Too Little, Too Late

for Charlotte School of Law.

Go here to read the latest news about Charlotte School of Law (CSL). Notwithstanding the fact that earlier this month the federal Department of Education changed course to permit CSL students to borrow federally-backed student loans (previous post here, although whether the DOE really opened the spigot is now a matter of dispute), today came the news that CSL's accrediting agency, the American Bar Association (ABA), had rejected the school's "teach-out" plan. Rubbing salt into the wound, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina (BOG) declined to renew CSL's operating license.

This result is terrible for CSL's few remaining students. One assumes they stuck with CSL either because they were tied to the city or because no other law school would take them or, most painfully, they were within fewer than 60 credit hours of graduating. Transferring students can't graduate from another law school unless they take 60 credit hours of courses there. They could take fewer than 60 hours at another school and have them transferred back to CSL except that after today's news there's no CSL to which they can be returned. That's a brutal result.

It's not clear why the ABA rejected CSL's teach-out plan. Perhaps a new one can pass ABA muster but at this point it may be too late for the remaining dominoes--access to federal student loans and an operating license from the BOG--to be put into place.