Law Schools, Student Loans

Charlotte Law Is Trying To Bleed Every Last Penny Out Of Its Remaining Students

Haven’t Charlotte Law students already been put through enough?

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'You want me to pay you for this?'

‘You want me to pay you for this?’

Charlotte School of Law, a for-profit Infilaw institution, was summarily dismissed from the federal loan program by the Department of Education on December 19, 2016. Since that time, Charlotte Law students — including those who have filed class-action suits against the school, alleging fraud and deception, among other causes of action — have been kept in a rather uncomfortable limbo.

Will the school reopen for the spring 2017 semester? No one knows, and the administration has been less than transparent with students, only assuring them that they are “working closely” with all regulators to ensure that the school will open for the coming semester. In the meantime, the administration has told some Charlotte Law students that the school needs at least 500 students to commit to taking classes this spring to reopen, while at the same time encouraging other students to transfer to Florida Coastal School of Law, an Infilaw sister school. Talk about mixed messaging…

We’ve recently learned from tipsters that those who have attempted to transfer have their own horror stories to share. A source contacted us earlier this week to let us know that Charlotte Law, a school that has shoved its students between a rock and a hard place thanks to their newfound inability to finance their legal educations, has the extreme gall to charge students for transfer packages and transcripts. This is truly shameless.

Here’s a message we received from a very angry Charlotte Law student about this issue:

Charlotte School of Law is still charging students for transfer packages ($25/a piece) and for transcripts ($10/a piece). So all the students who are scrambling to take control of their futures and trying to weave through the lies and half truths that CSL and Infilaw are throwing at us are stuck with the bill! How ridiculous is that? The school administration and its parent company, Infilaw, is withholding information and misleading students. Their terrible decisions put the school in the position it is currently in, and now for the students to get out and try to take control, if they can — and that’s a big if — they must pay these fees?

Moreover, the processing time for the transfer requests is apparently quite long. I heard that President Chidi didn’t know how many students have asked for these transfer packets when he was asked in the student meeting on Wednesday. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if your school needs students in order to remain open, then you, as the president of the school, should be on top of the number requesting to leave. Yet in our meeting he said he didn’t know how many had requested to transfer!!!

We’re beginning to wonder if the administration is purposefully drawing out their closing announcement to try and blame it on the number of students who are leaving. This benefits them as it would lower the number of students they have to teach-out. Fewer students lessens their responsibility. They can shift blame to the students, as they did with bar passage (apparently people didn’t pass the bar because they didn’t put in the work… not because the administration admitted people that had lower likelihood to pass the test).

It becomes more and more clear to us that the members of the administration do not understand their job. Our job as students is to pay for tuition and to come to class prepared to learn. The faculty’s job is to teach us the law and legal principles that develop it to the best of their ability. The administration’s job is to KEEP THE DAMN SCHOOL OPEN! It is their job to make sure that paperwork is timely filed and processed. They haven’t even written a teach-out program, as required by the ABA. In the face of the school closing it seems a good idea to have a contingency plan for your students, just as it seems a good idea to keep on top of the number of students requesting transfer information. The administration OWES us that duty. But instead, it appears they are dragging their feet with an announcement that would allow students to once again take control of their own legal education and futures.

So, either the administration is completely inept or they are continuing their misrepresentations and lies by omission.

Haven’t Charlotte Law students already been put through enough? Their holidays were ruined, and they had nothing to celebrate as the world rang in the new year because their futures were imperiled. If they want to escape from this mess, allow them to do so free of charge — after all, they’re not the ones who are at fault here. Stop trying to bleed every last penny out of students who have already been damned to a lifetime of debt.

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Earlier: Law School DENIED Access To Federal Student Loan Dollars
Students File $5 Million Class-Action Lawsuit Against Charlotte Law
Law School Without Access To Loans Needs At Least 500 Students (Who Can’t Pay) To Hold Classes This Spring

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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