Effective immediately, Larry Sager will resign as dean of the University of Texas Law School. He confirmed to the Texas Tribune this afternoon that he signed a letter of resignation.

“The fact of the matter is, and there’s no two ways about this fact, that I resigned now because I was asked to by the president of the university,” he said.

Sager sent out a letter to faculty earlier this afternoon describing his efforts to keep top-notch professors at the school. 

He announced over the summer that after the 2012 school year he would step down as dean of the state’s largest law school.

What the hell? Anybody know any of the background on this?

climateadaptation:

Well, I have to ask the obvious: Do you want to be a lawyer?? Law school is three years of your life and costs well over $100,000. A good chunk of that is unsubsidized loans (e.g., that’s very bad). If you’re going to law school to satisfy your inner enviro-idealist, how will you pay that back?

Besides those logistics, are you prepared to compete for a job with other lawyers? Lawyers are a vicious and tenacious lot. And the job market is saturated with out of work, hungry lawyers. Will your resume hold up in the market? 

I know a lot of law graduates who’ve been in the market for over two years. TWO YEARS looking to become a lawyer. Many have barred in multiple states - an additional financial and time burden outside of tuition and the three years dedicated.

They’re getting by in the non-profits, but, man, they are really struggling to make ends meet. So, the market is flush with both laid off, careerist-lawyers and fresh-out graduates. Not to mention a fresh crop of grads will be released next spring. There are too few jobs out there and the trends don’t look too good.

Granted, environmental law is a niche. There aren’t a lot of environmental lawyers out there as it’s a specialty field. The more narrow the field, the less unemployment.

Still, the state of the industry doesn’t look good.

By the same token, law schools are scrambling to justify the high costs of attendance in light a terrible job market. And there’s been a plethora of bad press questioning the value of a law degree.

In fact, students are suing law schools to get their tuition money back. One student went to the media shortly after he asked for and was denied that his tuition money be returned. He wrote a letter to the dean of Boston College and the media picked up his story. Hell broke loose.

The NYTimes has been running a series of stories questioning the value of a JD, as well. See: “Is Law School a Losing Game?” and “What they don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering.”

With that, I point to a solid piece by Paul Campos that argues against getting a law degree using statistics. Campos is a contributor to “Lawyers, Gun$, and Money.” Here’s his abridged argument:

POINT ONE: …Contrary to the standard narrative within legal academia, which assumes an increasing or at least steady demand for legal services relative to overall economic growth, the demand for legal services within the American economy has been declining, relative to the rest of the economy, for the past two decades….

POINT TWO: The rate at which American law schools are producing aspiring lawyers far outstrips the demand for new lawyers, and this has been the case for many years now. …

POINT THREE: The cost of law school is, in economic terms, arbitrary….In other words, over the past quarter century, the relative change in the cost of acquiring a law degree has borne no rational relationship to the relative change in the value of a law degree.

POINT FOUR: There is, to this point, almost no sign that this arbitrary relationship between the change in the cost of acquiring law degrees and the change in their value is going to move toward a more orthodox economic relationship, in which the decreases in value trigger decreases in price. Law schools continue to raise tuition at far faster than the rate of inflation…

POINT FIVE: These otherwise unsustainable trends are being maintained by a combination of unlimited federal educational loan money and, to a lesser extent, poor information regarding the actual relationship between the costs and benefits of acquiring a law degree….

Campos unredacted piece is well worth your time and I highly recommend you give it a go; even if you’re not considering a JD…

At some point in the next two years, I’ll have to decide between going for a JD or a PhD. Both seem equally interesting and with equally poor career choices.

That’s what it looks like, given a newly enacted state statute. Until recently, Texas Penal Code § 31.03 provided that theft is “a state jail felony if,” among other things, “the value of the property stolen is less than $20,000 and the property stolen is insulated or noninsulated tubing, rods, water gate stems, wire, or cable that consists of at least 50 percent: (i) aluminum; (ii) bronze; or (iii) copper.” But the new statute deletes the text from “insulated” to “50 percent,” so that the new version now makes theft a felony when “the value of the property stolen is less than $20,000 and the property stolen is … (i) aluminum; (ii) bronze; (iii) copper; or (iv) brass.”

According to Wikipedia, most pre-1982 pennies would qualify, being copper, bronze, or brass, but probably more recent pennies would as well, if “brass” is just read as being a “metal alloy[] consisting mainly of copper and zinc.” In any case, an aluminum can would pretty clearly qualify — and, again, we’re talking about the theft being treated as a felony. And, of course, that means you’ll lose your right to keep and bear arms as well as facing a longer sentence. Or am I missing something? Thanks to Charles Blevins for the pointer.

Oh Texas, thank you for giving me something laugh about today. This law was obviously intended to stop people from stealing copper, but was worded so poorly that it’s going to send some poor sap to jail for collecting coke cans.