Vincent G. Rinn Law Library

"Law School Transparency" Online Clearinghouse Provides Better Consumer Information

Established in 2009, Law School Transparency ( LST ) is a non-profit organization seeking to  to improve consumer information concerning the value of legal education and to usher in consumer-oriented reforms to the current law school model. They were formed in the context of the general economic decline that has impacted and changed the market for legal services. This has led to a growing number of law graduates with huge loans and under-employment or unemployment.

However beyond the economic conditions, many of these grads are questioning the accuracy and completeness of the information they received  as prospective law students, which affected their willingness to attend law school, in the first place. LST  indicates that the reporting standards themselves were inadequate for informed decision-making by prospective students. Also, they report that most law schools were initially not willing to provide the data they had, that could better inform student choices.

Most recently, LST has developed an online clearinghouse of school and employment data that attempts to provide relevant information for each ABA accredited law school. They collected and reconciled data from four sources: the ABA, U.S. News, school websites, and school NALP ( National Association for Law Placement ) reports. Only about 1 in 4 schools has chosen to make their NALP reports public, so far. The job of reconciling the data from theses multiple sources, to provide meaningful comparisons, was  challenging. They say they tried to "reconciled incompatible data as fairly as possible."

"For each ABA-accredited law school, the database includes key employment statistics; charts that break down the percentage of graduates in lawyer and non-lawyer jobs; graphs that detail whether jobs were long-term or short-term; maps showing the states in which the largest percentage of graduates
found jobs; salary breakdowns; and the jobs reports that schools submitted to the ABA and NALP." For law school where it is available the Raw Data used for creating the graphs, is also presented.

In addition to this basic information, the web page for each law school, provides an "under-employment score"; the percentage of students who report their salaries ( important for validity of stats) ; and  tuition figures including a total debt projection for the classes of 2015 and 2016.

 The continued development of this first-of-a-kind database and the inclusion of  even more previously non-public data, should advance   "... the simple notion that schools need to be disclose employment data to fulfill their obligations to fairly and adequately inform prospective students about the nature of the legal profession and opportunities within it."

 

 

 

Federal Student Loan Forgiveness Bill Introduced in House

U.S. Representative Hansen Clarke of Michigan has just recently introduced H.R. 4170, the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012, which would extend a helping hand to those struggling under massive amounts of student loan debt. The bill was introduced, 3/8/2012, with twelve co-sponsors including Rep. Janice Schakowsky,  from the Ninth Congressional District of Illinois. The bill's introduction identifies both the needs of students and of the national economy, as reasons for this bill.

As tuition continues to rise, and total higher-education debt  has surpassed credit-card debt  for the first time, rising to $830 billion in mid-2010. The bills findings state, "Because of soaring tuition costs, students often have no choice but to amass significant debt to obtain an education that is widely considered a prerequisite for earning a living wage." 

For many families the unpredictability of tuition increases makes it difficult or impossible to know how to plan for saving for school expenses. If they want a college education, most students don't have a choice but to go into debt both through government and  private lenders loans.

Unlike other areas of borrowing, it is almost impossible to have student loans forgiven through bankruptcy. Also unlike consumer debtors, student borrowers can have their Social Security  and other federal benefits garnished for repayment. Private loans usually have higher interest rates than government loans. They also do not have provisions for easier repayment options for lower-income student nor options for participating in public-service loan forgiveness programs.  ( "Student Debt  Is the college-loan system fair?"  By Marcia Clemmitt ,  CQ Researcher,  Volume 21, Issue 37 )

Representative Hansen Clarke's bill attempts to provide some relief to student borrowers and their families  who find themselves entangled in these circumstances.

The bill also cites broader economic considerations beyond the individual students. "Excessive student loan debt is impeding economic growth in the United States. Faced with excessive repayment burdens, many individuals are unable to start businesses, invest, or buy homes. Relieving student loan debt would give these individuals greater control over their earnings and would increase entrepreneurship and demand for goods and services." ( See : "Student loan debt a growing threat to the economy" )

 

Author's summary of bill's provisions ( Double check legislative language )  :

1 )  "10/10 Loan Repayment Plan"  -  Limitation on monthly payments based on family income with  automatic deductions from bank account.

2 )  "10/10 Loan Forgiveness" - Eligibility if have made 120 monthly payments on a loan. Government will assume the loan or cancel the loan depending on factors involved, up to $45,520.  Forgiven loans will not to be included for income tax purposes.

3 )  Capping  interest rates for all Federal Direct Loans at 3.4% .

4 )  Extending public-service loan forgiveness to a full-time job as a primary care physician in an under-served area or population.

5 )  Creating a one year eligibility period for a  Federal Direct Consolidation Loan for private loans held by borrower. The consolidated loan interest will not exceed 3.4% .

 

Judge Odas Nicholson ( 1924-2012 ) Was First African-American Woman to Graduate From DePaul Law School

A March 16, 2012 Chicago Tribune story reported the on the death of Judge Odas Nicholson. She was born in Mississippi in 1924 and came to Chicago when she was 13. She was  both a DePaul undergraduate and a graduate of the DePaul Law School.

In 2005 she received The Outstanding Service to the Profession Award from the law school which honors alumni with outstanding achievements in their chosen field or specialty. She was truly a pioneer, achieving many firsts for African-American women. (p.20)

"After graduating Marshall High School, she attended Wilson Junior College for two years before earning a bachelor's degree in philosophy from DePaul University. She was the only woman in her class and the first African-American woman to graduate from DePaul University's law school, according to the Women's Bar Association of Illinois. She was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1948."

According to the Chicago Defender, "Nicholson was appointed Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County by the Supreme Court of Illinois in November 1980 and was elected to a full term in November 1982. She served as a Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County for 14 years prior to her retirement in December 1994. She was the first African-American woman assigned to the Law Division of the Court and the first woman assigned to the Motions Section where she served for eight years. She was also the first woman assigned an individual calendar."

In the Tribune story, William Maddux, a presiding judge in Cook County, and a former collegue of judge Nicholson, is quoted saying  that  "Odas was a trailblazer, no doubt about it," "She had a formidable mind combined with a good dose of common sense."

( Hat Tip to Glennis Jones-Marshall )

Student Law School Suits Affecting Moody's Ratings

Recent  law suits filed by graduates from several law schools, have not only garnered much publicity but are having an impact on the credit ratings of the schools involved.  This may not have been on the minds of the student plaintiffs. But one suspects that administrators at the schools have probably considered the possible impact.

Moody's maintains credit ratings for eight of the fifteen schools sued, including: Southwestern Law School; California Western School of Law; Brooklyn Law School; New York Law School; Golden Gate University; DePaul University; Hofstra University; and the University of San Francisco.

A Thomson Reuter news posting states, "Class-action lawsuits recently filed against fifteen law schools for fraud are "credit negative" because they could cause reputational damage and a decline in tuition revenue, according to a report released this week by the ratings agency Moody's Investors Service."

Local graduate court cases, allege violations of Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act  claiming fraud and negligent misrepresentation. They are seeking restitution, damages and independent audits of employment and salary data. 

In the cases involving the first three law schools that were sued, Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Michigan, New York Law School and Thomas Jefferson School of Law, the schools have moved to dismiss the lawsuits, arguing that they were strictly following the  American Bar Association rules on job-placement data.

In January, Moody's revised its outlook on New York Law School from "stable" to "negative,". A summary of the Moody's report found online, provides a look at what factors the rating service is considering in evaluating the law schools.

The summary indicates that the downgrade for New York Law School, is due to conditions   "...reflecting recent enrollment volatility and uncertainty surrounding the outcome of a recent lawsuit and its potential impact on the school's market position and longer-term student demand..." The progress of the suits  will  continue to be monitored for  the potential impact on the School's market position. Addressing what could make the ratings go down, the report states  that, " An adverse outcome of the lawsuit which could lead to financial distress or reputational risk,"

While some of the emerging difficulties for law schools stem from structural changes in the legal marketplace , (See "Practicing Theory: Legal Education for  the Twenty-First Century").  The law school graduate law suits, focus on the internal practices at the schools. Practices that may have forestalled the impact of these structural changes on law schools, but that must now be re-examined.

 

Family Law Center Lecture : Rape Allegations in the 21st Century

The Gift of Holiday Traditions: Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas

This is the title of a National Endowment for the Humanities web site that is directed at teachers to provide information and questions for their students, to explore the Winter holidays many of us observe. But the historical and cultural insights presented, can be of value to any interested person who wants to better understand their own holiday practices and to also discover and appreciate those of other traditions.

As the title indicates, the text and links deal with practices that are centered in the African-American, Jewish and Christian traditions. But as historical investigation indicates, the early Pagans provided the bases for some of our current day rituals and practices, as well.

The link to "Christmas History and Christmas Traditions  -  Legends of Our Christmas Characters", shows the different influences from various countries on such chracters of Christmas as : Father Christmas (England), Kris Kringle (Germany), St. nicholas (Russia), Pere Noet (France), Santa Lucia (Sweden), La Befana (Italy), Jack Frost (Scadanavia) .

In the "Naughty & Nice: A History of The Holiday Season " link there is  a discussion of the history of Christmas in the slave south. Under the section "Naughty & Nice: Online Resources " there are more detailed explorations of each of the three major December Holidays.

While the celebration of these holidays usually highlights goodwill and sharing, there are rough spots where ideology, religion and politics come together. Where else but in court cases !  The "Christmas Wars": Holiday Displays and the Federal Courts", summarizes some of the contention in the U.S. over holiday religious displays.

 It is recommended that this last text, be read in the New Year after the season "Of peace on earth, good will to men!", has been enjoyed :-)

 

Four DePaul Law Faculty Sign Amicus Brief In IL Supreme Court Burge Torture Case

Four DePaul Law faculty members have signed a friend of the court brief in an appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court in the case of People of the State of illinois v. Stanley Wrice. They include : M. Cherif Bassiou, Leonard L. Cavise, Andrea D. Lyon and Judge Warren D. Wolfson. The four faculty  join 60+ other signers, including several former state and federal judges and prosecutors, and dozens of  lawyers, legislators and legal scholars. Stanley Wrice is one of as many as 20 still incacerated criminal defendants who were convicted on the basis of confession extracted under torture by former Chicago police commander Jon Burge and his officers.

This case and appeal are significant because it may decide whether the convicted defendants who are in prison, can get a hearing to consider the now very credible evidence of the use of torture in eliciting confessions which were used to convict them. Most of these men have exhausted their formal appeals.

Last year, an Illinois appellate court granted Mr. Wrice an evidentiary hearing into the torture allegations. But the state special prosecutor is challenging this grant, claiming that the use of torture in getting a confession was just "harmless error" and that Wrice would have been convicted anyway.

While a few persons convicted with torture-induced confessions have been released by the efforts of attorneys pursuing their own cases. Many still languish in prison without any formal means to challenge their convictions with the new evidence that has accumulated over time.

The  Illinois legislature has mandated  a procedure to provide such an option through the creation of the  Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission. The Governor signed the bill in August 2009. DePaul law Professor Cavise has been named to the eight member Commission. While this procedure at least provides for the possibility of a review of the convictions in the Burge torture tainted cases, there may be significant shortcomings in this process.

For their part, the petitioners must "...waives his or her procedural safeguards and privileges including but not limited to the right against self-incrimination under the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Illinois,agrees to cooperate with the Commission, and agrees to provide full disclosure regarding Inquiry requirements of the Commission." While the Commission is not a court of law, one can understand how persons who have already been denied their constitutional rights, might be hesitant to waive fundamental rights as part of this process.

A March 2011 article in the Chicago Tribune, raises some of the problems with the Commission. It states that while the Commision may be well-intentioned it falls short because of limited authority and resources.The Commission has subppoena power to independantly investigate claims. But besides the Director, there is only provision for one staff attorney and one paralegal. It can only recommend the case "for consideration" to the Cook County Circuit Court's chief judge. "What the chief judge is supposed to do with that is completely unclear," said Locke Bowman, director of the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center at the Northwestern University School of Law who has represented several Burge accusers..."

These deficiencies make the relief requested in the amicus brief more important for not only provisding a more certain process. But also for setting a clear precedent from the Illinois Supreme Court that "...the Burge torture scandal — characterized by extremc physical brutality and disregard for law and basic human rights — should not be the occasion to announce an unprecedented extension of the harmless error doctrine."

The brief makes legal, policy and moral arguments for its recommendations to the Illinois Supreme Court which are persuasive. But they do call on the court to recognize and exercise judicial powers that are not necessarily well-established or recognized. The brief calls on the court to depart from the relevant ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court and to exercise its "supervisory powers" in fashioning the proposed hearings process.

As the brief states : "Similarly in this case, the traditions and values of Illinois are starkly at odds with the harmless error approach to coerced confessions that the United States Supreme Court adopted in Fulminante and which the State urges upon this Court. It is simply intolerable that any person should languish in prison as a result of a conviction that rests even in part on a confession that Burge and his men are credibly claimed to have obtained by torture..."

Also : "The Court should exercise its constitutional supervisory powers." "...The Court has repeatedly noted that its supervisory authority is a sweeping power, constrained only by the exigencies that summon forth its use..."

The odds of success of this approach may still be in question. As DePaul law Professor, Jeffrey Shaman, states in his book,"Equality and Liberty in the  Golden Age of State Constitutional Law" (2008) :

“… In the criminal law arena, state courts may augment rationality review to assay the constitutionality of criminal laws that set forth differential penalties for similar offenses, that treat men and women differently, or that discriminate against juveniles. And in a few decisions, though certainly not many, courts have accentuated rationality review to guard against abuse of prosecutorial discretion. While the vast majority of cases involving economic rights or criminal law still evoke nothing more than the most minimal form of judicial scrutiny, the number of exceptions to this practice increases, albeit slowly, with each passing year.” [p.120]

The court call for this case is September 15. Illinois citizens will be waiting to see whether the Illinois Supreme Court can show the same reformer's courage that former Governor Ryan displayed when dealing with the egregious, life-or-death problems in the administration of justice in our state.

 

"Overload", Book Examines Impact of Information Overload

Many of us probably recognize that there is a tipping point both in business and in our own personal lives when ever greater access to information, no longer facilitates the activities directed to achieving our objectives. But rather begins to confuse and frustrate those activities, as the volume and number of options for information move beyond our abilities to deal with them.

This seems to be the situation that Jonathan B. Spira, author of the book, "Overload! How Too Much Information is Hazardous to your Organization", is addressing in his new book.

A quote from Larry Bowden, a vice president at computer giant IBM, really captures the crux of the problem, "Information Overload basically slows me down because I' m interacting with information that ’ s irrelevant and out of context and not allowing me to get to the end point to have the impact that I want.”

Mr. Spira explores the exponential growth in the generation of new information and knowledge and how greater access to this production, can detrimentally impact businesses and individual knowledge workers at work and in  their personal lives.

He claims that the very tools deployed to make knowledge workers more efficient have in turn bogged productivity down. He claims that "Information Overload has resulted in work days that never seem to end, completely destroying work/life balance and may even have "..caused people to lose their ability to manage thoughts and ideas, contemplate, and even reason and think."

Beyond exploring the negative impacts of information overload, Mr. Spira's book also provides pragmatic advice, tips, and strategies that the world’s leading organizations, including IBM, Intel, Morgan Stanley, and the U.S. Air Force have employed.

Mr. Spira's book would probably be of value to both managers and individual workers who may already be  experiencing the consequences  to information overload that he describes.

Link to Publisher page.

 

Supreme Court Librarian & Former DePaul Rinn Law Library Director Retiring

A posting yesterday, on the Law Librarian Blog, on the occasion of the announcement of the retirement of the U. S. Supreme Court Librarian, Judith Gaskell, provides a look back by two of the Blog's editors who knew and worked for Judy, years ago. One of them , Mark Giangrande, is currently on the Rinn Law library reference staff.

Link to posting : "Chief Justice Roberts Announces Retirement of Supreme Court Librarian Judy Gaskell"

DePaul Clinical Professor Co-authors Book On Criminal Justice & the LGBT Community

Ms.Joey Mogul is a partner at the People’s Law Office in Chicago and also director of the Civil Rights Clinic at the DePaul University College of Law. She and her co-authors, Andrea Ritchie , a police misconduct attorney and organizer in New York City and Kay Whitlock, Montana-based writer who has been an LGBT activist for 40 years, have written a powerful indictment of the criminal justice system's continuing abuse of members of the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual Transgendered) community.

As one of the reviewer's quotes says, “If you think the struggle for LGBT equality is only about marriage and the military, Queer (In)Justice will be a revelation..." Using the  stories and the voices of many of the folks that she has represented, Mogul & her co-authors situate the "legal" abuse of members of the LGBT community within the historical context of the use of the criminal justice system against Native American and freed Black slaves.

The control and punishment of people seen as deviating from the accepted social norms, is seen as a common historical thread that also includes people with different views of gender and sexuality. The authors say that even while important legislative reforms have been won to preserve the rights of gay people, many of the not-well-off LGBT folks are being left behind and are still subject to not only discrimination but brutality.

"The authors unpack queer criminal archetypes-like "gleeful gay killers," "lethal lesbians," "disease spreaders," and "deceptive gender benders"-to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed."

In the introduction of the book the authors state that, "Laws typically define crime in ways that many people take to be neutral, unambiguous, and reflective of widespread social consensus. While it may be comforting to believe that evenhanded enforcement of criminal laws will ultimately produce safety and justice, such beliefs are not grounded in current or historical realities."

The book identifies the practice of mass incarceration as one of  the historical tools used by a society to implement such policies. "Mass incarceration is neither a reflection of violence run amok, nor an indication that certain populations are naturally prone to crime. It is deeply rooted in the history and maintenance of racial power relations, and its racially disproportionate impacts are profound."

To mount an effective opposition to the abuses identified by the book, the authors say we must develop a more complete understanding of how such factors like race,class,national origin and gender, help define what behavior is criminalized and who becomes the target of the criminal justice system. IN regards to the LGBT community the authors say that they must become a vocal part of the debates around policing and punishment.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Also see : "Recognizing QUEER (IN)JUSTICE"    By Liz Lyons   in  The Advocate, Center For Public Interest Law, DePaul College of Law, Spring 2011 p. 5