- Have you ever dealt with lawyers who bypass law school? Google says California, Vermont, Washington, Virginia so I'm not sure how often you'd see it since you live in the God forsaken state known as Ohio.
Once that I can think of. Also Leah lives in California now
--- If so, what were your thoughts? Genuine retards or did they seem like they knew what they were doing?
Honestly, indifferent. There are so many genuinely shitty law schools with zero-to-negative admissions standards that there's a ton of crappy lawyers out and about with their JDs anyway.
Within the edgy online legal diaspora, calling out dogshit schools as "third tier trash/toilet" (TTT, or slap another T on if referring to fourth tier trash) was common a decade ago. Essentially there are law schools everywhere that will admit anyone, milk students for those juicy federal Grad PLUS loans (everyone qualifies and daddy government isnt regulating what schools are worth the dollars), and shove them out into the world indebted, prestigeless and skilless.
So all that to say I would actually put lawschoolless lawyer above a lawyer that attended a trash school, as an initial reaction.
- What are your thoughts on the whole 'bypass law school' thing in general? I may have caught you commenting on it during a stream a few weeks ago, but...you know...attention span and all that.
Its complicated. Law school is largely irrelevant to the practice of law. Its well known, and not considered particularly controversial, to say "law school doesnt teach you how to be a lawyer". There's a lot of truth to that, even if it doesnt 100% hold up on the margins.
But what law school is (or was) good for is filtering out the trash. Because US News rankings ran the public perception of law schools, they became extremely credential focused with respect to GPA and LSAT. It used to be pretty algorithmic which schools you would get into based on your stats. It didnt filter out the social weirdos, but was good at identifying reasonable levels of intelligence.
Over time this has become less true as: (i) grade inflation at the undergrad level has diluted the meaning of GPA as a reliable metric, (ii) the LSAT has been watered down in terms of content (removing logic games) as well as scoring (the 95th percentile score a decade ago was 168 and today the 95th percentile score is 170) and (iii)
Harvard and Yale had a hissyfit in 2022 over US News and dropped out because the focus on credentials hurt their equity-focused feelings and ability to discriminate against their disfavored demographics, so US News softened its ranking methodology to accommodate their bullshit.
All that said, it still makes logical sense to go to a good law school if you want to be a lawyer. It opens up a network of professionals for you to leverage to your own benefit. And the credential does have meaning professionally and socially amongst your peers.
So someone who doesnt go to law school and goes down the apprenticeship path may be smart enough to realize attending a TTT law school is a waste of money, but probably wasnt smart enough to get into and go to a top law school. Which honestly is probably fine if your goal is really just "I want to be a lawyer" and nothing else matters. You can do shitty litigation work without toiling away for three years in law school racking up stupid debt for a degree that is largely just a credential.
However it does set you up for a lifetime of being trolled about how you didnt go to law school. So there's that component, and if Leah Vulic didnt think that through before heading down this path thats on her.
- What's your view on this Reddit lawyer? Brain damage? Out of their depth? Do you think they even have any angles/tactics in mind that we just don't see? (
) My personal theory is the lawyer has a relationship of some form with one of the mods, and the lawyer is basically a mouth piece that's dumb enough to sign this shit with their name.
I am softly aligned with the "theres probably some personal connection here with Leah, and the firm she is at is largely just letting her run the show herself". The quality of work being put out for the Snark Mods is just too shitty in my opinion, so a personal connection and motivations ring somewhat true to me. I highly doubt she is a Snark Mod -- her firm would absolutely not greenlight her representing, effectively, herself. Only a fool of a lawyer would be their own client.
However the more likely alternative explanation is that reddit as a company may have a policy of fighting unmasking subpoenas of their mods as a matter of course, and this is just how the cards fell. Reddit has a weird model based upon essentially unpaid labor of the mods, and it would be perfectly rational for them to think protecting moderators in litigation as a matter of course is vital to the going-forward success of their business model. This paradigm explains the lawyer choice (not a biglaw firm but also not some schlep solo practitioner), even if it doesnt really explain the shit quality of work.
And it does seem like Leah has been practicing in this space prior to this case:
And her "Representative Matters" on her firm bio seem to track as well:
So yeah. Could have zero personal connection. But, to me, chucking a bunch of irrelevant KF screenshots into their filings just screams weirdo Snarker and I cant really get past that.
Edit: I see now these were questions for "LUS" or Potentially Criminal. All of the above stands, I just see now that those were questions directed at an individual.
