InfiLaw bust out lights its last match

The good folks at Infilaw, who back in palmier days hoovered up hundreds of millions of dollars in GRADPLUS federal loans while printing out law degrees of the most dubious value to many thousands of naive students at three for-profit scam law schools — all sporting shiny ABA approval of course, which is what gave Infilaw and its corporate master, vulture capital outfit Sterling Partners, access to all that sweet sweet loan money — have just pulled the plug on the last survivor of this spectacularly successful grift:

Following the U.S. Department of Education recently pulling federal financial aid at the Florida Coastal School of Law, a teach-out plan has been approved, with current students finishing courses at other ABA-approved law schools.

The law school is the last of three for-profit schools owned by InfiLaw, an entity of the private equity firm Sterling Capital Partners. In April, the DOE terminated Florida Coastal’s access to federal financial aid.

The department denied a reinstatement request in May, and in a news release, it stated that a private equity firm with 98.6% ownership in the school had relinquished its ownership.

“We will not be offering classes following the end of the summer term. Many students will transfer to other schools. Those who do not transfer will participate in the teach-out as visiting students at other schools,” Peter Goplerud, the law school’s president and dean, told the ABA Journal in an email.

The council and an executive committee of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar rejected two previously submitted teach-out plans from Florida Coastal.

According to a public notice dated June 4, the law school’s accreditation will continue until July 1, 2023, for the “limited purpose” of allowing currently enrolled students to receive credits earned as transient students at other ABA-approved law schools.

Some students will transfer to other law schools, while others will attend classes elsewhere but graduate with Florida Coastal degrees, according to Goplerud. He estimates that a dozen or more schools will take the students as visitors.

At one point, InfiLaw owned three for-profit law schools. The Arizona Summit School of Law entered into a teach-out plan in 2018, and the Charlotte School of Law shut down in 2017.

Since this summer marks the tenth anniversary of my blog Inside the Law School Scam, which along with national media pieces I published on this subject played some role in exposing and thereby undermining this lucrative racket (also too John Grisham wrote a novel based on the latter writings), I would like to take this opportunity to make a magnanimous gesture, by offering my various critics within the law school establishment this olive branch:

I was right, and you were wrong, either because you were too stupid or venal or probably both to see what was right in front of everybody’s eyes. Of course you’ll never admit that, for the same reasons you never admitted it in the first place (see previous sentence).

Have a nice day!