The Charleston School of Law (CSOL) is a private law school in Charleston, South Carolina. It was established in 2003 and is accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA). The school was founded upon a principle of promoting public service by its students and graduates; each student must perform at least 50 hours of public service before graduation. According to the school's 2021 ABA-required disclosures, 85% of the Class of 2017 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation. The school was formerly a for-profit institution, but became a non-profit institution in December 2024.
History Inspiration and establishment
In 2002, five Charleston judges and attorneys started establishing a law school in Charleston, the first organized effort to offer instruction in the law in Charleston since the 1828 dissolution of the Forensic Club. The five founders were Alex Sanders (a former president of the College of Charleston and a former Chief Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals), Edward J. Westbrook (a notable civil lawyer in Charleston), Robert Carr (a U.S. magistrate judge), George Kosko (a U.S. magistrate judge until 2008), and Ralph McCullough (a professor emeritus and former associate dean at the University of South Carolina Law School). The South Carolina Commission on Higher Education granted a license for the school to start accepting students in Fall 2004.
ABA accreditation In October 2005, the American Bar Association (ABA) sent an accreditation team to review the progress of the law school. In April 2006, the ABA's Accreditation Committee recommended provisional accreditation, but its final authority (the ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar) deferred a vote on the recommendation until December 2006. The school was asked to address questions about the institution's governance, library resources, and commitment to diversity.
The deferral caused concern for the school: In South Carolina, only graduates of ABA-accredited law schools may sit for the bar exam. Although students graduating from a provisionally accredited law school enjoy the full rights guaranteed to those graduating from fully accredited schools, including the right to sit for the bar exam, the delay until December 2006 was a problem since the deadline for registering for the bar exam was January 2007.
On December 2, 2006, the ABA granted provisional accreditation. Full accreditation cannot be granted until a school has been in operation for five years. On August 5, 2011, the ABA granted the school full accreditation.
On May 15, 2020, the council of the American Bar Association's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar met remotely and determined this school and nine others had significant noncompliance with Standard 316. This Standard was revised in 2019 to provide that at least 75% of an accredited law school's graduates who took a bar exam must pass one within two years of graduation. The school was asked to submit a report by Feb. 1, 2021; and, if the council did not find the report demonstrated compliance, the school would be asked to appear before the council at its May, 2021 meeting. On February 26, 2021, the ABA's council posted that the school was now in compliance with the standard.
School's first graduation
On May 19, 2007, the school's first class of 186 students graduated at a ceremony held at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, located in Charleston. Former U.S. Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings delivered the main address. Jean H. Toal, Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court, and William Walter Wilkins, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit received LL.D. honorary degrees.
With the blessing of the descendants of the organizers of the original Forensic Club, the school organized an honorary society also known as the Forensic Club. In its current form, up to five students are inducted into the group each year from the graduating class based on the recommendation of the faculty and approval by the founders.
Change of ownership
On July 25, 2013, the school announced that it had entered a consulting/management contract with a subsidiary of InfiLaw, a Delaware Corporation with headquarters in Naples, Florida, which owns three other law schools. Two of the school's founders, Sanders and McCullough, were paid by InfiLaw and left the board when the arrangement with InfiLaw was announced. This announcement was seen as a prelude to a sale of the school and was immediately opposed by students. Formal announcement of a sale was made on August 28, 2013, but documents submitted to the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education (CHE) revealed that an agreement had been executed between the law school and InfiLaw on July 23, 2013. The students and alumni of the law school were opposed to the sale for reasons including the perceived poor reputation of InfiLaw schools. In the weeks after the announcement of the possible takeover, 41 students transferred, a 64% increase from previous years. Still first year student enrollment in the fall of 2013 exceeded the enrollment for 2012. below.
On September 27, 2013, one of the three remaining founders, Westbrook, wrote to the other two remaining founders with proposals for avoiding the sale to InfiLaw: a cooling off period, the redemption of the interests of Kosko and Carr by the law school, and the exploration of a merger with the College of Charleston. Westbook stated that he would donate his own one-third interest to the College of Charleston if the third option were accepted. On October 2, 2013, Carr and Kosko rejected the offer made by Westbrook, claiming that no offers had been submitted; instead, they announced that they were proceeding with pursuing a sale to InfiLaw.
On October 3, 2013, the CHE agreed to waive a condition of the law school's license to permit the exploration of a possible merger between the law school and the College of Charleston or other public school; the waiver of that prohibition was granted for 90 days. On October 14, 2013, InfiLaw said it was willing to consider discussions with either the College of Charleston or the University of South Carolina about the future ownership of the school. Representatives of the College of Charleston and InfiLaw met in late October 2013, but no information about the meeting, including its attendees and agenda, has been released. In a survey completed almost exclusively by current students and released in early November 2013, only 0.55% of respondents supported the sale of the school to Infilaw.
The CHE assembled a team to investigate the possible transfer and accepted statements about the transfer through February 10, 2014. Charleston mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. on December 16, 2013, opposed the InfiLaw deal. Among his reasons was a real estate agreement from 2004; the city had purchased property on Woolfe St. for $1.2 million and sold it to the new law school for $875,000 to help it establish itself. He explained, "Certainly the city of Charleston would not have done this with any thought that eventually the Charleston School of Law would become part of a national, for-profit system of law school." Among those opposing the deal were tenured professors Jerry Finkel and Randall Bridwell who wrote about concerns about bar passage rates and class sizes.
The CHE's Academic Affairs and Licensing Committee scheduled its meeting to vote on the InfiLaw proposal on May 1, 2014, at 9:00 a.m. The full CHE announced that it would take up the committee's vote immediately afterward at 10:30 a.m. Instead of taking up the issue, a panel of the CHE announced on May 1, 2014, that it would hold two more public meetings before considering the matter on May 19, 2014; the full CHE would then hear the panel's recommendation at a meeting on June 5, 2014. On May 13, 2014, a supermajority of the school's faculty publicly released two letters opposing the InfiLaw deal.
The first public hearing on the takeover was held in Charleston on May 16, 2014. Representatives of Inifilaw were "greatly outnumbered" by those opposing the license, including faculty, alumni, and students. Riley also opposed the license. One of the founders, Westbrook, offered to continue his funding of the school in the event of a denial of Infilaw's license. A second public hearing was held on May 19, 2014, in Columbia, South Carolina. Speakers expressed concerns about InfiLaw's practice of accepting students who incur large debt but do not graduate and bar a bar exam. During the second hearing, Infilaw's lawyer revealed that the founders of the school had taken $25 million in profits between 2010 and 2014 and that InfiLaw had paid $6 million more to some of the founders. Founder Carr said, ". . . I never thought it was going to be a big business deal. I was wrong." Westbrook later revealed that Carr and Kosko had not only been draining profits from the business for several years over his objections, but had also depleted the finances of the school by signing an expensive consulting contract with InfiLaw and by hiring a marketing firm to manage the public relations crisis.
The CHE's Committee on Academic Affairs and Licensing voted 3–1 to reject the license to buy the school at its meeting on May 19, 2014. The vote was set to be taken up by the full CHE at its meeting on June 5, 2014.
On May 27, 2014, a lawyer representing InfiLaw stated that InfiLaw would seek to have the $6,000,000 used to buy out the interests of McCullough and Sanders repaid immediately if negative publicity did not stop, explaining that the purchase agreement prohibited any of the founders from doing anything to interfere with the takeover, including speaking out at public hearings.
Shortly before the CHE was scheduled to meet, the South Carolina Attorney General's office issued an advisory opinion confirming that the CHE would need to follow the law and either deny or grant a license based on whether InfiLaw satisfied the requirements of the licensing law. On June 4, 2014, InfiLaw withdrew its application from the agenda of the CHE for its June 5, 2014 meeting. A state senator, John Courson, had apparently initiated the delay to give the CHE more time to consider the matter; opponents suggested that the delay was sought to avoid what InfiLaw saw as a likely defeat. In a prepared statement, InfiLaw stated that it would still pursue the license. Soon after the withdrawal of the application, opponents of the takeover, including representatives of both the current students and alumni, began calling for the creation of a non-profit to run the school instead. On June 14, 2014, he Charleston Post & Courier, published its editorial favoring that outcome.
By the start of the Fall 2014 term in August 2014, no new application for the transfer of the license had been filed with the CHE, but the school's dean said that he had been told to continue with the parallel process of obtaining American Bar Association approval. Meanwhile, a nonprofit was created as of August 7, 2014, in South Carolina known as the Charleston School of Law Eleemosynary. On September 18, 2014, Ed Westbook announced the make-up of the first board of directors for the non-profit; members included representatives of the local bar, the South Carolina judiciary, and law school administrators with national experience. On September 22, 2014, the Charleston Post & Courier'''s editorial board endorsed the non-profit for the school.