Florida Coastal: The Law-School Scam by "The Atlantic"

[thelakelander]

A scathing feature expose on Jax's Florida Coastal School of Law by The Atlantic...

The Law-School Scam

For-profit law schools are a capitalist dream of privatized profits and socialized losses. But for their debt-saddled, no-job-prospect graduates, they can be a nightmare.


David Frakt isn't easily intimidated by public-speaking assignments. A lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve and a defense attorney, Frakt is best known for securing the 2009 release of the teenage Guantánamo detainee Mohammad Jawad. He did so by helping to convince a military tribunal that the only evidence that Jawad had purportedly thrown a hand grenade at a passing American convoy in 2002 had been extracted by torture.

By comparison, Frakt's presentation in April to the Florida Coastal School of Law's faculty and staff seemed to pose a far less daunting challenge. A law professor for several years, Frakt was a finalist for the school's deanship, and the highlight of his two-day visit was this hour-long talk, in which he discussed his ideas for fixing what he saw as the major problems facing the school: sharply declining enrollment, drastically reduced admissions standards, and low morale among employees.

But midway through Frakt's statistics-filled PowerPoint presentation, he was interrupted when Dennis Stone, the school's president, entered the room. (Stone had been alerted to Frakt's comments by e-mails and texts from faculty members in the room.) Stone told Frakt to stop "insulting" the faculty, and asked him to leave. Startled, Frakt requested that anyone in the room who felt insulted raise his or her hand. When no one did, he attempted to resume his presentation. But Stone told him that if he didn't leave the premises immediately, security would be called. Frakt packed up his belongings and left.

Full article: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-law-school-scam/375069/

[CityLife]

Thanks for sharing this Lake. Its a subject discussed quite a bit on MJ. From my reading of the first quarter of the article, this looks like an extremely well researched and written piece. Looking forward to reading the whole thing this weekend.

I hope that anyone considering a for-profit school of any kind takes a look.

[mbwright]

"the capitalist dream of privatizing profits while socializing losses."  gov't guarantees the loans, the borrower defaults, investors don't lose.  This time it just is not in real estate and commoditized loans.

The percentage passing the bar is very important.  Successfully getting out of law school and passing the bar is the important part.

[simms3]

I think it's safe to assume that many FL Coastal students are "rejects" of traditional law schools, many of which are actually cheaper to attend and with clearly superior stats/results, but are also more difficult to get into.  That alone points to a business model that is predatory on ill-informed and/or desperate "victims".

There's something wrong with a school that is owned by a PE firm beholden to institutional and or high net worth investors, as opposed to a non-profit school that happens to have an endowment whose sole purpose is to improve the school by buying high profile professors/lecturers, building new facilities, and expanding scholarship opportunities (and thus making them even more competitive by increasing the pool of potential students to those outside of financial means).

Watch out for the EB-5 program, too.  Definitely pros and cons, but ripe for abuse (moreso of foreign investors, but nonetheless, another government program paved with good intentions that will potentially line pockets of well-run investments firms and screw other not-so-savvy foreign/domestic investors and companies either through scam or mis-management).

[spuwho]

I am not sure that every capitalist wants to socialize their loss, hedge perhaps, but not socialize. Of course there is always the Enron way and take it off books.

Having been close to the ABA, I would say there is a significant level of reform required in the accreditation process. They have been sued for having a total stranglehold on legal education in the US. If you go to a non accredited law school, you can't take the bar exam. So the ABA started accrediting private law schools in response to the monopoly suit.

Legislation to reform the ABA and the accreditation process has a problem. Almost every member of Congress has a law degree and is a member of the ABA. The Senate Judiciary Committee which reviews legal reform issues are all high level members of ABA governing committees. How do you reform legal education when one organization has a total hold from top to bottom?

The ABA s response is always "who us? ....we're just this non for profit, we don't impose on anyone" Don't be fooled.

ABA wants all the controls like a regulator, but very little accountability that goes with it.

[Josh]

Tier 4, baby!

[Jessicapants]

The job market for graduating law students in general is not great right now, but the worse the law school is that you attend, the worse your job prospects are.  A "for-profit" law school is never considered to be a good school, by any measure. This has been the case for more than 5 years at this point.

Candidates who have bad grades AND poor LSAT scores are bad candidates for law school. Who wants to hire a lawyer that has poor critical thinking skills and can't follow directions? No one, with good reason. This has always been true.

What I think is interesting is that all of this information is widely and freely available to anyone who even remotely has access to Google, which is all law school applicants since the application process is now an online process. I've been reading about the plight of unemployed and underemployed law grads for more than 3 years now. I've also actively seen this plight from FCSL students, since the firm I work in employs them as interns.

Many of us who believe in doing research before making a huge, life-altering decision have actively chosen to avoid law school because of this readily available information.

The schools that accept unacceptable candidates should be out of business, but they're not. Why? Because every one of their students believes that they are the exception to the rule. Are there exceptions to the rule? Yes, but they are rare. Hence, "exceptions". Unfortunately, this nuance is lost on most of them.

I worked in law firms while I earned my undergraduate degree. I currently work in a law firm, and will continue to work here until I finish grad school. I'm doing well. I feel very comfortable in law. I have a decent undergrad GPA from a state university and high practice LSAT scores. I'm a good law school candidate. But I am unwilling to take the risk of attending (any) law school because I refuse to put myself in $100k+ student loan debt, just to have a 50-50 shot at making a little bit more money than I currently make. It's not worth it.

I was bored about a year after I finished my undergrad so I chose a grad school program at UNF that will cost me a grand total of $20k and allow me to keep my current full-time job and low personal expenses. If I make more money after I finish the program, great. If not, I'm not up a creek with no paddle. It works for me.

All of this is to say that I'm glad that someone put the work into writing an expose about FCSL and InfiniLaw. I hope that education and student loan reform will happen sooner than later to prevent heartache amongst the students who could potentially be caught in this type of scam as well as the taxpayers that ultimately get stuck with the bills.

[ben says]

Per usual, I think this is more an issue: the persistent lack of regulation in industry. When we have regulation, it seems to be aimed at the wrong thing, or so riddled with loopholes it's useless.

The ABA is to blame, as is the federal government (how about Kaplan/Virginia/Phoenix/all-those-other-for-profit-"schools"?).

As someone who went to Coastal (I got in elsewhere. It wasn't a "last result" to me. I chose Coastal due to faculty and proximity to home...wanted to come home to Jax after 6 years living away), I continue to think Coastal has some outstanding faculty. I mean really. My evidence prof (also a poster on MJ, "funny") got his JD from UC Berkley, my crim prof got her JD from UVA, my torts prof got his JD from Princeton, etc. I'm not solely talking pedigree of degrees...they were good teachers and good people. They still are. I believe I got a quality education. I also left with under $4k in debt.

The failings of the school are ownership issues (as the Atlantic points out). When a school is treated as a corporation, you get a Coastal/Infilaw school. Profit over people, always. End of story.