Western State College of Law at Argosy University in Irvine, California.

The past seven months have been an emotional seesaw for Allan Easley and the students, faculty and staff at Western State College of Law in Orange County, where he is dean.

The school’s future was cast into uncertainty in January, when its owner Argosy University was placed under a federal receivership and the campus lost it eligibility for federal student loans. The 50-year-old law school appeared poised to shut down, joining the ranks of five other law schools recently closed or soon to close. But Western State was thrown a lifeline by Westcliff University—a for-profit institution based in Irvine—which agreed to purchase the law school for $1 and keep the doors open.

A federal judge in Ohio approved the purchase agreement earlier this month, though the transfer is still awaiting the blessing of both the American Bar Association and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The tentative deal means current Western State students may complete their degrees, with classes resuming Aug. 21. And if all goes well with accreditors, Western State will remain open for the long term. Law.com caught up with Easley this week to discuss the toll the upheaval has taken on faculty and students and what the future looks like for Western State. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Allen Easley.

Tell me what things have been like at the school since Western State came under the receivership? Last semester was horrific for the students because of the combination of not being sure we’d be allowed to finish the semester, and students not getting their financial aid disbursements. There are lots of students in serious financial distress. We did reach a point where it became clear that we could at least finish the semester and people wouldn’t lose all the work they were doing in the spring. But it didn’t eliminate the financial stress. That was always there. For faculty and staff, they had their own stress caused by the fact that they weren’t sure whether their jobs would continue and whether they would be able to help students finish the program. All of us cared most about figuring things out for the students.

What’s the current financial aid situation? The spring financial aid—it’s too late. There’s nothing we can do about that. The loans were cancelled. It’s not that students borrowed money they have to pay back. Those loans were cancelled. And we cancelled their tuition payments. With the absence of loans, they didn’t have to find another way to pay tuition. But that still left them with rent and food, and gas. That was a hardship. Some students dropped out so they could work and make ends meet while they waited to see what would happen to us. Some moved from full time to part time so they had more time to work.

Post Aug. 1, we’re being operated by Westcliff. We’ve posted a fall schedule. We’ve had students registering for classes for the past couple weeks. They will be able to receive financial aid for the fall through the auspices of Westcliff University. Going forward, things should be much more normalized for the students coming back. But it doesn’t fix the spring.

What has all this meant for the faculty and staff? On one day, we lost half of our staff—not the faulty part. All of that was designed by the receiver to try to make it easier to make payroll. We’re just now beginning to rebuild the staff. We figured out how to operate with dramatically reduced staff through the spring to get things done, but you can’t operate that way long term. That was just an emergency circumstance.

Western State is currently operating under a teach-out plan, which is usually reserved for schools that are closing. Tell me more about that. Because of the length of time it takes for the accrediting agencies [the ABA and WASC] to approve the change of ownership, that would have taken us into the fall semester. So we created—and Westcliff committed to—a two-phase plan. Phase one is that Westcliff agreed to complete the education of our current students as essentially a teach out. The ABA and WASC were able to approve that very quickly. That’s why we are able to start classes this fall and give students access to financial aid.

Because it’s a teach out, it means we can’t yet recruit new students. We don’t have a new entering class this fall. We just have the returning students. Once the ABA and WASC agree to the change in ownership—it’s on the agenda of the ABA’s Council in November—then we can begin to recruit new students. So the earliest we will be able to bring in new students is the fall of 2020.

How many students are you expecting to return? Right now, we have about 230 students registered that are expected to start classes next week. Last fall, we had 415 students, roughly. So the drop is the product of students graduating in May, and we have not replaced them with new students this fall because we’re in a teach-out phase. On top of that, we’ve had some students we lost to transfers to other schools. We knew we wouldn’t be anywhere near 400. We’re happy with the number we have.

Will you reduce the size of the faculty? A number of faculty members, because of all the uncertainty, were looking at other options and decided to do that. The faculty shrunk through that natural attrition. We’re hoping that some of those people who decided to go to other places are people we can bring back in the future. It’s probably three or four years out, though. With no entering class this fall, that means, necessarily, over the next three years we’ll be missing a cohort of students.

How are you feeling about Western State’s prospects? We celebrated our 50th commencement ceremony last May. It was a little bittersweet because we weren’t sure if it would be the 50th of 100, or if it would be the last one. We’ve had an important impact on the Orange County legal community, and I hope if everything works according to plan, that some dean—it won’t be me, clearly—50 years from now will have the opportunity to help Western State celebrate its 100th anniversary.