Today’s Wall Street Journal Law Blog has an article about the “UnemployedJD” blog of an unemployed law graduate. The website begins “My name is Ethan Haines.” The website features a picture of a trim white male who, according to the website, is on a hunger strike to protest his own unemployment and the unemployment of other law school graduates.
However, according to the WSJ, the website is operated by Ms. Zenovia Evans, who does not in any way resemble the profile of “Ethan Haines.” As reported by USA Today, Ms. Evans chose not to take the July bar exam, chose instead to study abroad in London, and is currently purusing a MBA. USA Today reports that she is not unemployed, but is instead an “independent contractor (which means no benefits) for a personal injury law firm, earning about $600 a week to hone her legal skills.”
UnemployedJD does not disclose where Evans/Haines attended law school. But a web search found a Zenovia Evans who attended the Auburn Hills campus of Thomas M. Cooley Law School.
The particular demands of the Evans/Haines hunger strike are that ten particular law schools provide certain information about the employment of graduates to an organization called Law School Transparency, and that the schools audit their career counseling programs “for effectiveness, resourcefulness, and accuracy.” [LST has no relation to Evans/Haines or the hunger strike.]
According to Evans/Haines, the ten schools to which s/he sent the hunger strike demands were “randomly selected law schools ranked in the Top 100 of the 2010 U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings. These schools were selected because they stand to gain the most from keeping the current rankings structure in place.”
The Cooley Law School has been a long-time critic of the US News ranking sytem, which Cooley analogizes to ranking college football teams based on the quality of their freshman recruits, rather than by the results achieved by the teams. Cooley favors an alternative rankings system, under which Cooley scores in the top-20.
According to USA Today, “She says she owes more than $150,000 in loans.” (On the blog, she says that she authorized USA Today to reveal her real name.) Cooley’s current annual tuition is $30,644, with discounts of 25-100% available for students with high LSATs (starting at 149, with an additional 10% discount for Michigan residents).
It does not seem prudent for a person with $150,000 in debt to postpone the bar exam, study in London, and then enroll in a different professional school program.
Haines/Evans does not allege that Cooley Law School misled her in any way, or that Cooley’s Career and Professional Development Office failed to function in a professional and appropriate manner.
Surprisingly, Evans is also the proprietor of the J.D. Lifeline website, which sells a book for pre-law students, and another book for 1Ls. According to J.D. Lifeline, “now is the perfect time to go to law school.”
Regarding the progress of the hunger strike, Evans/Haines writes: “As of today, August 24th, I am officially at the end of the second stage of starvation. I have rejected all food thereby limiting myself to water and fruit juice for the past 12 days. Stage three – where death is highly probable – is in the very near future, but I have yet to receive any communication from law school officials regarding my Notice of hunger strike. As of today, I have lost 15 pounds! I am at a loss for words…”
Given the near-death situation, one wonders if Ms. Evans is still able to perform her duties effectively at the law firm where she works.
Constant improvement of post-graduation data, and constant improvement of law school career counseling offices are both worthy goals. Certainly there is room for debate about the merits of the US News ranking system versus alternative ranking systems. To me, however, Mr. Haines and Ms. Evans do not appear to be particularly persuasive spokespersons for those causes.
Law School Transparency says:
We (Law School Transparency) are pleased to see you mention our organization. Just to nip some entitlement criticism in the bud, as some nuance has been lost in today’s coverage, I hope some of you read our recent post on the origins of the LST initiative.
It’s important to us that we are not grouped with the many disgruntled law school graduates raging against the “law school scam.” We are driven by our desire to improve the employment information available to prospective law students so that they can make informed decisions.
[DK: I added some text to make it clear that you're not associated with Haines/Evans.]
August 24, 2010, 8:42 pmD.R.M. says:
Such bullshit. Fruit juice breaks a hunger strike; it’s full of sugar. You don’t starve to death while consuming calories.
August 24, 2010, 8:44 pmanonymous says:
Wow… So she is scum?
August 24, 2010, 8:47 pmA Law Dawg says:
I guess Daddy should have bought her a pony?
August 24, 2010, 9:04 pmJd what says:
Here’s what I don’t understand about the law school scam sites. So you can’t get a job so what you’re still licensed to practice law, go out and get some clients. I went to a law school not much better than Cooley I think only 10 of our class had offers at graduation. One year later I would say about 20% of the class had gone solo. Some are doing really well. Others are just getting by, bit they all have clients. The jd is one of the most entrepreneur friendly degrees due to the low initial capital outlays for starting a small firm.
August 24, 2010, 9:10 pmMikeybackwards says:
I think in the interest of full transparency that LST and/or Ms. Evans/Haines must provide a link to video, 24/7 so we can verify his/her condition. Additionally, this will prove that s/he is not gaming the system by sneaking snacks, etc. to drive this faux-test.
August 24, 2010, 9:12 pmCornellian says:
An excellent example of why Cooley deserves its rock bottom ranking.
[DK: I guess we disagree here. I wouldn't judge a school by one dubious graduate. As has been noted by another commenter, about a third of Cooley's entering 1Ls don't make it to 2L. That's not standard in law school today, but it used to be; during the 1950s, it was even standard at Harvard. (As memorialized by the famous, perhap apocryphal, speech by the Dean to new students: "Look to your left; look to your right; one year from now one of you will not be here.") So if Cooley wants to give a chance to people whose metrics wouldn't get them into another law school, I think that's fine. What would be unethical would be keeping students for three years of tuition, even when it's pretty clear (based on 1L grades) that they will have very little chance of ever passing the bar.]
August 24, 2010, 9:36 pmLaw School Transparency says:
Law School Transparency has no official relationship with Mr. Haines and has neither endorsed nor encouraged any supporter to engage in a hunger strike.
August 24, 2010, 9:44 pmLeopold Stotch says:
Wow. What’s wrong with this picture? Everything.
That’s something of an understatement.
August 24, 2010, 9:51 pmOrin Kerr says:
Did anyone believe that a pseudonymous person claiming to be a lawyer was actually engaging in a hunger strike, just because they said they were on their blog?
August 24, 2010, 9:54 pmMikeybackwards says:
Apparently LST wants to present as if they do.
August 24, 2010, 10:08 pmGuest14 says:
It’s hard to imagine that someone could take the LSAT sober and not score at least a 149.
August 24, 2010, 10:16 pmToday's Tom Sawyer says:
By definition, half of all test takers make below a 150….
August 24, 2010, 10:23 pmSteve2 says:
The idea of protesting unemployment befuddles me. Protesting it via hunger strike befuddles me even more.
August 24, 2010, 10:32 pmRonald C. Den Otter says:
As someone who has done a lot of pre-law advising, you might be amazed at (a) how much relevant information about law school admissions, law school itself, student debt, and placement is at applicants’ fingertips (b) how little energy many prospective law students expend on obtaining it. I wish there were some good data on the decision making process in deciding to go to law school. Does anyone know of any?
August 24, 2010, 10:44 pmJohn Burgess says:
LST: If Gandhi could sip beef tea while on a hunger strike, I think fruit juice might be allowed. Or, we might look for a tighter definition of ‘hunger strike’.
August 24, 2010, 10:48 pmzippypinhead says:
But, but, but… if you read it on the Internet, it must be true!
Amusing trivia factoids about Ethan’s/Zenovia’s alma mater: Tier-4 Cooley is supposedly the “largest” accredited law school in the U.S., with something over 3,600 students on 4 campuses (the vast majority of students are part-time). They even offer a weekend-only program for those who can’t manage an evening part-time curriculum. Almost a third of the students drop out in their first year. Sounds like a business model ripped right from the IPO filing of some for-profit “career school” company.
Can you say quantity, not quality, Boys and Girls?
August 24, 2010, 11:05 pmSaul says:
Although the curve says 50% have to be under 150, I agree with Guest14. What do people who score under 150 do? Do all of them pass on law school or take the test again later?
August 24, 2010, 11:15 pmJosh Bornstein says:
David, I completely disagree. I think she is extremely persuasive. . . . for the other side. Now knowing just a bit about her, I [a] am automatically in support of the other side(s), and [b] don’t give a rat’s ass about her hunger strike. (Although the latter is due to my belief that informed suicide by a competent adult is permissible.)
Grrrr. I read a story like this, and I want to head to my angry-dome (hat-tip to ‘Futurama’).
August 24, 2010, 11:23 pmGopher Law says:
The biggest problem with the scam blogs and the antics pulled by their ranks, such as what I am considering to be a fake, publicity stunt of a hunger strike, is that, as evidenced by some of the comments here, it undermines the quite laudable work being done by the Law School Transparency Project and others who are simply seeking honest reform in the reporting of employment statistics by law schools. The “hunger strike” is no more shameful than the “employment statistics” that law schools publish where third tier schools report an average starting salary of $160,000 by failing to note that the number comes from a self-reported survey that two-thirds or more of the class failed to respond to, or where they include graduates working part-time at Starbucks as employed in “business.”
August 24, 2010, 11:48 pmCornellian says:
If you’re in the bottom 50% on the LSAT you should not go to law school.
August 24, 2010, 11:49 pmGuest14 says:
I would point out that the curve doesn’t say they were sober when they took it.
August 24, 2010, 11:53 pmLaw School Transparency says:
I hate to continue shilling, but I can’t help myself here. Read this paper. It details the employment information available to the most persistent prospective, yet still concludes that – at least in terms of post-graduation outcomes – making an informed decision is a hopeless endeavor except in certain extraordinary circumstances.
Then again, if you know that there is inadequate data on employment outcomes, we might call you informed…just not very bright for moving forward.
August 24, 2010, 11:55 pmDerek Shampoo says:
She does make her side look bad. It took me a year to find any kind of legal employment and I still don’t have a salaried position. But as easy as it would be to blame the profession I know it is much more a result of the wider economic slump
August 25, 2010, 12:03 amBarbara Skolaut says:
Not surprising to me (but then, IANAL).
August 25, 2010, 12:11 amDrew says:
As long as law schools can lie with impunity about their employment and salary figures to US News, the problem won’t be resolved.
August 25, 2010, 12:24 amleo marvin says:
Coincidentally, the 32 equally factors in Cooley’s alternative ranking system include:
Total JD enrollment
Total minority enrollment
Total applications
Number of full time faculty
Number of part time faculty
Total teaching faculty
Number of minority faculty
Number of course titles beyond first year
Number of professional librarians
Library seating capacity
Number of networked computers available for student use
Library square footage
Non-library square footage
Total Law School Square Footage
In other words, under Cooley’s ranking system, 43.75% of a school’s rank (i.e., 14 of the 32 factors) is a direct function of its size.
August 25, 2010, 1:02 amSoronel Haetir says:
I thought that story was about med school, not law.
August 25, 2010, 1:34 amBrian says:
Don’t assume that Cooley’s attrition rate is due to students being forced out because of grades. Many transfer to better schools after getting a year of law school behind them. FSU, for instance, seems to take a large number of transfers from Cooley.
August 25, 2010, 1:36 amWeb Hoaxes: Would You Trust This Lawyer? « Ethics Alarms says:
[...] strike, either. There is more reason to question her veracity, not to mention her integrity. As blogger David Kopel points out, Evans owes $150, 000 in student loans, yet is not pursuing law career and currently planning to [...]
August 25, 2010, 2:32 amCornellian says:
I suppose it would be more precise for me to say that this example doesn’t give me any reason to question Cooley’s rock-bottom ranking.
And high failure rates are not an indication of quality so much as a scam akin to the school lying about the job prospects awaiting its graduates. It’s just a convenient mechanism to get a year’s worth of tuition from the naive and gullible without even having to give them a piece of paper with “LL.M.” written on it.
August 25, 2010, 3:44 amGuest2010 says:
Does anything else think that $600/week for someone who purposely delayed sitting for the bar exam upon graduation to study abroad and is not 100% committed to practicing law (i.e., enrolled in an MBA program) really isn’ that bad of a deal?
August 25, 2010, 5:20 amMike G in Corvallis says:
I’m a bit surprised that “Ethan Haines” is supposedly male. I’d think there’d be far more sympathy and audience involvement if it were a young woman dying slowly and painfully for all to see on the Web … as with Kaycee Nicole Swenson and Kysa Braswell a decade ago.
August 25, 2010, 5:23 amChrisHo says:
I will be so happy; and America will be so much better; when this entitlement mentality subsides. As for the “law school scam” I think it is more a product of the university system. Higher education is very well marketed. Unfortunately far too many over estimate themselves and under estimate the investment needed in time and money. Her story is not much different than one a few months ago about the young lady in New York who went into heavy debt for a job whose salary would cost her many years just to break even.
Paying back debt at four year colleges was ranked not long ago by the US Department of Education, http://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2009/ge-cumulative-rates.xls
Huffington Post has a good blog entry with that link above, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/colleges-that-graduate-st_b_685649.html
August 25, 2010, 6:15 amOwen H. says:
Heavens! Someone on the internet isn’t who they say they are? Shocking, I say! Just shocking!
August 25, 2010, 7:19 amPine_Tree says:
I don’t know about other schools, but at Georgia Tech this was not apocryphal.
And it wasn’t “one year from now one of you will not be here”. It was “only one of you will graduate”. Not sure how this matches any real statistics, but that was the line.
August 25, 2010, 8:49 amD.C. says:
The problem is the data that comes from the law schools themselves is oftentimes fabricated and intentionally misleading. Frankly I find the attitude that young students should KNOW they’re being lied to, and factor it into their decisions somewhat repulsive. The purpose of the law school scam blogs is to point out to prospective students that when a law school lists a 95% employment rate after graduation, and a median salary of $160,000, they are massaging, and in many cases fabricating those numbers.
August 25, 2010, 9:24 amtherut says:
I do NOT feel his/her pain. Get off your butt take the exam and be an independent contractor or set up your own practice. I worked “moonlighting amost every week-end while a Medical resident. I made more money as a Resident with my moonlighting than I did my first year in my private practice. I paid my own health care etc. What is all the whinning about? I worked 28 day 12 hour shifts in an ER one month. Did I whine NO. I loved it.
August 25, 2010, 9:27 amTJIC says:
I’m down 15 lbs this year on my hunger strike (and 60 pounds over the last two years).
I’m protesting the fact that I’m overweight.
Where’s my press coverage!?!?!
August 25, 2010, 9:28 amDG says:
{I don’t know about other schools, but at Georgia Tech this was not apocryphal.
And it wasn’t “one year from now one of you will not be here”. It was “only one of you will graduate”. Not sure how this matches any real statistics, but that was the line.}
The attrition rate for high quality engineering schools is quite high. Usually students end up at the business school for the balance of their degree, so most do graduate, just not in engineering. This was explained to me (many years ago) that at public schools, it was politically easier to admit large numbers of probably unqualified students and let them either fail out entirely or move to an easier major, than simply raise admission standards for incoming freshman.
August 25, 2010, 9:32 amFormer Half Term Governor says:
I think it is a comment on the state of journalism in this country that her alleged “hunger strike” was reported without anyone being able to verify it or anything about her. Kudos to USA Today for at least insisting on a name after several other on-line publications had reported under a pseudonym, but they still didn’t say where she went to school.
If you are a reporter, wouldn’t you expect question #1 to be “what is your name and where did you go to school?” Question #2 should have been “if you are a graduate of Cooley, perhaps the law school in the country with the largest number of unemployed graduates, why does your hunger strike single out schools like Chicago and Penn, whose graduates probably do pretty well, rather than your own alma mater?”
August 25, 2010, 9:43 amRexx says:
“Regarding the progress of the hunger strike, Evans/Haines writes: “As of today, August 24th, I am officially at the end of the second stage of starvation. I have rejected all food thereby limiting myself to water and fruit juice for the past 12 days.”
She has every right to kill herself by what ever means she may choose, but she has no right to expect someone to accede to her blackmail. If she was sitting in front of my driveway demanding I let her work for her or she would starve to death I would let her starve as long as she wanted to.
However, 12 day is far short of what it takes to starve oneself to death, and I have absolutely no idea how she can claim she is, “officially at the end of the second stage of starvation.” What official certified her stage of starvation. I one time, way bake in my hippie days, fasted for 39 days only drinking water. I stopped at 39 days because I did not want to make the claim I was as good or better then Jesus.
August 25, 2010, 9:44 amMarcus says:
I am sure once the fraud is completely revealed, we will all be informed that this was a social experiment. Or maybe performance art.
“Way bake in my hippie days,” is the best Freudian slip ever.
August 25, 2010, 10:04 amPine_Tree says:
Yeah, sometimes between quarters it was like the Plague went through. Tech’s fall-out school was Management; I think they’ve invented a couple of others in the years since.
There was also an (unofficial, obviously) “square root club”, where the square root of a person’s GPA was higher than their GPA. That’s a sign to be considering other options……
August 25, 2010, 10:06 ammmm, bacon says:
Zenovia Evans, with a side of bacon.
August 25, 2010, 10:22 amDJ says:
I had a class with Zenovia my second semester of law school. She was in my Torts 2 class, which I believed she was retaking since she wasn’t in my incoming class. I remember her chiefly because of her unique name, which our professor would let out in a sigh after her recitations of cases.
As a 2L at Cooley, I learned that there are two types of people who attend Cooley: those with an LSAT score allowed them to only to be accepted at Cooley and those who attended on full or nearly full scholarships. My graduating class included a student who took the LSAT 3 times to score a 145 to enroll on probation and another who is an electrical engineering professor. I attended because I received an 85% scholarship and the campus was a ten-mile drive from my home.
I have no complaints about the quality of education at Cooley or the quality of the students it graduates. It sufficiently weeds out the students who some say shouldn’t be allowed to be a lawyer–of my incoming class of approximately 45, 23 graduated, and only 1 transfer that I can recall.
My complaints are more directed towards the administration for things like the asinine ratings metric that Cooley publishes and buying the rights to the name of a minor league baseball stadium.
August 25, 2010, 10:32 amFred says:
The only surprising thing here is that Ms. Evans hasn’t added that pretentious ‘Esquire’ title.
August 25, 2010, 10:37 amQuestioner says:
Decision making process? Do you mean like: “Well, I majored in Political Science and can’t seem to find a decent job. What should I do? I know! I’ll go to law school!”
I don’t mean to single out political science. But I do think that is the basic rationale of a lot of liberal arts majors. In fact, I recently interviewed someone who told me she want to law school because neither of her two liberal arts majors had obvious career paths.
Also, many people have the delusions about their own ability to do well. And young people are more inclined than the rest of us to take risks.
August 25, 2010, 10:41 amQuestioner says:
It is ironic that the first sentence of the second paragraph of Zenovia Evans’s book, J.D. Lifeline: A Law School Guide for the New Legal Economy, is: “You can always count on the fact that I will be honest with you–even if your law school representatives or other legal professionals won’t be.” (See p. v here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34481478/Preview-J-D-Lifeline-Pre-Law-Edition)
By “honest” does she mean, “I will make stuff up and say whatever I think will help me promote myself/sell books?”
August 25, 2010, 10:48 amButters says:
Dude. I would think a hunger strike with the munchies would be, like, at least twice as hard.
August 25, 2010, 2:05 pmUrso says:
You have to give Cooley some credit for brazenness here. They have a small pamphlet-type thing that goes with their rankings explaining each factor. If I recall correctly, the explanation for this one was “In law school, a student needs a place to sit.”
August 25, 2010, 2:14 pmD.R.M. says:
Are you actually claiming that a Hindu vegetarian consumed a beef product on his fasts? That’s utter nonsense. When Gandhi’s doctor told him to drink beef tea for his health (at a time he was not on a fast), he refused on principle. I don’t have much use for the man’s policy views, but Gandhi was not a hypocrite.
And as far as fruit juice, the way Gandhi ended his third fast-unto-death was by drinking fruit juice. You can’t starve on fruit juice, and the malnutrition won’t kill you for a long, long time.
August 25, 2010, 2:43 pmFutureCooleyJD says:
As a Cooley 2L, I couldn’t agree more. It is too bad that our student government is not willing to stand up to the administration when they do these kinds of ridiculous things.
August 25, 2010, 3:08 pmRonald C. Den Otter says:
That’s exactly what I mean by “process,” using the term charitably!
August 25, 2010, 7:54 pmneurodoc says:
Wasn’t he outraged by the discrimination he countered as a non-white in South Africa, but indifferent to discrimination against Africans there?
August 26, 2010, 11:48 amneurodoc says:
Why does this woman on her hunger strike remind me of Cleavon Little’s Bart in Blazing Saddles?
Bart: [low voice] Hold it! Next man makes a move, the nigger gets it!
August 26, 2010, 11:52 amOlson Johnson: Hold it, men. He’s not bluffing.
Dr. Sam Johnson: Listen to him, men. He’s just crazy enough to do it!
Bart: [low voice] Drop it! Or I swear I’ll blow this nigger’s head all over this town!
Bart: [high-pitched voice] Oh, lo’dy, lo’d, he’s desp’it! Do what he sayyyy, do what he sayyyy!
[Townspeople drop their guns. Bart jams the gun into his neck and drags himself through the crowd towards the station]
Harriet Johnson: Isn’t anybody going to help that poor man?
Dr. Sam Johnson: Hush, Harriet! That’s a sure way to get him killed!
Bart: [high-pitched voice] Oooh! He’p me, he’p me! Somebody he’p me! He’p me! He’p me! He’p me!
Bart: [low voice] Shut up!
[Bart places his hand over his own mouth, then drags himself through the door into his office]
Bart: Ooh, baby, you are so talented!
[looks into the camera]
Bart: And they are so *dumb*!
walter condley says:
Back in ’93 I heard Bruce Williams, a small businessman and one of the most successful radio hosts in history, warn a caller off going to law school with the comment, “right now lawyers are like fleas on dogs’ backs.” Thinking of this and the many years that have passed since, I wonder whether the number of law grads who never found work as lawyers is much larger than everyone believes. The issue seems to have received widespread attention only with the relatively recent explosion of tuition costs.
August 26, 2010, 6:43 pmhelene edwards says:
Say Neurodoc, you know that when Blazing Saddles is aired, the “N’s” are bleeped out, right?
August 26, 2010, 7:00 pmJoe says:
I’m pro-death here.
August 27, 2010, 10:24 am