The end of the constitutional challenge to Wisconsin's diploma privilege.

The case was settled with a $7500 payment to the plaintiff. Back in December, the judge — Barbara Crabb — decertified what had been a class action (including all the graduates of out-of-state law schools who sought to practice law in Wisconsin and were required, under state law, to take a bar exam when the graduates of Wisconsin law schools — the University of Wisconsin and Marquette — had a "diploma privilege" to skip the exam).

"It was almost written in stone that you’ll end up in a law firm, almost like a birthright."

"It" — law school — "was thought to be this green pasture of stability, a more comfortable life."

Thanks, New York Times. Thanks for depressing every law student in America. Fall semester is about to begin, and I wasn't going to talk about this major drag of an article, but it's charting as #1 on the NYT's most-emailed list.

Now, the sheer depressingness of the thing isn't what's annoying me most. It's that it relies absurdly heavily on quotes from one Derek Fanciullo, who "lost his job as a television reporter two years ago" and borrowed $210,000 to go to NYU School of Law. Why Fanciullo is the big source, you tell me. He was a reporter, and the article was — duh — written by a reporter. Maybe reporters believe reporters, but it looks kind of lazy to me. What is life like for a law student looking for work? Let's report the quotes of a reporter who went to law school.

Getting a job in a law firm was a sure thing? A birthright? Law was a green pasture of stability, a comfortable life? Of course, things have changed:

This fall, law students are competing for half as many openings at big firms as they were last year in what is shaping up to be the most wrenching job search season in over 50 years.

That's harsh. Terrible. It needs to be said. But let's not pretend that it was ever right to waltz into law school thinking if I pay up what they're asking, I get a lock on a great-paying job. Fanciullo is building his complaint on a shaky foundation.

With the cost of law school skyrocketing over the years, the implicit arrangement between students and the most expensive and prestigious schools has only strengthened: the student takes on hefty debt to pay tuition, and the school issues the golden ticket to a job at a high-paying firm — if that’s what the student wants.

See? The reporter is endorsing Fanciullo's fantasy that the student, by paying big tuition, got a deal, an "implicit arrangement." You mean a contract? This notion seems to implicitly cite this recently reported case, where a graduate sues her school because she didn't get a job.

The NYT article also quotes a Penn law student, Julia Figurelli saying: "Had I seen where the market was going, I would’ve gone to a lower-ranked but less expensive public school." Well, there's a ray of light for students at some schools, including mine (the University of Wisconsin). Here's a ranking of law schools according to value. Wisconsin with a #20 value ranking and a #35 U.S. News ranking is apparently one of the best choices. Georgia, Alabama, George Mason, and Iowa also look very good, along with plenty of others. State schools are especially good choices if you want to remain in that state — where, if it's Wisconsin, you will not have to take the bar exam...

... unless...

The 7th Circuit reinstates the case challenging the Wisconsin diploma privilege.

The case is Wiesmueller v. Kosobucki.

Under SCR 40.03, a diploma from an ABA-accredited law school whose curriculum includes the specific study of Wisconsin law is sufficient evidence of competency to practice in Wisconsin without a bar examination.

A class of recent graduates from ABA-accredited schools outside Wisconsin who seek a law license in Wisconsin argued that the privilege infringes on the Commerce Clause because only graduates of the law schools at Marquette and the University of Wisconsin benefit from it.

The Wisconsin Attorney General, defending the diploma privilege, has argued that the privilege is not discriminatory because of its availability to residents of any state who attend a school where Wisconsin law is taught. And if it does have an effect on interstate commerce, it is outweighed by the state’s interest in competent lawyers who know Wisconsin law, the attorney general asserts.

In its opinion, the court of appeals said that the district court’s dismissal of the action left it in “an evidentiary vacuum.” The plaintiffs had been appealing that order issued.

The court indicated that the plaintiffs should build the evidentiary record before the diploma privilege’s effect on interstate commerce can be assessed.

“[S]uppose – a supposition not only consistent with but actually suggested by the scanty record that the plaintiffs were not allowed to amplify – that Wisconsin law is no greater part of the curriculum of the Marquette and Madison law schools than it is of the law schools of Harvard, Yale, Columbus, Virginia, the University of Texas, Notre Dame, the University of Chicago, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Northern Illinois (which happens to be within a stone’s throw of Wisconsin, as are the three law schools in Minneapolis),” the court wrote.

“That would suggest that the diploma privilege creates an arbitrary distinction between graduates of the two Wisconsin law schools and graduates of other accredited law schools. And it is a distinction that burdens interstate commerce,” the court concluded.