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Duncan School of Law files appeal with ABA. But can it win?

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Lincoln Memorial University’s Duncan School of Law has filed an administrative appeal with the American Bar Association over its denial of accreditation in December. That gives the school until May to correct the issues that led to its denial. But it is unclear whether the school can do so, given that applications will likely drop now that accreditation is in question. 

The small Tennessee school, which enrolled its first class in 2009, at first took a more combative approach, filing a federal lawsuit against the ABA.

“The only reasonable inference from this disparate treatment is that the ABA desires to restrain trade,” the school’s complaint asserted. “[Duncan] has been the victim of a group boycott orchestrated by defendant ABA in concert with these interested accredited law schools, to the detriment of [Duncan], its students and the public at large.”

Duncan sought a temporary restraining order to place the accreditation denial on hold, arguing that it would incur irreparable harm with prospective students choosing not to apply to the school. But a U.S. District Court judge ruled against the school, holding that Duncan was unlikely to win at trial because it had not exhausted all of its appeal options.

Now the school will work through the ABA’s process, giving it another 100 days to remedy its situation. But that may be too late. Part of the reason it was denied accreditation was because of declining enrollment numbers and standards.

It will now likely face an even greater shortage of applicants. The University of La Verne, which was stripped of provisional accreditation in the summer, due to a low bar pass rate, has seen incoming enrollment drop significantly.

“January is definitely a critical time for enrollment because this is the time of year when people have taken the LSAT and are applying to schools,” spokesperson Kate Reagan told the local Channel 10 news.

When planned in 2007, Duncan had projected that it would enroll 100 full-time and 60 part-time students for the 2010-2011 academic year. However, a drop in applications resulted in only 55 full-time and 36 part-time students. At the same time, the school admitted a higher percent of applicants — 71 percent up from 51 percent  — and its average LSAT and GPA numbers dropped.

Beckman has said that the school still outperforms eight accredited schools in terms of average scores for LSAT and GPA. But the ABA found that Duncan did not have a system in place to ensure that low scoring students would be able to graduate and pass the bar exam, as those eight schools do. While that is an area Duncan can work on over the next three months, there are other issues to address.

A major concern to the ABA was that the school readmitted one-third of the students who failed out of the school. Eighteen students were dismissed for a GPA below 1.25. Six of them, however, were readmitted based on “extraordinary circumstances,” a percent the ABA found unlikely.

The ABA was also concerned about letting a new school open when the legal job market was shrinking. For that issue, there is little the school can do. But it can try to put in place more resources to help students find jobs upon graduation.

The school will graduate its first class in 2013, and even without ABA accreditation, students can take the bar exam in Tennessee.

Jack Crittenden

Jack Crittenden

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