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    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
    The Laughlin/Massimo kid is a special case here, as she is a recognised social media "influencer" who has been making more than USD 100K off of YouTube and Instagram product placements and got Amazon to furnish her dorm room gratis. I can easily see how USC provides a better "set" for that kind of activity than, say, Yale or Bryn Mawr.

    One thing that having gone to a very highly rated school and done very well there did was provide me with a kind of mobility that I wouldn't necessarily have had otherwise (especially as only one of my parents had a degree and none of my grandparents spoke English). That credential translated seamlessly across the country and internationally in a way that has been quite advantageous whenever I've wanted to change location or career.
    I cannot for the life of me see why Amazon would need to spend money on that kind of advertising/marketing. At this point, Amazon is like the East India Company.


    There is evidence, as I recall, that degrees from a name brand university make a bigger difference for people who don’t come from a lot of money, for the reasons you state. For people whose families are already fairly well-connected or, at least, have exposed them to the wider world of experiences and ideas, it’s not going to make as much of a difference.

    But everyone’s experience is going to be different. It depends on the field and where you want to go.

    And whereever you study, or don’t, you have to show up and make the most of it. And the thoroughly cynical “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” attitude of these families isn’t conducive to that.

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      Also, surely a big part of hiring a hot shot lawyer is that you want to operate on the very margin of the law like giorgio chiellini, and getting caught is a bad look.

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        Not to mention the fact that his firm now has to wonder what kind of exposure he might have been creating for them in his work for clients (they will have gotten calls from their malpractice carriers yesterday). Part of the suspension is that he has been disappeared from their website.

        Reed, I agree with all of that, but would note that a big name degree can also be very helpful to someone who doesn't want to rely on their family's network and go in a different direction (though it never hurts to have that to fall back on if things go south). And as you note, the situation can differ a lot by field. Law, banking, consulting, publishing, journalism and (perhaps more strangely) Hollywood comedy writing are all very credential driven. A lot of other equally or more lucrative professions are not.

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          [URL]https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1106022074328469505?s=21[/URL]

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            That is not a 'giant' blunt.

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              Originally posted by Janik View Post
              Fare-dodging, or fraud to the tune of (IIRC) £38k?
              You must have a different case in mind, Janik. There is no shortage of striking off cases. The one I have in mind was where a solicitor was struck off for avoiding his fare a few score times on his London to Redhill commute. No other offence was involved:

              https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/01/j...er-qualifying/

              Edit: I should probably concede that my "banned for life" language may be slightly overstated. It is possible, in theory at least, to apply to readmission to the roll (i.e. to become allowed to practise again) after having been struck off. I don't know what criteria the tribunals apply in considering such applications, or how many years of good behaviour would be needed before it was even worth trying to apply, if indeed that might do the trick. I suspect that in practice it rarely happens.
              Last edited by Evariste Euler Gauss; 14-03-2019, 09:39.

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                https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-lori-loughlin


                The Guardian page above contains a link (just above the Stanford photo) to a pdf of the court filing. The filing contains lengthy transcripts of the wiretapped conversations between Caplan (the Wilkie Farr guy) and the fixer. Doesn't look good for him, to put it mildly. Gotta feel a bit sorry for his daughter, while of course bearing in mind all the hard working and bright kids from less privileged backgrounds whose places at elite unis were going to be taken by these cheats.

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                  Originally posted by Gerontophile View Post
                  That is not a 'giant' blunt.
                  this joint is small, that blunt is far away. the guy himself is 30 feet tall

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                    A real WTF moment. When family values posters go wrong.

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                      I knew what that was going to be about before I clicked the link. Brilliant isn't it.

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                        I saw enough Ivy students of unexceptional ability with rich parents who were there to drink a lot before "transferring seamlessly" to a Goldman job to be repelled. The degree of self-congratulation was nauseating, and I'm not sure the opportunities those schools provide for the honest hardworking types offsets the distortions they're perpetuating.
                        Last edited by Bruno; 14-03-2019, 11:04.

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                          EEG, the process in the US is the same. One can apply for re-instatement, but it is very rarely done and even more rarely granted. Also note that this is a state law matter in the US. One is admitted to the Bar of one or more states and they are the ones who make the decisions in this respect.

                          The transcripts are indeed damming for Caplan (and many of the others charged).

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                            Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post

                            You must have a different case in mind, Janik. There is no shortage of striking off cases. The one I have in mind was where a solicitor was struck off for avoiding his fare a few score times on his London to Redhill commute. No other offence was involved:

                            https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/01/j...er-qualifying/
                            I think Janik must have been thinking of this case, which is also what I thought you were referring to. But as it turns out that one was not a solicitor but a "senior executive".

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                              Most Florida story ever?
                              Mayor Dale Massad was arrested when he opened fire on a SWAT team that had come to arrest him on charges of practicing medicine out of his home without a license. Sheriff Chris Nocco said Massad was a violent drug user who kept a stash of weapons in his home, had had previous run-ins with the law and lost his medical license 25 years ago after a three year old patient died.

                              After the mayor was arrested in this shootout the state also announced an insurance fraud investigation. Governor Ron DeSantis then suspended Massad from office and replaced him with Vice Mayor Terance Rowe. The new acting mayor criticized how the Sheriff’s office had treated his predecessor but conceded that Massad was “not a perfect role model.”

                              Now Rowe has been arrested for obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice and using a two-way communications device to facilitate the commission of a crime.

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                                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                EEG, the process in the US is the same. One can apply for re-instatement, but it is very rarely done and even more rarely granted. Also note that this is a state law matter in the US. One is admitted to the Bar of one or more states and they are the ones who make the decisions in this respect.

                                The transcripts are indeed damming for Caplan (and many of the others charged).
                                "Ruh-Roh!"
                                Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 14-03-2019, 13:45.

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                                  My client has been considering a move into voice acting, and was merely demonstrating her knowledge of the Wacky Races canon in light of a rumoured revival.

                                  The fundamental problem that the defendants face here is that they are unlikely to be able to provide any information that is useful to the prosecution in terms of other charges. Assuming that they can't somehow exclude the tapes (an issue that hundreds of thousands of USD are likely to be spent on), they can only fall back on the not insignificant advantages available to rich white people without criminal records in our criminal "justice" system.

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                                      So there's a mayoral opening in Florida. Hmmm...

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                                        Unless you're going to pretend to be the reincarnation of Rob Ford, I don't think they'll be interested.

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                                          "EBIT macht frei"

                                          https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47566898

                                          Is he going to get away with just an apology?

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                                            It appears so.

                                            Rather amazingly to me given my own experience of German board meetings, reports note that no one found the "pun" distasteful at the time it was made.

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                                              Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                              Not to mention the fact that his firm now has to wonder what kind of exposure he might have been creating for them in his work for clients (they will have gotten calls from their malpractice carriers yesterday). Part of the suspension is that he has been disappeared from their website.
                                              "Exposure" is such a great legal term. It's almost a euphemism in cases like this.


                                              Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                              Reed, I agree with all of that, but would note that a big name degree can also be very helpful to someone who doesn't want to rely on their family's network and go in a different direction (though it never hurts to have that to fall back on if things go south). And as you note, the situation can differ a lot by field. Law, banking, consulting, publishing, journalism and (perhaps more strangely) Hollywood comedy writing are all very credential driven. A lot of other equally or more lucrative professions are not.
                                              Yeah, that's true too. In a way, that's what I did, though not to the degree that you did. (Both my parents have multiple degrees and three of my four grandparents did and I'm not as smart as you are nor was my college as incredibly hard to get into).I went off into directions that my family knew nothing about largely because I was lucky enough to have mind-expanding, horizon-broadening educational experiences in college and, to a lesser extent, in grad school. In the classroom, though. Not so much the social or extra curricular stuff.

                                              And credentials are especially important in some fields, especially in those where there's an obscene amount of money or fame to be had and the employers need a simple way to narrow down their applicant pool. That is, to a large extent, what a credential is for. The old-fashioned apprenticeship/personal relationship system - which once applied to law, journalism, business, and even medicine, I suppose - just doesn't scale up to our modern economy that well. Employers want to put the risks of investing in education on the employee.

                                              But in most fields, regardless of credentials, sooner or later you're going to have to walk the walk. My understanding is that in big fancy law firms, for example, a big percentage of the associates wash out even though they probably all went to top law schools and had excellent grades. If one's job involves sales commissions or hard performance numbers (hedge funds perhaps?) then you're going to have to get it done, regardless of where you went to school. And for every Conan O'Brien or Doug Kenney that wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, there are probably many more who never made it in comedy. (or maybe they just took one of those cush Goldman jobs that Bruno talks about). The degree can only get you so far.

                                              I don't know about Wall Street. I imagine they hire a lot of extremely talented Type A quants who went to elite schools because that's what those kinds of people do. Whether they really needed that kind of education to be that good at their jobs, I don't know. And maybe there are also a lot of jobs for not-especially motivated or talented people. I kinda suspect a lot of PR jobs are like that, but relating to the public is a skill of its own.

                                              But these parents that think that just getting into the right school is what it's all about are in for a rude shock. They'd be better off spending their money on tutors or maybe those "post-grad" years at private schools and what not. Or maybe just give their kid some money to make his demo or whatever and let him/her learn from failure.

                                              Or, better yet, spend quality time with one's kids and help them develop into mature, functioning, compassionate human beings. Crazy thought, I know.

                                              That was my long-winded point.


                                              Bruno wrote: I saw enough Ivy students of unexceptional ability with rich parents who were there to drink a lot before "transferring seamlessly" to a Goldman job to be repelled. The degree of self-congratulation was nauseating, and I'm not sure the opportunities those schools provide for the honest hardworking types offsets the distortions they're perpetuating.

                                              That may be true, but I suspect most of the distortion is happening at younger ages because wealthy parents can afford private schools and/or to live in the districts of good public schools, and they can afford all kinds of opportunities that lower-income people cannot. And if your parents are educated, you're more likely to be exposed to books and ideas and standard English grammar and all kinds of other advantages. Even the SAT - perhaps especially the SAT - can be gamed without actually cheating.

                                              Despite all of their financial aid and outreach efforts, the proportion of Ivy League students - and, to a lesser extent, universities overall - who went to private high schools is way higher than the US population overall. And of course, all of those private schools tout how many of their students are on financial aid, but a huge proportion - perhaps most - are paying the full boat or near it. We need to spend a lot more on education, spread those dollars more equitably, and maybe even ban private schools. The first two are going to be hard, the last is probably impossible.


                                              Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 14-03-2019, 17:26.

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                                                Roughly 90% of "Big Law" associates wash out. The investment banking numbers are roughly the same.

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                                                  The private schools are essentially college prep schools, i.e. the demand for them is fundamentally driven by the elite university end goal. So I would still say that it's the latter (in tandem with capitalism) that's causing the distortion.

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                                                    Is the SAT just a series of multiple choice questions, or is there any essay writing/complex maths problem element to it?

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