Charlotte School of Law has had a rough couple of months. Last November, the school was placed on probation by the American Bar Association for low test scores and lax admissions policies. A few months later, the federal government withdrew its financial aid to the school’s students, as part of an Obama Administration crackdown on for-profit schools.

Now, the state of North Carolina is opening an investigation into the school, POLITICO has reported. According to a spokeswoman for Attorney General Josh Stein, state officials are “investigating the school under the state’s civil consumer protection laws.”

Whether or not the school will remain open is still uncertain. During the fall semester, there were 716 students enrolled at the school, a number that has dropped to about 220 since the government announce it would stop granting loans to students.

President Barack Obama’s administration began targeting for-profit higher education in 2015, in an effort to make sure colleges and universities don’t attract students by misleading them about how much money they will earn after graduation, only to leave them in debt from steep tuition prices. In one of its earlier measures, the Department of Education required colleges to start monitoring their graduates’ debt, earnings, and jobs.

Charlotte is now looking to President Donald Trump’s administration in hopes that it will be able to reclaim the money it lost. The Department of Education recently urged the school to re-apply for funding, in spite of criticism from Stein. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has a reputation for supporting for-profit educational organizations.

The school landed on the ABA’s probation list in the fall after receiving criticism for low bar exam passage rates and a pattern of admitting students that were unqualified or unlikely to succeed. In January, the DOE announced that current and future students at the school would no longer be eligible for federal aid, after the school’s leaders and education department officials failed to agree on a plan to address its issues. Charlotte refused to implement a “teach out” plan that would allow students to continue their studies at a different accredited institution. Such a system would have required the school to close permanently.

In late January, more than 150 students filed lawsuits against Charlotte in an effort to win back the money they had spent on tuition and recover damages for the shortage of job prospects they faced.

Charlotte is the first accredited school to lose its access to federal aid. InfiLaw, the corporation that owns the school, also owns Arizona Summit Law School, which was placed on ABA probation for similar reasons in March.

Victoria Sheridan

Victoria is an editorial intern at Law Street. She is a senior journalism major and French minor at George Washington University. She’s also an editor at GW’s student newspaper, The Hatchet. In her free time, she is either traveling or planning her next trip abroad. Contact Victoria at VSheridan@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Charlotte School of Law Saga Continues: North Carolina AG Investigates the School appeared first on Law Street.

A new report authored by Law School Transparency, a Georgia-based non-profit, is shedding light on the current failures of law schools, and U.S. senators are taking notice. In a unique show of bipartisanship, senators from both parties criticized American law schools last week for leaving law school graduates with significant debt but few job prospects.

The report attempted to determine if law schools are admitting students who are not prepared for bar passage or legal jobs. Law School Transparency explained the motivation for its study, stating:

We started with a basic observation. As long as the bar exam guards entrance to the legal profession, law schools should be held accountable for enrolling students who face significant risk of not passing that exam. Failing to earn a license does not eliminate all of the value law schools provide, but that failure significantly decreases the value of a law degree for a typical graduate. Fewer students would undertake three years of law school and significant debt without the prospect of practicing law.

The study came to the conclusion that there were 74 schools that in 2014 admitted at least 25 percent “at-risk” students, and 37 of those schools admitted at least 50 percent at-risk students. Given that there are only 206 ABA accredited law schools, 74 is a pretty hefty number. As defined by Law School Transparency, at-risk students are those who risk failing the bar upon graduation. Law School Transparency also came to the conclusion that for-profit law schools admit huge numbers of at-risk students, particularly the law schools operated by InfiLaw, a company that has consistently been accused of being predatory.

In reaction to this report, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote about the need to change the law school system. He stated: “We need to move away from a system that results in too many law school graduates twisting in the wind.” Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) spoke against for-profit law schools specifically, saying: “Now that we’ve taken the cap off what you can borrow for graduate courses, they have decided they are going to just charge to the heavens in terms of tuition for worthless, worthless law school degree.”

The backlash against law schools, particularly for-profit law schools, has been in the works for a while, but the attention from senators is a big new aspect. Maybe with this increased attention as a result of Law School Transparency’s report, we’ll finally see some changes.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Unfortunately, it seems as though another law school is feeling the effects of the declining enrollment facing law schools across the country in recent years. George Kosko and Robert Carr, the owners of Charleston School of Law located in South Carolina, have recently announced that they might not enroll a new class of students this coming fall. The statement they put out read:

We cannot in good faith enroll another class when, like last year, the school is spending more money than is coming in; when we cannot assure the students that they will be able to use federal student loans for their full three years; and when we cannot be sure the school will be able to maintain its license and stay open

While this was not a formal announcement of closure, it does not look promising that the school is going to be able to turn things around.

Understandably, many of the students were shocked and confused by this news. The announcement came during the thick of finals season, a bizarre time to announce something that could rattle and greatly affect the futures of the school’s current students. Many students expressed that they were in disbelief that the administration would announce something of this magnitude during finals.

Other students expressed disappointment. Second-year law student Drew Waxler believed that he would finish his three years at Charleston School of Law and then head back home to Burlington, Vermont to start his career. However, it appears that his plans may have to change. He says that, “it is discouraging that you won’t have an alma mater to take pride in after graduation if they do decide to stop taking” new classes of students.

While many of the students were shocked by the news, the school has actually been in trouble since 2013 when its owners announced that a sale to the education company Infilaw was under consideration. At the time, many students and faculty members expressed their outrage with the sale. They explained how the three schools currently under Infilaw are of a lower caliber than Charleston. If the school were to become an Infilaw school, it would decrease the value of a Charleston Law degree. To the relief of many, the sale didn’t go through. However, it appears as though the process has done lasting damage to the school.

So, what does this mean for the students? According to the American Bar Association and state rules, a law school is not allowed to simply close its doors without doing anything for its students. If they decide to close, they will have to submit a “teach-out” plan that details how current students will finish their education programs. So, while certainly not ideal, at least the students can know that they won’t be left to figure things out for themselves.

The owners have stated that they expect to release a formal announcement at some point this week.

Brittany Alzfan

Brittany Alzfan is a student at the George Washington University majoring in Criminal Justice. She was a member of Law Street’s founding Law School Rankings team during the summer of 2014. Contact Brittany at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Charleston Law School has had a tough few years. It was established in 2003–right when that big law school boom was starting– and its first class graduated in 2007. The school began as a way to fill a gap in legal education that existed in Charleston; despite the fact that it’s the second largest city in South Carolina, there was not a law school there when Charleston Law began operating.

In 2013, the school began dealing with a company called InfiLaw, which eventually purchased the school pending approval by the American Bar Association (ABA) and South Carolina’s commission on higher education.

InfiLaw is part of Sterling Enterprises, a private equity company from Chicago, and it operates for-profit law schools. Currently there are three in InfiLaw’s collection–Florida Coastal School of Law, Arizona Summit Law School, and the Charlotte School of Law. Charleston Law would be the fourth. The company’s reputation within the law school field isn’t particularly stellar. There are concerns that InfiLaw is a scam, and predatory–after all, it takes students who can’t get into other law schools, puts them into massive debt, and then those students have a very difficult time finding jobs that can pay off said debt. In an in-depth piece on for-profit law schools that focused heavily on InfiLaw, the Atlantic attempted to pinpoint the company’s motivation:

A Florida Coastal faculty member who is familiar with the business strategies of private-equity firms told me that, in his view, the entire InfiLaw venture was quite possibly based on a very-short-term investment perspective: the idea was to make as much money as the company could as fast as possible, and then dump the whole operation onto someone else when managing it became less profitable.

Regardless of whether or not those are actually InfiLaw’s practices, actually taking over Charleston Law could lead to serious changes at the school.

That’s where this all gets very, very messy. Those two entities that have to approve the sale–the ABA, and the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education (CHE)–have a few different moving parts. It’s a confusing mess, but essentially what’s happened is that one committee of the ABA, the accreditation committee, has approved the sale; however, another part that needs to give its approval, the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, has deferred making a decision. They’re waiting on the CHE, who have their own set of problems with which to contend.

Now CHE is caught in the middle. One of Charleston Law’s founders, a man named Ed Westbrook, doesn’t want the school sold to InfiLaw. He’s in the minority, as the other two founders want to see it go to InfiLaw. Westbrook claims that he can successfully operate it as a non-profit, without taking any money from the state. He’s made vague statements about using his own money to do so. Now, both Westbrook and his lawyers, and InfiLaw and its lawyers are reaching out to the CHE with conflicting proposals and information. Westbrook’s optimism is admirable, I guess, but Charleston Law as it stands seems a bit like a sinking ship. For example, the school’s new President, Maryann Jones stepped down in November. She lasted in the job for a grand total of eight days. Her reasoning was described in an email she sent when she resigned:

The level of vitriol, with all sides making me a lightning rod for an unfortunate situation that was not of my making, makes this truly a situation that I am unwilling at this stage of my life to undertake.

Back to the CHE approval though, which appears to be the lynchpin to this deal. Want to be even more confused? There are 15 seats on the CHE. Four are vacant, and eight are being held by people whose terms have technically expired. Governor Nicki Haley is trying to fill those seats–but that would be in January at the earliest.

So, will InfiLaw succeed in its takeover of the Charleston School of Law? I have absolutely no clue. This tangled web of players, committees, and arguments is a mess–perhaps symbolic of the messy relationship between the ABA, for-profit law schools, and students. Whatever happens, it’s now in the CHE’s hands…and I for one do not envy them.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post InfiLaw’s Attempt to Purchase Charleston Law is a Giant Mess appeared first on Law Street.

For years, I’ve been seeing those TV ads about for-profit universities. University of Phoenix, ITT Technical Institute, Porter and Chester Institute, and the list goes on, but no matter what catchy jingle they used, they all seemed like crap. While for-profit universities at one point seemed like a good idea, they’re now recognized as pretty bad investments. I think very few of us realized that they had moved beyond the point of just offering associates, bachelors, and technical degrees–they’ve now expanded into the law school game as well. Not only do the existences of for-profit law schools harm the people who make the foolish choice to attend them, they also have the potential to harm the entire legal profession.

Paul Campos of the Atlantic recently wrote an excellent piece on the rise of for-profit law schools. He explains how they were born out of the brainchild of one company called InfiLaw, a corporation created by the Chicago equity firm Sterling Partners. They bought up a struggling law school–Florida Coastal University–and created two others–Arizona Summit Law School and Charlotte School of Law. Campos goes on to explain how InfiLaw’s law school experiments started to accept students who would not have been enrolled in most law schools, mostly because their LSAT scores were very low. Admitted students often had to take out massive loans to pay for their substandard educations, and then struggled deeply to find jobs after graduation. Campos explains how this simply is not sustainable. Throughout the entire article, one thought kept coming into my mind: this sounds like the educational version of a ponzi scheme.

There’s something dangerous about for-profit educational institutions, especially for-profit law schools, and that’s that they make promises that they can’t keep. Despite what Suits may tell us, in order to be a lawyer you really do need to pass a bar exam. That’s not an easy feat–only about 68 percent of the people who took the bar exam passed it last year. While there is a lot of dispute over whether or not scores from the LSAT test correlate to bar exam passage, most analysts certainly admit that they are at least somewhat linked. Students’ law school grades can also indicate whether or not a particular individual will pass the bar exam. Overall, the prospects of for-profit law school students to pass the bar exam are pretty bad. As Campos explains,

Scores ranking from the 60th to the 40th percentile, by contrast, correlate with a moderate but rapidly increasing risk of failure. Scores below the 40th percentile correlate with a high risk of failure, and scores below the 25th percentile correlate with an extreme risk of failure, to the point where it is quite unlikely that someone with an LSAT score below 145 will ever pass a bar exam.

Florida Coastal’s median LSAT score was 144. Of course the argument could be made that these law schools are doing students a service because they are working with individuals who would not have been admitted other places to get their law degree, despite all odds. But that’s simply not true–instead, these for-profit law schools are just handing out promises that they can’t possibly keep.

Law school may still be a good choice for many American students, despite the fact that the legal field is rapidly changing. But the Obama Administration is actually starting to put pressure on for-profit colleges, in recognition of the true disservice they’ve done to most of their students. The for-profit law school field is a bubble that’s slowly popping, and it brings us back to this point: if you’re going to go to law school, make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. It could save you a lot of time, money, and pain.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post For-Profit Law Schools: Dangerous Deceptions appeared first on Law Street.

Both business and law school students across the country will almost undoubtedly learn about mergers and acquisitions inside the classroom. However, some students at the University of Maine are about to get some real world experience with these concepts. Plans to merge the university’s law and business degree programs were leaked last week in a report created by a group of concerned professors.

The details are still tentative. It’s unclear whether the university will simply consolidate the schools under one roof, or go so far as to have teachers and students from both schools combine to form an independent school with one dean. Despite these muddled, yet crucial specifics, Maine’s motivation to bring together these two schools is quite clear. With law school applicants dwindling amid high student debt and the depressingly crowded job market, schools are doing whatever they can to keep their law programs alive; even if that means being unconventional in an industry that prides itself on its traditional nature.

Admittedly, there are areas of overlap between law and business that could definitely be acceptable and beneficial to both. With the globalization trend that has continued to grow in the twenty-first century, it is no surprise that employers strongly desire the most well-rounded student. After all, the more skills and knowledge a student possesses, the more inherently valuable they are. Chief Executive Officer at the Bernstein Shur law firm in Portland, Pat Scully, showed his support for this initiative saying, “It will be easier for students to draw on the best of both offerings.” Working with business-minded faculty would allow future lawyers to gain insight and better relate to clients in ways that law professors simply aren’t accustomed to teaching.

But that is not the part with which the teachers find problems. They are concerned that during this planning process the teachers and students that will actually have to put the plans in motion are being ignored. This worry stems from the fact that the planning is being conducted by a third party, the Parthenon Group. Moving forward, it will definitely prove crucial how involved the educators are in this merger because they are the ones that will either accept it with open arms, or coldly reject and challenge this new system. In essence, however they are treated and react could either create a successful precedent and help remedy the current law school crisis, or just add to the list of ill-fated solutions already offered.

For example, the Charleston School of Law found itself in a similar crisis when it was discovered that their founders took out profits totaling $25 million in 2013. Recently, a presumed angel in the form of a company called the InfiLaw System, stepped in and offered to purchase the school. This would add to the other three for-profit law schools they have acquired. While many argue that InfiLaw is the only option to keep Charleston’s doors open, it seems in many ways the lesser of two evils. InfiLaw, like Charleston, is a for-profit company that builds other for-profit law schools; a characteristic that makes many students and community members wary of supporting the sale. They are are understandably skeptical of the school being handed off to another money-hungry group that will just put them back into the same situation. Other concerns stem from allegations that claim InfiLaw is a “diploma mill” with admission standards lower than normal because they are a profit driven organization.

These two solutions for keeping law school programs alive during this ongoing crisis provide insight on what seems to be a step in the right direction. The University of Maine has found a feasible resolution that actually predicts a positive outcome for students and may even help to set them ahead of the undeniable competition, especially from Ivy Leagues. On the other hand, schools like Charleston seem to be haphazardly throwing their programs into the hands of whomever will leave the school’s remaining founders with the optimal profit. Unfortunately, it seems in both cases the teachers and students are not being awarded the consideration they deserve as the heart of the system itself. This oversight that could prove fatal in both situations.

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Erika Bethmann (@EBethmann) is a New Jersey native and a Washingtonian in the making. She is passionate about travel and international policy, and is expanding her knowledge of the world at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs. Contact Erika at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Jesse Michael Nix via Flickr]

Erika Bethmann

Erika Bethmann is a New Jersey native and a Washingtonian in the making. She is passionate about travel and international policy, and is expanding her knowledge of the world at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs. Contact Erika at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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