You’d be forgiven for wondering if Charlotte is cursed. Despite being America’s ninth-largest city, the last time we put a full-time law school in Queen City, we needed to set up a food bank to support the students. Charlotte School of Law, an InfiLaw-run, for-profit law school, collapsed in 2017 amidst probation, bar passage carnage, and federal financial aid chaos.
But, for better or worse, legal education is going to give Charlotte another shot. with Elon University announcing that it has applied to the ABA for approval to open a full-time law school on the campus of Queens University of Charlotte, kicking off in fall 2027 with 75 students. This marks an expansion of Elon’s existing part-time program in Charlotte.
Back in 2023, when Elon University first started making noise about expanding its law school presence in Charlotte, we had some reservations. While Elon boasts better academic credentials than the for-profit InfiLaw system, its main campus had also struggled with epically poor bar passage rates not too many years earlier, and we wondered whether a new program in Charlotte just shuffled the deck, replacing one troubled school with another.
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By the way, when we say “epically poor,” we mean Elon’s first-time bar passage rate on the North Carolina bar exam was… 0.00 percent. It was around 46 percent when adding other jurisdictions.
But a lot has happened since then. Elon’s employment figures have steadily risen, with nearly 87 percent of the graduating class in long-term, full-time jobs, and the underemployment score — where law schools often get away with murder — is a mere 2.9 percent. The bar passage rate improved too, and its two-year passage rate is consistently north of the 75 percent threshold required for accreditation. The university has put together a decent resume for law school administration. With Elon expected to close its merger with Queens University of Charlotte, transitioning to a full-time law school provider became a plausible option.
University President Connie Ledoux Book explained the decision:
“The need for graduate and professional programs in one of our nation’s fastest-growing cities makes the launch of a full-time law program a natural next step for Elon Law.”
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When Charlotte School of Law proceeded to lose access to federal loans, set up the aforementioned food bank, see its dean quit after a month, fight a sad lawsuit against the ABA for daring to have standards, and ultimately close “effective immediately” after the state yanked its license, the “natural next step” seemed to be salting the earth so no law school could take root there again.
Instead, Elon is approaching Charlotte as an opportunity for innovation. Rather than just add a new campus to the Greensboro operation, Elon is attempting a 2.5-year curriculum, to get students out into the workforce faster and presumably more cheaply.
Charlotte is the largest U.S. city without a law school. Its metro population is projected to grow 21 percent between 2020 and 2034, and the city faces documented shortages of lawyers. Cities can import lawyers from law schools elsewhere, but building a local lawyer population is easiest if the new attorneys don’t have to move.
Does that mean everything will go smoothly? Of course not. Bar passage rates could slip. The market could shift. And, of course, the curse of the city of Charlotte could remanifest and the new campus elevators could open and spill forth a wave of blood like that hotel from The Shining.
But, for now, we’re wishing the city luck on its return to legal education.
Joe Patrice is a senior 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 or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.