Alejandro Calderon, Author at Noto Law School

Toilets Need To Be Sued, But Not For a Grade

February 1, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General

You have to admire this student’s balls, because you won’t be able to admire his brains. I never thought I would agree with a judgment for a law school, but this student seems to be reaching a bit here.

A student at one of our favorite New York toilets, NYLS, sued the school when he received a C in his first year writing course. In a move that can best be described as bowl jumping, he transferred from Hofstra to NYLS. He claimed that he was disadvantaged because he was a transfer student, and asked that the law school change its grading system from letter grades to a pass / fail system, similar to Yale Law. He must have thought he was transferring to NYU, not NYLS. Well, he had the first two letters right.

The C student also claimed NYLS didn’t act in good faith and fair dealing and thus breached an implied contract with him. I’ll agree that NYLS doesn’t act in good faith often, (if ever), but this seems a little ridiculous to me. Wonder what he would have done if they had given him a D?

Massachusetts Toilet War

January 31, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General

The law school toilet war in Massachusetts is getting ugly. Three toilet competitors, New England School of Law, Western New England Law School and Suffolk, have been spending large amounts of money lobbying against the potential UMass merger with Southern New England School of Law and have been accused by state Rep. John Quinn of “joining forces to fix the market.”

Well, toilet schools are big business, and our friends in Massachusetts aren’t going to let just any toilet into the cartel without a fight. It’s all about the money, never about education. Just keep printing those worthless diplomas and cashing those tuition checks.

Leave a comment Massachusetts Toilet War

Poll Results

January 30, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General

The most popular loan repayment plan is to leave the country. Those who would rather leave the country than pay their loans edged out the folks who prefer to pay by IBR (income based repayment) by just one vote.

Another Reason Not To Go Solo: Malpractice

January 29, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General, Legal Aspects

Top defense lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld give us another reason not to try to go solo: malpractice. The two lawyers messed up and missed a deadline a few years ago and got sued by a client. They had to pay $900,000 to the client. Ouch. That had to hurt.

For those of you considering solo practice and thinking about saving some money by skimping on malpractice insurance, you might want to think again.

ABA Must Have Missed This

January 28, 2010 Alejandro Calderon General

Carolyn Lamm of the ABA wrote a response to the great op-ed that Mark Greenbaum wrote for the LA Times a few weeks ago. Greenbaum took the ABA to task for not exercising greater control over law schools. The ABA responded and Above the Law rips them a new one (www.abovethelaw.com). Here is what the ABA’s Lamm said about law schools reducing enrollment:

He fails to acknowledge that in fact existing law schools have reduced voluntarily class size and therefore despite a minimal increase in the number of accredited law schools (7% over a 5 year period) first year enrollment grew by only two percent. Hardly producing a “flood of graduates”.

I guess Carolyn Lamm doesn’t read my blog, or check with the law schools to see how many students they admitted this year. Had she checked or read my post on December 29th, TTT Dean Matasar is a Hypocrite, she’d know that NYLS admitted an ADDITIONAL 250 students this year, for a total of 750, up from 500. Looks to me like Greenbaum knows what he is talking about, and the ABA is still clueless.