Cutting Law School by 1 Year Could Worsen Law Grads' Finances

(Note: I admit, this post really has nothing to do with technology.  But it might still be interesting to anyone with an interest in education, or graduate school.)

In comments that most non-lawyers probably glossed over, President Obama commented today that "law schools would probably be wise to think about being two years instead of three."

Obama made the comments during a pro-student tour in which the President is taking aim at the high and continually rising costs of education.  The logic seems sound -- if a legal education costs $70,000 per year (accounting for inflation and interest), then two years in law school costs $70,000 less than three years. If you then assume that these hypothetical students could work during what would be their third year of law school, this puts the students $100,000 or more ahead of where they would be.

Anecdotally, this proposal seems to be extremely popular, with lawyers and law students on various social networks decrying the uselessness of the third year of law school.  (A popular follow-on proposal is "add an optional third year" or "get an LL.M. if you disagree".)  Indeed, Obama himself was a law professor, and other law professors have made this proposal before.

Surely, it can't be that easy.

"Hello World! It's Me, the Internet!"

Big news today for the Internet -- and for the lobbying world. A group of organizations from the "Internet infrastructure industry" announced a new policy advocacy organization, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition.  i2, as they are calling themselves, claim to "support[] those who build the nuts and bolts of the Internet". They don't define exactly what those "nuts and bolts" are, but their members list includes software-as-service, remote hosting, and spectrum organizations.

An informal browsing of their members seems to indicate that most are related to cloud computing or other remote services. I question whether this is really representative of the "Internet infrastructure" without network owners and ISPs. Regardless of what they call themselves, though, i2 has stated that they believe in a robust and growing Internet environment to encourage innovation.

The most interesting part of i2's site is the explanation of their policy positions. Most of their positions are not particularly surprising for businesses relying on the Internet for their business models. I'd like to highlight a few interesting implications of their positions, though.