Pro Bono Scam

As tuition skyrockets and law school diploma mills continue to blossom across the nation, American Bar Association President Carolyn Lamm has urged the organization and law firms to "think creatively" about how they might lead efforts to develop ways to employ lawyers hit by job cuts. Actually regulating the scam schools and the bogus post-graduate career statistics, and actually doing something about the endless supply of jobless graduates being pumped out into the job market is clearly off the table. The bloated law school administrators that sit on the ABA regulating committees will have none of it.

The ABA and the legal establishment have attempted to foster an illusion of an imaginary, nonexistent demand. The solo scam cheerleaders (most notably, Susan Cartier Liebel) are always trying to convince naive law graduates that there is some great untapped need for lower income legal services. She says this despite the fact that legal service organizations are inundated with the resumes of the thousands of unemployed lawyer grads who are willing to work for free. Even deferred associates and those short on hours are in a mad competition to "help the poor" and look busy.

It comes as no surprise then when I came across the following article published last weekend in the San Francisco Chronicle. Looks like Pillsbury Winthrop's pro-bono program has the city in quite an uproar. In a city with no shortage of homeless, the firm has been accused of using scorched-earth tactics to fight for the right of some scumbag to litter the city with 11 abandoned vehicles. On top of the litter and declining property values, the taxpayers have had to spend $71,320 to defend this matter. City residents have been pleading with the law firm to stop assisting with this vexatious litigation. "This guy is out of control," said local resident Ken Stewart. "It's unbelievable. We need some help on this." Perhaps, next time I head out that way, I could get this guy to park one of his vehicles on Carolyn Lamm's front lawn.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/23/BAA11BM6RJ.DTL

TTT