Since it appears he doesn't grasp the difference between levels of degrees, I think he thought an AAS was all he needed to be a legal genius. He even tried to represent someone in his brothel lawsuit, so I'm not actually sure he understands you have to go law school and pass the bar exam to be a lawyer before you can represent clients in court.
Could be. Here's one possible reason.
(Source) I used to work Career Services at a CC years ago. If you went to a nationally accredited shit Maury Povich judge show college, these places were notorious for fucking with their placement stats and placement potential stats. These were tracked via SalesForce just like any other business that relies on commission sales. So if you, for example, went to upstairs stripmall business collage of Westwood to earn a game designer dagree and already had a jerb bussing tables at Red Lobster... guess what?
They placed you in a relevant position. Naw, they ain't asking, they're
TELLING YOU.
So when a prospective mark went to career night at high school or came off the street looking for information to compare/contrast your options, the admissions rep will just... start lying and fabricating statistics and facts that aren't there. They'll never tell you that guy works at Red Lobster and moved sideways to Bahama Breeze after graduation. He was placed. According to what Career Services is TOLD by corporate to log in to Salesforce.
And it trickled into the regular community colleges, four years, and universities. Maybe the practices in these are less shady, but it's only slightly less. The admission reps even in those places will tell people what they want to hear.
And after the Dept. of Education had a fire lit under their collective asses right before the Everest/ITT Tech/Brown's Business College collapse, they demanded ALL institutions have to disclose to potential and enrolled students information on placement, placement potential, and what jobs/education they need to work towards their long term goal.
Enter the fucking pamphlets and flyers.
IDK if they still do this...
But in some CC and universities, you may find these pamphlets and flyers that say: "What can I do with a _________ major?" There will be some limited info on additional schooling and state licensure requirements. The meat of these things is a list of careers one could theoretically pursue with whatever major they're in.
Some of it isn't realistic. Why is that?
Because it's on the student to ask the questions, and ask the RIGHT questions. Many don't while many don't or can't conceptualize certain things to even ask in the first place.
Example: Teaching whether birth-21, middle school, high school, elementary, or just early childhood.
There are state licensure exams. There were a few in my time that were MANDATORY to take and pass BEFORE you are even allowed to enroll in a 300 division class. But they don't tell you this.
Imagine not knowing this. Imagine not being able to conceptualize the existence of the basic skills exam, getting a passing percentage, and having the state education licensure board send that to your adviser before signing up for say... a methods class.
So it's possible (and may be probable) that lying by omission and neglect was how Russell thought he could Juris Doctor his way in with just an AAS. We'll never know that because we don't know what the staff at that college ever told him. We also don't know to what extent Russell just makes his own fanfiction up since he has issues.
