His bit about children, gin, and Irish hair are favorites of mine. It’s in his Monster show, which we have on DVD (and nowhere to play it anymore 
).
I wish I played my cards differently.
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There are a lot of his acts, usually just portions, available on youtube. Another comedian who makes me belly laugh is Billy Connolly. I was able to see him live a number of years ago and am so glad I did.
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Agree about outstripping inflation. There have been several general education studies showing that US education cost have far outstripped inflation, by a factor of 3X or so. Legal education in the US is more like 5X inflation.
The main drivers of education cost seem to be the proliferation of administrators. Back when you (or I, I think perhaps 8-10 years behind you) went to LS the profs themselves wore many hats, and there were very few administrators. Now there are more administrators than profs, not to mention (in a largish law school) a hundred or more non-teaching associate deans of this and that and non-teaching other administrators.
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This is so true where I teach. Every single activity has a “vice president in charge of …”. In 20 years, tuition has quadrupled. And everything is driven by the relentless drive to attract and maintain tuition dollars. Is the education better? No.
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I remember applying to law school 23 years ago. This particular school required 3 reference letters, in addition to a transcript and LSAT score.
I called to see if the school had received my 3rd reference letter, and I was told it hadn’t. I called every 3 or 4 days for a month, maybe 6 weeks. Other schools had sent quick rejections.
I followed up with my referee, in NYC, who told me she had sent it in.
The admissions clerk at the school continued to tell me the application was incomplete. The last time I called, she let me know that they found my reference letter. It has been misfiled. If I remember right, she said she found in in a drawer. I appreciated her honesty, but I don’t remember any sort of apology.
I think I received my rejection 10 days later.
Luckily, I had cast a wide net when I applied, and I didn’t have that experience anywhere else, and had a couple other options. That experience was at McGill, one of 2 schools in Canada that likes to call itself the Harvard of the North. 
I used to be an administrator at a college in my 20s. Then, in due course, I joined the proliferation of administrators with the local probation service. My final posting with probation was a newly created post in one of our districts. Almost immediately after starting, there were calls for it to be scrapped as there were too many administrators. It made for a disheartening seven years before I could apply for early retirement, on a much reduced pension, to escape from the incessant sniping (much of it coming from the level of senior management who had created the posts in the first place).
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I had a similar experience with one of the law schools I applied to. Since applying at all was a spur of the moment decision, I had sent out a handful of applications and wasn’t partial to any of them. I taught a prelaw class a few years ago. My God the students were obsessed, frantic, and driven about admissions. I couldn’t even talk any of them off the ledge.
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I was more like you in my application process. I took the LSAT 28 days after I decided to apply for law school. I bought a book that was called How To Prepare for the LSAT in 30 Days.
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They didn’t even have LSAT prep books when I applied. I took a bag of Fireballs to eat during the test.
They did have a prep course for the Bar Exam, however… gave us all a chance to grab food after the nightly lectures. And since there was no Online then, you got the results in the mail. Frantic would-be admittees gathered at the main post office to intercept their results. Me? I went to Florida with my dad. I figured, what’s done is done, and he wants to go the Seaquarium to see Flipper. I wanted Miami Beach deli. (this was a looong time ago). Oh- I passed.
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You guys (including @Phoenikia) sound kind of like me. I was working as a scientist/engineer was in the HQ building and saw a paper on the bulletin board reading, “Do You Want To Become An ABC Corp Patent Attorney?”.
I asked about it and was told that people who were interested should take the LSAT ASAP, so I paid the late fees(*) and had 2 weeks to prep. I got a Princeton guide. But other than the reading comp section, the rest of the test (logic puzzle section and 2 logical reasoning sections) is like an engineer’s dream come true. Probably also a dream for philosophy majors who like puzzles. I did seriously need to work on reading speed and the Princeton guide was helpful in pointing out the embedded cues.
(*) I see now that “LSAC no longer offers a late registration period”. They also cut out one of the logical reasoning sections.
I didn’t get the corporate sponsorship for political reasons (but politics I do agree with, so it’d be hypocritical of me to whine about it), so I cut my work hours to 30/week and was able to get a full slate of classes in the afternoons/evenings. Luckily the company had two “record dates” for benefits. That $3500 education stipend was tied to status as of July 31, and the date for vacation was December 31. They were very nice about letting me switch back and forth between 30 hours and full time, stipulating only that it had to be in 1-month increments (we were paid monthly then) and that I had to have a set 6 hour daily schedule that people could rely on. So I was full time all summer and in the month of December. Otherwise at 30 hours (3/4 time) those benefits would have been reduced by 25%.
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Hey John, I probably could have worded things better. My animus was toward the people creating positions that are not terribly needed to basically create empires, not the people who take those positions. This happens in the corporate world, too, especially at the headquarters, they just don’t use the word “administrator” to describe those make-work positions - and in fact, the administrators in the corporate world are wholly necessary.
Maybe that was my problem - using the word “administrator” thinking only about what that word means regarding US universities, without considering the broader meaning of the term.
Anyway, my apologies and no offense was intended.
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No need and absolutely none taken. Some 20 years after I retired I still bear a grudge against the duplicitous bastards who created our 12 jobs (one in each of our operating districts) and then set out to undermine the job holders.
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When I have to teach undergrads a little section on patent law, I explain to them that most patent attorneys are engineers, and I am not.
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Yeah, “administrator” in academia has a whole ‘nuther set of meanings 
… or implications.
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Yes as to the folks who write/obtain patents (engineers or other STEM). Patent litigators sometimes aren’t. The guy who litigated against all of our major competitors (and won) got his PhD in Philosophy at U Chicago (born with silver spoon in hand) before going back to UChi Law.
Not having a STEM background helped make him a better patent litigator. That and being razor sharp. He would sit with our chemists and get a good general understanding of the tech behind the patent, and then distill it down in a way that was still accurate, but could be readily communicated to judge and jury.
I can’t do that - I get too far into the details and want my description to be “just right”. Well, “just right” will put the jury (or judge) to sleep…
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Does U Chi undergrad count for anything
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A parallel situation presents itself. My (engineer) husband rails against poorly written instruction manuals, most of which are written by experts within the company. Instead, he suggests that a company go to a temp agency and hire someone with absolutely no knowledge of either the product or its science, provide this person with the product and basic instruction. Let him learn to use the product, then write an instruction manual. Repeat this process until a readable manual, intelligible to the end user, is the result.
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Oh, you just stop making sense! 
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Yes! Yes!!
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