Charleston School of Law

Everything seems to be unraveling for this law school.

With the school is failing, the administration pulls out all the stops to keep students.

* It was First Amendment Day at SCOTUS this morning! Here’s a recap. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Exclusive report on the new CSOL president’s meeting with students. He explained how Infilaw had a terrible track record and offered nothing to the school. Just kidding! But he did suggest introducing “a Boy Scout-inspired ‘merit badge system’” to the school. So there’s that. [SC Lawyers Weekly]

* Facebook made this legislator vote the wrong way on a bill. #banBoomers. [Lowering the Bar]

* Texas became the first state to ban fracking bans. Looks like they understand hierarchical government in some situations. [Breaking Energy]

* Allegations of political influence peddling in Orange County pot industry. I didn’t make it to the big ATL Business of Bud conference the other day, but this sounds scandalous. On the other hand, “drug trade influence peddling” used to involve fewer gavels and more Glocks, so this is a positive development. [OC Weekly]

* Do you have strong feelings about FRCP 56(d)? You should. An excellent practice tip. [What About Clients?]

* Tonight is the Family Violence Appellate Project’s annual Battle of the Lawyer Bands. If you want to see bands from Google, O’Melveny, Latham, Jones Day, Lieff Cabraser, and Kirkland & Ellis — and help a good cause — then you’d best be in San Francisco and head over to 1015 Folsom. Buy tickets at the link. [Family Violence Appellate Project]

* You know who aren’t “Beliebers”? The Fourth Circuit. They swatted down Bieber and musical enabler Usher defending themselves against another artist’s copyright claim. Read the full opinion on the next page. [Fourth Circuit]

Charleston's New President Oversees Infilaw, Because Of Course He Does

* Just days after a hard-fought reelection campaign, Sepp Blatter is resigning his post as President of FIFA. I wonder whose indictment is coming out next… [The Guardian]

* The ABA is going to investigate the much-maligned Charleston School of Law. [SC Lawyers Weekly]

* If you fancy yourself a trivia master — or just want some free drinks and food — sign up for ATL’s Summer Trivia Showdown. Use the code “PLComp” to get in for free. [Above the Law]

* A New Jersey judge gagged the Bergen Dispatch, leading to this incisive response from the paper and the judge quietly vacating her own order. As Walter Sobchak taught us, “The Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint.” [Boing Boing]

* Not to diminish the serious electoral problems of the U.S., but check out how out of whack representation is in the United Kingdom. [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

* If you’re seeking a prosanity fix, a parent filed a federal lawsuit against local, state and federal education officials contending that the theory of evolution is functionally a religion and therefore teaching it is a violation of his kid’s rights. [Charleston Daily Mail]

* Seyfarth Shaw’s Stephen Poor explains why he joined Twitter. He talks about innovation and leadership, but it was all about following @aplusk. [Bloomberg BNA / Big Law Business]

More faculty layoffs for a school that can't figure out what it's doing.

* What Dewey think the leaders of this failed firm — Steven Davis, Stephen DiCarmine, and Joel Sanders — were doing during Memorial Day Weekend? Odds are at least one was working on his tan prior to opening arguments at tomorrow’s trial. [American Lawyer]

* Sofia Vergara will be heading back to court after a judge granted Nick Loeb, her ex-fiancé, permission to amend his complaint to seek custody over the couple’s frozen embryos. “There is no legal issue. Embryos are not children,” says her lawyer. [ET Online]

* After making great hay of the school’s apparently dire financial straits in a last-ditch effort to woo InfiLaw back into its lonely arms, Charleston Law will be enrolling new students after all. We’ll have more on this desperate move later. [Post and Courier]

* Cuba Libres for everyone! The Florida Bar is sending a parade of lawyers into Cuba to explore potential business opportunities while Biglaw firms are breaking into their stashes of Romeo y Julietas in preparation for an influx of post-embargo billable hours. [Reuters]

* Students at Northern Kentucky Law may soon be doing time at a local jail to complete their educations, since the administration is considering moving the school there. At least they’ll have practice for their residence in debtors’ prisons in the future. [NKY.com]

* Uber is building a 70-lawyer in-house group. Constantly going to outside counsel got too spendy after partners instituted surge pricing on all billable hours over 80/week. [Law and More]

* Justice Ginsburg presided over a same-sex wedding yesterday. Could she have tipped her hand on the upcoming marriage equality decisions by consistently emphasizing the word “Constitution”? The article begins: “The groom and groom strolled down the aisle to the mellow strains of ‘Mr. Sandman.'” The first time I read that I thought it said, “Enter Sandman,” which, admit it, would be a much cooler wedding song. [New York Times]

* Professor Rick Hasen, for one, thinks that might be exactly what RBG just did, noting her history of offering sly hints about the outcomes of unannounced decisions. [Election Law Blog]

* Is there a legal solution to save Charleston Law? That’s interesting, but the bigger takeaway from this piece is that one of the board members actually left the stage during commencement after the invocation denounced greed. You cannot make this stuff up. [Post and Courier]

* Those pesky nuns. [Lowering the Bar]

* Stanford’s student commencement speaker crowdsourced her speech. It was all going along fine until the 3 minutes segment where she just yelled, “Baba Booey” over and over again. [Forbes]

* California releases its February bar exam results. The only thing in California lower than those passage rates are the reservoirs, amiright? [Bar Exam Stats]

* Richard Hsu talks with Henry Bushkin, Johnny Carson’s lawyer and the author of a new book about the late “King of Late Night.” [Hsu Untied]

* Happy birthday to Professor Joseph Crea of Brooklyn Law School who celebrates his 100th birthday today at the school. [SF Gate]

* Jose Baez of Casey Anthony trial fame gave the commencement address at Valparaiso Law this weekend and let graduates know that they, too, can be attorneys, even if they’ve been financially irresponsible. They’re letting this man teach at Harvard Law now. [The Times]

* Suffolk Law and Cardozo Law will have new deans this summer, and both are planning for smaller classes. Considering Suffolk’s plummeting LSAT scores (and standards?), its new dean may have bigger problems to deal with than filling seats. [National Law Journal]

* He “Pressure Drop[ped]” the ball: If you could take the LSAT or open for the Rolling Stones with Toots and the Maytals, which would you pick? This Paul Hastings partner took the test, and says it’s his only regret about choosing law over music. [Am Law Daily]

* Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may have been sentenced to death last week, but it’s highly unlikely that his punishment will be carried out any time soon, if at all. Instead, he’ll be putting his lawyers to work for time ad infinitum. [WSJ Law Blog]

* “[D]on’t let anyone say that Charleston School of Law was already in trouble.” A local attorney says that this soon-to-fail law school only started circling the drain after its proposed sale to InfiLaw was announced. That’s quite the indictment. [Post and Courier]

Yesterday we learned that the CSOL Board believes it's the responsibility of faculty to save the school. The faculty

Charleston is nearing the end of the line.

* We mentioned earlier this week that Charleston School of Law may suspend enrollment of first-year students next year. Perhaps the law school’s ultimate failure wouldn’t be a bad deal for students — a closed school loan discharge would actually be a blessing for them. [WSJ Law Blog]

* With law school graduation right around the corner, you can kiss your dreams of a Supreme Court justice delivering your commencement speech goodbye. Thus far, not a single SCOTUS jurist will deliver remarks at a 2015 ceremony. [National Law Journal]

* Per the latest report from Citi Private Bank’s Law Firm Group, law firm expenses outpaced revenue in the first quarter of 2015. Some of the biggest expenses are salaries, so maybe this is another reason why some firms are resorting to layoffs. [Am Law Daily]

* They should’ve just watched The Wire? Under Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s leadership, the Department of Justice is going to launch an investigation into whether the Baltimore Police Department has been involved in any discriminatory police work. [NPR]

* If you’re still trying to decide which law school to attend, you may want to consider one that has robust practicum offerings. Being “practice ready” after graduation supposedly does wonders for your job prospects. (Just kidding.) [U.S. News & World Report]

Giving graduates the cold shoulder may spell the beginning of the end for this school.

* Brooklyn Law’s dean thinks “too much power rests with the [NCBE],” and that we need a new way to license lawyers. Brooklyn Law’s July 2014 bar passage rate was ~10 percent lower than the year prior, so perhaps he doesn’t like how those grapes taste. [National Law Journal]

* A man on trial for a bank robbery committed in 2013 pooped his pants while on the stand, removed some of said poop from his pants, and started eating it because the Virgin Mary told him to do it. If you couldn’t tell, he’s got an insanity defense. [Inquisitr]

* A new Citigroup report says Biglaw firms are at “high risk for cyberintrusions,” but so few will admit that they’ve been hacked it’s impossible to tell if the problem is growing. Don’t worry, clients, your confidential files might be safe. [DealBook / New York Times]

* People may think “this is a crappy, for-profit school that didn’t make it. But it could have been a great law school.” Charleston Law’s founding dean wrote a damning blog post about his colleagues for their attempts to sell the school to InfiLaw. [Post and Courier]

* “[B]eing well-dressed and having a law school diploma” isn’t enough to ensure that you’ll get a job anymore. Quick, take some advice from the career services dean at a school where 47.2 percent of recent grads are working full-time as lawyers. [Huffington Post]

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

* A Connecticut attorney was cited for dropping two ounces of weed on a courtroom floor, and he blames it on his client’s son. They were apparently going to stage an embarrassing intervention, but it was the attorney who wound up being embarrassed. [Hartford Courant]

* While Charleston School of Law bides its time and attempts to resist a buyout from the InfiLaw System, the school has offered many of its existing faculty members buyouts. We’ll have more on this interesting development later today. [Charleston Post & Courier]

* Pace Law is going to slash its tuition for incoming students with qualifying GPAs and LSAT scores to match the tuition of the in-state public law school of the student’s home state. Sorry, folks, but this tuition “fire sale” is only for new students. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Hiscock & Barclay is “dating,” “not engaged,” and “not even close to to getting married” to Damon Morey. There may not be “anything close to official,” but this seems like the very hesitant precursor to an arranged marriage, if I do say so myself. [Buffalo Law Journal]

* Per a recent study, the closer your law firm is to your law school, the more likely it is that you’ll make partner. In fact, it doesn’t even matter if you went to an elite law school — you’re still more likely to make partner if your alma mater is nearby. [New York Times]

* Appalachian Law may be a “fourth tier” school, it may be much smaller than it once was, and it may have lowered its admissions standards, but you better believe the little law school that could is going to be just fine. Don’t stop believin’, Appalachian! [WCYB]

* Whoa, the American Bar Association shockingly deferred action on giving InfiLaw its blessing on the takeover of Charleston Law. Perhaps the ABA is turning over a new leaf as to saving law schools? [National Law Journal]

* Nevermind. The American Bar Association decided to grant provisional accreditation to the beleaguered LMU Duncan School of Law. Perhaps the ABA’s new slogan should be, “Accredit all the law schools!” [Claiborne Progress]

* Like it or not, despite their financial constraints, it’s likely that many law schools will never close, no matter how terrible they are — so as long as ABA regulation remains lax and the government keeps feeding students loan dollars to attend. [Daily Caller]

* If you read one piece of long-form journalism today, let it be this special report on the Supreme Court’s “echo chamber,” perhaps better known as the elite members of the SCOTUS bar who hoard all of the cases on the docket for themselves. [Reuters]

* In other law school-related news, fewer law school graduates are passing the California bar exam. California’s pass rate for the July exam was just 48.6%, and it’s been almost a decade since the pass rate was that low. Ouch! [Los Angeles Times]

Its ownership is still up in the air, and now its president walks off the job.

* Congratulations (and good luck) to our nation’s new ebola czar — who happens to be a high-profile lawyer. [ATL Redline] * An update on the Charleston Law/InfiLaw drama. [Post and Courier] * If they had only taken the pink underwear off the patient before he woke up, he wouldn’t have his panties in a bunch. [Huffington Post] * Getting people to read law review articles is hard enough; why put them behind a wall? [TaxProf Blog] * It’s funny that Floridian lawyers are having such a bad reaction to Bad Judge, since the show could actually be reality TV down there. [Daily Business Review (sub. req.)] * Career advice: if you aspire to the federal judiciary, try to avoid writing blog posts about biting girls in the butt. [Missouri Lawyers Weekly (sub. req.)] * Congrats to lawyer Lisa Smith on winning the Pitch Week book competition at the When Words Count Retreat! [Street Insider]

Now Charleston has a new suitor willing to save it from for-profit InfiLaw. But would it run the school any better?