go down. Reading comprehension would be an unholy nightmare and logical reasoning wouldn’t go much better. His salvation would be games, where he would muscle his way through to a score in the low 140s.

So what’s the moral to this story? First, don’t get swine flu on your honeymoon. Second, Itunes can get you though almost any period of confinement. Third, you don’t need a high LSAT score to survive on an island.

Stay tuned for the analysis of the 150’s through the 170’s in the next installment.

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation.

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.

Commentary: What apparently happened was that the gun slipped down through the waistband of his jeans. When Burress groped his thigh to catch it from sliding further it accidentally went off. But apparently he wasn’t brandishing the gun, or threatening anyone. It was a total Homer Simpson. It sounds about as intentional as tripping up the stairs.

Disclaimer: He’s not a favorite of mine, but I don’t mind watching him. I think of him as Terrell Owens without the (limited) redemption he found with the Cowboys, or Randy Moss without the even greater redemption he found in New England. I do, however, believe that the NFL (and the NBA for that matter) is turning into a sewer, and that thugism is a disturbing, rising current in the US. When the highest compliment you can give a man is to call him a “gangsta,” we really shouldn’t be surprised when our heroes begin carrying guns.

Disclaimer aside, the severity of the sentence strikes me as being oddly disproportionate. It seems too harsh, and I can’t see the justification. The most common explanations for the sentence that I’ve seen are the following:

Plaxico is black, and some people believe that we live in a country where racism is at best implicit in our social consciousness and at worst explicitly written into our federal sentencing guidelines. In the eyes of these people, the harshness of Plaxico’s sentence is the result of racism.

Other people believe that because Plaxico is a celebrity/athletic star he was thus “made an example of” to deter similar future actions in high utilitarian fashion.

Still others believe that neither racism nor making-an-example is at work in this case. Instead, this view contends that what Plaxico did was really bad and his sentence was proportionate to the crime he committed.

These strike me all as being patently false, and I think they’re belied by the judgments given to some other unfortunate celebrity behavior. I’d like to consider three recent cases.

Chris Brown
R&B artist Chris Brown pleaded guilty to beating his girlfriend, high-profile recording artist Rihanna. While this might not be Farrah Fawcett in The Burning Bed, neither was it a one time shove during a heated argument. A recent CNN story cites an LAPD report claiming that on another occasion Brown strangled Rihanna (in a headlock) so severely that she began to lose consciousness and that he threatened to kill her.

Verdict: Brown was sentenced to six months of community service, a year of counseling, and five years probation. Translation: he has to pick up litter on the highway for six months, attend some weekly meetings, and if he stays out of further trouble, he won’t do any time at all. (I know people who got worse for DUI’s).

Commentary: Guys hitting girls just isn’t cool, as in no bueno. Don’t get confused by Gina Carano or Cristiane Santos in MMA. It doesn’t matter how tough or cruel a woman can be, it’s just not a line we want to cross or even blur.

Disclaimer: I don’t know Chris Brown’s work, and I don’t feel too badly about that. I kind of know that Umbrella song from Rihanna. I don’t know most of the words, but I admittedly don’t change the station as quickly as I probably I should when it comes on the radio. I suppose she’s kind of hot, but not remarkably so, and certainly not enough to induce greater sympathy from me.

Michael Vick
Everyone’s favorite person to hate is now the Eagles’ backup quarterback. If you haven’t heard about this, you couldn’t be reading this blog because you’re living in solitary confinement in upper-Mongolia. Nevertheless, to recap, Michael Vick, once successful Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback, pleaded guilty to operating a large-scale dogfighting ring. While there was the issue of financing an interstate gambling conspiracy, the deeper issue here is that he trained dogs to fight viciously, presided over these fights, and actually hung and drowned the poorer performing canines. The details of the case suggest that Vick tortured dogs in a deeply disturbing manner.

Verdict: Vick was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison (that’s less than two years for the mathematically challenged). After serving that sentence, he was prosecuted on criminal state charges for dogfighting in Virginia. Although he was sentenced to three years, this sentence was suspended for good behavior and a $2,500 fine. Translation: he did 23 months in the federal big-house, and no more.

Commentary: Whether or not you feel for the dogs, brutal treatment of animals has been established as a precursor to sociopathic behavior. Vick didn’t just fall in with a bad crowd and make bad decisions. The lurid details of what he is alleged to have done to these dogs suggests that he is, or at least was, unwell.

Disclaimer: I saw Michael Vick play when I was in graduate school at UVa, but I didn’t follow him closely with the Falcons. I certainly think he should be allowed to play in the NFL and I hope that through playing with the Eagles he can makes something meaningful of his life. I generally think those people who want him to interminably suffer constitute an insatiably angry mob, whose lack of sympathy is itself disturbing and worthy or further investigation.

Floyd Maywether Jr.
You’ll be excused for not knowing about this (unless you watch HBO’s 24/7, which you should) because Mayweather hasn’t been charged and isn’t even a suspect. However, his Rolls Royce was present in the parking lot of a Las Vegas roller-skating rink (that’s right, big time) the night a shooting recently took place, although no one was hurt. According to the Associated Press, one of the victims claimed Mayweather threatened him 10 minutes before the shooting. Police later searched Mayweather’s home and car, recovering two handguns, ammunition and bullet proof vests.

Verdict: None, as Mayweather was never charged with anything and apparently isn’t even a suspect.

Commentary: Look, it’s sketchy. Who gets into a gun fight at a roller-skating rink? And who still drives a Rolls Royce? Really. As one would expect, this roller-skating rink is frequented by children, which makes gun fighting extra bad. Like way worse than running with scissors.

Disclaimer: Not a fan, never was. I think his 39-0 record is among the most padded in boxing. He didn’t fight any of the great figures of his era during their prime, unlike, for instance, De La Hoya who fought EVERYONE in their prime (though his record in those fights is fairly poor). The upcoming Marquez bout is the closest thing to a legally fixed fight I’ve ever seen. A lightweight like Marquez giving up nine pounds to a welterweight like Mayweather is akin to a middleweight fighting a heavyweight. I won’t be surprised if Mayweather wins, or even if he prevails in the inevitable fight with Manny Pacquio (another substantially smaller fighter). But he’s a 10th grader picking fights at the local middle school.

So there’s my cast of crazies.

I think that two years for klutzy gun carrying Burress is excessively severe if gambler and animal-torturer Vick gets 23 months, and girlfriend-beating Brown doesn’t do any time at all.

Does anyone disagree that Brown’s beating of his girlfriend is a far more serious offense than Burress carrying a concealed gun into a club and accidentally shooting himself? There was real damage inflicted on a real person in the Brown case, whereas Burress didn’t damage anyone except himself. People make a lot out of the potential harm in Burress’s carrying a gun, but it would seem that there is greater potential harm in strangling your girlfriend until she passes out.

Also, I think Vick’s offense is far more serious than Burress’s. Even if you don’t care about the animals, the potential harm suggested by Vick’s actions seems greater than Burress’s. There was no wrongful intention (or mens rea for those afflicted with law school) with Burress, whereas there pretty clearly was for Vick (and even more so for Brown, by the way…) I suppose Burress’s guilty intention was knowingly bringing a gun into a club, but for me it isn’t as bad as intending to injure and subjugate your girlfriend or intending to torture and kill animals.

At the end of the day, I’d rather hang out with Burress at a club than either have a date with Brown or a sleepover at Michael Vick’s house during a Bad Newz Kennel night. I’d probably buy him a holster, but that’s just people helping people.

Mayweather probably doesn’t deserve to be listed in this group because he hasn’t even been accused of doing anything wrong. But it is interesting to look at him opposite Burress, because (assuming Floyd wasn’t at all involved in the shooting) they caused the same amount of harm to others. Mayweather may have actually had a gun in his car at the time a shooting took place in the same parking lot. Burress wore a gun into a club. Neither one injured anyone else.

Imagine that Floyd left one of his handguns in his bowling bag (because his body guards called in sick and he was worried about being hassled) and it went off in the rink as he went to retrieve the ball, injuring no one. Would two years in prison be the appropriate remedy? Imagine that Michael Vick had a handgun at the large semi-public dogfights he hosted (I don’t know for certain either way, but let’s be serious. You could probably take over Canada with the guns broutght to Bad Newz Kennel events). Would that have deserved two years when he only got 23 months for the dog fighting itself?

One might think that racism was at work in Burress’ sentence because we have a fear of successful black people. This strikes me as odd, since I think Chris Brown’s and Michael Vick’s sentences were lighter than they could have been (especially Brown, who isn’t even doing time). Moreover, Mayweather wasn’t even charged, when there seems to be enough circumstantial evidence to allow a racist system to pursue him. If racism is at work in the Burress case, it’s notably lacking in the case of these other black celebrities. It seems implausible to me that we’re exercising ugly racial sentiments so selectively.

I think the same comparison also belies the suggestion that we’re making-an-example out of Burress because he’s a high profile figure who did something wrong. I suppose it’s possible, but is it really more important to send a message about carrying guns that didn’t injure anyone else than it is to send a message about domestic violence, or severe animal torture? If we are sending a message, I’d argue we chose a strange case.

And one last thing, just while we’re here. If your view is that Burress’s crime was carrying a gun into a crowded place because guns are profoundly dangerous and need to be strictly controlled (a la Great Britain), that’s fine. But then can you please, please, please explain to me why some random guy was allowed to carry a assault rifle to a speech given by President Obama in Arizona? (And by the way, the rifle appears to be CAR-15, which is a more modern, slightly de-tuned version of the famous M-16. It ain’t a gentleman’s hunting rifle. It’s what our soldiers carry in Iraq.) Or why a guy is allowed to show up at an Obama town hall meeting with a gun strapped to his thigh in New Hampshire? The trivial answer is that these states and others don’t require a permit to openly carry a gun, unlike New York. That may be a reason, but it isn’t a justification.

Can it really be true that if Plaxico carried the same gun to a club in Phoenix, but tucked his shirt behind it so it was visible and yet everything else was the same, then he’d get two years of his life back and still be a millionaire playing in the NFL? Right. Got it.

So, what’s up with the Burress sentencing? Perhaps I have it wrong, or I’m missing something. What do you think?

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation.

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.

He failed the New York bar three times before ultimately passing in February of 2008. This also sound egregious, but it’s more common than you’d think. After having passed one would expect, Mr. Bowman would on his way to paying down these loans, but he was denied admission to the bar when a committee rejected his moral character and fitness application, because Mr. Bowman “…has not made any substantial payments on the loans.”

Apparently, Mr. Bowman didn’t make a single payment on his student loans since their origination. Sallie Mae subsequently sold his debt to a collector, who added on 25%. It was then sold to another collector who added an additional 25%. With penalties, Mr. Bowman now apparently owes some $430,000. If that’s true, it sucks terribly.

If it matters, Mr. Bowman apparently has a number of serious injuries. The NYT piece reports that he spent six years in rehabilitation after being run over by an all-terrain vehicle. Much later, he was run over by a Jet-Ski which broke his leg in four places. (Mr. Bowman, if you’re reading, it’s time to stay away from recreational vehicles.)

Also, if it matters, there are some large gaps in his educational timeline. Some of his loans are more than 20 years old. He graduated from SUNY Albany in 1995 and UC Hastings in 2004, yet just recently passed the bar. Even his very serious injuries might not explain all of these gaps, though again, this might not matter in one’s evaluation of his circumstance.

The coverage, such as it is:

I feel as if everyone has heard about this story and people’s opinions strike me as a bit strange. My pal, and (more significantly) former University of Chicago Law School Dean of Admission, Anna Ivey, briefly questioned the lender’s wisdom in extending Mr. Bowman all of these loans. Lawyer blog Above The Law was critical of the committee’s decision to reject Mr. Bowman because of his debt. Among the hundreds of comments on ATL’s story, opinions ranged from outrage at the committee’s rejection to the conviction that Mr. Bowman was a deadbeat who never intended to pay any of his loans back.

It seems as if everyone has an opinion about this matter, which is itself more disturbing than Mr. Bowman’s story. For my part, I feel strongly that the NYT story just doesn’t give us a sufficient foundation to render these sorts of judgments about the case.

Here’s what I think we can conclude from the NYT’s piece:

1. Mr. Bowman has had a tough road, and that sucks.

2. It took him a long time to get through school.

3. Whatever forces caused his loans to spiral from $230,000 to $430,000 in four years are ungodly, and should be struck down.

4. Even if the ethics committee passed him, Mr. Bowman would be most unlikely to find employment with a major firm paying him anything like $160,000 a year. In the current economy, he’d be lucky to find employment at all. (More on that in a moment.)

Now, is he a deadbeat who never intended to pay his loans? The NYT piece doesn’t begin to justify any conclusion on that question. One is tempted to believe that he could have made at least some progress during all of these years. Nevertheless, between his long educational road and his injuries, he wasn’t going to pay much of the principle during this period.

Was the bar justified in rejecting him? The NYT piece suggests that the loans were at least a factor in their rejection, but we can’t know if there were additional reasons, so we can’t conclude much about this, either.

Ex hypothesi discussion:

Whether Mr. Bowman can justify not having made any payments is an open question, but for the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that he can’t justify his lack of payment and that he should have paid more than he did. Whether his failure to pay hitherto indicates that he would never have made any payments is another question entirely.

It’s obviously speculative, but I think that if he were able to find decently compensated employment as a lawyer, it’s likely that Mr. Bowman would have paid back his loans (whether he wanted to or not). Student loan debt is generally not dischargeable in bankruptcy and thus the debt would follow him. Not paying would thus decimate his credit, making it far more difficult to acquire the furniture of an adult life (i.e. houses, cars, startup capital for any business venture).

Furthermore, I don’t think that someone can maintain a legal practice while having defaulted on substantial loans (though I’ll stand corrected if someone can show otherwise). Either his wages would get garnished or he’d have to somehow live outside the credit system. Moreover, the bar could take action against him for not paying these loans.

A caveat. Through viewing the supporting documentation for the NYT article, I did learn that Mr. Bowman had notified the bar that he expected to accept employment as counsel for a shipping company in Singapore. This might entail relocating outside the US and thus it’s conceivable that he could move beyond the reach of his lenders. But the bar could sanction or revoke his license if he didn’t pay his loans, and this would be a very strong deterrent against defaulting. There’s reason to believe that Mr. Bowman does need bar certification for whatever legal work he intends, else he would not likely have gone through the unpleasantries of taking the New York bar four times.

Some might claim in rejecting Mr. Bowman’s application, the bar took precisely the action I described above. But if their rationale in denying him admission to the bar was that he hadn’t paid his loans sufficiently, their reasoning is profoundly strange. By denying him the chance to pursue legal practice, they’ve absolutely assured that he will default on his loans. Given the loans’ ridiculous interest rates and penalties, their rate of growth so far outstrips his ability to pay that he would be irrational to try to pay them. Unless he has some talent that has thus far remained unmentioned, he’s unlikely to ever find work outside of law that would allow him to service his debt.

What the ethics committee should have done, in my opinion, (assuming the debt was the only problem) is admit him provisionally and make it clear that they’d rescind him admission if he didn’t make substantial progress on his loans. Instead, they’ve left him with some rather unpleasant options. And in our world, people with unpleasant options tend to unpleasant things. (See below).

Further Grumblings:

With regard to the issue of whether the lenders should have extended Mr. Bowman this level of credit, I believe that even our creditors are drunk on the increasingly suspect platitude that education is always a good financial investment. You should know that lenders are generally more than willing to lend students money for their education because students can never absolve themselves of this debt. Anna Ivey suggests that lenders should be more scrutinizing in their case by case assessments of whether educational loans are likely to be paid off. Their current strategy seems to be simply charging unrealistically high interest rates, and rest in the satisfaction that the students will either find a way to pay off loans or die in debt.

Here’s a question, though… If we are bailing out the thousands of homeowners who apparently didn’t read or understand the terms of their incredibly risky, variable-rate mortgages, should we then bail out the students who’ve accrued more debt than they can reasonably pay off? I’m not suggesting we should bail out either group, but really, Is the former more innocent than the latter?

On my view, the guy who didn’t realize that it was a bad idea to get a negative amortized, adjustable-rate mortgage for 105% of the purchase price of his house seems more culpable that the student drunk on false dogma that education is always a good investment. The former is just a gambler who didn’t leave any room for market fluctuations; the latter is the vestige of an American Dream that left without telling us it had gone.

Moreover, the former can just declare bankruptcy, give up the house, and walk away from his debt. The latter can’t simply declare bankruptcy, give back his degree and be be free of debt. If, by the way, that were magically made possible tonight, tomorrow morning you’d see thousands of degrees stacked in front of every university in the US.

Back to Bowman, here are my predictions:

Mr. Bowman will sue someone, for something.

That lawsuit will never reach a courtroom because…

Mr. Bowman will settle for some undisclosed sum and as a consequence…

His debt will be substantially reduced, and…

Mr. Bowman will be admitted to the New York bar, at least provisionally, and someone is going to suffer for his rejection. But…

Even after being admitted to the bar, Mr. Bowman will be unable to find a high-paying job (at least for the foreseeable future). And even if he does…

Sadly, I expect Mr. Bowman will not enjoy legal practice enough to feel that his long journey was, in his own, final estimation, worth the suffering he’s endured (even if some of it was self-inflicted). Ultimately…

His regret is likely to be more inescapable than his debt.

Here’s what we got in the end:

A would-be lawyer is very likely to become a litigant.
The lenders will probably never be paid in full.
Years have been wasted, and more waste is coming.
Everyone involved will feel that they lost far more than they ever got from this.

Well played by all. Really.

The takeaway: Seriously monitor your debt. You’re literally mortgaging your freedom. Make sure you’re okay with the terms.

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation.