The Money Man Talks. Again.

He just won’t shut up. What a shame there isn’t an over the counter medication for diarrhea of the mouth. NYL$ Dean Mata$ar, a frequent target topic of the scamblogs, stopped counting money long enough to give an interview to a Bloomberg reporter and NYL$ alum. No conflict of interest there.

He whines to his former student that he thinks law schools have received an “inordinate amount of scrutiny.” Yes, when scams are discovered, that’s pretty much what happens. Ask Bernie Madoff. He didn’t like the SEC’s scrutiny, so he paid them off. All the scambloggers are starving, . You only had to pay us, and the New York Times wouldn’t have picked up on it, ever. They don’t do their own research, your filthy secret would have been safe. Instead, you chose to have lackeys from your school send in comments about how your new building was needed and your professors aren’t overpaid. Yeah, I read the comments, I just don’t publish the crappy ones.

Listen to him dance around this question: Given the recession, do you think law schools have an obligation to reduce enrollment? I don’t want to give anything away from this gripping interview, but he didn’t get the right answer and it was a true/false question. Fail!

He’d also like to cut the time it takes to get a Bachelor’s degree in half and add that to a 5 year program (2 undergrad, 3 law school) and have his school provide that service. Crafty, Dicky! He knows enrollment is down, and to keep the butts in the seats they need a new scam. And he’s already come up with one! Well done, Dickster!

In addition to showing how folks can find a way to justify the evil they are inflicting on others, I think past and future students can take three lessons away from this interview. 1) Crime pays. 2) The best criminals are the most creative. 3) Quit while you’re ahead, and shut up. Just shut up.

Careful When You Interview

I have not had many interviews since I received my JD, and not one for the legal profession. I had an interview a couple of months ago in another field for a job that I would have really liked. Instead of getting hired I got a call ten days later telling me that I was “overqualified.”

I have run that interview over and over again in my mind, and I am pretty sure I messed up when I let my law school education get the best of me. The interviewer asked me a bunch of illegal questions: Are you married? Do you have kids? Do you have a boyfriend? How old are you? After the last one, he said,”Oops, that question wasn’t legal.” I told him that the last 4 weren’t legal.

It was a reflex, and one I realize I should have tried to quell. I should have nodded politely, and said yes, I believe you’re correct. But the repressed gunner had to speak.

Yes, he was an asshole, and working for him probably would be up there on life’s suck-o-meter with taking property class again, but it would have been a steady paycheck with insurance.

So my advice is: If it’s not a legal job you’re applying for, do yourself a favor and forget you went to law school.

Matasar Speaks. Please Shut Up.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it today: Dean Tricky Dicky Matasar needs to learn how to shut up. He spoke to the New York Law Journal about the recent New York Times article taken from my blog (see below) and whined that he was an easy target and “poster child.”

Dickster, I will agree you’re an easy target, but it’s because you’re a hypocrite. When you do things like sit on the board of Access screwing over providing loans to the students and charge over $46,000 for your toilet and then go out and give speeches about how law school is too expensive, you should expect that some will criticize. Some will rip you a new one.

This reporter did a great job. By far the best question from the reporter:

It seems a little too easy to place all the blame on the ABA. The ABA didn’t require New York Law School to build a new building, and it doesn’t dictate what you pay your faculty. A recent IRS filing indicates that a few faculty members earn more than $300,000. Don’t you have a responsibility to keep costs low for your students outside the ABA requirements?

This question proved too difficult for him, and he gave a non-answer. The man has his head far, far up his ass so it was difficult to chose which lies comments to highlight, but here are my favorites:

I wasn’t surprised to be set up as a poster child, but I think it was unfair.I think it was unfair to focus on costs without focusing on value.

Unfair. Wow.If they had focused on value, it would just make you look worse. There is no value in a TTT degree. How “fair” is it that you scammed students for 12 years?

We also tell them that the chance of landing a six-figure job immediately on graduation are not that great, certainly outside the top 10 or 15 law schools, but the long-term return on an investment in legal education has been, and continues to be, pretty good.

Huh. I’ve talked to a lot of your students, . They write in, a lot of them are desperate, angry, and generally, in a great deal of pain. They have never mentioned this conversation. I’m guessing the only part of this you really tell them is that last line about the “long term investment.”

There are ways that we’ve managed costs — though we are an expensive law school — that are quite different from other law schools.

Did you get the cheaper marble when you built the fancy new building? Not go with the gold leaf trim?

We were an expensive law school 12 years ago and we are expensive law school now.
No .

I give a talk to every first year student here that says coming to law school is like buying a brand new Mercedes-Benz every year on credit and pushing it off a cliff. But that metaphor isn’t true. Unlike each Mercedes-Benz you buy, a year of law school takes you toward a lifelong career and the ability to practice law.

If it isn’t true, why say it? It seems to me he needs a shrink. It’s like he’s 98% evil, and once or twice a year his conscience pops out of his ass and makes an appearance, warns the students, and climbs back into that deep dark hole.

The claims that, “I was so surprised to find out not every student gets a job at $160,000 a year,” might have been significantly more credible three or four years ago. We are very forthright with our students about the job expectations they have….Students are not and they’re not naive. The testimonials we hear from students are very different from the stories that show up in the blogs, which is from a very dissatisfied group of students.

That’s a very large dissatisfied group, . So what you’re saying here is that a student
who was at your school 3 or 4 years ago was misled? But now because of the blogs, they should know better?

When asked what percentage of his students have jobs, the Dickster replied:
I can’t tell you the exact number, but it’s not as high as we’d like it to be.

If you can’t tell the exact number, you need to stop putting out that 85% are employed 9 months after graduation. Looks like you’ve been busted, Poster Boy.

For people who have been at this for a long time who are toward the tail ends of their careers, there’s very little incentive to want to change. People can ride out the current world all the way to the end. They are secure and safe.

Yes, you are at the tail end of your career and you are secure and safe. It’s all about you, Poster Boy. Now refund your unemployed students tuition and shut up.

Debtors’ Prison

When you have school loans, life can feel like a prison sentence. Every day is stress and worry and asking yourself what was I thinking???? Who knew that we might also get the chance to actually be in prison.

A reader sent in this article. Seems that debt-collectors have been getting arrest warrants and going after those late on credit cards and auto loans. I can’t imagine that school loans will be far behind.

More than a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who can’t or won’t pay to be jailed. Judges have signed off on more than 5,000 such warrants since the start of 2010 in nine counties with a total population of 13.6 million people. In interviews, 20 judges across the nation said the number of borrowers threatened with arrest in their courtrooms has surged since the financial crisis began.

Some states are making changes to the laws and making it more difficult for the scumbag collectors, which is a tiny step in the right direction. How is it possible that the president of banks are not in jail? How is it possible that nobody from Lehman or Bear Stearns spent time in jail? How about Al Lord? Why don’t we put the real criminals behind bars instead of repeatedly punishing those who lose their jobs or fall for a sub prime loan scam? Jail the scammers, not the scammed.

Charlie Needs Counsel

I rarely watch TV, however, I have watched Two and a Half Men a few times and I think it’s a great show. It makes me laugh, and I can forget about the law school mistake when I tune in. That being said, no way would I want to represent train wreck Charlie Sheen in his lawsuit against CBS.

Sheen is talented, but no matter how talented, he doesn’t realize that acting is not real work. Going to school for 7 years and having to use your brain doing tedious crap is work. Hanging out on a TV set acting with beautiful people and getting paid TWO MILLION dollars a week not only isn’t work, it’s hitting the lottery every week. And Sheen threw it all away because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Sheen claims that he is no longer an addict / alcoholic because he passed a drug test which showed no drugs or booze were taken for 72 hours. He wants CBS to both apologize and “lick his feet.” Oh, and he wants a raise to THREE MILLION an episode. He made a lame attempt to apologize about his anit-semetic remarks about his former boss.

If he were my client, and I thank god he is not, I’d tell him that if someone is paying you two million dollars a week, you lick their feet, and you don’t insult them. You take the check they give you and thank them for it. Especially since you didn’t even graduate from high school and combined with all the drugs you’ve done, that means you probably can’t even read the check CBS gave you.

I think the best rehab for this overpaid fool clown troll would be to work a real job for a year, or hey, let’s see if he could do it for 72 hours.

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