Poster of the Weak: Jungleshark

Apparently jungleshark has been around since June of last year, but never left an impression until this past week. Here at BLS, we don't tolerate homophobia. And that's what jungleshark is- a homophobe. He managed to get the "Top Conservative Law Schools" thread locked; he was always up for debating the ideals of libertarianism, but never once responded to the multiple accusations of hating gay people, which led me to believe he does. All he managed was "I don't believe I said that," as opposed to something akin to "that's untrue." People don't tend to play coy when accused of being hateful bastards. My favorite of the jungleshark posts is as follows:

I think one indicator of a law school being liberal is whether the application asks if you are homosexual. Applications to Penn and Cornell ask you if you're homosexual or if you're transgendered. I applied to Penn because it's well-regarded, but I'm hoping I get into a well-regarded school that's not quite as liberal. Also browse through the viewbook and see what the students & faculty look like (how they're dressed, etc...). I looked at UCLA's viewbook and I also looked at Vanderbilt's viewbook and there is a big difference. Vanderbilt looks more conservative. UCLA has an institute on sexual orientation; that is a sign of it being liberal. Also, notice that Texas's non-discrimination policy does not include "sexual orientation;" that may be a good sign if you're conservative. Penn's non-discrimination policy, on the other hand, not only includes sexual orientation, but even "gender identity." Penn is apparently way ahead of the game in terms of being liberal. I think Penn also tried to get military recruiters banned from campus because the army doesn't permit open professions of homosexuality.

Vom. (And yes, I do look down on those who claim to follow "traditional Christian values" and then use said values as justification to hate.)

FWIW, jungleshark might not be that enlightened in other areas, as well. While we here at BLS greatly support the LSAT retake, when you do so three times and two of the scores are fairly close while one is not, I tend to see the outlier as just that: an aberrational outlier. Jungleshark sports a 3.629/156/160/175. Now which of those three LSAT scores do you think is most representative? I'm going with the middle. Jungleshark also "resigned" his job as teacher because he was "not getting admistrative support." A homophobe and a quitter? Enough to make jungleshark your Poster of the Weak.

Oh, and I almost forgot: feel free to email any comments you might have concerning jungleshark to bloodhound18@yahoo.com. I'm sure he'll appreciate it.

Poster of the Weak: Jay Obee

This week's Poster of the Weak is Jay Obee. Jay Obee is a rather new poster to Top-Law-Schools.com, and we here at BLS can think of no better way to introduce him than by giving him a good roast. So let us begin!

Jay Obee is a 0L. In law school terminology, he's a young child, yet to begin the perils of law school and job hunting. However, unlike our previous Poster of the Weak, he's smart. Smart prospective law school students tend to have the worst qualities you can find in a human being: They talk a lot, think they know a lot, are argumentative, presumptuous, and usually get in way over their heads. I'd know, I'm one of them, and I'm sure every other admin here can relate.

The problem with Top-Law-Schools.com (or rather, the virtue), as that the site is also frequented by people in all stages of the law school process: 1Ls, 2Ls, 3Ls, and even BigLaw Associates come by to share their wisdom. In fact, an amazing facet of Top-Law-Schools.com is that you can literally trace the intellectual growth of posters, as most begin posting on TLS in their senior year of college. This maturational process is astounding, IF the TLS poster goes through it. There are some law students who are on the forum who still need to grow up.

Jay Obee, I sincerely hope you grow up. Because beneath my cold, acerbic exterior lies a warm, loving Emmy waiting to see a beautiful scholar blossom forth.

Thread: Berkeley vs. NYU vs. Stanford
http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49125
The topic is obvious. A poster is deciding between the three schools and needs some help. Jay Obee is quick to the rescue:
Do you seriously think the OP is dumb, Jay? Of course he/she knows the schools' RANKINGS. He was admitted at NYU and Boalt! We have a smart one on our hands. His question, obviously, is whether he should disregard the rankings and go for a school at which he feels comfortable.

How do you know Boalt's placement in the top 6 was a fluke? Have you reverse engineered the USNews rankings? I don't understand how you can say such a thing and give absolutely no support for it. Sure, it was ranked 13 a few years ago, but NYU wasn't even close to the top of the T14 and you aren't complaining about them!

Then you talk about their firm placement, of which you really have no idea. What does it mean that you've seen so many Berkeley grads at "shitty mills?" Are you kidding? Do you work at the Berkeley Law student failure office?

Now let's look at his next post:Your research!?! Pray tell, where is your research? Where is your mound of publications on job placement from Boalt? Oh, that's right, you don't really have anything to show for it.
No! Wait... here we go...I've belabored the problems with these statistics many times before. Quite simply, the problem is that any statistical analysis that provides information about where law students END UP is going to be flawed. The simple reasoning is that it fails to show the preferences of students and the preferences of law firms. For students, there are regional preferences, professional preferences, speciality preferences. Boalt tends to attract students who want to pursue IP, public interest, or judicial positions. On top of that, students who end up attending Boalt like sticking on the West Coast (I can't blame them; the weather is nice, and SFO is beautiful). Why can't this account for the disparity? Jay offers no reason.
But the thing is... how do you know this? Have you sat in on hiring decisions, where partners have actually rejected Boalt students because they attend Boalt? No, you haven't. You are simply looking numbers, and myriad sets of facts could explain them.

Finally, the thread is hailed upon by the voice of reason, a Boalt student:
But Jay doesn't back down:
Dear Jay, aren't you begging the question? How do you know the statistics are reliable? You say the statistics are reliable because they prove the conclusion that Boalt simply doesn't place well in Biglaw when it is compared to the T6, but the problem is that you haven't proved it yet. And, by a marvelous sleight of hand, you presume the truth of your argument in claiming that the statistics are more reliable. The argument is circular on its face.

I can't be bothered to dissect the rest of the thread. Needless to say, this pattern of behavior is to be found everywhere on TLS: Jay Obee is providing advice about a process using statistics that can't prove the conclusion he wants to prove. What's worse is that he's using them as gospel. And what's terrible is that he's ignoring the testimony of law students.

Why is it so foolhardy to accept such testimony, Jay Obee? Is it because we're self-interested, and we really want to sell our respective schools? Can you accept our anecdotes?

I suspect my explanation for this is will apply to Boalt students as it applies to students at my law school. When you start at a law school (or at some point before OCI actually begins), your OCS will provide you with statistics. These statistics show you the 25th percentile, 75th percentile, mean, and median GPAs of students who attained offers at the firms that interviewed at the school during OCI. Very much like the USNews rankings, these statistics provide the same "admissions information". We need them. Why? We need them because we have a limited number of "bids": We can't interview at every firm. There isn't enough time, and firms only have so many interviews with so much patience. So we have to "spend" our bids carefully. But how do we know where to spend our bids? How do we know where we stack up with respect to a given firm? That's what the GPA chart tells us. It tells us what are "reaches", "targets", and "safeties" should be.

Now the reason I suspect no one is going to come and tell you outright what class rank it takes to get into these firms is that these charts are classified. The following paragraph precedes our GPA grids:

"On behalf of your classmates, we ask that you please keep this information confidential. The data is specific to MLS students, and is made available exclusively for the use of MLS students. While it may be tempting to share it with others outside the MLS community, distributing it will only work to disadvantage you and your classmates. If an employer is giving the edge to MLS students -- digging deeper into the class than it does at other law schools -- that will end if word gets out. Moreover, employers may not submit the forms which enable us to compile this data if they know this information will be publicized. Please help yourself and your colleagues by maintaining confidentiality!"

So, really, Jay, our hands are tied. But I can assure you that students at non-T6 schools have a perfectly fine time getting jobs at top firms. Really, it's not hard. Everyone who wants one gets one. During 1L at these schools, people are usually fighting for the clerkships and other prestigious things, not necessarily for one of the many spots available to us in the Vault 10 (and even Vault 5!). You claim that our calling you a "0L" is an ad hominem attack; but it isn't. We are simply in a better position to know our employment prospects than you are, and that'll be the case until you actually begin your own job-hunt.

That, my dear friend, is why you shouldn't post so conclusively about firms and job prospects from law schools, and that is why you are Poster of the Weak.

Congratulations.

Poster(s) of the Weak: redcement, Archon D: terrorface

And now the first of our weekly series, Poster of the Weak, where we acknowledge the people who bring their very own brand of doltishness to TLS.

There are so, so many to choose from, although most aren't quite up to par with our dear Pyke. It was a tough decision, and even though I would've liked to make my first PoW someone I just generally despise, I'm instead going to pick two people who irked my particular brand of correctness this week. Why? Because I can, and I'm ostensibly making up for weeks and weeks of past idiocy. So here they are: the little-known, ill-received redcement, as well as the gamer extraordinaire, Archon D: terrorface.

Redcement managed to come from obscurity only to get her ass handed to her by multiple well-respected TLSers in my very own "Do you judge posters by their LSAT score?" thread. She started off with a gem: I think high LSAT score is predictive of the wealth of the applicant..the test favors white, upper class, male applicants. I tend to assume this profile of posters who say they score high, until their posts show otherwise.

She then went on to comment on the lack of stereotypes for Asians, state that one can't understand the seating arrangement of an airplane without having been in an airplane, and tell someone that if you're a rich 22 year old girl, you automatically understand the inner workings of credit cards, insurance, computers, and stocks. But then came the pièce de résistance:



"I guess I'd like to see more references to/tests for multi-tasking, alert ability to change gears, grace in the face of snide commentary, mindfulness, creativity, craftsmanship, compassion. I'd like to see hypotheticals about jack-of-all-trades who have to do the math on a new roof, church members in pews, food stamp documentation lists."

You read correctly; redcement would like to see LSAT questions about compassion and doing math on a roof. Because these are, "you know, skills that will be useful for attorneys." She goes on to misuse the word "empathy" and equate it with compassion, but by this point, her stupidity surprised no one. Now take a guess as to her numbers. C'mon. You know you want to.

154/3.0. No wonder she rails against the cultural insensitivity of the LSAT. Quite enough to make her my Poster of the Weak 1.

Archon D: terrorface is sporting a 163, 3.0, trashy facial hair, and a ridiculous handle. And even though he's one of the lucky few (URM), he still managed to get dinged by Baylor. How do I know this? Because Archon D: terrorface was apparently not humbled enough by his rejection; he still had enough hubris to start his own thread, lamenting what must so obviously be Baylor's loss. Someone pointed this out, and was immediately called rude and racist. Someone tried to defend this person, and was also immediately called snarky and a thug. When that person made a count-by-count rebuttal of the OP's reponse, he magically disappeared. People on TLS hate to be pwnt, but what they hate even more is to pwnt when their heart tells them they're right. I think it's due to a lack of ability to create coherent arguments, more than anything else.

As if this self-pity wasn't enough, Archon D: terrorface then had the gall to cite the Genesis as a reason an omniscient God and free-will can exist. He managed to remove all rationality from the discussion and turn it into an assumption about the Christian God. He showed no ability to produce his own argument based on logic, but instead cited the Catholic Church and introduced a whole new array of bullshit with nothing to back it up. A narcissistic, self-pitying, ugly, illogical believer with a 163? Poster of the Weak 1(a). Terrorface, indeed.