InfiLaw - The End of An Era (and good riddance)

This fall, for the first time in 25 years, Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, FL will not enroll any new students.  The small crop of continuing second and third year law students are completing their degrees at other law schools under an ABA-approved teach out plan.  Florida Coastal was unable to continue to operate after being denied federal student loan funding by the Department of Education.  Florida Coastal was already struggling to enroll enough students to stay in operation after multiple sanctions by the ABA in recent years.  Enrollment dropped from a high of 671 1Ls and 1742 JD students overall in 2011 to just 87 1ls and 184 total JD enrollment in 2019, a drop of nearly 90%. 

Florida Coastal’s demise makes it the third and final InfiLaw School to fail, following on the heels of Charlotte Law (shut down in 2017 after being placed on probation by the ABA and losing federal student-loan funding) Arizona Summit (shut down in 2018 after losing ABA accreditation).

This ignominious ending could have been averted, had Florida Coastal adopted the turnaround plan I attempted to put forward in April 2014 when I was a finalist to be the Dean there.  Instead, the President of the school infamously threw me out (see here), and the rest, as they say, is history.  Although Dean Scott DeVito later tried to implement much of what I had recommended, his efforts ultimately proved to be too little and too late to save the school.  Dean DeVito resigned two years ago this week when he concluded that InfiLaw was not willing to invest sufficiently in the school to enable it to be successful.

The closure of Florida Coastal not only is the end of the InfiLaw era, but may herald the end of the for-profit ABA law school era.  At one point, there were half a dozen for-profit law schools, including the three InfiLaw schools, plus a couple other proprietary schools that acted very much like for-profits.  But after Western State University affiliated with Westcliff University, and its former sister school Thomas Jefferson converted to a state-accredited school (Thomas Jefferson was supposedly a not-for-profit, but operated like a for-profit), Atlanta's John Marshall converted to non-profit status and Thomas Cooley became part of Western Michigan University (Cooley also theoretically was a not-profit, but nevertheless generated huge revenues as the largest law school in the country for many years), the only ABA-approved law school still operating as a for-profit entity is Charleston School of Law.  Charleston's owners have repeatedly publicly announced their intent to convert to non-profit status, but as far as I can tell, there has been no formal application to the ABA to change its status.   Charleston would be well-advised to proceed with this plan and focus on raising the quality of their admitted students.

If this is the end of the for-profit law school era, few in legal academia will miss it.  Although I have long opined that a for-profit law school could theoretically operate in an ethical manner (for example, I believe that Western State did for several years), the need to generate profits seemed to drive many of these for-profit schools to admit large numbers of poorly qualified students.  Indeed, the for-profit schools were frequently among the least selective law schools in the country and were fixtures in my Bottom 10 Law School lists.  The admission of unqualified students led to high attrition, low bar pass rates and declining reputations, which made it even harder to attract qualified students. This unvirtuous cycle ultimately proved to be the downfall of several of these schools.

With the demise of Florida Coastal, Jacksonville is now the largest city by population in the country with no law school,  (Jacksonville ranks 13th nationally with a city population of 930,000) and one of only two top 50 MSAs without a law school, the other being Charlotte, NC, former home of InfiLaw sister school Charlotte Law.  (Jacksonville is the 39th largest MSA at 1.6 million. Charlotte is the 23rd largest MSA with nearly 2.7 million.)  Although Universities may understandably be reluctant to open a new law school in this era, I believe a law school of reasonable size (200-250 students per class) affiliated with a respectable private college or University could thrive in Jacksonville.  If anyone wants to start one, please let me know!

Comments

[PaulB]

It's a 90 minute drive to Gainesville. Florida is overrun with law schools. But, hey, as long as the feds are willing to underwrite any law school tuition without regard to whether or not most of the students will repay their loans, why not?

[AnonProf]

I too am glad to see InfiLaw go away, but I'm a bit put off by the self-serving, "if only they'd listened to me" nature of this post (which I suspect was the only reason this post was created).

[Steven Lubet]

Good post. Glad to see you back.

[David Frakt]

Steven - Thanks.

PaulB - UF is a highly competitive law school, ranked 21 by USNews, with a median LSAT of 165 and median GPA of 3.84, so it is not an option for solid, but not excellent students. UF's 25th percentile LSAT/UGPA is 156/3.52. For students in the 3.3 to 3.5 GPA range with a 150-155 LSAT, there is no good option near Jacksonville. The two law schools in Orlando (2 to 2.5 hours away) are both bottom 20 schools (Barry and FAMU). FSU is just over 3 hours, but is also highly competitive to gain admission. Stetson, in the Tampa area, is nearly 4 hours drive. Florida International and Miami are both about 5 hours drive. In fact, Georgia State, in Atlanta, is slightly closer to downtown Jacksonville than Miami. Jacksonville is thriving and could definitely support a law school.

[Howard Wasserman]

FWIW, that 3.3/155 probably is not getting into FIU. Or if she did, she would be at the low end of the entering class.

[David Frakt]

Good point, Howard. FIU is definitely getting more competitive. And they deserve to be, as they have one of if not the best bar pass program in the country.

From 2020 509 Disclosures:
LSAT All Full Time Part Time
75th Percentile 159 159 159
50th Percentile 158 158 156
25th Percentile 156 156 150

UGPA All Full Time Part Time
75th Percentile 3.78 3.79 3.78
50th Percentile 3.65 3.65 3.64
25th Percentile 3.35 3.41 3.04