When we last checked in with Florida Coastal School of Law in February 2019, the struggling law school had recently announced its plans to convert to a nonprofit institution, having already submitted an application to the American Bar Association for the change. At the time, the law school was out of compliance with with the ABA’s accreditation standards pertaining to its admissions practices and risked facing similar consequences as its defunct InfiLaw sister schools, Charlotte School of Law, which closed in August 2017, and Arizona Summit Law School, which had its accreditation revoked in June 2018 and will officially close by spring 2020.
As luck would have it, in June 2019, Florida Coastal found itself back in the ABA’s good graces after adopting higher admissions standards, but there was still no word on its would-be conversion to a nonprofit in affiliation with a yet-to-be publicly named “university located in the Southeast.” All that was known was that the affiliate school could potentially give Florida Coastal the ability to double or triple in size.
After months of waiting, Florida Coastal finally has an answer, and it seems that chaos has erupted in its wake.
Under the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar’s Applications for Substantive Change page, this brief statement on the matter is listed for August 2019: “The Council denied the application of Florida Coastal School of Law to convert to a non-profit law school.” This information was communicated to students via email by Dean Scott DeVito on September 9:
Dear Students and Colleagues,
I received a letter this afternoon from the ABA informing us that they have denied our application to convert to a non-profit. This was an extremely disappointing outcome given how hard so many of us worked on the application. We are currently asking regulatory counsel to review the documents to provide insight into our next steps.
Once I have a clearer understanding of what our next steps will be, I will update you.
Dean DeVito
We’re told that students were supposed to receive their student loan disbursements for the Fall 2019 semester by or before September 9, but such funds were never deposited into student accounts. Sources say that on September 10, Dean DeVito called students into a town hall meeting, presumptively to speak about their missing student loan funds, but that was not what was discussed.
At that meeting, without resolving the student loan situation, DeVito unexpectedly announced that he would be resigning as dean, and students claim that he left the building with his things shortly thereafter. Sources say that following the shocking meeting, James Artley, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, was asked what was going on, and he allegedly replied, “If we are here in seven days, then we will be good,” leading them to wonder about the school’s future.
We reached out to DeVito to speak about students’ loan funds and his sudden departure from the school he’d loyally championed since 2015, only to receive this automatic response:
Thank you for reaching out to me. Scott DeVito is no longer employed by Florida Coastal School of Law.
We reached out to the remaining members of the administration at the school, as well as its marketing liaison, and have yet to receive a response to our media inquiries.
According to an email sent to students by Dean Artley shortly after DeVito publicly resigned, Florida Coastal is “currently working with our parent company (Infilaw) regarding this announcement and the appointment of new leadership. We ask for your patience, as we work through this transition. We will be communicating more information within the next 24 – 48 hours.”
What does this mean for the future of Florida Coastal School of Law? Some sources have speculated that the Department of Education is refusing to release federal student loan money to Coastal because of its relationship to two other failed law schools. Others still believe this means the final flame in InfiLaw’s for-profit law school fire will soon be snuffed out. Either way, we’re told that students’ “dream[s] [have] been crushed” by this disheartening news, and no one is sure what will happen.
Past is precedent with InfiLaw schools, and this doesn’t look good for Florida Coastal.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.