Charleston Law School to be denied Accreditation?

[cofcxc]

Rumor has it that the otherwise glorious and quick rise of the Charleston School of Law has been halted by a very unexpected denial of accreditation by the ABA.

Everything had pointed to a slam dunk to this point, including a glowing recommendation by an ABA committee that visited a few months ago.

Word is that the ABA will deny based on concerns mainly over diversity of the staff/student body. Maybe this gets back to the whole Stars and Bars issue that has quietly loomed over the state for these several years. I am quite suprised.

This is supposedly being kept quiet until a next step can be planned. If this were an outright denial for even next year, this would be catastrophic.


This is all rumor. Curious if anyone else has heard this.

[cofcgrad02]

Rumor has it that the otherwise glorious and quick rise of the Charleston School of Law has been halted by a very unexpected denial of accreditation by the ABA.

Everything had pointed to a slam dunk to this point, including a glowing recommendation by an ABA committee that visited a few months ago.

Word is that the ABA will deny based on concerns mainly over diversity of the staff/student body. Maybe this gets back to the whole Stars and Bars issue that has quietly loomed over the state for these several years. I am quite suprised.

This is supposedly being kept quiet until a next step can be planned. If this were an outright denial for even next year, this would be catastrophic.


This is all rumor. Curious if anyone else has heard this.

Wow. That is incredibly surprising considering how high the academic admissions standards had reached in short order; think the average LSAT is up near 155 or so these days, which is good for a young school. I applied to CSL a couple years ago* and was pretty impressed that they seemed to be on their way towards establishing a quality institution. I've only heard of one other school being denied accreditation, and that was Barry University in FL-- the university itself has never exactly been very good to begin with, so I wasn't surprised to hear that. BTW, Barry is now accredited; guess they sorted out their problems from a few years back, and even Texas Southern, which is truly Atrocious (with a capital A) has maintained their ABA status.

It would be a huge problem for people who will be graduating from CSL if they don't gain ABA accreditation. Why? Because you can't practice law if you don't graduate from an accredited school. Result is that you end up with a whole bunch of people with huge debt working as paralegals. Ouchers.

Don't want to get into a huge political discussion, but as a private institution CSL should be able to take the students and staff they want. It's pathetic if they are deliberately discriminating against highly qualified people based on race/ethnicity/religion/etc., and I hope that isn't the case. Yet often the only way to gain substantial diversity at the "third tier" level of law schools is to accept students with inferior credentials (GPA & LSAT) and deny those with superior credentials, and that's wrong too. The ABA, however, might be nudging them to up their diversity quotient even if it means taking less qualified students.

Anyway, I hope none of this is true. If the ABA is withholding accreditation on the basis of academic or institutional control problems, I'm with the ABA. If the ABA is withholding accreditation on the basis of a "diversity quotient" that is at odds with the concept of meritocracy, I back CSL. Either way, however, the current students are the ones who will suffer incredibly from a lack of accreditation and it's not their fault.

*I did go to law school. On scholarship. For three weeks. It's really boring. I left.

[cofcxc]

Deadly boring. Paternalistic. Whose-YOUR-daddyism. Nepitism. Grade normalization. Socratic method. Law school is the worst thing you can do.

I like being a lawyer though.

[cougaid]

That's the first I've heard of Charleston School of Law being denied....I actually work for a Law School in Atlanta that just went through this process a year ago. The minority ratio is important to the ABA however, from my understanding it would not prohibt provissional approval. They would just ask that before full approval an attempt be made to change the ratios toward the ones they prefer to see. They have sent memos to most schools, not just new ones, stating where they would like to see the ethnic ratios move toward. Sometimes that is a difficult task and they view the number of applicants and take that into consideration.

[gomocs82]

Can CSL graduates not be admitted to the bar in SC and practice in SC?

I am fairly certain the Nashville School of Law is approved by the TN Bar and state groups and their graduates can sit for the bar in TN, but not other states. There is a law school in Atlanta (John Marshall?) whose graduates can practice in GA.

[gomocs82]

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/ne ... 017893.htm


Three Specific Areas the ABA wants more info on:

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/ne ... 017893.htm




From comments in 1st article, grads cannot even sit for exams in SC. To