Legal Practice Guide 11: What Went Wrong at Arizona Summit?

As Hall & Oates once crooned, what went wrong?!?!?

Indeed, that's what they're asking in Arizona atop the Summit of gory glory.

In the early 1990s, Donald Lively had a vision for a new type of law school.
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[H]e never envisioned that the for-profit model that made the schools possible would open the schools to such criticism and scrutiny, eventually threatening their very existence.

He always assumed people would just see his good intentions —  to fulfill the school's mission of student diversity.

Sometimes as a lawyer you have to give your client advice they don't want to hear.  You might - hypothetically! - have to say something like, "Donnie, your idea is fucking stupid."

Thankfully, that isn't the case here.  Arizona Summit was a brilliant idea.  As the article points out, Phoenix was starving for lawyers and the legal profession needed some variety in the bowl of vanilla ice cream.

Of course, as we know from the scambloggers' existence, there are always negative Nebby's wanting to rain on a cash parade:

Some in the legal community were skeptical of the schools' for-profit status. 

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The American Bar Association, the national accrediting body for law schools, put Arizona Summit on a two-year probation in March 2017 for being out of compliance with admissions policies and academic standards and for failing to maintain a rigorous program.

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First-year students typically take Torts and Civil Procedure as separate courses. But the Arizona school combined them. School officials would later find that students weren't getting enough instruction in either subject. 

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ASU typically takes the top 25 percent of Arizona Summit’s class each year.

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Arizona Summit officials acknowledged some of their graduates struggle to pass the bar exam. They've been encouraging students to take the exam in New Mexico, where they say it's easier to pass, and graduates had a 54-percent pass rate in February.

Fiends!  That's a veritable rogues gallery of people who simply don't want diversity in the legal profession.

What went wrong?  Nothing except the world turning against it.

Today's legal practice exercise is to pretend that you're Arizona Summit's lawyer.  What advice can you give them facing this parade of horribles?

1. Keep on truckin', bro', no need to make changes when yer the Summit.
2. Sue the ABA and/or Arizona State in federal court.
3. Thumb nose at the ABA: double-down on diversity and lowered admission standards, exponentially increase tuition to account for the risk the school takes in admitting less-qualified students.
4. Continue adjusting admissions standards and/or gimmicky bar passage efforts just barely enough to stay ahead of the ABA's mercilessly Tantalan chopping block and do little else.
5. Remodel the school with a mid-century western swing motif and affordable high-class dining options that superficially incorporate the uniqueness of Arizona's cultural heritage with otherwise standard items like delectable salads and ham sandwiches. Use avocado and ancho mayo.
6. Emphasize faculty publication rates, add to the library, and pay out the nose for top LSAT scorers to play the rankings game.
7. Rename yourself "Arizona State Summit."

There's really not much else to do here, right?  Sometimes as a counselor the best thing you can do is throw your hands up and say, "ScammerClient, you have the solution within."