Charleston School of Law

New Charleston law school surpasses founders' expectations
Dean says institution already asset to local Bar

By Gregory Froom
S.C. Lawyers Weekly
(Reprinted with permission)

JAN. 31, 2005 -- A year ago the new Charleston School of Law had no building, no faculty and no students.

Twelve months later the law school's inaugural class has started its second semester in an historic downtown railroad depot that is now a high-tech legal learning center.

"I think things are going better than we could have ever anticipated," said I. Richard Gershon, the law school's dean. "In every aspect, we have exceeded our expectations."

One key indicator of the school's progress: enrollment. Founders had projected that 125 students would make up the first class. Instead, 138 students are now enrolled in the law school's traditional day program - while another 62 attend evening classes.

The part-time evening program, which is the first of its kind in South Carolina, was driven by market demand, Gershon told Lawyers Weekly.

"There was no evening program in South Carolina - a state with 4 million people. We decided we'd try it and it's been a huge success," he said. One student commutes nearly 100 miles from Myrtle Beach to attend evening classes, according to Gershon.

Not only the quantity of students is impressive to the dean, but also their quality, he said.
The LSAT scores for the first class were "astoundingly good for a brand-new school," according to Gershon. The bottom 25 percent of the class on average scored a 150 on the test, he said.

"There are a lot of ABA-approved schools whose top 25th percentile is a 150," he said.

According to Charleston School of Law statistics, 77 percent of the class is made up of South Carolina residents. "There was a market here for sure," Gershon said.

However, in-state students may become less dominant in the future. "I think that demographic may change as we mature. I think there are a lot of people in the country who would like to go to law school in Charleston," he said.

The law school is currently recruiting students for its second class which will start in the fall. The application deadline is March 31.

The school's admissions office is headed by John S. Benfield, a veteran in the field. Before hiring on with the new law school, Benfield served as served as the assistant dean of admissions at the University of South Carolina School of Law from 1993 to 2003, according to the CSOL Web site.

The new law school has also enticed some U.S.C. faculty members to move from Columbia to Charleston. Among them: former Carolina law school professors R. Randall Bridwell and Stephen A. Spitz.

Warm Reception

Gershon has been "pleasantly surprised" by the hospitable attitude of the Charleston-area legal community - a better reception than he experienced in Fort Worth where he headed an upstart law school at Texas Wesleyan.

"I've found this bar so much more welcoming to this brand-new law school than the bars in other communities I've taught in," Gershon said.

Local judges and lawyers have offered assistance by setting up a mentoring program for students and by serving as adjunct professors. The school has 17 adjuncts teaching in its writing program and two adjunct professors teaching criminal law.

Judges and attorneys in Charleston "are excited to have our students come and clerk with them through the year and during the summers," according to Gershon.

On the other side of the ledger, the law school is already putting value back into the legal community, he said.

"I see us as a law center and not just a law school. For example, we are already bringing the satellite feed from Columbia to present CLE programs on Fridays so that lawyers in Charleston have an easily accessible place to get their CLE hours," Gershon said. The service started in November.

Another benefit: lawyers are free to use the law school's library and even get free electronic access to Westlaw and Matthew Bender resources.

"Our argument was that if someone can come in and use a treatise that they don't have a subscription to, why can't they use the electronic resources? We pay extra for that, but it's a service to the bar," Gershon said.

The library provides a dedicated room for practitioners to use and offers training courses for the electronic research tools.

"I think we already serve as a resource for the bar and want to continue to do so," Gershon said.

Modern Facility

For the time being, the law school is housed in a 19th-century train depot that has been upgraded to offer 21st-century amenities - including wireless Internet and a coffee bar for students.

The facility, located on Mary Street, was built nearly 170 years ago and most recently served as office space for the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, according to the law school's Web site.

Although the location will likely be temporary, it was refurbished last year to accommodate several classrooms as well as a two-story library with arched ceilings.

Gordon Russell, the director of the law library and information services, said the library will be on the vanguard of modern legal research. Although the facility will retain the familiar bound reporters and legal encyclopedias, many materials will be made available electronically or via Internet-based lending arrangements, he said.

CSOL also plans to be the first law school nationwide to eschew troublesome microfiche in favor of electronic access, according to Russell.

Gershon said that the school's library is better in tune with the contemporary law practice than a facility with row after row of dusty volumes.

"We do think that our library is much more reflective of what judges and lawyers are doing in their research than a lot of law libraries around the country. The proof of that is that many of our books were donated by lawyers and judges who no longer use them," he said.

Another information-age feature of the law school is its bookstore, which is the size of a large utility closet and doesn't actually stock any books. Students order their texts directly from the Internet, so the "bookstore" is left to peddle only novelty items like T-shirts and mugs emblazoned with the school's logo.

Despite the train depot's technological capacity, creature comforts and aesthetic appeal, the law school may soon be in the market for a new home due to space constraints.

"The challenge really is do we stay here on the peninsula of Charleston, which has all of its attributes, or do we look to building a full campus for much money somewhere else?" he said. "Those are issues that we will have resolved by next year this time."

ABA Accreditation

With enrollment, faculty and an interim facility in place, the school's chief focus is now on obtaining provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association.

"The founding organization of this law school is completely committed to the success of this school," Gershon said.

"They don't want us to be a marginally approved school, they want us to be an outstanding school. It shows in the building, it shows in the type of faculty we're hiring," he said.

Law school officials met with the ABA earlier this month to start the process. The journey to accreditation will begin officially in March when the law school requests a site visit.

The site visit should happen sometime in late September or October, according to Gershon. The site team will spend several days in Charleston meeting with students, faculty and staff. The team will also sit in on classes and talk to the school's founders and members of the community before drawing up a fact-finding report.

The report will go to several committees within the ABA for recommendations before the school's accreditation comes up for a vote at the 2006 ABA House of Delegates meeting.
"Our students will know in their third year whether they can take the bar," Gershon said. "While certainly we can't make any guarantees, I'm feeling really confident because I have the greatest faith in the founders of this school and their commitment to doing this the right way.

"The ABA is really a consumer-protection agency in a lot of ways because they don't want you to just accept everybody, take their money and then not spend the resources on their education," he said.

That's not happening at the Charleston School of Law, according to Gershon. "If the ABA looks at our students, they ask, 'Are these people likely able to pass the bar and enter the profession?' The answer is going to be resoundingly 'yes.'"