Florida Coastal School of Law. Courtesy photo

Florida Coastal School of Law is back in the good graces of the American Bar Association.

The ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has deemed the school  in compliance with all of its standards and has removed a series of remedial action it imposed in March of 2018 that aimed to strengthen the school's admissions and academic program and keep students apprised of their bar exam prospects.

Florida Coastal's clean slate is quite a turnaround from a year ago, when the Jacksonville school was locked in bitter litigation with the ABA over what it claimed was unfair accreditation practices that held schools to different standards. The school dropped that litigation in February and is working to become a nonprofit entity aligned with an established public university, though officials have not yet revealed the campus with which they hope to affiliate. Florida Coastal is the last of InfiLaw Corp.'s three for-profit law schools to remain open. The Charlotte School of Law closed in August 2017, while Arizona Summit Law School shut down a year later.

The council determined that Florida Coastal is back in compliance with the standards when it met last month in Chicago, but did not announce the decision until this week.

“It's a very heavy weight, and we're very glad to have it off our backs,” said dean Scott DeVito in an interview Thursday. “People at the school—students, staff, and faculty— are very proud of what we do here. When an accreditor says, 'What you're doing isn't adequate,' that' s a hard blow to take. When the accreditor says, 'Hey, we've come. We've looked at what you're dong and what you're doing works,' that's really a very positive thing.”

In comments to the Jacksonville Daily Record, DeVito said that the academic credentials of the students who enrolled in 2018 are equivalent or better than those at 43 other law schools. (The median LSAT of Florida Coastal's first-year students in 2018 was 150, up from 144 in 2015, ABA data shows.)

Similarly, DeVito said the school's first-time bar passage rates are “better than five out of six comparable schools in 2018 and all comparable law schools in February 2019.” On the July 2018 Florida bar exam, 62.5% of takers from Florida Coastal passed—the fifth lowest percentage out of the state's 11 law schools. That pass rate was 54.5% for the February 2019 exam, which was sixth-highest in the state.

The ABA first determined that Florida Coastal was out of compliance with several of its standards in October 2017, including one that requires schools to only admit students who “appear capable” of completing their degrees and passing the bar, and one requiring schools to maintain a rigorous academic program and provide adequate academic support.

The following March, the ABA imposed three specific remedial actions on the school and sent a fact finder to the school. (Florida Coastal unsuccessfully appealed the imposition of the remedial actions.) Among the required actions was that the school provide each student with data on the school's previous bar passage rates in Florida and Georgia, tailored to his or her rank within the class. Put another way, students in the bottom quartile of the class were to be told how previous cohorts in the bottom quartile fared on the licensing exam.

Florida Coastal then asked a federal judge for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction enjoining the bar pass disclosure and a visit from a temporary fact finder, arguing that the disclosure would be harmful to students and the previous classes didn't reflect the quality of the current students. The ABA stayed the bar pass disclosure requirement following the injunction request.

The school dropped its accreditation lawsuit in February, after officials said they were confident that the ABA would find it was in full compliance with its standards. That same month, the school announced that it has submitted an application with the ABA to transform from a for-profit law school to a nonprofit, and to separate from InfiLaw. That plan calls for the school to be run by an independent board. Moreover, DeVito revealed that the school aims to affiliate with an established university, though officials have yet to announce any formal arrangement.

DeVito said Thursday that Florida Coastal is still waiting for various entities, including the ABA, to sign off on the transfer to nonprofit status. That approval, as well as being found in compliance by the ABA, is one of the conditions imposed by the law school's potential university partner, he added.

“It's great for the people here who worked really had to ensure the ABA would find us in compliance,” DeVito said.