In the O Where Art Though Brother movie, the great understated punchline of the movie in the end is that the george clooney character was convicted, not of the serious crimes he claimed, but rather of practicing law without a license. Just cast such an awesome low-grade sleazy shadow over him in all his mustachioed dapper dan glory.
It's funny because, I've lately been considering trying to get a free ride at a college somewhere, and find myself wanting to study something thats potentially socially useful that I couldn't learn on my own. My brain is definitely too feeble for the straight-up hard sciences, but a degree in history or literature seems like nothing I couldn't learn without a library card and more free time. So the field of study I am interested in is economics. Maybe Doug could tell us what its like to be an official student of the dismal science.
>
> No, a real crasher is like the guy who notoriously got
> a job here in Shytown maybe 12-15 years ago as an
> associate at a big law firm, did fine, no one
> questioned his competence, then it somehow emerged
> that he had never graduated law school or passed the
> bar. He was Not A Lawyer. Obviously he was fired and
> will never BE a lawyer.
>
> This incident was partly memorialized in Scott Turow's
> Personal Injuries, facts changed for reasons of the
> story, which was blended with a fictionalized account
> of Operation Greylord, the feds' early 80s attack on
> crooked judges in the Cook County Circuit Court, a
> prosecution in which Turow played an important
> supporting role as an ASUA.
>
> Simply being the "wrong kind of person" to get into a
> "good law school" or a big firm of whatever is not
> crashing if you do finish law school and pass the bar.
> Then you are a lawyer and legally entitled to
> victimize the weak and helpless, oops, I didn't say
> that. But as a prof at 4th tier law school I am
> concerned to get the Wrong Kind of Students (who
> graduate law school and pass the bar) into those sorts
> of places.
>
> Btw, I don't believe that giving right wing answers
> helps a bit. Associates and many partners at big
> firms, especially in Chicago, are more likely than not
> to be liberal Democrats. One May First some years go
> while working at Jones Day, I was riding the elevator
> up with a partner, and I said to her, Happy Law Day.
> Or, if you prefer, Happy May Day. I prefer May Day,
> she said.
>
> And law professors DEFINITELY tend to be liberal to
> mildly leftish (not hard left, so I have to be well
> behaved -- I'm too left, or if I'm not I don't want to
> find out) as a group, unless you area applying to
> George Mason (yikes) Ave Maria or Regent's School of
> Law. Even at U of C law profs are reasonably likely to
> be liberals, and the conservatives are are too smart
> to be buffaloed by ideological smoke. I send Ian's
> post on a Marxist analysis of law firm life to a well
> known right wing instructor at U of C LS with whom I
> am friendly, and he said it was "spot on," totally
> persuasive.
>
> I didn't see conservative bias in the LSATs, but it
> has been some time since I took them.
>
> --- Andy F <andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 3/26/07, Tayssir John Gabbour
> > <tayssir.john at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Here are the examples of "crashers,"
> > non-professionals who
> > > successfully posed as having credentials:
> >
> > I haven't gotten back to the book yet, but at least
> > from what you
> > posted they sounded like people who just were
> > skilled without having
> > credentials. That doesn't prevent them from having
> > the right
> > professional attitude/ideology (maybe the ex-con
> > lawyer was
> > different). In fact, if they didn't exhibit that
> > sort of outlook they
> > probably would have had their credentials examined
> > more closely and
> > been uncovered sooner. People with faked
> > credentials don't do well by
> > sticking out.
> >
> > By comparison, consider the experience of my
> > well-credentialed (AFAIK)
> > environmental lawyer friend: for coaching for the
> > LSATs he went to a
> > fellow who specializes in getting the Wrong Kind of
> > People into law
> > school. He explained that one session went like,
> > "NO! You're
> > thinking like [some famous leftist attorney].
> > Think! How would
> > George Will answer that?" That's a crasher
> > schooling crashers.
> > (Apologies to Andie.)
> >
> >
> > --
> > Andy
> > ___________________________________
> >
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time
> with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut.
> http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:53:29 -0700 (PDT)
> From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 15% of the Population, 2 Hours per Weekend
> (was Development of Political Underdevelopment)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Message-ID: <268110.60299.qm at web50408.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
>
> Ph.D's are generally regarded as totally overqualified
> in most avenues of life, treated with suspicion,
> regarded as foolish and impractical people who spent
> years on nonsense no sensible person would care about,
> and resented as smarty pants know-it-alls. Also PhD
> training really does unsuit you for lots of the normal
> behaviors, attitudes, and activities expected of most
> people in the business, legal, corporate, and
> government worlds. It's hard to explain the effect,
> but it is transformative, like getting a serious
> religion for a long time (even if you get over it), or
> doing tour of duty in the Marines (even noncombat), or
> having your brain really thoroughly washed by the Red
> Chinese. No one gets out the same, just knowing more
> stuff. I'm am not saying it makes you better, maybe
> Joanna is right that it makes you worse, but call that
> as you may it makes you _different_ in may that other
> people (disfavorably) notice. (I have a PhD in
> philosophy and political science from a top 5 school
> as well as law degree from a top 40 school.)
>
> --- Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > But then there's this:
> >
> >
> >
> > >SALON | Nov. 6, 1998
> > >
> > >Annalee Newitz
> > >[...]
> > >It is imperative for graduate students to
> > understand that becoming a
> > >professor is only one of many careers they might
> > pursue with their
> > >advanced degrees.
> > >
> > >During my less apocalyptic moments, I've become
> > somewhat gleeful
> > >thinking about Ph.D.s pouring into Hollywood,
> > writing sly sitcom
> > >scripts and weirdly symbolic movies of the week. I
> > like the idea of
> > >teachers at Heald Business School who have studied
> > class
> > >consciousness in American poetry, lawyers who have
> > analyzed the
> > >humor of sexual transgression in literary obscenity
> > trials and
> > >technical writers who have explored the way
> > information technologies
> > >change the way we use language. These are the
> > people whose higher
> > >education is relevant to their lives, despite the
> > fact that their
> > >experiences fall outside the purview of university
> > curricula.
> > >
> > >What I want, finally, is for Ph.D.s to be proud of
> > what they've
> > >learned, not because they've been granted the title
> > of professor,
> > >but because they've done something useful with
> > their minds.
> > >Likewise, I hope that professors will come to
> > appreciate that all
> > >teaching does not have to end in the production of
> > more professors.
> > >We should not be wringing our hands over the loss
> > of tenure-track
> > >jobs, but trying instead to build an honorable
> > tradition for
> > >thinkers who work outside the university system.
> > [...]
> >
> >
> > http://www.salon.com/it/career/1998/11/06career.html
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check.
> Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta.
> http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_tools.html
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> lbo-talk mailing list
> lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> End of lbo-talk Digest, Vol 89, Issue 11
> ****************************************
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <../attachments/20070327/4c7876b6/attachment.htm>