Northeastern Law School Lied, This Guy's Career Died

Remember Northeastern Dean, Emily Spieler's comments to the National Law Journal in which she cavalierly dismissed our complaints about law school? If you missed them, here they are for your convenience:

Northeastern University School of Law Dean Emily Spieler said prospective students should be aware of the potential downsides of law school, but should not take the Internet-based law school bashing at face value.

"The Internet is an egalitarian and a flat form of communication," she said. "That has its values and its negatives. It concerns me because I think it gives a lot of voice to deeply unhappy people."

Those who are satisfied with their decision to attend law school are less likely to share their experiences online, and anti-law school Web sites offer a skewed view, she said. Additionally, those sites tend to focus squarely on the availability of large law firm jobs and don't address the broad array of public interest and nonlegal jobs open to law school graduates, she said.

Apparently, "unemployednusl", a poster on JD Underground respectfully disagrees. You can read his awe inspiring rant in full at JDU (Dec 13 at 3:37 PM).

I've provided an excerpt for your reading pleasure:

The "deeply unhappy comment" strike a personal chord with me, because the first time I voiced frustration with the career services office - two years after graduation - I was told that they did not know what they could do to assist me, and that I should speak to the local branch of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers. As if that would help me procure employment. Again, I think it all falls under their rubric of "people who don't want to work in public interest are wrong; there is something wrong with them." I am quite serious in stating the above. The fact that I am trying to find a law firm or corporate job to service my $200,000 (and climbing) in student loans, interest, and penalties is viewed with disgust by the school. A real Northeastern graduate would be willing to make the financial sacrifice to work pro bono for the rest of their life in Dorchester, Detroit, or preferably some third-world country, because that really makes for a good byline. Nothing cheers up a 1960's hippie-cum-law school administrator like a pretty white kid from Greenwich or Weston telling people in Sub-Saharan Africa or Indonesia how they should be running their societies. God forbid they pull themselves up by their own bootstraps or figure things out by themselves. Where would they be without the support of clean-cut WASPS? What unctuous crap.

This view is enhanced by a consistent and very vocal minority of the student body who parrot the administration's perspective that every single person at the school should work in the public interest. Mind you, only 12-15% of a given graduating class go into the public interest. Interestingly, many of the most vocal public interest folk (in my class, at least) came from pretty serious money, lived in luxury apartments/condos on the waterfront, Beacon Hill, or in Back Bay, and drove to school in BMWs and Audis. In their three years of law school, they spend absolutely no time whatsoever in the poorer neighborhoods of Boston, whose residents they claim to champion. In fact, I rather doubt they incurred any student loans at all...

If I could find an entry-level $30k job at some company somewhere, I would gladly take it, even though my minimum student loan payments are about $26k after taxes. There is not one entry-level position at a MA law firm on the school's job board. NOT ONE. Suffolk and New England School of Law have such positions listed, even if they are at shockingly low wages (think $25k). What they do have listed are a stenographer salesperson listing, a two-year unfunded fellowship in frigging Liberia, an attorney listing for Pangea3 in Mumbai, and an attorney/assistant position for a solo in Tiverton, RI, which is a lower-middle class suburb of Fall River, MA, a destitute mill city of 90,000 at the mouth of Narragansett Bay. Plus an incredibly random smegma of public interest positions in Arizona, Florida, Alaska, DC, and basically anywhere except Massachusetts, where the vast majority of grads take the bar.

Am I deeply unhappy? [Indeed] I am! I had no great shakes before law school - as a graduate of a non-Williams/Amherst/Bowdoin/Middlebury NESCAC institution (the only ones with decent career services and loyal, high-placed alumni), I was in the midst of discovering how useless a liberal arts education really is in a city of research universities like Boston. However, even with the variety of crap retail and sales positions I held, I could make my loan payments. Today, I look at my future, and I need to make about $60k to spend as little as half my after-tax salary to Access and Nelnet. I have literally ten times the student loan debt that I did post-undergrad. I live in my parents' house with no health insurance, no car, and basically no hope. I have no expectation of making even $30k in my first job, whether in the legal profession or not. I feel successful if an employer I have applied to takes the time to send me a rejection letter, which happens maybe one time out of fifty. Informational sessions done as favors aside, I have not had a legitimate job interview in about a year and a half. Given that I took a spate of corporate and transactional courses, cannot afford malpractice insurance, and live in one of the most overlawyered states in the country, the idea that I might set up a virtual law office or troll the county courthouses for DUI's is risible. Every time my parents juggle credit cards or take money from their 401k's so that I can buy food, I want to vomit. I would try to get a job at Best Buy or something, except that I am "overqualified" and my student loan payments would drown me. My running shoes are four years old, and my glasses prescriptions are seven, but I cannot bear to ask my folks to help me get new ones. I screwed up something in my left shoulder really badly this summer, and still have not told them, because they cannot afford to send me to physical therapy, but would anyway. I have trouble sleeping without downing a few drinks - when I don't, I am usually awake until four or five in the morning, doubled over with fear and regret. Living with my parents in the middle of expensive metro-Boston suburbia, I can't even remember the last time I talked to someone of the opposite sex, much less had any sort of relationship. Which is of little consequence, because the salary I need to make to support a home and a family is far more than I ever have a reasonable expectation to make. Call it a buck-fifty, at least.

Wow. If Dean Spieler ran over this guy's mother on his birthday, I wouldn't be able to feel more sympathy for him.

Sounds like he's really making the most of those public interest and non-legal job opportunities you tout, Dean.

So, let's see, Dean Spieler pushes a radically liberal law school program, but hates free speech that affects NUSL's bottom line. She forces her students to fight for radical moon-bat crusades, but is dismissive of complaints about the destruction her and her colleagues have wrought on thousands of law school graduates. She boasts about the great public interest and non-legal careers available to graduates while simultaneously (along with her career services flunkies) throwing this guy (and likely others) under the bus to enjoy a life of debt and financial ruin.

Northeastern Law: Where you're not a REAL liberal until you experience a life of poverty first hand!