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LOOSE LIPS’ POLEMIC against D.C. School of Law is absurdly shortsighted (10/14). Closing the school would result in minuscule savings and a great loss at the same time. In a city with an annual budget of almost $4 billion in combined operating expenses and capital outlays, the estimated money saved from such a draconian act is not only a pittance, but an example of “penny wise, pound foolish” writ large. One could save more by substituting paper for cloth napkins and curtailing a few other extravagances the mayor lavishes at our Taj Mahal city hall.
Far more important, although less tangible, are the losses such a move would generate. In a city filled with high-powered, high-priced lawyers, the only facility devoted almost exclusively to public-advocacy law and the “law of the poor” would be lost, and the cost and hardship stemming from that kind of myopia, over time, is incalculable. Certainly the school needs improvement, but let’s not kill it in the name of progress. If we do so, however, let’s be honest about it, and confess that the deed was done basically because pure pro-bono lawyers give the downtown $250-plus-per-hour crowd the jitters.
Jim McGrath, Dupont Circle