Apparently Ann Althouse is marrying someone she’s known via her blog comments for years, although she met him in person only a short time ago. I don’t understand why this is something to make fun of; seems perfectly reasonable to me. There have been plenty of times when I’ve found Althouse unreasonable, terrible, and illogical, but on this occasion I think “congratulations!” is actually the appropriate response.
On the bright side, the controversy led me to this video (via Althouse), which is delightful:
Someone in Ann’s comments writes,
The video translates loosely to “Raising the roof at Antwerp Central Station”…with The Sound of Music…the Flemish have a strange sense of humor…
And then, via Obsidian Wings, this diagramtastic retelling of Little Red Riding Hood:
Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.
yeah, congrats to ann. i met my fiance while he was drunk and rolling in the dirt, and thereafter tried getting me drunk. not all of these stories are super romantic, okay?? lol.
my thoughts on the KCA fashion grades: http://filthygrandeur.blogspot.com/2009/03/kca-fashion-grades-sexism-even-on-red.html
part two of my essay about gender and sexuality in China Mieville’s novel, Iron Council: http://filthygrandeur.blogspot.com/2009/04/gender-and-sexuality-identity-and.html
a sonnet i wrote to my fiance’s penis: http://filthygrandeur.blogspot.com/2009/04/there-never-was-member-so-defined.html
I can’t help but wonder what all the brouhaha about Althouse says about how we commenters view ourselves.
A few weeks back, military historian David Silbey at Edge of the American West wrote about what victory looks like in a counterinsurgency and whether we had reached that point in Iraq. Today, he writes about what defeat looks like.
I think the Althouse mocking had something to do with how she announced the engagement?
chingona,
According to the NYTimes article about Althouse’s forthcoming nuptials, commenters view themselves as “commoners.” And to the extent that that is the dynamic on Althouse’s blog, I can see why people found it a bit funny/ odd that she married one of her commenters after spending a total of 11 days with him.
My husband and I first “met” through blog comments, but each of us ran our own blog of roughly equal popularity, ended up at the same grad school and dated for two years before becoming engaged. It’s not so much the medium of meeting as the brevity of “real life” acquaintance that’s unusual.
And, as Mandolin points out, Althouse’s intermittent exhibitionism about her personal life contributes. My husband and I never mentioned on our respective blogs that we were dating. He’d refer to me as “PG” when talking about something I’d written; as “my girlfriend” when talking about something offline. I’d do the same with respect to him. He did think it would be funny, since both of our law school blogs were over by the time we married, to put up a “tombstone ad” on each of our blogs of the type that runs in the Wall Street Journal announcing a corporate merger. We didn’t.
I admit that I am too thin-skinned to put my private life up for public viewing. I’m just surprised that Althouse, especially given her lack of sympathy for the AutoAdmit plaintiffs who had their reputations wrecked when they’d not even put themselves in the public eye, is once again acting surprised that people are mean on the Internet. The “controversy” is not over the fact she’s getting married or how it came about, but over the obligations of other bloggers to act the part of the cheering populace — as her own commenters do.
How did she announce the engagement?
I’m concerned people might think I’m defensive on Althouse’s behalf. In general, I hold her in pretty low regard. The first I ever heard of Althouse was when she went after Jessica Valenti for daring to have breasts in public, and needless to say, the hypocrisy between how she treats other people (especially other women) on the Internet and how she expects to be treated has always stuck with me.
And the 11 days thing, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t do it.
But I do see a certain “wouldn’t want to be in a club that would have me as a member” quality to it that amuses me. Like … eww, a commenter (or maybe it’s just eww, an Althouse commenter).
An April Fool’s fake product listing on Think Geek that might actually become a real product, based on the overwhelming response:
Tauntaun sleeping bag
I agree about the “congratulations” response to Althouse; I’ve been sort of baffled by the commentary about it. It’s not nice to make fun of people’s private lives, no matter whether the person in question holds contemptible ideas.
Since this is an open thread… I am now blogging by my lonesome at new space (RIP Our Descent), where I intend to write about gender issues, Judaism and Jewish identity, and whatever else comes up. I hope you all will stop by! I only have a few posts up now, but there are many more to come.
Some things I’ve written so far: “Sex Is Not The Point,” a response to the idea that polyamory is good for all of us, and “Nerds, Jews, And Gender Conformity,” which is exactly what it sounds like.
: )
Anyone ever read the blog of cartoonist Joe Murray? It’s very neat
http://joemurraystudio.com/blog/
Daisy,
It’s certainly not nice to make fun of people, full stop, but I take issue with the characterization of something that played out on a widely-read blog — and that Althouse asked her fiance to agree to have publicized in the NYTimes! — as “private.” She was having a “private life” in this respect about as much as I have “private thoughts” about same-sex marriage: we’ve both put a lot of it out there. It reminds me of the high school kids who have public MySpace pages that put their every waking moment on display, and then become aggrieved when someone is critical of them based on that display. If you put your business in the street, inevitably there will be boos as well as cheers; that’s just human nature.
Never heard of the person getting married – yes, I know, I need to get out more or is that stay in more so I can spend more time on the internet? – but that video of Little Red Riding Hood? I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. Nutrition facts! Snort!
PG, you’re right. She’s a public figure and has voluntarily made this part of her life public, but… I think what I meant was not private life but family life — that it’s especially unkind to make fun of people’s family lives (that’s not quite the right word, either, but I can’t think of a better one). Her family life and your ideas about marriage — and her ideas about marriage, for that matter — may be equally public, but there’s something that’s just mean about making fun of the former, and not the latter. It’s like the difference between mocking John McCain for his absurd positions on issues both foreign and domestic and mocking John McCain for being old.
That Red Riding video was fabulous! Thanks.
As for meeting people from comments on blogs…I have met some pretty great people that way.
NYTimes article on parents who now have to *gasp* send their kids to public school & my friend’s rather nice blog post about it.
Also, in his homelessness blog, he wrote a short thought on his Passover tradition to share his ceder, and the boundaries that he feels are set on whom he invites in. Extrapolation on what these boundaries are and mean, and whether the boundaries are even correct or correctable, might be interesting.
While on the subject of big bad wolves, here’s this classic song:
I’m doing a few posts on the education crisis and trying to look at it from both genders. Check out Gender & Education Crisis , Education facts by Gender, and Boy/Girl Graduation Rate Difference if you’re interested.
Pingback: Yay!!! « Luftschloss
Plaid, that public school/private school article kind of ticked me off:
and like most new parents we never even thought about the public school zoning issues.
Like most new parents? For most new parents in the fairly affluent area I live in, and certainly most new home buyers, the school district you live in is of primary concern. Real estate listings have the school districts shown at the top of the listing. It has a great bearing on the value of the property you live in.
“I think it’s all part of the end of the wishful-thinking era, where you just think you’re going to grow into your expenses,” he said. “We’ve had successively bigger mortgages and we say: ‘It’s always a stretch. That’s all right; in a couple of years we’ll have more money.’ But now we’ve had to get a little more real.”
They bet. They lost. This is exactly the kind of person that I don’t want to get a dime of my money if he gets in trouble with his mortgage.
Noah Bilenker and his wife, Valerie Abitbol, recently went into contract on a two-bedroom apartment costing around $1 million on Third Avenue near East 81st Street in the P.S. 290 zone. The couple — both lawyers who do not yet have children — chose that apartment over another on East 95th Street and Third Avenue solely because of the school.
How the hell much does a private school cost in Manhattan that someone who can afford a $1 million dollar apartment has to worry about tuition?
But I left the blogger this post. Italics are from his comments:
It’s much, much harder to improve the public education system when those adults with the most influence in government/school policy (i.e. with the most money) opt out of the system and then just shake their heads at how inept it is.
Very true.
Really, I can’t figure out why people don’t have the urge simply to spend their money efficiently.
OTOH, I’m not sure how the concept of efficiency fits here. If I’m a parent and have the money, what’s more efficient – putting my money into a system that tries to help everyone, or putting it into a system that focuses much more directly on my child? Their concern is that their child will get an education that is superior to other kids’ and thus gives their kid a competitive advantage. How does helping other kids increase the efficiency of the process?
How the hell much does a private school cost in Manhattan that someone who can afford a $1 million dollar apartment has to worry about tuition?
$40-50K/year. For all 12 years. Not including the rent that they would be paying anyway–$7-8K at a guess, though I’m not sure of Upper East Side rent these days– if they didn’t buy the $1 million apartment (which is not a particularly expensive apartment for Manhattan.)
An Article from the New York Times in 2004:
And one from Bloomberg in 2006:
So how much does it cost now? Just extend the curve, I guess.
—Myca
It’s not just NYC that has college-tuition level prices for private schools. Two of my friends attended Episcopal High School, two others attended St. Johns (both in Houston), and it currently costs $21k a year to send your kid to those schools.
Unless you live in a gentrifying area like Harlem or somewhere non-gentrified like Washington Heights, $1 million is not going to buy much house in Manhattan.
Re: Public Schools vs Private Schools: All I can say is that when I was growing up, my family lived in the worst school district in the whole state and they insisted on sending me to public schools for most of the time. Somehow, I managed to learn how to read and write and went on to become college educated and successful at my professional job, etc etc. But, I have to say that the non-academic education I received in Detroit Public Schools has been much much more valuable than anything else I have learned since then. Experiencing an inner city school first hand has been quite useful in many ways. People worry too much about “good” schools (usually good = white, fwiw).
(usually good = white, fwiw).
Not always — I know parents who picked schools based on the percentage of students who were Asian and Jewish. On the other hand, some parents will avoid such schools so their kid won’t have as much competition in class rank.
As with the parents in the NYTimes article who all describe their kids as so smart and so bright, people obsess most over schools for their children if they consider their children to be above average, such that they believe a bad school won’t offer enough to keep their children engaged. My public high school was pretty mediocre, and I ran out of classes to take by my senior year (even after maxing out offerings in areas where I had trouble, like math and science) and had to fill up my schedule at the local community college. There’s also how much of a shock you want college to be for the kid. A top-ranked public university’s most basic calculus and biology courses kicked my butt because I wasn’t used to that level of academics, whereas my friends who went to St. John’s found the pre-med programs at UMich and Northwestern to be no more demanding than high school was.
My parental obligations are greater than my social obligations, so I am more concerned with obtaining a good education for my children in particular than I am in ensuring that the average education of a district is good.
If my kids are in public school (they are) then my goals coincide with those of the district, but still not entirely. For example, I might have very different opinions on where the school should focus its money: sports, arts, math; advance programs or special needs; libraries or buses or school lunches.
From an efficiency standpoint, the best thing possible would be to form a charter school with a group of like-minded parents, and use public money to educate that group of kids. That is generally illegal, though ;) so the next best option is usually to send those kids to a private school which meets your goals, and live somewhere with the lowest possible school taxes.
But generally, there is little incentive to raise taxes for better public schools. those who care enough will either move somehere that has good schools, or will pay to send the kids to private schools.
Rhode Island is an interesting example. I know some folks who live near Providence. The state has a very large and comparatively strong Catholic school network, and though it doesn’t serve the majority of kids there are tons of kids in Catholic school. As a result the public schools are generally atrocious, and show no signs of improvement: anyone who might really care simply leaves the system, and there are few rich and powerful people with kids in the public schools.
people obsess most over schools for their children if they consider their children to be above average, such that they believe a bad school won’t offer enough to keep their children engaged
This always seems odd to me because I think that kids who are smart and self-motivated and come from a family that values education generally will be okay, no matter what the schools are like. It’s the kids that need extra help or extra attention who fall through the cracks in a bad school.
From an efficiency standpoint, the best thing possible would be to form a charter school with a group of like-minded parents, and use public money to educate that group of kids. That is generally illegal, though ;)
????? Where you live? Or what?
chingona,
First: i’m talking law, not ethics here. So if my response appears to ignore ethical issues, that is intentional.
IIRC, charter schools are still public schools and as such are subject to a variety of laws involving public schools–who can get in, etc. It’s been a while since I looked into this and I might be wrong. But I do not think, for example, that you could have a charter school and only admit “smart” kids, or “non-difficult” kids, etc.
Education costs and efficiency vary hugely across children. Imagine for a moment that “educate” is defined as “reach a particular educational goal, whatever that is.”
It is not actually all that expensive to educate a room full of students, who speak and understand the same language of the teacher, and who do not have behavioral issues. It can be extraordinarily expensive to educate someone who needs 1 on 1 attention, or who has behavioral problems, for example. As a result, the parents of the “cheap to educate” kids have an inherent conflict of interest with the “expensive to educate” kids.
You might think that the parents of the “easy to educate” kids would start a charter school. You might expect them to say “hey, we know! We’ll take our share, apply it to our easy-to-educate kids, and they will end up with an outstanding education!” And in fact, that is what many “easy to educate” parents would like to do.
That, however, is illegal. Ethical issues aside, you cannot deny a student access to a public school because they are more expensive to educate, even if their presence has a significant effect on the education of the remaining students.
So what ends up happening is that the easy-to-educate parents send their kids to private schools, and the private schools do their best to select kids who are easy to educate.
You CAN make a charter school which focuses on certain things. So you could have no sports teams, I think, and spend that money on arts (provided you met the state PE requirement), or you could have no sports teams and spend that money on extra math instruction.
That’s about as much as I can even guess; i’m not an Ed Law attorney.
Oh, and as for this:
What are you measuring?
You can set some (usually low) objective standpoint and say “if that kid is meeting it, they’re OK.” That is what the government does.
Or, you can look at the potential. I.e., you can say “well, where would that kid be if they got a great education which let them learn as fast and as much as they wanted? Are they there?” That is what the parents do.
IOW, imagine two students:
1) Jane is in third grade and if she got “perfect instruction” she would be reading at a third grade level. She is reading at a second grade level. Jane’s parents see that is a problem.
2) Mary is in third grade and if she got “perfect instruction” she should be reading at a sixth grade level. She is reading at a third grade level. Mary’s parents see that is a problem.
Both Jane and Mary are not getting what they need. Both Jane and Mary are reading below their “ideal” level, i.e. they have the mental capability to know more than they do.
Jane has “lost” only one grade, but she has not caught up to her grade.
Mary has caught up to her grade, but has “lost” three grades.
Who has the more valid complaint? Who has the more valid claim against school resources?
Okay, I misunderstood what you meant by “like-minded parents.” I was thinking “parents who want a certain kind of focus in the curriculum” or “parents who want certain kinds of values explicitly taught in school,” not “parents who only want their kids in school with kids they approve of and who have similar abilities.” Living somewhere where charter schools sprout like mushrooms, I just had a “wuh?” reaction to you saying it’s illegal. My objection to what you said wasn’t moral or ethical, just total confusion as to how what you were saying was true.
And by “okay,” I mean the kids will be educated enough to function professionally and go to college if they want to. I spent kindergarten through sixth grade in overcrowded, troubled public schools in Houston. Then we moved to a small town in Pennsylvania with a good school district. I went to a good college, but so did all my friends from Houston who stayed in that school system who came from similar backgrounds to mine – middle class, educated parents who valued education, read to their kids at home, etc. Maybe we could have been reading at a sixth grade level in third grade, and instead we read at fourth or fifth grade level in third grade, but none of us were substantially harmed in our life prospects by being in mediocre public schools. I don’t think I can say the same for some of my classmates who could have benefited from more attention and time from our teachers. I’m not saying parents of kids who function at an above average level should just suck it if they don’t think their neighborhood school meets their kids needs. But this terror of falling out of the middle class if every last thing isn’t perfect and just so is, in my opinion, exaggerated and unnecessary.
Depends on how you define “substantial harm” I suppose.
It is always a guess. You can’t know for sure that the college-grad friend would not have ended up getting a PhD if he had a better algebra teacher. You can’t know for sure that the high school dropout friend wouldn’t have also gotten a PhD if he had a better algebra teacher, either.
And of course you can’t know for sure whether one (or both) of them would be miserable, or happy, as compared to the lives that they lead now.
I don’t think it makes sense, though, to assume that the dropout student would be in a better place if only he had more/better education, but not to make that same assumption about the college grad. College is far from the acme of education, and lower end colleges are even more distant.
i know a school with a bad math program. Sure, the kids meet state standards, but it’s a bad program (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with the kids involved.)
Graduates of that program may be able to go to college. but they are going to be at a serious disadvantage if they try to go into math, say, or engineering, or computers. Some may make it if they’re brilliant, but by the time they graduate high school, for most of them the door to the traditional math track is functionally closed.
I see that as a cost, even though on an objective level the students are reasonably well educated.
I’ll preface my comment by stating that I am childless. It is entirely possible that I would be the same as many other parents when it comes to concern about being in the “right schools” if I had kids.
But generally, I wonder if parents go too far with the academic success and the whole idea that going to the right schools makes all of the difference in life. I mean, the stress of it seems like something I would find overwhelming and I know it is something many students find overwhelming when it comes time for them to apply for colleges. Does getting a grad degree from an ivy league school lead to more happiness than just getting an undergraduate degree from a state university?
L,
I don’t know about college, but I feel safe in saying that going to a U.S. medical school or a top 10 law school sets a kid up for a relatively secure future in terms of being able to get (and in most economies, keep) a job that pays an upper class wage. Security for one’s child is important to parents. If the parent doesn’t have the kind of money that would allow for, say, setting up a trust fund, the alternative is to push the kid toward a solid resume. The solid resume may not set the kid up ever to do anything memorable in his life, and certainly doesn’t do anything for “happiness” beyond that which can be obtained with a large income and respectable social status, but parents tend toward risk-aversion. They’ll trade a lot of long shots at great happiness for a sure thing of home-ownership and grand-kids.
L,
It is really very difficult to describe the effect of the “right” school or the “right” background unless you have seen it.
Depending on circumstance, it can quite literally lift someone entirely out of their own social class. It is a one-shot opportunity to get a type of privilege which you otherwise need to be born with, or work your entire life to try to get.
I don’t have a whole lot of money. But if you offered me a choice between $100,000 or guaranteed admissions for my kids into Harvard, I’d take Harvard in a heartbeat.
I guess I don’t see it although I base things on my own personal experience which very well may be unique. My brother has a graduate degree from Georgetown in a field where Georgetown has one of the most well regarded programs. I have an undergraduate degree from a second tier state college. He earns $20k a year more than me but I earn enough to get my needs met. I don’t consider him to have more privilege than I do although granted, we started out about as privileged as one could get. *shrug* maybe that privilege is why I can’t see this and why my parents felt that attending inner city schools would be valuable.
The kind of funny ironic thing though is that if I had wanted to go to Harvard, my inner city school background would have probably worked in my favor with the admissions people.
Speaking as someone who fully acknowledges having a fair amount of privilege, I have always gone to private school. My parents sent me because they thought I would get a superior education at smaller, better funded schools. My largest school had roughly 500 kids, my smallest 26.
My high school was boarding, which my parents saw as an advantage within itself. It also cost nearly 60,000 (roughly 50,000 without expenses, but my “student account,” laundry fees, and various school activity expenses added up.) The kids at the school tended to be from very wealthy backgrounds with very little class conciousness. I remember a boyfriend of mine telling me his family was “middle class.” They made 400,000 a year and lived in the East bay. Some kids were the children of prominent CEO’s and executives past and present (from companies such as Staples, Estee Lauder, and AOL/Time Warner) and legacy families. The ultimate insult was poor. Scholarship kids were said to be ruining the school. Materialism was extreme, with designer clothing ruling the system. Bullying of kids perceived as having less money, and the social system favouring the ultra rich, was common
Of course there were many advantages too. The schools superior funding allowed for a beautiful arts building that would fit in at any large university. Our science department allowed such expensive projects as engineering e.coli to glow, raising chickens yearly, and condensing DNA into clumps to be put in cheap plastic novelty necklaces. We had our prom at a ski resort and took international trips every year for those willing to pay the highly discounted prices (some trips included South Africa, Australia and China.) The language programs were equiped with interactive software for practicing and recording pronounciation. We had “Smartboards,” which are some strange computer based whiteboard. New building projects were constantly underway. All in all, our budget provided us with huge advantages
I am by no means trying to brag about the privilege I have been given. I am simply trying to shed light on private school culture and what drives parents with the means to choose these schools. I now attend a private college, and am amazed at what the lower budget means. I no longer have a beautiful, expensive dorm (though mine is quite nice.) The students come from all races (I only knew 1 black girl in high school and her father was a Diplomat) and socioeconomic backgrounds. The health center is not open 24 hours. The school has very real concerns over budget. There are no new buildings being erected. However, I do feel I’ve gained greater perspective and a better grasp on reality than I had when my classmates would refuse to drink tap water and ride top horses imported from Germany. All in all, I can see both the benefits and disadvantages of elite private school culture having lived it. I hope I provided some insight
Molly, You’ve certainly had an educational experience that few people ever get to see. So tell me, if someone from your high school chose to go to a state college, would they be looked down upon? Was there a lot of pressure to get into the “right” college?
Not much here, just blogging about the manipulation of civilian oversight in my town. And apparently there’s a “filthy five” list of activists and I made the top position.
I did have to contact a site because someone there was posting personal information about me. But apparently one of them is the legislative aide to a city council member up for reelection. If he loses, she loses a cushy $49,000 a year job during a recession. One of them might be another city councilman’s legislative aide. It’s nice to have people in City Hall who do look out after us “filthy five”. But the other people on the list (four out of five are women) are pretty incredible activists. Creepy factor aside, it’s an honor to be included.
Moving here from “Reduce The Rate”
PG,
That’s a problem with the bar, then. Improve the test. As it stands now, the bar exam is an unnecessary hurdle. I’ve always felt that either a JD or passing the bar exam should be the requirement for becoming a lawyer – not both.
Having grown up around lawyers (more or less the family business), I know that I could be a better lawyer – without either a JD or passing the bar exam – than most of the lawyers I’ve worked with or against. Hell, I’ve had to give EBT (deposition) tips to my lawyer in the past. And my experience with the laws is hardly exhaustive.
Neither passing the bar exam nor getting a JD guarantees a competent attorney. At least a medical residency gets you experience. I’d actually feel better about attorneys & accountants if they had to serve an apprenticeship.
Unfortunately, there is no way for me to know how well somebody did in the research and writing course (which, I agree, is a much better gauge of competency) in law school.
I’ve thought about the qualifications necessary to be an attorney for years. Although I haven’t come up with anything better than apprenticeships, I know that the current system is terribly flawed.
But still, as with all other professions, most doctors, lawyers and accountants are really bad at what they do. It’s a “buyer beware” world when dealing with the lettered professions.
(edited to fix the cut off sentence in the penultimate paragraph)
In California you can take the bar and become an attorney without a JD. Dunno that that’s really improved the average quality there. Like any state- or nation-wide standardized test, the bar exam attempts to ensure a minimum floor of knowledge that may not have been necessary to achieve a passing grade at a given school.
“Unfortunately, there is no way for me to know how well somebody did in the research and writing course (which, I agree, is a much better gauge of competency) in law school.”
If you’re in the position of hiring a lawyer (which is really the only point at which you care about the lawyer’s competency), there is a way to know. I had to submit my law school transcript and a research/writing sample for every place where I applied for employment. I got offers from places that prioritized that skill set and disregarded my C in Federal Income Taxation.
Hmm, comment disappeared. I hate it when that happens.
I’d be inclined to believe that there’s been no improvement in quality. I don’t think either law school or the bar is geared towards improving quality. I object to the requirement to do both because its more like hazing to get into the club than any sort of quality assurance. One hoop is enough.
I don’t think that’s true for most lawyers you’re likely to hire who are either in practice by themselves or part of a small firm. You certainly wouldn’t see that in my dad’s firm. The one fantastic lawyer that I’ve worked with, I hired w/o knowing how good she is. It was only after I started working with her that I was able to see how chock full of accomplishments and accolades her career has been.
Getting hired by a firm is itself a sort of vetting process — if a firm wants to maintain its reputation, it can’t hire and retain a lot of crap lawyers, so when you pick a particular firm, you’re picking them in part based on their hiring good lawyers. They’ve read the writing sample and checked the transcript so you don’t have to.
You can become a lawyer in California without going to law school?!? I don’t really know why that makes me happy but it does. I suppose that I think that I am smart enough to actually pass a bar exam without having gone to law school. It is probably not true but as I don’t live in California, I’ll never try to take the bar exam and thus, I will never fail it. I love it!
L,
I don’t know if you followed the conversation at “Reduce the Rate,” but I mentioned there that Kathleen Sullivan, one of the best appellate lawyers in the country and former dean of Stanford Law failed the CA bar the first time she took it. It’s considered one of the hardest bar exams in the country, but bar exams in general are mostly about taking a preparation course and cramming for two months, which I’m guessing Sullivan didn’t bother to do. (After all, she literally wrote the book on constitutional law, or at least the one I used in law school.) The bar exam humbles many of us — I passed NY the first time, but by the skin of my teeth and having the “practical” section be on a subject I knew extremely well (confidentiality of sources as applied to bloggers).
PG, I am just being silly. I know that my chances of passing the California bar without having first attended law school would be slim at best. I just like to think that I could even though I know I probably couldnt. I dont know if that makes sense or not. I guess I like to have an inflated view of myself :)
The thing is that I am not terribly young and although I do have a great interest in the law, I am probably not going to go to law school. If there were a law school which was close to my home or work, I would consider going part time. But it is my bad luck that the law school near me is a really good one. They might admit me but I never could afford the tuition without going deeper in debt that it would be worth at this point in my professional life. It is something like $20k a *semester* …I might want to learn the stuff but not *that* much….maybe if I were in my twenties I would go for it because the $120,000 in tuition could be made up over the course of one’s career.
L,
I think the higher passage rate among people who attended law school is more a matter of correlation than causation — people who could afford to attend law school also are more likely to be able to afford the prep course, and to take studying for the exam more seriously, then people who didn’t go to law school and are taking the exam on a lark. If you’re highly self-motivated and good at memorizing rules and arcane terms and phrases, and then writing coherent essays and answering multiple choice questions using that information, you very well might be able to pass the bar. Every year, a few dozen people pass without having graduated from law school.
Law school and the bar go hand in hand. Law school gives you the theoretical and basic backing in thought that is, ideally, put to use in acting like a lawyer. Studying for the bar (which is a horrible test) tends to serve more as a method of controlling competition, and in certain states is a way to ensure that people know at least something about the state law.
huh.
Not all lawyers are especially smart. not all lawyers are especially competent. And the law is both broad and deep. As a result there will always be some lawyers who are out of their depth.
Smartness helps. but there is a shitload of knowledge in there as well. If you think that you could be a better lawyer than all the ones you know, without law school or the bar exam, just because you’re smart… well, you’re hanging out with the wrong lawyers. Or you’re an absolute genius.
And therein lies my complaint. It’s the hazing you need to get through to join the club. Either make a better test, eliminate the test or institute an apprenticeship requirement.
First of all, I don’t think that I could be a better lawyer than all the ones I’ve known. I think I could be better than most of them. There’s a difference. I think it’s likely that you could be a better programmer than most professional computer programmers. But you would need to gain the experience & knowledge necessary to do that.
You’re missing the vital bit where I wrote that lawyers are like people in any other profession. Most of them are not very good at what they do. Some of them are exceptional and I can only wish that I could approach their level.
And, yeah, I beat one of the best, by reputation, Insurance Company lawyers in my city when I represented myself. It’s not that hard in many areas of the law. The biggest thing is knowing how to find the information that you need. That, and having a decent judge and not having the rules stacked against Pro Se litigants.
Look, I’m not picking on lawyers. When I became a computer programmer I knew nothing about computers. Nothing. I had avoided them like the plague. Within six months I was as good as almost everybody working in my field. After a year there was nobody better, in my field, in the greater NYC metropolitan area. Most programmers were just really, really bad at what they did and I had a gift for that particular type of programming. It’s no different for any other profession.
So, yeah, for the first six months to a year of my law career I wouldn’t be all that hot. But once I gained the experience in whatever area of law I specialized in I’m willing to bet that I would be better than most, not all, lawyers practicing that area of law.
There’s nothing special about being a lawyer as opposed to being an electrician or plumber or salesperson. The same things apply. Aptitude, intelligence, work ethic, experience, knowledge. I would be the worst salesperson that you have ever seen or could imagine. I just don’t have what it takes to even qualify as mediocre when it comes to sales.
There have been people who practiced law very successfully for years w/o either a JD or passing the bar before being found out. It is not impossible given the intelligence and desire to learn. Just like it’s not impossible to become a good programmer without the degree or certifications.
I have seen great lawyers in action and I’ve seen mediocre lawyers in action and I’ve seen bad lawyers in action. In my experience, and I realize that doesn’t serve as proof for the whole country, the majority have been in the category “Bad”. Seeing a good lawyer at work is a thing of beauty, not least because it doesn’t happen every day.
Wow, that’s cynical. You know, sometimes the merit of the case determines which side will win.
And sometimes the quality of counsel determines which side will win. And sometimes the judge determines that. If you’ve spent much time in court, certainly you can identify which judges are lazy or perceptive or favor certain attorneys more than others or a hundred other things that determine how much of a chance you have.
If you don’t have a decent judge, and there’s more than a non-zero chance that you get a bad judge, the merit of the case may not determine which side will win. So I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that that is one of the requirements of winning. It is not unreasonable to believe that if you were to argue the exact same motion in front of different judges that you might get different results.
Did you know that in Oregon Pro Se litigants are forced to disclose their experts while those represented by council can keep their experts hidden from the opposition?
So I really don’t think I’m being cynical with that statement, I believe that I’m being honest. The judicial system is not perfect, it’s comprised of people. I’m really not just pulling stuff out of my ass based on how I imagine the legal system might work based on stories I’ve read from people I’ve never met.
PG, thank you for allowing me to preserve my fantasy that it is possible. I am very self-motivated and good at memorizing rules and arcane terms (and all those years of taking Latin certainly couldnt hurt). Now I will walk around for the rest of the day thinking, “La la la, I am so awesome that I could probably pass the bar in California if I put my mind to it”
I think the difference is that with the law, there is some element of perception that becomes something of a self fulfilling prophesy. People think, “oh this lawyer went to a good school and passed the bar so they will win the case” which then allows them to be intimidated. But computer programmers are more likely to be judged by the finished product.
Depends on what type of law you’re practicing. I would guess that most of my dad’s clients have no idea where he went to school. They think he’s a good lawyer because people in their community have recommended him. Most of his clients really have no idea whether he’s a good lawyer or not, they have no basis on which to judge. I have that same problem w/ dentists. I have no way to judge whether they’re good or not and I can’t rely on recommendations to tell me anything other than that their patients like them.
In close cases where the facts could go either way or the existing precedent/law is not on point, sure. But seriously, there is such a thing as “the law says X and you’re saying Y so you can’t win no matter how awesome your attorney nor biased the judge or jury (who after all can be overturned on appeal for getting the law wrong.” That’s why corporations with excellent attorneys will settle with a schmo who is pro se: they realize they can’t win in court, and they’re better off settling where they can manipulate him into taking less money than he’d probably win in court.
I’ve never heard of this inequity. Researching superficially, I can see that Oregon indeed does not authorize expert discovery in its state courts, but I haven’t seen anything that this rule is only for parties represented by counsel.
In practice, someone who is ignorant of Oregon’s discovery rules — as some pro se litigants may be — might turn over information about the experts while a person who is aware of the state’s discovery rules wouldn’t. But this is a practical effect of the difference in knowledge, not part of the rules.
Can you tell me on what you base your assertion that pro se litigants in Oregon state courts are forced to disclose their experts?
It’s been about 5 or 6 years since this happened & I asked my state Rep to change the law, but I base my assertion on both what the judge ruled in my case and what the law said at the time. It was my fervent hope that my state Rep would follow through on my request, but then I moved out of the stated for 4 years and didn’t check.
The rule was definitely in the ORCP in 2003. Let me search for my response to the Motion for Summary Judgement, I know I cited the rule there. The judge, in response, stated that,”… the rule says attorneys do not need to disclose the identity of their expert witness, but you are not an attorney. Therefore your response to the Motion for Summary Judgement will not be redacted as you request.”
It may take me a couple of days to hunt it down, but I’m sure that I have it somewhere.
But, holy shit, they changed the rule in the ORCP as per my request! That was ORCP 47E. Deborah Kafoury was a great, great representative.
I believe the first 3 words of the third sentence of the rule used to read, “If an attorney…” and that’s where the judge fucked me over.
PG,
It was changed in 2007. You can find the change here:
http://www.willamette.edu/wucl/pdf/olc/sb499.pdf
Wait. Crap, that’s not it. I’ll let you know when I find it.
Jake,
Thanks, I’d appreciate seeing it.
It does look like the people who drafted the rules simply did so poorly and wrote the language with the underlying assumption that it would be of concern only for attorneys, and thus neglected to provide for pro se litigants. I am really doubtful that the intent of the drafters was actually to create different rules for pro se vs. represented litigants. That is, there doesn’t appear to be a specific rule saying pro se litigants MUST disclose their experts; rather, the rule making an exception to the general discovery rules neglected to specify that pro se litigants are included.
I agree with you about the intent. I think that’s pretty clear. However, it was clear that the judge had not read my response beforehand. I believe that he was both biased against Pro Se (I’ve had several lawyers tell me how unusual his actions were) and, possibly, had a bias towards the Insurance Co’s lawyer who he had dealt with many times before. So, I won the battle over Summary Judgement but my long term goals were severely hampered.
But, honestly, the judges actions are not out of character with how Oregon treats Pro Se, in my experience. When I had to go to the courthouse to file my response I’d gone to the wrong office initially and the court clerks refused to tell me where I needed to go to get it filed. They claimed that constituted “legal advice” so they couldn’t tell me.
OTOH, I’ve had some very good experiences here w/ other judges and in small claims court, so it’s not all bad.
This is what I meant back in the sentence you responded to in comment 49. Which judge you draw can have a great effect on how you do.
PS: I’m not sure how long it’ll take to find the old rules. I have the ORCP from that year on disc somewhere, but we’re still not unpacked after the move back to Oregon & I’ve been suffering from some extreme fatigue. So if I don’t get back to you on that in a reasonable timeframe it’s not because I’ve forgotten or don’t have it. I promise you that I’ll eventually find it and get it to you when I do.
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