ABA Gets Out of the Way of Florida Coastal's Success

As you may recall, Florida Coastal brought suit in federal court against the ABA for vague accreditation standards that unfairly stopped it from fully savoring its meaty prospect pool.  Well - in yet another development showing that the dust of that great irrational rebuke of law school is settling - Florida Coastal dropped the suit:

The new filing offered no insight into why the parties are dismissing the case, but Florida Coastal Dean Scott DeVito said Wednesday that the school is confident in the ABA’s accreditation process moving forward.

“The primary reason we are dropping the suit is that our faith in the process has been restored based on the council’s and section’s interactions with us on our pending issues the last few months, and after the factfinders came last week,” he said.

Translation: Florida Coastal is back, baby!  Want proof?  Their argument is literally that it's competitive with the bottom quintile of law schools in America.

“We talked about our entering credentials being on par with or better than 44 other law schools, our Florida first-time bar pass being above 4 out of 5 comparable law schools in Florida and just 5.5 points below first-tier University of Florida in 2018, the strength and skill of our faculty and academic support, our continuing improvements in career placement, and what great students we have,” DeVito wrote to students.

This is the glory of the ABA and pseudo-regulatory capture.  If one school sucks (relatively: these kids are all budding millionaires, right?), they get isolated, called out,  closed down.  But if it's 44 uncle-fucking schools that all  suck, it's the standards that are the problem.  Strength in numbers

As of this writing, Florida Coastal's non-discounted cost on Law School Transparency is $255,736.  It boasts a 37.4% employment score.  Its reported LSAT spread is 140-147.  The school is so confident that things are going to go well with the ABA's Council on Legal Education later this spring it dismissed its lawsuit with prejudice. Ask yourself if the future hearing has any real teeth behind it.

It's truly a wonder why Valpo, Whittier, et al, opted to close.  Running one of these businesses is like writing subprime mortgages but you're permanently stuck in 2004 and Fannie Mae is wearing a spiked dog collar with your initials on it.  I'm jealous of the joy these folks must feel sending out admission letters.  Legitimately jealous.

The legal academy may hate Donald J. Trump and the broad strain of American libertarianism, but it's with a big ironic wink; its crappiest members clearly enjoy the profits of a totally neutered regulatory scheme paired with a rigged "free market."  They're no different, deep down, than the typical Fox News economist, and it's truly a glorious, glorious thing to be on the right side of such ideology.