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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

So you’re tired of hearing about student debt.  Well, so am I.  You may’ve heard of investing in student equity.  Wait, you haven’t?  They’re called “Human Capital Contracts”—an investor (or the government) pays for your education in exchange for 10% of your income for ten years.  No one else has ever tried something like this.  I sat down and thought out what I think of them.

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

Take a break, and listen to some Rock & Roll, primate!

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

Newer law students (and graduate and other professional students) can take hope: between fully financing their legal education with Direct Loans & Grad PLUS loans and electing the Income Based Repayment option, legal education isn’t a crippling investment.  Find out why it’s not a great solution, and why it certainly won’t reduce law school costs.

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

Just how powerless is the ABA in the face of a tuition bubble and legal labor oversupply?  Not as much as it believes it is.  Check out how it suffers from Stockholm Syndrome here.

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

Everitt Henry relieves my workload and gives us three suggestions for dealing with lawyer oversupply and the tuition bubble.

Posted by JETAA Northern California’s Mark Frey:

Join us for a great opportunity to meet professionals from both Japanese and U.S. organizations that play active roles in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, as well as recent JET returnees and fellow alumni. The JET Alumni Association of Northern California (JETAANC) Career & Networking Forum will take place on Sunday, October 3, 2010, at the Kabuki Hotel, 1625 Post Street, San Francisco, from 1:30-5:00pm. Registration begins at 12:30pm. A networking happy hour will follow starting at 5pm in the hotel’s O! Izakaya lounge. The event is free for JET alumni and non-alumni may attend for $5.

The event will feature keynote speaker Andrew Hattori (Miyazaki, 2002-04), JETAANC Board Member and member of the Public Policy Institute of California; a panel discussion featuring JET alumni; and a networking session where attendees can meet representatives from various organizations, companies and members of the Bay Area professional community. During the networking session, participants will also have the opportunity to discuss resumes and job hunting techniques with alumni and recruiting professionals.

Recently returned JETs cannot afford to miss this event. For veteran alumni, this is a great opportunity for you to make career contacts, catch up with old friends, and help recently-returned JETs—your second chance to be a sempai all over again! If you are interested in attending, RSVP here: http://tinyurl.com/3xsg2lr.

For more information on this and other JETAANC events, contact president@jetaanc.org or visit www.jetaanc.org

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

Unlike Japan, the United States has no trouble filling graduate degree programs, as this NYT article on Japanese higher education points out.  The student debt situation in the U.S. is so dire that the Department of Education is adopting a new regulation to require some schools to demonstrate their graduates are employed and paying down their debts after graduation.  Can this rule apply to the ever more expensive law schools??  Find out here.

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

Take a break, and listen to some Rock & Roll!

Smitha Prasadh (Tokushima-ken, 2005-07) is a Master of Design Candidate at Carnegie Mellon School of Design as well as an active organizer of the growing JETAA Pittsburgh Subchapter.  She is seeking respondents for a survey she is conducting on reverse culture shock as part of her graduate research:

Hello! I am an alumna of the JET Programme. For my graduate thesis, I am designing a resource to help North American JET alumni cope with reverse culture shock upon their departure from Japan. If you are an American or Canadian JET alum, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could fill out this survey about your overall experiences before, during, and after JET. Your participation would help my research greatly.

The following survey should take approximately 15‐20 minutes to complete. (Should you choose to elaborate on your answers, it will take a bit longer.)

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/jet-rcs-thesis

Thank you very much for your time!

Smitha Prasadh
thesis@smithaprasadh.com

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

As the tuition bubble expands, so too does a cast of characters who discuss it–all with their own audiences and agendas.  Read this to find out who’s who as the tuition bubble debate becomes more complicated.

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

Folks, this chart should explain itself.  It doesn’t speak too much to the tuition bubble, but eyeballing the data suggests there’s a correlation between lawyer density and less income per lawyer.  I may have to run a regression analysis just to satisfy my inner social scientist.

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates his own blog, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

I’ve read how young adults in Japan are sometimes criticized for being lazily unemployed and living with their parents.  I don’t know how common or fair that depiction is, but it’s out there.  Economists’ term for this phenomenon is “structural unemployment.” Guess what awaits the U.S. legal profession?

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates his own blog, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

Anyone see Kore-eda Hirokazu’s 「誰も知らない」(Dare-mo Shiranai), the movie about the mother who abandons her four children in a Tokyo apartment?  I thought of that movie when I learned that 4/10 law graduates over the last forty years are neither practicing lawyers nor judges.  What happened to them?  Did they land on their feet?  If you’re going to law school will you end up like them?  Found out more here.

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates his own blog, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

You studied political science before JET didn’t you?  Do not lie!  For those of you with a healthy interest in politics, specifically international relations, please read, “How Law Schools Behave Like States in International Relations Theory,” and tell me who’s the realist.

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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates his own blog, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

I’m pretty sure that most Jets Wit out there live here in New York.  If so, you’ll be right at home with this week’s post—where I chide the Big Apple for adding five law schools during its 1970s economic and demographic slump.  But when your contract expires please return to NYC, JETAANY needs your support!