Law Professors, Law Schools

Yikes! Another Law School Offers Buyouts To Tenured Professors

Should tenured professors take the money and run, or risk staying behind at a school whose standards for admission may drop even lower?

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The old saying about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb apparently doesn’t apply to the legal profession. We’ve already seen two large-scale law firm layoffs this month (first at Kasowitz Benson, and then at Goodwin Proctor), and now the bad news has reached a law school.

As if this particular law school didn’t have enough to worry about, it’s now being forced to offer buyouts to its tenured, tenure-track, and tenure-equivalent faculty members, in an effort to scrounge together enough money to keep the school running.

Which law school put this offer on the table, and how many professors will take it?

Charleston School of Law, which is heroically attempting to stave off a takeover by the InfiLaw System, sent letters to “some” of its professors earlier this week from Dean Andy Abrams with the details of the buyout program. All manner of tenured faculty member contracts will be bought for consideration. But how much consideration?

Here’s some scant information on the program from the Post and Courier:

Abrams stated that the buyouts were part of the school’s plan to explore options to resolve its financial challenges. But he didn’t say how many faculty members would be bought out, only that it would be a limited number, or how much they might receive for agreeing to leave.

Law school spokesman Andy Brack said the issue is a personnel matter, and the school doesn’t discuss personnel matters in the press.

While the bulk of Charleston Law’s monetary problems can be attributed to owners pulling out profits to the tune of $25 million between 2010 and 2013, not to mention issues with enrollment — which was down 16 percent year over year from 2013 to 2014 — it’s worth noting that InfiLaw also had a hand in the school’s financial undoing. The for-profit school entered into a management agreement with InfiLaw back in 2013, and pays out some pretty hefty fees for those services. InfiLaw refused to comment on Charleston’s current dire straits, but in the past said that its proposal to buy it outright was the “best alternative for the future of the school.” Why? Because InfiLaw, a for-profit business, has tons and tons of money from charging tuition prices out the wazoo.

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Here’s the average debt 2014 graduates have from each of the InfiLaw System schools:

  • Arizona Summit Law School: $187,792 (see additional information here)
  • Florida Coastal School of Law: $162,785
  • Charlotte School of Law: $140,528

For the record, the average indebtedness of Charleston Law’s 2014 graduates is $147,031. It certainly seems like it would fit right in with the rest of the InfiLaw stable of debt horrors.

Students at Charleston Law are very worried about the faculty buyouts. “Students’ initial reaction is concern. We love our faculty and don’t want to see anything happen to them,” says the president of the school’s Student Bar Association. Many students believe the faculty buyouts are related to the school’s possible sale to InfiLaw.

Should tenured professors take the money and run, or risk staying behind at a school whose standards for admission may drop even lower? The professors who received these buyout offers may want to get out while they still can.

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Charleston School of Law offers buyouts to faculty members [Post and Courier]

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