Джон Гришэм: The Rooster Bar

Gordy was talking to the wall, his back to his audience. When he lifted his cup for more tequila, the indentions between his ribs were visible. His weight loss was astonishing. He spoke calmly now, as if spouting facts he alone had uncovered.

“His main vehicle is Shiloh Square Financial, a private investment operation that also plays with leveraged buyouts and distressed debt and all the usual Wall Street games. Shiloh owns a chunk of Varanda Capital, how much we don’t know because their filings are bare-bones, everything about this guy is deceptive, and Varanda owns a chunk of Baytrium Group. As you might know, Baytrium owns, among many other companies, our dear Foggy Bottom Law School. Us and three others. What you don’t know is that Varanda also owns an outfit called Lacker Street Trust, out of Chicago, and Lacker Street owns four other for-profit law schools. That’s a total of eight.”

On the right side of the wall in large squares were the names of Shiloh Square Financial, Varanda Capital, and Baytrium Group. Below them in a neat row were the names of eight law schools: Foggy Bottom, Midwest, Poseidon, Gulf Coast, Galveston, Bunker Hill, Central Arizona, and Staten Island. Below each name were numbers and words in print too small to read from across the room.

Gordy stepped to the table and poured another measured serving of tequila. He took a sip, stepped back to the wall, and faced them. “Rackley began piecing together these schools about ten years ago, always, of course, hiding behind his many fronts. It’s not illegal to own a for-profit law school or college, but he wants to keep it under cover anyway. Guess he’s afraid someone will catch on to his dirty little scheme. I’ve caught him.” He took another sip and glared at them, his eyes wide and glowing. “In 2006, the bright people in Congress decided that every Tom, Dick, and Harry should be able to vastly improve their lives by getting more education, so the bright people said, basically, that anyone, including the four of us, could borrow as much as needed to pursue professional degrees. Loans for everyone, easy money. Tuition, books, even living expenses, regardless of how much, and of course all backed by the good word of the federal government.”

Mark said, “This is well-known, Gordy.”

“Oh, thank you, Mark. Now, if you’ll just sit there and be quiet I’ll do the talking.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s not well-known is that once Rackley owned the law schools, all eight of them, they began expanding rapidly. In 2005, Foggy Bottom had four hundred students. By the time we arrived in 2011, enrollment was at a thousand, where it remains today. Same for his other schools, all have roughly a thousand students. The schools bought buildings, hired every half-assed professor they could find, paid big bucks to administrators with passable credentials, and, of course, marketed themselves like crazy. And why? Well, what’s not well-known are the economics of for-profit law schools.”

He took another sip and moved to the far right of the wall, to a poster board covered with numbers and calculations. He said, “A bit of law school math. Take Foggy Bottom. They clip us for forty-five thousand a year in tuition, and everybody pays. There are no scholarships or grants, nothing real schools have to offer. That’s a gross of forty-five million. They pay the professors about a hundred grand a year, a far cry from the national average of two-twenty for good schools, but still a bonanza for some of the clowns who taught us. There is an endless supply of legal academics looking for work, so they’re lined up begging for the jobs because, of course, they just love being with us students. The school likes to brag about its low student-to-teacher ratio, ten to one, as if we’re all being taught by gifted pros in small, cozy classes, right? Remember first-semester torts? There were two hundred of us packed into Stuttering Steve’s classroom.”

Todd interrupted with “How’d you find out about their salaries?”

“I talked to one of them, tracked him down. He taught admin law for third years and we never had him. Got fired two years ago for drinking on the job. So we got drunk together and he told me everything. I got my sources, Todd, and I know what I’m talking about.”

“Okay, okay. Just curious.”

“Anyway, Foggy Bottom has about 150 professors, its biggest expense, say $15 million a year.” He pointed to a jumble of figures they could barely read. “Then you have the administration on the top floor. Did you know that our incompetent dean makes $800,000 a year? Of course not. The dean at Harvard Law makes half a million a year, but then he’s not in charge of a diploma mill where someone is watching the bottom line. Our dean has a nice résumé, looks good on paper, speaks well whenever he speaks, and has proven rather adept at fronting this racket. Rackley pays all his deans well and expects them to sell the dream. Throw in another, say, $3 million for the other bloated salaries up there and it’s safe to say the administration costs $4 million a year. Let’s be generous and make it $5, so we’re at $20 in costs. Last year it cost $4 million to operate the place — the building, the staff, and, of course, the marketing. Almost $2 million of it was for propaganda to entice even more misguided souls to sign up, start borrowing, and pursue glorious careers in law. I know this because I have a friend who’s a pretty good hacker. He found some stuff, didn’t find some other stuff, and was impressed with the school’s security. He says they work hard at protecting their files.”

“That’s $24 million,” Mark said.

“You’re quick. Round it off to $25, and the Great Satan nets $20 million a year off dear old Foggy Bottom. Multiply that times eight and the math will make you sick.” Gordy cleared his throat and spat at the wall. He took another sip, swallowed slowly, and paced a few steps.

“So how does Rackley do it?” he asked. “He sells the dream and we took the bait. When his eight schools expanded overnight, they opened their doors to everyone, regardless of qualifications or LSAT scores. The average LSAT for entering first years at Georgetown, which we know for sure is a top-tier school, is 165. For the Ivies it’s even higher. We don’t know the average LSAT at Foggy Bottom, because it’s a military secret. My hacker couldn’t penetrate the file. But it’s safe to say it’s well below 150, probably closer to 140. A major flaw in this defective system is that no LSAT score is too low to be admitted. These dipshit law schools will take anybody who can borrow the federal money, and, as stated, anybody can borrow the federal money. The ABA will accredit a kindergarten if it calls itself a law school. No one cares how dumb an applicant might be, nor does the federal loan program. Don’t want to offend anyone in this room but we all know our scores. We’ve all been drunk enough to talk about them, with the exception of Zola of course, who happens to have the highest of the four. So to be diplomatic I’ll say that the average of our little group is 145. Based on percentages, the chances of passing the bar exam with a 145 is about 50 percent. No one told us this when we applied because they care nothing about us; they just wanted our money. We were screwed the day we walked in.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” Mark said.

“And the sermon is not over,” Gordy shot back, then ignored them for a moment as he studied his wall. Again, they exchanged looks that conveyed apprehension and fear. The sermon was interesting, and depressing, but they were far more worried about their friend.

He continued, “We’re in this mess because we saw the opportunity to pursue a dream, one that we could not afford. None of us should be in law school and now we’re in over our heads. We don’t belong here, but we were scammed into believing we were cut out for lucrative careers. It’s all about marketing and the promise of jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs, big jobs with nice salaries. The reality, though, is that they don’t exist. Last year the big firms on Wall Street were offering $175,000 to the top grads. About $160,000 here in D.C. We’ve heard about these jobs for years and somehow convinced ourselves that we might get one. Now we know the truth, and the truth is that there are some jobs in the $50,000 range, something like you, Mark, managed to get, though you still don’t know the salary. These are at smaller firms where the work is brutal and the future is bleak. The big firms are paying one-sixty plus. And there is nothing in between. Nothing. We’ve suffered through the interviews, knocked on doors, scoured the Internet, so we know how bad the market is.”