As if you needed another reason to wonder where all of the money goes.
It isn’t unusual to think of law school as a path to profit. While you see the occasional bleeding heart litigator who goes to law school so they can prevent ANWR from becoming a cold cash pump, many more go because they want their share of Biglaw’s six-figure starting salaries. Three former law school employees tried to cut out the middle man and get their money directly from the school. It didn’t go well for them. From NJ.com:
Three former employees of Seton Hall Law School have pleaded guilty to a $1.3 million scheme to defraud the university, authorities said. The trio admitted to a wide-ranging scam that included asking vendors to pay them directly, purchasing hundreds of thousands dollars worth of gift cards and forming a shell company to bill the university for services never rendered, U.S. District Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced Friday.
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“Through an elaborate, years-long embezzlement scheme, these defendants violated their obligation to the students and exploited their role at this institution of higher learning to line their own pockets,” Sellinger said in a statement. “Through forgery, fraudulent invoices, unauthorized transactions and phony shell companies, they stole money intended to benefit the school and its student body and abused their positions.
Look, if you want to make money off of a law school, there are a bunch of legal ways to do it. It doesn’t take much digging to realize that most schools are actually judge hedge funds that mill diplomas — just pay attention to where schools are putting their money and you have a ready-made list of investment opportunities. They probably won’t be ethical, but at least you’ll be able to rake in those profits from outside of a jail cell.
