As long-standing readers of Outside the Law School Scam will know, the privately owned "InfiLaw System" operates law schools for profit. InfiLaw claims that its
"schools have a demonstrated ability to achieve superior outcomes that are a function of admission processes (which probe beyond traditional quality indicators and factor otherwise overlooked predictors of success) and programmatic innovation, academic support processes, and faculty focus on student success". Let's evaluate this "demonstrated ability".
InfiLaw's three schools are (or were) the following:
Charlotte School of Law: Defunct since August 2017, when the state yanked its license. The LSAT scores of the last entering class were 141, 144, and 148 (at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles, respectively). In November 2016, the ABA put Charlotte on probation for failure to meet even the ABA's dreadfully low standards of admission. One student
"there was no application process" and that the school would call "two and three times a day" to badger prospective students with "aggressive predatory sales tactics".
A federal criminal investigation of Charlotte has been under way for more than a year.
Forty percent of last year's graduates are unemployed, and only one-third of last year's graduates have long-term, full-time jobs.
Arizona Summit Law School: On probation since March 2017 for falling short of the ABA's abysmally low academic and admissions standards. LSAT scores: 140, 143, 148. More than 20% of last year's graduates were unemployed, and more than a third of that class did not find long-term, full-time work. Only a quarter of first-time candidates passed the Arizona bar exam in July 2016.
Florida Coastal School of Law:
At risk of losing eligibility for federally guaranteed student loans. LSAT scores: 141, 144, 149. Only a third of those taking the bar exam last year passed.
Forty percent of last year's graduates are unemployed, and less than half of that class found long-term, full-time jobs. Not a single graduate got a federal clerkship or a job in Big Law.
InfiLaw also made an unsuccessful bid to buy the for-profit
Charleston School of Law (LSAT scores 141, 145, 149), the only other school that currently fails the "gainful employment" standard of eligibility for student loans.
Where have the InfiLaw schools "achieve[d] superior outcomes"? Not in the department of employment for their graduates. The unemployment rates listed above are reminiscent of the Great Depression. And even the most happily employed InfiLaw graduates can hardly be called smashing successes, concentrated as they overwhelmingly are in tiny firms, "government", and "business". Of the many adjectives with which one might describe those outcomes,
inferior would be an understatement;
superior, a whopping lie.
How about "admission processes"? The disaffected student reported above suggests that her toilet had no meaningful admissions process, just an aggressive telemarketing campaign. How exactly does an InfiLaw toilet, with "no application process", ferret out "otherwise overlooked predictors of success"?
In the running of scam schools, however, InfiLaw has "demonstrated ability" in spades. All three InfiLaw toilets rank in the top third by cost of attendance. Until recently, they ranked among the top few in enrollment, with four-figure student bodies: as recently as 2012, Charlotte alone enrolled 626 first-year students. Roughly a third of InfiLaw's students pay full fare, and only 2% or so get free tuition. While it lasts, therefore, InfiLaw milks about a hundred million dollars per year out of the public—thanks largely to the arbitrage scheme known as federally guaranteed student loans. Small wonder that InfiLaw "probe[s] beyond traditional quality indicators" to take in just about anyone who can arrange payment of InfiLaw's obscene fees.
