story of the week #2

i have to admit this whole week is a little fuzzy. it went by fairly quickly, but i felt like a zombie the whole time. i haven't been sleeping.

regardless, i managed to write 17 stories this week. we were short-staffed the last few days of the week, so we all had to do a little extra heavy lifting and write 4 stories a day. some how, i got out of writing 4 on wednesday, though.

i wrote a variety of stories this week. 2 firm profiles, one for employment and one for energy law. they were fairly easy, though because i had good interviews. for the second week running, my most read story was a people story, an article about an IP lawyer joining a new firm. lawyers just loooove to read about themselves.

as far as interesting stories goes, i wrote a few this week. one comes to mind first, mostly because i wrote a follow up about it just a few hours ago (that will run on the wires monday). here's the story: the new york state attorney general has been investigating shady practices that student lending companies use to lure in students.

now first of all, not having any student loans myself, i am in a pretty unique situation. however, i know how evil these student lending companies can be. and its so hard to know if you're getting the best interest rate, consolidation, payment plan, whatever. most people i know just went to their college's financial aid office and spoke to a financial advisor and they helped them pick the best lender.

now what if i told you that those same financial advisors who are giving you advice are actually being paid kickbacks from the very lenders they are recommending? there were also stories of those same college financial advisors getting all expense paid trips to florida and seats on the boards of the loan companies. what's more, the colleges are getting a percentage of the money from the loans that they send towards certain loan companies. it's really very corrupt.

so the attorney general is investigating, and yesterday he issued a statement naming names. turns out this one company (education finance partners) has ties to over 60 schools nationwide. want to know the one top of his list? BU! if you don't believe me i'll send you the story i wrote today. here's a snippet:

"efp agreed to pay boston university .25% of the net value of referred loans totalling $1 million to $5 million, .5% of referred loans between $5 million and $10 million, and .75% of referred loans over $10 million."

so right off the bat, let's say bu sends $10 million in loas to efp in one year...they make an easy $75k. and considering bu is up to almost $40k a year, it's not hard to send that much money towards one student loan company, especially when your student body is over 40,000 students strong, including grad, law and med students. bu could be making millions off of us, and it's not the only school.

so...i would have to say that was probably the most interesting this i wrote about this week. pretty disgusting, right?