Florida Coastal Law School BEWARE OF THIS LAW SCHOOL DO NOT BE SCAMMED Jacksonville Florida

I attended the school and kept my scholarship the entire time.  Put a little hard work in, and you will be fine. 

Also, FCSL consistently has a bar passage rate at or above the state average, which is generally somewhere in the 80 percentile range.

The Florida Coastal School of Law is a private for profit bussiness, and a consumer should be very careful in choosing a law school that is not profit driven. The attrition rate is almost 1/5 per year, I think,;and even out of all the students who graduate, only 50% pass the Bar. With another 12% of the retakers passing in the first five years of graduation.


This is a business scheme. The Bar of the states is just a simbiotic creation of the State Supreme Court. This is not a truly legal entity. see J.A.I.L.4judges.com.


THIS IS A TRULY POLITICAL ENTITY; AND YOU WERE PHASED OUT FOR SOME REASON.

This post is a rebuttal of Law Student's bald assertions about Florida Coastal School of Law.

First, let me say that when any school extends a merit-based scholarship to a student, it is because said school believes the student will perform at a given level. Furthermore, such merit-based scholarships should incent the recipient to perform at the requisite level in order to maintain the funding. I started Florida Coastal in January of 2007, and the school made me sign an award letter stating plainly the terms for maintaining the scholarship. My original scholarship was for $10,000 per year. However, because I performed in the top 5% of my class, I received not only an increase in scholarship to $17,500 per year, but the school also committed to pay for my Bar Prep course with BAR/BRI upon graduation. Thus, I must question the levels of commitment and dedication, which have attended Law Student's efforts. I would respond further that one gets out of an education what one puts into it and nothing more. Moreover, I would be interested to learn of any institution that does not revoke academic scholarships when students do not meet the requisite academic standards.

Next, I would like to note that Florida Coastal is dedicated to diversity, even going so far as to have a Dean of Multicultural Affairs, and the comments about discrimination against minorities are utterly unfounded. I noticed Law Student did not provide a single example of discriminatory conduct on the part of any actor at Florida Coastal or on the part of the institution itself. I have to wonder if Law Student graced the campus with his/her presence on many occasions because I notice almost every day some activity supported by the Gay and l*****n Group, the Black Law Students Group, the Latino Law Students Group, the Italian-American Law Students Group, etc., etc., etc. To Law Student: One has to attend classes to excel, and I have to wonder how often you even appeared on campus, given your utterly unfounded comments about discrimination.

As to the qualifications of the faculty, I will note only a few of the highly distinguished professors we have the honor of learning from at Florida Coastal. First, there is Professor Pimentel, a former United States Supreme Court Fellow who got his J.D. from U.C. Berkeley and attended Harvard Law as a visiting student for his third year of law school. He also served as a clerk to a federal judge after law school, worked in court management for two federal judicial circuits, worked at the Hague, and headed up U.N. task forces that reformed the court systems in the Sudan and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Second, Professor Knechtle was instrumental in drafting the most recent constitution in Iraq. Other notable professors include Daicoff and Hornstein whose credentials and abilities are impressive as well. I could go on, but I think these professors alone indicate the ignorance of Law Student as to the credentials of Florida Coastal's faculty. Perhaps Law Student would have done better and kept the scholarship Florida Coastal promised if Law Student would have gotten in the habit of preparing for an argument in advance by brushing up on the relevant law and/or facts.

Additionally, I note that Law Student provides absolutely no factual or statistical basis for the assertion that Florida Coastal has an increased incidence of suicides among law schools. Furthermore, even if there were an increased incidence of suicides at Coastal, there is no basis for the argument that the "weed out" strategies are the cause. Also, Law Student seems to be distressed about the school's desire to increase its ranking. It is difficult to imagine why any student would find the purpose of increasing a school's prestige as negative, and no further rebuttal of Law Student's commentary in that regard is necessary.

As to some of Law Student's other dubious points, which are barely worth dignifying, I address each briefly as follows. While it is true that one professor was terminated for alleged advances on students, this hardly provides the basis for such a blanket statement as that made by Law Student in his unprincipled rant against the institution and its otherwise distinguished faculty. Next, the location of a law school in an office building has what connection to the education received therein? Please educate me on this Law Student, as I have been unable to formulate even a remote connection. As to the registrar's office, if one takes the time to get to know someone in that office and if one is polite and shows some courtesy and respect, one can get exactly what one wants out of them or most anyone else for that matter. If one cannot deal with bureaucracy, one is probably ill suited to the practice of law anyway. As to the facilities, I have to question again Law Student's presence on the campus, as Coastal has two of the most modern courtrooms in Florida, one of which the First District Court of Appeal has found suitable in which to hear arguments on a number of occasions. Apparently, Law Student's standards are higher than those of our learned judges on the First DCA. I will not even go into detail on the new state-of-the-art computer lab. And never mind the utterly awesome fitness center, the use of which is included in the cost of tuition and fees.

Having sufficiently provided prospective Florida Coastal students with another viewpoint upon which to consider their opportunities with regard to that institution, I now proceed one step further in noting the following. I know at least two students personally who have served as summer clerks to Florida Supreme Court Justices. Jacksonville's current Public Defender is a Coastal graduate. I know another individual whose first job out of Coastal is with the Florida Attorney General doing appellate work to uphold criminal convictions. Yet another obtained his first attorney job as a clerk for the First DCA. Further, many attorneys from Coastal work at such prestigious firms as Holland & Knight and Spohrer & Dodd, among innumerable others. Our Moot Court team is nationally and perhaps internationally acclaimed.

Finally, I write a note to all prospective Coastal students regarding my personal experience at Coastal. I have made a number of life long professional and personal connections with faculty and students at Coastal. I will graduate Magna c*m Laude with a GPA in excess of 3.50 and I have had the honor of serving as a Staff Editor on the Florida Coastal Law Review since the end of my first year. I obtained a job as a law clerk at a local civil litigation firm at the beginning of my second year and have remained there ever since. I have served as assistant to several distinguished professors, both for pay and credit, and I find the experiences have all been invaluable. So, if you are thinking of attending Coastal, by all means, explore all of your available options, but do not count Coastal out based on the rants of one student, whose lack of success is likely due to underlying personal factors, which are not reported. Coastal is a challenge, as any law school should be. Do not think you will not have to work extremely hard to maximize your experience at Coastal. In closing I query: Would you want to attend a law school that would have it any other way?