The Faculty Lounge

More Bad Behavior at St. Thomas University College of Law

Alexander Lugo at ALM/Law.com recently wrote about some of the allegations of bad behavior at St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami Gardens, Florida, including allegations extracted from complaints to the ABA filed by STUCL faculty and from a lawsuit I filed on behalf of former STUCL Professor Lauren Gilbert, which recently settled.   The Law.Com story noted that I was representing another STUCL professor who was threatening to file suit, but I declined to provide any details to Mr. Lugo at that time.  At the time, I was still holding out some hope that STUCL might be willing to engage in good faith negotiations to resolve my client's concerns.  Unfortunately, they were not.

This week, I have filed a new lawsuit against STUCL on behalf of that previously unnamed client, Assistant Professor Claire Osborne-Thomas.  As the lawsuit is now a matter of public record, and likely to be of interest to the law professoriate, I thought I would share with TFL readers some of the details.  Many TFL readers may know Claire from her teaching or scholarship.  Claire was previously a tenured professor at Thomas Jefferson Law School in San Diego (back when they were ABA-Accredited), but was not given tenure when she made the lateral move to St. Thomas to be closer to her family.  After compiling a stellar record of teaching, scholarship and service at STUCL, including teacher of the year in 2022-2023, Claire applied for tenure in 2023-2024.   She received the strong backing of the tenure and promotion committee and had several strong external reviews.  The Dean, an STUCL graduate and former state court judge appointed by the University President without any input from the faculty (one of the school's many violations of ABA Standards), recommended that tenure be denied.   For months, she refused to provide a copy of her recommendation to Claire, falsely claiming that Claire was not entitled to see it.  After threatening to sue, I was finally able to obtain a copy of the recommendation, and it immediately became clear why the Dean didn't want to share it.  The recommendation completely ignored the tenure standards that the Dean was supposed to apply.  Her recommendation to deny tenure was instead based on demonstrably false, unsupported and defamatory claims about Claire's behavior.  In the lawsuit I filed, we allege that the Dean wrote this recommendation at the direction of the President, who had decided he would not support Claire for tenure in retaliation for her appeal of an unjust reprimand that he had forced the previous Dean to give her.  The reprimand, later reduced to a warning, was for a non-incident where Claire had chosen not to report to campus security a bizarre, non-specific, vaguely threatening message of unknown origin shown to her by a student.   Although the school determined the message to be misinformation and not a threat within hours of Claire's decision that it was not worth reporting, the President nonetheless directed that the Acting Dean reprimand her for her failure to report.   The lawsuit further alleges that the President's underlying motivation for reprimanding Claire was because he was trying to build a case to terminate her colleague Lauren Gilbert, who also was aware of the hoax message and likewise chose not to report it. The President also ordered that Lauren be reprimanded for this incident, and later cited this non-event as a basis for seeking to terminate her.  Both Lauren and Claire appealed the reprimands they received.  The complaint further alleges that the President urged Claire to drop her appeal, and promised that her future career at STUCL would be brilliant if she did so, but threatened that if she continued to try to have the letter removed from her file (using normal channels for appeal set forth in the employee handbook) that her future at the law school would not be so brilliant.  The President also made it clear that the reprimand/warning was "not about her" but rather was about Lauren and urged Claire to consider what she could do for the University.  Claire refused to back down and refused to involve herself in what she considered to be a dastardly plot against Lauren.  True to his word, the complaint alleges that the President personally ensured that Claire's tenure application was disapproved, completely disregarding her record of teaching, service and scholarship, in retaliation for refusing his entreaties.  Claire did appeal the denial of tenure, but after a month without any response to her appeal, she authorized me to file suit. 

For those interested in further details about the case, a copy of the complaint, with numerous exhibits attached, is linked below.

Download Osborn-Wright Complaint with exhibits

Charleston School of Law Becomes a 501(c)(3)

Charelston Law has announced that it will become a 501(c)(3) effective December 1.  Congratulations to Larry Cunningham and all who helped make this transition a reality. 

Penn State Dickinson Law and Penn State Law Merger Approved

The ABA has granted  approval for the reunification of Penn State Dickinson Law and Penn State Law.  The single school will operate at both the Carlisle and University Park locations, but will have its primary location in Carlisle and will be known as Penn State Dickinson Law.  It will be helmed by Dean Danielle Conway.  The school will admit a unified 1L class this coming fall.

Law Professor Lauren Gilbert Settles with St. Thomas University

In several previous posts,  I described how my client, tenured full Professor Lauren Gilbert, was initially summarily terminated by St. Thomas University College of Law, then reinstated after I sued the University. The ABA Journal wrote a couple of articles about the termination and the lawsuit, which led to the STU releasing an updated termination letter to the ABA Journal, which quoted from the letter over Professor Gilbert's objection.  (See, here.)  As noted in the ABA Journal, this case has now been settled.  As a term of the settlement, STU has issued the following statement:

"On August 28, 2024, in response to a request from a journalist at the ABA Journal, we provided a copy of a letter that we sent to Professor Lauren Gilbert, which set forth St. Thomas University's grounds for dismissal of Professor Lauren Gilbert to that journalist. A story was then published in the ABA Journal which had the potential to create false impressions about Professor Gilbert and harm her reputation. Specifically, the article referenced a statement by the University in the letter that Professor Gilbert had an "inappropriate relationship" with a student. The University now recognizes that this language could have been construed as suggesting that Professor Gilbert had a relationship with a student that was outside the bounds of a professional professor/student relationship, such as a dating or an intimate relationship. This was not what was meant by the term "inappropriate relationship" and the University does not have any evidence that Professor Gilbert engaged in any dating, intimate relationship, or sexual conduct with a student in any form. To the extent that readers of the ABA Journal story drew any such conclusions, we regret any confusion or false impression caused by the use of this phrase. 

 

Separately, the ABA Journal story also mentioned statements within the letter that referenced an agreement that Professor Gilbert would not return to campus while personnel matters were pending, and included a comment from a University spokesperson that "tenure is not a shield for inappropriate conduct that endangers the community and/or our students." This statement in the letter was a general statement and was not meant to apply specifically to Professor Gilbert. The University now recognizes that this statement, and other comments in the article, may have the potential to create the impression that Professor Gilbert was restricted from campus because she was deemed to be a danger to students or community members. The University wishes to clarify that Professor Gilbert herself was not considered to be a physical danger to anyone, but because the University had previously found that she had not followed a University policy on reporting potential threats, the University preferred that she not return to campus. However, Professor Gilbert voluntarily agreed to temporarily refrain from visiting the campus as part of settlement negotiations. We deeply regret any confusion or incorrect impression, and any harm to Professor Gilbert's reputation that the release of the letter may have caused. 

 

We are pleased to report that the settlement negotiations were successful and that Professor Gilbert and STU have agreed to amicably part ways."

Please join me in wishing Professor Gilbert the best of luck as she embarks on the next chapter of her life.

  

Update: Additional coverage at law.com here.

 

Charleston School of Law Seeks Full-Time Faculty

This just in:

The Charleston School of Law welcomes applications for full-time faculty members to teach in one or more of the following subjects: Constitutional Law; Contracts; Property; Business Organizations; and Wills, Trusts & Estates. Candidates must: have a J.D. degree or its equivalent; be licensed to practice law in at least one United States jurisdiction; and demonstrate a commitment to scholarship, exceptional teaching, service, and collegiality. Applicants should elect whether they would like to be considered for a lateral position, a tenure-track position, or a visiting professor position.

The Charleston School of Law is an ABA-accredited institution located in historic, downtown Charleston, South Carolina, which Travel + Leisure Magazine named as the 2024 Number One Best City in the United States for the twelfth consecutive year. The School of Law prides itself on having a talented and accessible faculty and staff. Princeton Review regularly ranks Charleston School of Law as a top institution for faculty accessibility, teaching quality, and resources for women.

Applicants should submit a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, and teaching evaluations to the Committee Chair, Jonathan A. Marcantel, at [email protected]. The Charleston School of Law is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any individual or group on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, race, color, religion, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, disability, or any other legally protected class.

Penn State Submits Plan for Reunification of its Two Law Schools to ABA

Penn State University has officially submitted a plan to reunify its two law schools to the Council of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions.  The proposed single law school will be called Penn State Dickinson Law and will have a primary location in Carlisle PA - keeping University Park as a secondary location. It will be led by Penn State Dickinson Law's current dean, Danielle Conway.  According to the announcement:

The applications do not anticipate a change in the current size of the faculty. They note the anticipated unified law school will aim for a J.D. in-residence class of 200 students per year, with 125 in Carlisle and 75 in University Park. The LL.M. program will be administered using the framework developed at University Park to support LL.M. students at both locations.

 

ABA Names Jennifer Rosato Perea Managing Director of Accreditation and Legal Education

The ABA has announced that Jennifer Rosato Perea will serve as the Managing Director of Accreditation and Legal Education. Rosato Perea currently serves as the dean of DePaul College of Law.  She will assume her new position on June 1. 

That's the newsy part.  But this is especially exciting for me - and folks at the Drexel Kline School of Law.  Jenn and I were among the first faculty hired in 2005 to start what was then the Drexel College of Law.   She was named interim dean shortly before the law school opened and was a superb leader through the birth of the law school and our process of initial ABA accreditation.  I can't imagine a person better situated to understand the diversity of issues that face law schools than Jenn.  And putting aside the practical part, Jenn is the best of human beings.   What good news for all of us in the law school world!

Concord Law School Officially Renamed Purdue Global Law School

Concord Law School - the online law school started in the days of Kaplan - has been renamed Purdue Global Law School effective November 8.  More details can be found here. I'll be curious to see whether Purdue will begin moves toward ABA accreditation. 

New Mexico Law Seeks Natural Resources and Environmental Law Faculty

This just in:

The University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Law invites applications for one tenure-track or tenured position to teach in our Natural Resources and Environmental Law (NREL) Program to begin in Fall 2024. We seek candidates with scholarly distinction or promise, as well as a commitment to excellence in teaching. 

The successful candidate will ensure that we continue to graduate environmental lawyers who serve the state, United States, and world. The UNM School of Law strives to prepare students to participate in the key decisions that affect the environment, either as employees within various federal, state, tribal and local agencies who have regulatory authority over natural resources and the environment, or with the private entities and nonprofit organizations that appear before them. The School of Law offers a variety of NREL courses, focusing on issues of natural resource management, environmental justice, energy and climate, and environmental issues involving indigenous peoples and tribes. 

We highly value candidates from diverse backgrounds and perspectives as we work toward enriching our students’ learning and enhancing the faculty’s academic mission of research, teaching, service, and community engagement in New Mexico, the United States, and the world. Women, underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities, people who attended law school later in their careers, people from rural origins, first‐generation college graduates, veterans, and groups historically marginalized in American life are encouraged to apply. 

More information about the NREL Program, Certificate, Journal, and Clinic may be found here: https://lawschool.unm.edu/natres-envlaw/index.html. Additional information about the University of New Mexico School of Law may be found here: http://lawschool.unm.edu/about/index.html. 

All applicants should submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and list of references to the University of New Mexico Jobs website: https://unmjobs.unm.edu/. This position is listed as requisition number 26484. For best consideration, please apply by September 25, 2023. Professor Maryam Ahranjani, chair of the appointments committee, welcomes inquiries at [email protected] or 505-277-2113.

Twinette Johnson named Dean at UDC

Congratulations to Dean Johnson! Read the entire press release here.

UGA Law Seeks New Faculty for Emerging Scholars Program

This just in:

The University of Georgia School of Law invites applications to join our future law teachers’ program as a Limited Term Assistant or Associate Professor. Positions will begin August 2023 or January 2024, and are limited to two academic years. We welcome candidates with a J.D. who are applying directly from legal practice or from non-traditional professional careers in the legal field. A demonstrated interest in teaching a core course (e.g., any first-year course, criminal procedure, evidence, corporations, bankruptcy, or tax) is preferred. Diversifying faculty is an important strategic goal.

Applicants must be committed to producing world-class scholarship, providing first-rate legal training and engaging in meaningful service. Teaching two courses per academic year will be expected, beginning in the second semester of residence and after consultation with the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. Interest in pursuing a full-time, permanent job in legal academia and active participation in the Law School’s mentorship and faculty development program will be required.

All applications will be considered until the position is filled. Interested persons should submit a letter of interest and curriculum vitae/resume at https://www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/306433.

The University of Georgia is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity or national origin, religion, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Persons needing accommodations or assistance with the accessibility of materials related to this search are encouraged to contact Central HR [email protected]. Please do not contact the department or search committee with such requests.

Symposium Announcement—“Deeply Rooted”: Discussing the Aftermath of Dobbs 3/9

“Deeply Rooted”: Discussing the Aftermath of Dobbs

March 9, 2023

University of Tennessee College of Law

The majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, holding that the right to abortion was not "deeply rooted in our nation's history or traditions." The dissent disagreed, stating that the right to abortion is essential to the guarantees of liberty and equality.  For the past 50 years, the right to abortion has deeply shaped the lives and choices of individuals and families.  This symposium will explore the aftermath of Dobbs, a decision that has uprooted the nation’s understanding of privacy and autonomy.  The symposium is sponsored by the Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice at the University of Tennessee College of Law.  

Each panel will discuss a specific impact of the Dobbs opinion and the people affected.  We will examine the legal analysis in Dobbs and its impact on constitutional law, including rights previously recognized by the Supreme Court under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.  We will discuss the impact of Dobbs on access to health care and on the medical profession, as well as the impact on marginalized communities.  Finally, we will analyze the consequences for citizens of Tennessee in the  post-Dobbs world, where abortion is now illegal.

Speakers include legal scholars, legal and medical professionals, and advocates in Tennessee.  Professor Mary Ziegler, a leading expert in the legal history of abortion, will give the keynote address, “Canary in a Coal Mine: What Does it Mean to Lose a Constitutional Right?”

We hope that this symposium will spur a critical conversation about the role of this landmark case in shifting the legal landscape surrounding civil rights. We invite you to attend either in person or virtually via Zoom.  To register, visit: https://forms.gle/C8JSjMUjTMqeZeFo6

Schedule after the fold.

Penn State President Recommends Reunification of Its Two Law Schools

The world goes round.  Neeli Bendapudi, Penn State's president,  is recommending that the university reverse the previous decision to separate its two law school campuses in to two separately ABA accredited schools and instead merge them back into one.  The plan is for the new school to become Penn State Dickinson Law - based primarily in Carlisle.  It will be lead by Penn State Dickinson Law's current dean, Danielle Conway - and based on the recommendation, Penn State University Park is canceling its dean search.  Deets here.  

Wilmington U. Starting a Law School; Closius Named Dean

Wilmington University in Delaware plans to open a law school in Fall 2023.  The school's dean will be Phil Closius who previously served as dean at Toledo Law and Baltimore Law.  

 

Jacksonville Law Launches with Nick Allard as Dean, 14 1L's

That was quick.  Jacksonville University's new law school has opened its doors.  

Call for Help: Borrower Defense to Repayment at For-Profit Law Schools

As some of you may have heard or read, a preliminary settlement in the case of Sweet v. Cardona has created the possibility that many former students of predatory for-profit colleges and Universities will receive loan forgiveness from the Department of Education.  The list of schools for which former students may be eligible for relief includes four for-profit law schools: the three former InfiLaw schools (Florida Coastal School of Law, Charlotte School of Law and Arizona Summit Law School), all of which are now closed, and Western State University College of Law, which has changed ownership and is now Western State College of Law at Westcliff University.  (See list of other eligible schools here.)   (Full disclosure - I taught at Western State from 2005-2010. This is well before the period when Western State was alleged to have defrauded any students, and I am not aware of any malfeasance that occurred while I was there.)

 The Plaintiffs in the case had sued the Department of Education for failing to process or unfairly denying their borrower defense to repayment applications.  Under the settlement, students at these schools who were part of the class action will receive full relief from their federal loan indebtedness.  The settlement also allows borrowers who were not part of the class to file a borrower defense application seeking relief.  I am working with a group of Florida Coastal alumni and former students who are trying to get the word out to other alumni and former students (including those who did not graduate) about this program and encourage them to apply while they still can get favorable consideration (before the final settlement is approved by the Court).  Former students who took out federal loans to attend can apply for full or partial discharge of their loans and may also be eligible for refunds of amounts paid and credit repair services.  For those borrowers who are not already part of the class, their applications must explain how they were financially harmed by the school due to misrepresentations by the school.    These misrepresentations could relate to employment rates or prospects and earnings potential, institutional selectivity rates or rankings and admissions information, availability about or nature of financial assistance available, availability of educational resources, bar passage rates, or any other false, misleading or deceptive information that induced a student to enroll or stay at a school.

So where do The Faculty Lounge readers come in?  First, please help spread the word to potential beneficiaries of this program and encourage them to apply.  They have nothing to lose.  Apply here. Second, if you are a former faculty member or employee of any of these schools, or are otherwise personally aware of any misrepresentations, or fraudulent or deceptive practices engaged in by these schools, now would be the perfect time to come forward and share what you know, and potentially help students with mountains of debt.  The applicants may believe that they have been misled or deceived, but it is difficult to prove without direct evidence or independent corroboration.  There have been many efforts to sue InfiLaw Schools under various theories of fraud, but InfiLaw has been very successful at fending off these lawsuits before they ever got to the discovery stage, so there is very little hard evidence in the public domain that the applicants can use to bolster their applications.

I am assisting FCSL students pro bono in gathering this information, so if you have any useful insights you could share about how these schools used misleading information to recruit and retain students, please contact me at [email protected].  Your information will remain confidential unless you authorize the information to be shared.  If you have other suggestions or tips for applicants, please place them in the comments.  Thank you. 

An Inauspicious Start for America's Newest Law School

As noted on this site back in March, Jacksonville University announced that it is planning to open a new law school.  What was unusual about this announcement was that when JU made it, it announced that it was going to open the law school  in under 6 months with a fall entering class starting the first week of August.  (The typical timeline for opening a new law school after a public announcement is 3 years.)  JU announced that it was planning to enroll 30 students in its inaugural fall class.  Later in March, JU announced a Dean search and posted a hiring announcement seeking 5 inaugural faculty to teach the incoming 1L class.  I live and practice in Jacksonville and have been attempting to follow developments at the new law school. (Full disclosure: I applied to be the Dean.  I didn't get an interview.)  I regularly check the school's website and otherwise scour the internet for information about the school, but so far, there has been very little information released publicly about the school.  The website has only the barest information on it, with no information at all about the administration, faculty and staff.  Through various sources, I have learned the following:  the school has reached an agreement with an inaugural Dean and five faculty members, but they are not yet formally under contract.  

I know who the new Dean is, but the school says that they are planning to announce the Dean soon, so I won't steal their thunder by announcing it here.  Suffice it to say that s/he is an experienced and respected former Dean.  I also know that at least two of the new faculty members were tenured full professors recruited from other law schools.   But who will they be teaching?  The school appears to have fallen well short of their admissions goal of 30 (later amended to 20-30) students.  As of the end of May, they had seat deposits from only about 10 students and were hoping to get a few more after the June LSAT results came out.   I can't think of any other law school to start with such a small entering class in the past 25 years.  The only one that came close to such a small class was Indiana Tech, which shut down in its 4th year of operation when all the graduates of its first graduation class failed the bar (one of those students appealed and was later passed).  Hopefully, Jacksonville University College of Law has chosen quality over quantity for its inaugural entering class.  But it is not clear who is making admissions decisions or setting admissions policy.  ABA Standards require the Dean and faculty to make admissions decisions, but there was no Dean or faculty in place when these students were admitted.   The school has also published a student handbook and curriculum, again without input from the non-existent law school faculty, another violation of ABA Standards.  Another unusual aspect of the new law school is that it has no law library (yet another violation).  The school is reportedly planning to use a public law library downtown initially.  While there has been some hints that JU will build a dedicated law school building, the school will initially offer classes in a downtown office building where JU currently rents some space.  

I am hopeful that the new Dean will move quickly to improve the transparency of what is going at the new school and bring the school into compliance with ABA Standards.   With less than three weeks to go until orientation, s/he has his or her hands full if the school is to have a successful launch.  As a member of the Jacksonville legal community, I am pulling for the law school to succeed.  Stay tuned for further updates.

 

 

 

An Inauspicious Start for America's Newest Law School

As noted on this site back in March, Jacksonville University announced that it is planning to open a new law school.  What was unusual about this announcement was that when JU made it, it announced that it was going to open the law school  in under 6 months with a fall entering class starting the first week of August.  (The typical timeline for opening a new law school after a public announcement is 3 years.)  JU announced that it was planning to enroll 30 students in its inaugural fall class.  Later in March, JU announced a Dean search and posted a hiring announcement seeking 5 inaugural faculty to teach the incoming 1L class.  I live and practice in Jacksonville and have been attempting to follow developments at the new law school. (Full disclosure: I applied to be the Dean.  I didn't get an interview.)  I regularly check the school's website and otherwise scour the internet for information about the school, but so far, there has been very little information released publicly about the school.  The website has only the barest information on it, with no information at all about the administration, faculty and staff.  Through various sources, I have learned the following:  the school has reached an agreement with an inaugural Dean and five faculty members, but they are not yet formally under contract.  I know who the new Dean is, but the school says that they are planning to announce the Dean soon, so I won't steal their thunder by announcing it here.  Suffice it to say that s/he is an experienced and respected former Dean.  I also know that at least two of the new faculty members were tenured full professors recruited from other law schools.   But who will they be teaching?  The school appears to have fallen well short of their admissions goal of 30 (later amended to 20-30) students.  As of the end of May, they had seat deposits from only about 10 students and were hoping to get a few more after the June LSAT results came out.   I can't think of any other law school to start with such a small entering class in the past 25 years.  The only one that came close to such a small class was Indiana Tech, which shut down in its 4th year of operation when all the graduates of its first graduation class failed the bar (one of those students appealed and was later passed).  Hopefully, Jacksonville University College of Law has chosen quality over quantity for its inaugural entering class.  But it is not clear who is making admissions decisions or setting admissions policy.  ABA Standards require the Dean and faculty to make admissions decisions, but there was no Dean or faculty in place when these students were admitted.   The school has also published a student handbook and curriculum, again without input from the non-existent law school faculty, another violation of ABA Standards.  Another unusual aspect of the new law school is that it has no law library.  The school is reportedly planning to use a public law library downtown initially.  While there has been some hints that JU will build a dedicated law school building, the school will initially offer classes in a downtown office building where JU currently rents some space.   I am hopeful that the new Dean will move quickly to improve the transparency of what is going at the new school and bring the school into compliance with ABA Standards.   With less than three weeks to go until orientation, s/he has his or her hands full if the school is to have a successful launch.  As a member of the Jacksonville legal community, I am pulling for the law school to succeed.  Stay tuned for further updates.

 

 

 

Law Schools Miss the Mark on Bar Passage - Will the ABA Act?

I promised to provide a bar passage update when this year’s bar passage reports came out, and they are available.  You can access the individual school reports here. You can access the all-school compilations here at the ABA Statistics Page.

As a reminder, the ABA bar passage standard, Standard 316, requires that law schools attain an “Ultimate Bar Passage” (UBP) rate of 75% within two years of graduation.  The most recent reported results are for the class of 2019, the graduates of which had until the July 2021 bar exam to pass the bar.   So far, the ABA has found only three schools to be out of compliance with Standard 316, so let’s start by reviewing the results at those schools.

2021 Admissions and Bar Pass Update

In light of dramatic improvements in admissions standards at formerly exploitative schools, combined with several of the worst offenders going out of business, last year I abandoned my perennial bottom 10 list of the least selective law schools.  Things continued to improve for the fall entering class of 2021.  Thanks in large part to record numbers of applications, most law schools were able to raise the entrance credentials of their entering classes. Indeed, most did so while also raising the size of their entering class as well.  

Although the overall trend has been positive, with far fewer underqualified students being admitted, there was still one law school in 2020 that I found to have concerning admissions practices - Southern University.   In 2020, Southern's admitted student LSAT credentials were the worst in the country at 146/144/143  for the 75th, 50th and 25th percentile.  The good news is that Southern significantly raised its standards this year.  This years' LSATs are 149/146/144.  The bad news is that Southern is still the least selective law school in the country, by a fairly considerable margin.  The two closest competitors are North Carolina Central at 153/147/145 and Appalachian at 152/147/146.  (Yes, two or three LSAT points make a big difference, especially at this level.)  And the UGPAs for Southern's students are also concerning at 3.39/3.03/2.72.   For comparison, North Carolina Central's entering 1L class had UGPAs of 3.53/3.27/2.99, a significant difference.     The average college GPA these days is 3.15, and closer to 3.25 for social science and humanities majors (e.g. most law students).  Anything below 3.0 typically places a student in the bottom third of the class.   A 2.7 UGPA is downright awful. 

As I have noted many times in the past, students with very low entrance credentials (low test scores and low grades) are at high risk of attrition or of failing the bar after graduation.  Southern had a worrying 63.2% first-time pass rate in 2019.   Fortunately for Southern, most of their 2020 graduates didn't have to take the bar - they were granted diploma privilege.  But for the dozen first-time bar exam takers who went out of state, the pass rate was predictably poor - 41.66%  (5 out of 12).  In comparison, North Carolina Central, which historically has prepared its students very well for the bar exam, had a first-time pass rate of 79.3% across 13 different jurisdictions with an excellent 81.8% first-time pass rate in North Carolina, where the majority of NCC students took the exam. 

Bar Passage

Law schools are required to submit their bar passage data for calendar year 2021 later this week (by March 31, 2021).  Once the numbers come out, I will provide an update on any interesting trends.  As a reminder of the importance of admissions standards and how admissions standards impact bar performance, see this post from last year.   

I am particularly interested to see the numbers from Western Michigan (formerly Cooley). Western Michigan has already failed to make the UBP standard four years running:  class of 2015 - 69.75%, class of 2016 - 69.0%, class of 2017 - 66.0%, and class of 2018 - 62.3%.   It is very likely that the class of 2019 will also fall short, as that class had a first-time pass rate of 35.8%.  In May 2020, Western Michigan was found by the ABA to be significantly out of compliance with Standard 316, but there has been no public notice of any further action by the ABA since then.  Although Western Michigan has now raised its admission standards to an acceptable level, the fallout from many years of unacceptably low admission standards continues and likely will for another two years.  If the UBP standard (Standard 316) is to have any teeth at all, the ABA must do something to Western Michigan to penalize the school for its many years of unethical admissions practices leading to repeated bar failures.  A most fitting penalty would be some form of refund to those students who graduated but have never been able to pass the bar after two or more attempts. 

New Law Schools Coming Soon in Jacksonville and High Point; Jacksonville Seeks Dean

After a bit of a lull, we are seeing a couple of universities creating new law schools.  Jacksonville University in Florida plans to open a downtown law school this fall, with the help of a $5 million contribution from the city. The University is searching for a dean.  Jacksonville was previously home to Florida Coastal Law School.   Meanwhile, High Point University in North Carolina announced it will open a law school starting in 2024.