Wilkes University, in Wilkes-Barre, PA, has shelved its plans to start a law school. On June 4, the school's Board of Trustees voted to set aside plans for a new law school at least temporarily. This can't please Dean Loren "Chip" Prescott, who has been spearheading the school's Planning Initiative.
Meanwhile, over in Southern Massachusetts, the new UMass-Dartmouth Law School has announced that they've received about 400 applications for this fall's first post-SNESL entering class. They say that 127 of them "have enrolled", though what that means - in June, months before classes start - is unclear. There is no question that UMass can build this school out into a successful, ABA-accredited institution. And I can't imagine that either the University, or the state, would expect anything less. But somebody is going to have to pay some real money to make this happen. Either the school will move tuition to meet actual costs or taxpayers will be writing checks. We'll learn more about the level of financial backing for the school when we see how actively they recruit at the AALS hiring confab this fall. And speaking of faculty: it's not clear to me that UMass has actually hired back the old SNESL faculty yet. Nobody was guaranteed a slot after the merger and the website still calls the old SNESL profs "proposed faculty."
Update: Yesterday, all but two tenured SNESL faculty received UMass tenure. The other two apparently received satisfactory alternative contracts.
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