Summary: Students for the fall 2015-16 academic year will be accepted to the law school even though the future of the school is still unclear.
After an unexpected announcement a few weeks ago from the owners of the Charleston School of Law, George Kosko and Robert Carr, that the school was planning on closing, they announced that they will be accepting students for the fall 2015-16 academic year.
School Student Bar Association president Matt Kelly has mixed feelings about the announcement. He says it is unacceptable that a large number of faculty and staff have been laid-off while the board exhibits a false sense of the financial crisis the school is in. He is most concerned with the ongoing pursuit of the board to sell the school to the for-profit InfiLaw System.
Kosko and Carr opened the school with three other lawyers and judges in South Carolina: Ed Westbrook, Alex Sanders, and Ralph McCullough. In July 2013, Sanders and McCullough retired. Immediately after, Kosko, Carr and Westbrook announced that they were working towards selling the school to the InfiLaw System. Students, faculty, and alumni halted the sale at that time. The InfiLaw System is believed to be an inferior system with lower standards that would devalue any law degree obtained through them.
Westbrook then suggested creating a nonprofit organization to take over the school but in March he stepped down and severed all ties with the school. It is unclear if his financial ties have been cut as well.
Kosko and Carr have continued to stress that the sale of the school to the for profit InfiLaw System is the only hope for the school since they have hit a financial crisis from declining enrollment and the owners taking $25 million in profit out of the school between 2010 and 2013.
In efforts to cut costs, the school has laid-off seven more faculty members bringing the total to 35 faculty and staff members to be laid-off since last May. The law school is also working to reduce the number of buildings they operate.
An InfiLaw spokesperson has said that the company has no plans to refile with the state’s Commission on Higher Education for a license to operate in South Carolina after the initial application in 2013.
Photo: postandcourier.com