The Charlotte School of Law saga has now gone full James Bond now that we’ve got secret recordings rearing their head. In this case, an unnamed law professor surreptitiously recorded Charlotte’s assistant dean for student success, Odessa Alm, addressing faculty back in 2015. And if you thought the government should cut Charlotte a break, this recording suggests the school was even deeper into shielding its inadequacies from the public than we realized.
In the recording, acquired by WFAE in Charlotte, Alm explains that the school dodged a public relations bullet by paying students to avoid the bar exam.
You know if we didn’t have the extended program last time — if we all didn’t work really hard to defer the 21 people we deferred, our pass rate would have been 20-something percent.
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This isn’t really new. Indeed, it’s something of an Infilaw special, with Arizona Summit infamously paying off students that they feared would nuke their already abysmal bar passage rates. It, um, failed.
Charlotte’s program, which paid students up to $11,200 to sit out the exam, certainly looks like a clever ploy to protect the school from disastrous bar results, but there is a charitable way of looking at it:
There are a few ways you can view paying students to hold off on taking the bar. You can say, “We really want our students to pass the bar, so we’re willing to give them a stipend, give them a rigorous bar prep course, and make sure they’re up to speed to take it six months later.” In the most skeptical light, you can say, “it’s administrators inflating the school’s bar passage rates.” This piece of tape makes it clear that a senior administrator is very conscious of how that program has paid off for the school’s bar passage rate.
But even in that charitable read, the school is still admitting that after three years it isn’t effectively preparing upwards of 80 percent of its students for the bar exam. This is something of a red flag.
When WFAE reached Charlotte for comment, all they got was…
“This topic deals with pending litigation that includes allegations we strongly disagree with. We’ll address them in the proper forum and have no further comment at this time.”
In other news, Charlotte is back in session with the handful of students who haven’t abandoned the sinking ship. While job prospects for Charlotte grads remain weak, the students still have some hope.
If they play their cards right they might get that sweet $11,200 stipend.
Law School Official: Bar Passage Would Have Been in 20s If Not For Paying Students Not To Take Exam [WFAE]
Classes reopen in stripped-down Charlotte School of Law [Charlotte Observer]
Joe 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.