Law Schools

Charlotte Fires Dozens Of Faculty, Which Surprises No One

A dying law school cleans house and starts indirectly pleading with Trump.

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charlotte-law-lf-rfOh. So the law school that can’t get federal money and then took a Kremlin pee party on a negotiated agreement with the Department of Education is laying off its faculty in droves today? What are the odds?!?!?

As we should have suspected, Charlotte School of Law followed the announcement that it would not sign on to a DOE “teach-out” proposal that would have allowed the school’s students to get access to some federal funds and complete their education at Florida Coastal by whipping out the pink slips.

As the Charlotte Observer reports:

Sources said that up to two-thirds of the school’s professors and staff were notified in the past two days. The massive cuts come less than week before the school is supposed to reopen despite crippling financial problems that threaten to overwhelm it.

Threaten to overwhelm it? When has “we’ve fired over two-thirds of our faculty” ever ended with “but then we got this ship turned around”? When two-thirds of the faculty is fired, you can start using the past tense on the “overwhelm” point.

A fired faculty member who asked not to be named out of concern of retaliation told the Observer that Dean Jay Conison made personal phone calls to the affected staffers starting Wednesday night. Those calls continued Thursday morning, the former faculty member said.

At least they’re getting the personal touch. It’s really the least you can offer.

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School spokeswoman Victoria Taylor said Thursday that CSL does not comment on personnel decisions. But she did say that the school expects “to have fewer enrolled students in the spring than we did in the fall,” while adding that “The good work that CSL faculty and staff have done in the community through our clinics will continue.”

Taylor, of course, cut her teeth explaining to waiting passengers that the HMS Titanic “might experience some delays, but will be along shortly” on April 16, 1912. Her aside about the good work that the school does with its clinics seems to run afoul of actual facts, however:

The Observer has also learned that the faculty cuts will close nearly all the school’s legal clinics, which give students experience in handling legal cases involving nonprofits, entrepreneurship and such pressing social issues as homelessness and immigration.

The immigration clinic alone had more than 50 ongoing legal cases that now will be closed, sources say. That means many of the people served must now go elsewhere for help.

Obviously clinics were going to get cut before the core subjects for a school drastically trying to stay afloat. But if there was ever a perfect encapsulation of why for-profit institutions run counter to professional education, this is it. The obligation as professionals to serve clients gets a swift knife in the back as soon as someone’s profits are evaporating.

Charlotte knew the school was going to close after this semester anyway, right? Was there no plan to transition these cases? Perhaps there is and it’s not in this story, but that should have been a top priority for the school’s winding down process.

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Unless, of course, you think this is a cynical effort to foist blame on the Department of Education. “Oh, those jerks at the DOE forced us to hurt all these immigrants — we were never trying to hurt anyone with our dismal employment numbers!” If that’s the play here, it’s really despicable.

But it may be part of the strategy. The school’s president Chidi Ogene and Dean Jay Conison have clearly cast their lot with the Trump administration bailing them out in a daring bid to pin this all on Obama:

Thursday, Ogene and Conison issued an extraordinary statement in which they accused the Department of Education of breaking the law and violating its own rules by cutting off the school’s access to loans last year.

“It is regrettable that the Department of Education leadership, in the very last days of its tenure, has chosen to jeopardize the future of all our students,” the statement said. “… That is why we will continue to fight aggressively for the interests of everyone of our students when the new administration takes responsibility for the department.”

Who’d have thought that we’d live in an era where law schools would find warmth drawing parallels with Trump University, but here we are.

And it’s the smart play. Does anyone actually think Betsy DeVos is going to keep putting the screws to a for-profit institution? Hell, unless Charlotte is overrun by grizzly bears, she’ll probably buy a stake in InfiLaw before opening the loan floodgates.

Let’s make a prediction now — DeVos bails out Charlotte, Charlotte rehires some or all of these professors, and then Donald Trump tweets us about all the new jobs he created on the Charlotte faculty.

That was designed to be an absurd sequence of events to elicit a chuckle, but re-reading it that seems safely in the realm of possibility.

UPDATE (1/19/17 5:02 p.m.): A tipster just pointed out that the firings included all but three of the school’s bar exam coaches, which is not exactly a good faith gesture that the school is taking bar passage seriously. Charlotte alumni are reportedly organizing to help recent grads study for the upcoming test.

Charlotte School of Law fires dozens of faculty [Charlotte Observer]

Earlier: Law School DENIED Access To Federal Student Loan Dollars
Charlotte Law School Pulls Rug Out From Students

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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