Law Schools

Failing, For-Profit Law School Announces Plans To Affiliate With 'Major University'

This is what happens when your law school has garnered nothing but bad press and terrible outcomes for students.

By  
on

failedWhat do you do when your standalone, for-profit law school has garnered nothing but bad press and terrible outcomes for students? What if only 39.8 percent of one of your most recent graduating classes was employed in full-time, long-term jobs as lawyers? What if the most recent median debt reported for graduates of your program was a back-breaking $178,263? What if, despite your dean allegedly begging certain graduates not to take the bar exam, one of your most recent graduating classes performed so poorly on the bar exam — with 69.4 percent of takers failing the test — that the total pass rate for an entire state was dragged down to just 56.5 percent?

Much like the Thomas M. Cooley Law School attempted to do when it announced an affiliation with Western Michigan University, you’d do anything you possibly could to change the law school’s name like it was heading into the witness protection program.

Which school is trying to affiliate itself with a university to “enhance [its] reputation” this time? That would be Arizona Summit Law School, a member of the InfiLaw system.

Yesterday afternoon, the school announced to its students and alumni via email that it intended to affiliate with a “major university” in one year’s time. At the time of publication, Above the Law is the first media outlet to report this news. What we’d like to know is what kind of a university would want to team up with a flagging, for-profit law school? Right now, the school is apparently negotiating with several possible takers. No self-respecting university would want to get into cahoots with a for-profit institution, so perhaps we can look forward to the Grand Canyon University Arizona Summit Law School or DeVry University Arizona Summit Law School in the future.

Here’s more information from the AZ Summit Law press release (available in full on the next page) on why it’s such an attractive school for a “major university” to affiliate with:

In its short history, Summit has earned numerous awards for diversity and innovation – including being a two-time winner of the American Bar Association Gambrell Award. Summit students last year logged more than 100,000 public service hours. The school’s career placement rate historically has ranked favorably among the nation’s 50 tier two law schools. It has a student loan default rate of less than 2%, which is one of the best among the nation’s universities and law schools (including many state universities and ivy league schools).

Dean Shirley Mays notes that, “our mission entails admitting many students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have lower entering credentials but the potential to succeed. Our ability to and record of enabling success is evidenced by an ultimate bar pass rate that complies with ABA standards, our strong career placement rate, and many stories from employers who prefer to hire our graduates because of their preparedness for practice and strong work ethic.”

Congratulations on having a “strong” career placement rate that “ranks favorably” among other law schools whose graduates have great difficulty finding jobs. Congratulations on having graduates with a miraculous ability to avoid loan default despite their joblessness (income-based repayment programs sure are great). Congratulations on having an “ultimate bar pass rate” of 86 percent, which certainly looks more palatable than your recent 30.6 percent bar pass rate.

Sponsored

With all of these remarkable achievements, we hope that a “major university” will rescue affiliate with Arizona Summit Law School soon. Best of luck!

(Flip to the next page to see the full Arizona Summit Law School press release.)

Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Sponsored

1 2Next »

Topics

, , , ,