Law Graduate Who Sued Her School Loses at Trial

[steve2470]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/business/dealbook/law-graduate-who-sued-her-school-loses-at-trial.html

A jury in San Diego on Thursday rejected claims by a law graduate, Anna Alaburda, that the Thomas Jefferson School of Law enticed her to enroll by using misleading graduate employment figures.

In the first — and perhaps last — such case to reach the courtroom, Ms. Alaburda, 37, argued that the school reported a higher percentage of its graduates landed jobs after graduation than was actually the case, and that she relied on the bogus data to choose to attend the school.

After amassing more than $150,000 in debt to graduate in 2008, she has been unable to find a full-time, salaried job as a lawyer, she says.

A jury voted nine to three to reject her claims.

[SheilaT]

1. What little I think I know about this case

I just find it very, very difficult to understand why she can't find full time work as an attorney. I haven't read any specifics of what kinds of jobs she's applied for.

What I do know from my brief time as a paralegal is that if all else fails you can earn a surprisingly good living doing DUI representation or divorces.

A few years ago I knew of a woman graduating from law school and her mother-in-law (my friend) was telling me the woman was unable to find a job. Just nothing out there. A bit more questioning uncovered that the new lawyer in question wanted to practices in a specific and very narrow area. Environmental law, I think, but I may be misremembering. As it turned out, inside of a couple of months she got a good job in that exact field.

This specific case is just a subset of the problem of college students who choose to major in some fascinating field that offers almost no employment. They take out loans -- and I'll admit that the colleges don't fully explain the costs, and don't very often make job prospects very clear -- but they also have an obligation on their own to research this stuff.

[Sam_Fields]

3. She was offered one lawyer job, but the pay was too low for her.

When you are at the bottom you need to work your way up.

[sendero]

6. It it my understanding..

... that unless you graduate from a top 14 school, employment is not that easy to come by as a lawyer. If you graduate from a bottom 50 percentile school, you will need a lot of luck to get any job.

[SheilaT]

7. If you don't graduate from one of the top schools it's true that

it's going to be harder to find a job, and you probably won't be hired by the most prestigious firms. But the jobs are still out there.

It's the same as graduating in any field from any school. Plus, it's my understanding that law students typically do an internship (it might be called something different) between second and third year, and most of the time the firms they intern with will make a job offer. Not always, of course.

And the fact that she turned down an offer, any offer, is proof that she was employable in her field. I had a similar experience in my life. In my younger days I desperately wanted to be an airline stewardess. I applied and interviewed a bunch of times, and then I got a call from one station manager who'd interviewed me saying there weren't any stewardess classes coming up for his airline, but he had an opening on the ticket counter. My first impulse was to say No, I really want to be a stewardess. Then I thought, What if I never make that? So I took the job. Which I held for ten years. And during that ten years I'd occasionally apply again for a stewardess job at numerous airlines, and was never accepted. Meanwhile I got the one thing I wanted most from an airline job which was free travel.

[Ash_F]

2. "school did not reveal that its employment figures included such work as a pool cleaner, waitress.."

Sounds like a scam to me. Not sure what the nine were thinking.

[TeamPooka]

4. Better Call Saul. nt

[Recursion]

5. Protagoras's Paradox

Protagoras agreed to instruct a poor young man, Euthalos, in law and rhetoric free of charge on the condition that he would pay the fees in full if, and only if, he won his first court case. Once Euthalos had completed his course of study with Protagoras he assiduously avoided taking any cases at all. Protagoras, finally out of patience with the young man, took him to court for payment and argued thusly: “ If I win this case, Euthalos will have to pay me what he owes me. If I do not win this case then Euthalos will still have to pay me because, under our agreement, he will then have won his first court case. Therefore, no matter what the outcome, Euthalos will have to pay me.” Euthalos, however, contested this claim, stating, “If I win this case I will not have to pay Protagoras, as the court has declared his case invalid. If I do not win this case I still do not have to pay as I will then have not won my first court case. Therefore, no matter what, I do not have to pay.”

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. I'm glad I wasn't the only person who immediately thought of that.

The best answer I've seen to that is from the logician Raymond Smullyan, who said that the court should award the case to Euthalos, because the money is not yet due, but immediately afterwards it will be, and Protagoras can start demanding it and if necessary sue again.

[Recursion]

10. My logic prof made the point that this is a good argument for a null or Scotch verdict

If the jury had reached a null verdict than it is neither the case that Protagoras has won his case, nor that Euthalos has won his; that at least gets a result without an internal contradiction.

[FLPanhandle]

8. She is a pretty bad lawyer if she relied on school brochure materials as her only source of info.

That and graduation percentages can vary widely year by year, also she was offered a job but declined it.

I wouldn't want her representing me in court.