U of North Dakota contemplates deadly drop in standards

The law school at the University of North Dakota anticipates a shortfall of $2.1 million by 2028. In response, it proposes to raise fees and expand the entering class from 85 to 100 students.

The dean admits that greater expansion might well push his über-toilet into "accepting students that may struggle to pass the bar exam". Indeed, already the LSAT score at the 25th percentile is a horrible 146, and the admission of 15 more students, to say nothing of a greater number, would likely send that score tumbling. It is difficult to imagine where the U of North Dakota could find even 15 more students per year without dipping at least a few points on the LSAT, and probably quite a few.

The dean's statement amounts to a shameful admission that the law school as it stands hovers just above the threshold for students of truly horrible calibre—those who would struggle to pass any bar exam. It is a predatory institution that puts its existence, and the advancement of its faculty, ahead of the needs and interests of its students. 

There simply is no need for a law school in North Dakota, especially one that draws its so-called students principally from the marginal group that will struggle with any bar exam if it does manage to graduate. Rather than coming up with a few million dollars and thinking of admitting even worse trash, the dean should have the honesty to concede that his über-toilet should be wound up as soon as possible. 

Law school in El Paso "feasible"

Another "feasibility study" has alleged the need for a new law school, this time in El Paso, Texas. And the U of Texas at El Paso calls itself the perfect home for this would-be über-toilet. 

The state's legislative body commissioned the so-called study from Kennedy & Company Education Strategies, a firm in Virginia that offers various consulting services to universities. On its Web site, we read that its "feasibility studies can help serve as an advocacy document to Boards of Trustees or funding authorities to provide accurate forecasts for the investment needed to support high-quality programming in new fields". Or to legislatures that want "advocacy"—propaganda—rather than sound, independent analysis. 

According to the "study", this law school would need ten years to become financially self-sustaining. It would require an infusion of $20 million in capital. That does not include the cost of constructing a building needed on account of "limited campus space and accreditation requirements"—supposedly $60–110 million more. And we are expected to believe that an über-toilet in desolate Hell Paso with a maximum of 100 students per class would generate enough profit to pay back a nine-figure outlay, or that it would serve the public well enough to justify an unrecovered expenditure of that size. 

Let's hope that sane voices will prevail in the Lone Star State. Old Guy, however, isn't betting on it. 

Golden Gate remains closed

After Golden Gate announced its closure, disgruntled students and alumni sued for an injunction requiring the über-toilet to continue its operations. Unsurprisingly, they lost. Golden Gate is part of law-school-scam history.

As for the various claims arising from alleged breach of contract, "plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail on any of them" (at 3). Not exactly a ringing endorsement from the bench.

With this decision, Golden Gate is the sixteenth ABA-accredited law school to close since 2016:

Cooley (one campus)

Hamline (merged with Mitchell)

Indiana Tech

Whittier

Charlotte

Savannah

Valpo

Arizona Summit

Cooley (a second campus)

Thomas Jefferson (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)

La Verne (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)

Concordia

Cooley (a third campus)

Florida Coastal

Penn State Law (probably) 

Golden Gate

Which law school will be the next to close?

Florida A&M on the chopping block?

The Board of Governors of Florida's State University System has warned Florida A&M that its law school may be closed down soon unless performance improves substantially. In particular, despite a target of having 80% of graduates pass a bar exam on their first attempt, the figure for last year was only 41% and was even lower than the previous year's figure.

Programs in health-related fields are also threatened with closure, but it is the law school at Florida A&M that seems to be doing the worst. Readers of OTLSS will not be surprised, since Florida A&M is a notorious über-toilet that draws it students heavily from the 140s (perhaps even lower) on the LSAT. Such unpromising students can be expected to fail bar exams in large numbers, and of course they do. 

We at OTLSS urge the Board of Governors to acknowledge immediately that Florida A&M is sunk hopelessly in the mire of toilet-grade students and that it simply is not going to achieve, or even approach, that 80% standard. The merciful course of action is to pull the plug now. "Give us five years" is bullshit: we see time and time again that über-toilets fail even to come close to a respectable standard despite years of dispensations. Shut Florida A&M down.

(Dougie) Fresh news: "andré douglas pond cummings" to be dean of Widener

Long-time readers of OTLSS will remember andré douglas pond cummings, the ever-so-humble scholar of law & hip-hop who insists on writing all four of his names at all times, solely in lower-case letters. He reportedly christened himself Dougie Fresh, for what reason I know not, as a young Mormon on his obligatory mission to win converts, but he seems to have tired of that moniker. (We often call him Dougie Fresh here, or Pond Scum.) His greatest moment in the sun was a stint as second in command at Indiana Tech Law School, a four-year-long flash in the pan whose greatest contribution to the world was an almost inexhaustible wellspring of material for witty mockery here at OTLSS. Those who are late to the party may occupy a merry afternoon by searching for 

site:outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com "indiana tech"

and laughing their asses off at every article.

Well, as I said, Indiana Tech went tits up after four years. Dougie Fresh apparently got a job teaching legal writing at the toilet law school of the U of Arkansas at Little Rock, thereby faring rather better than most of his colleagues at the finest failed law school ever to disgrace Allen County, Indiana. I had nearly forgotten about him when our dear founder, Dybbuk, shared the following piece of news with me: Dougie Fresh is going to become the dean of Widener University Commonwealth Law School on the first of June.

Widener waxes dithyrambic about Dougie Fresh Pond Scum:

• an accomplished leader, scholar, and award-winning professor
• an inclusive leader with an array of legal expertise
• a student-centered leader who stands out as a strong proponent of inclusion and belonging

For "a strong proponent of inclusion and belonging", read "a whore who will draw sorely needed student-loan-bearing racialized students into our stinky über-toilet". At Indiana Tech, Pond Scum told a prospective applicant that 143 was a "serviceable" LSAT score, apparently meaning that it was good enough for Indiana Tech. It is in fact a dreadful LSAT score, one so bad that anyone entering law school with it is unlikely to graduate and less likely still to pass a bar exam ever. Widener preys on racialized students: they make up more than a quarter of the student body and a clear majority of those who fail out. Unfortunately, gullible people who have suffered a lifetime of undeserved disadvantage on account of white supremacy may heed the siren song of white scamsters who tell them that they can have a career in law despite demonstrably poor ability that renders them inadmissible to any respectable law school. At least 25% of the class got no better than 146 on the LSAT; only two ABA-accredited law schools have lower scores (145 and 144). 

Conspicuously absent from this puff piece by über-toilet Widener is any mention of Dougie Fresh's four years just shy of the helm of HMS Indiana Tech. Why is that, pray tell? Could it be that Indiana Tech, whose entire brief and shameful existence is amply and amusingly documented at OTLSS, is a grievous embarrassment, blotting a career of allegedly brilliant achievement in the burgeoning field of law & hip-hop?

We at OTLSS predict that the students and staff of über-toilet Widener will quickly tire of this pretentious buffoon and his four lower-case names. We recommend that they call him Pond Scum and ask why he insisted on being called Dougie Fresh by his fellow latter-day saints.

ABA busy with rubber stamp of approval

Lately the ABA has been wielding its rubber stamp of approval with relish. It has "acquiesced" to letting über-toilet Charleston School of Law become a so-called non-profit institution. Acquiescence apparently is a sort of noli contendere that lets the state and federal authorities make the real decision. 

Provost Larry Cunningham cited "two key benefits to the change: it will bolster the school’s academic reputation, separating it from those institutions accused of being 'diploma mills,' and it will make fundraising easier as potential donors will be attracted to the tax advantages of giving to a nonprofit school." Charlatan Charleston will, however, be a diploma mill whether it is nominally non-profit or not. It's so odious that even InfiLaw tried to acquire it. As for raising funds, I suppose that someone somewhere will be ass enough to donate to this flagging über-toilet and may be more inclined to do so if money can be saved on taxes. Still, it's a hopeless scam-school with no future.

In addition, the ABA has given provisional accreditation to the upstart über-toilet at Jacksonville University. Scarcely a year and a half old, this bullshit institution started life with a handful of students and still expects only 40 in the next entering class. It's a ridiculous and ill-fated attempt to establish a law school in Jacksonville where Florida Coastal failed after years with more than a thousand students. Of course, the ABA hands out provisional, and even full, accreditation like breath mints, so its scam-enabling conduct comes as no surprise.

Wilmington University in Delaware opens über-toilet

Bucking the trend of closures since the second half of 2016, Delaware's Wilmington University opened an über-toilet law school last autumn. Despite forecasting an inaugural class of 65 students, the über-toilet got only 20. Indiana Tech did about the same: actual enrollment was less than one-third of the pie-in-the-sky prediction.

Phillip Closius, dean of this dump, risibly explained the shortfall: "I just over-estimated it.… I had no experience dealing with a school that was new and seeking accreditation. We didn’t get in front of enough people to produce those numbers." Indeed, he evidently had "no experience"—and didn't bother to glance at the histories of similar failed ventures, such as Indiana Tech.

Although we at OTLSS have not found any information about the LSAT scores of the twenty fools who signed up at this dive, Harvard need not quake in its boots at the thought of sharp competition from Delaware. One hundred three people applied, and Closius claims that twice as many were needed for a class of 65. The claim seems questionable: had there been twice as many similarly situated applicants, we should have expected enrollment around 40. Perhaps he meant that the hypothetical second slate of 103 applicants would have been much poorer and much more likely to matriculate. Or perhaps he just can't do arithmetic.

And now it's time for the obligatory announcement that Wilmington is a Different Type of Law School™. Closius again: "There was no reason to open up a new law school that’s doing exactly the same thing as 190 other law schools." Quite so. What, then, sets Wilmington apart from the pack?

Wilmington Law aims to distinguish itself with relatively low tuition — the current cost is $24,000 a year — and a focus on preparing students for the bar exam. Class assessments are designed to mimic the format of the attorney licensing exam, Closius said. The school will also emphasize hands-on learning through externships, he added.

Let's work through this item by item.

A law school can be expensive despite "relatively low tuition", thanks in large part to the cost of living and other expenses. It can also fail. Indiana Tech did, right after giving the entire student body ZERO tuition; Golden Gate is closing now after doing the same for all full-time students. Law schools with an unbroken heritage going back to the nineteenth century, such as the notorious Valpo, have gone tits up. Why should Wilmington be viable? Where exactly is it getting the money to operate with a faculty of 7 and a student body of 20? That's not even half a million dollars of revenue, far too little for operating expenses.

We hear, however, that the new über-toilet Jacksonville University College of Law doubled its entering class to 27 students last year after drawing only 14 upon opening in 2022. That's still too few students for sustainability, by Old Guy's estimates. And infusions of cash into a law school can quickly sink a parent university: Indiana Tech, once again, provides a fine example, and even the U of Minnesota is hurting from the millions of dollars' worth of subsidies needed to keep its upper-fourth-tier law school afloat.

The "focus on preparing students for the bar exam" tells us two things: 1) Wilmington, like many other über-toilets, will be a glorified bar-review course; 2) already Closius & Co. know damn well that their charges will struggle to pass a bar exam, because they're admitting students of low calibre.

And "hands-on learning through externships"? Ho-hum. Other law schools say exactly the same thing, without yielding results to match the rhetoric. Emphasizing "externships" as a vehicle for "hands-on learning" amounts to an abrogation of the duty to teach. And who the hell in Wilmington is going to offer "externships" to a couple of dozen über-toileteers?

In sum, Wilmington is indeed doing what 190 other law schools are doing—or perhaps I should say 160 or so, to exclude the élite and near-élite schools.

Admit it Closius: 1) you don't know what the hell you're doing; 2) there just isn't any practical or innovative way to make minimally competent lawyers of the lousy human material that your unneeded shit pit of a law school attracts. Unlike you, Old Guy has actually considered what would be needed to run a law school for Wilmingtonian über-toileteers: maybe a dozen years or so of demanding full-time instruction, starting with remedial training in reading, writing, and logic long before introducing anything to do with law. Some of your so-called students might complete the program, but it would be painful for all—and Old Guy isn't volunteering to teach it. 

Wilmington has sunk tens of millions of dollars into buildings that seem to excite Closius more than his shitty students and shitty law school. Indiana Tech and Thomas Jefferson are but two über-toilet law schools that pissed money away in precisely the same manner, only to have to vacate the new facilities almost as soon as they had moved in.

Prediction: This pig of a law school will fail to thrive. Old Guy doesn't expect it to survive four years.

Other news:

High Point University — a private, Christian university in North Carolina — is moving ahead with plans to launch a new law school next August. Applications for the coming school year will be available in September, according to its website.

Just what we need: a god-bothering private joke of a university with a new über-toilet of its own, in a state that lost a horrible law school (Charlotte) just a few years ago and still has far more law schools than it needs. Expect an update from OTLSS as information comes to light.