Florida Coastal School of Law. Courtesy photo.

A brief period of stability for Florida Coastal School of Law looks to be over, with the American Bar Association denying its bid to become a nonprofit institution and the abrupt departure of the dean who turned around the school's flagging fortunes. Additionally, students have reportedly not yet received their loan disbursements for the fall semester, which began two weeks ago.

Above the Law first reported the problems with the student loan disbursements, and the U.S. Department of Education did not immediately respond for a request for clarification Wednesday on whether Florida Coastal remains eligible under the federal student loan program, though the school remains on the department's list of accredited institutions. An email to students sent Wednesday by Rick Inatome, the chief executive officer of Florida Coastal owner InfiLaw Corp., confirmed that the Education Department had not yet released student loan funds to the school but offered no explanation as to why.

Meanwhile, the ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar last month rejected the Jacksonville school's application to convert from a for-profit law school to a nonprofit one—a plan Florida Coastal announced in February as part of its separation from for-profit owner InfiLaw Corp.

It's unclear why the ABA nixed the application. ABA officials declined to discuss the matter Wednesday, citing confidentiality rules. However, Scott DeVito, the former dean who oversaw the application, said in an email Wednesday that he was not surprised by the denial given the complexity of the transformation.

"The [ABA] Council requires this to be a confidential process so I can't say more," DeVito wrote. "I can't speak for the school, but I would expect they will re-apply (perhaps even for this November's meeting) and, if all goes well, the Council will approve the transaction at that point."

The school announced internally on Sept. 10 that DeVito was no longer dean or a member of the faculty, according to Florida lawyer David Frakt, who was once a candidate for that job and has tracked developments at the school on The Faculty Lounge blog. Inatome's email to students said dean of academics Jennifer Reiber will step into the role of interim dean. (She did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.) Additionally, former Florida Coastal dean Peter Goplerud will return to the school as president.

Messages to DeVito's Florida Coastal email address were returned confirming that he "is no longer employed by Florida Coastal School of Law." The change comes just two weeks into the new academic year.

Reached Wednesday, DeVito wrote that, "it just was the right time so I stepped down." His departure was unrelated the the ABA's denial of the school's application to become a nonprofit, he added. DeVito also said he was "out of the loop" and any issue pertaining to the student loan disbursements.

"My impression was that he was genuinely trying to turn that place around, pretty much using the path I had laid out in term of improving admissions," Frakt said in an interview Wednesday. "And he had. They shrank pretty dramatically, but their admissions numbers are dramatically better, and better than, like, 40 other schools. And they got out from under noncompliance [with the ABA standards]. To me, things were looking up."

Frakt noted that law deans typically return to the faculty when they step down, calling DeVito's exit "pretty dramatic."

DeVito assumed the deanship at Florida Coastal in 2015, amid the dramatic downturn in law school admissions. The situation was particularly tenuous at Florida Coastal, with the ABA in 2017 finding it out of compliance with the standard requiring that schools admit only students who "appear capable" of graduating and passing the bar. (Florida Coastal's first-time pass rate on the July 2017 bar exam was 48%). That finding touched off more than a year of litigation between the school and the ABA, with Florida Coastal and InfiLaw's two other law schools claiming in court that they were being treated unfairly by the accreditation body. The Jacksonville school dropped its suit in February after officials said they were confident that they would be deemed back in compliance with the ABA.

During DeVito's deanship, the number of J.D. students declined 76%, from 854 in 2015 to 207 in 2018, according to data from the ABA. But the credentials of 2018's new students were significantly higher. The 25th percentile LSAT score rose to 147 last year from 141 in 2015, for example. Those improvements were enough to sway the ABA's legal education council, which in June found Florida Coastal back in compliance with the standards.

In February, the school submitted its application to the ABA to become a nonprofit institution. It has been a for-profit school since its 1996 founding. That revised status would help Florida Coastal to affiliate with a nonprofit university in order to bring about more stability, DeVito said at the time.