January 15, 2002 Jan Pudlow Associate Editor Regular News Budding legal careers put on hold Barry University graduates await their fate Associate Editor For Arnold Mount, a 50-year-old Navy retiree with seven kids, going to law school at Barry University in Orlando was a personal sacrifice on the way to a rewarding second career practicing elder law.Commuting an average 1,200 miles a week from his home in Georgia, he put a total of 240,000 miles on five worn-out vehicles by the time he finished law school in 1998.During the week, he’d help his 91-year-old dad and elderly uncle in St. Petersburg, drive to Orlando at dawn, work in Barry’s law library all day, and take classes at night. On the weekends, he’d hit the highway and return to his wife and kids in Georgia.In the end, he went through the graduation ceremony, but because Barry has not been accredited by the American Bar Association, he has not yet turned in a final paper or taken the bar exam because he doesn’t want to start the clock ticking on that one-year deadline from the point of taking the exam and the school being accredited.His dream of helping elders isn’t in the realm of the law, but is weighed in the day-to-day nitty-gritty of taking care of his now 96-year-old dad and elderly mother-in-law who both moved in with his family.“I always wanted to do something with my life. The Navy was my springboard to do what I wanted to do. I wanted to mostly help people, especially elder folks. Elder folks don’t get treated with enough dignity. They get scammed all the time,” Mount said.“I would want to concentrate in elder law. I spent a lot of time averaging three and four hours of sleep a day. This was my one shot at law school. I don’t think I could handle that type of intensity again.”Mount joins 120 graduates and 208 students caught in career limbo as Barry tries for the fourth time to win provisional accreditation from the ABA. Barry has one more chance to succeed when its current application goes for a full vote by the ABA Section for Legal Education and Admission to the Bar in Philadelphia in February.In the meantime, several Barry graduates have filed a class-action lawsuit in the Middle District federal court claiming, among other issues, that the ABA violated antitrust laws.Though it is the ABA’s policy not to comment on pending accreditation matters, their side is told in court documents: “Plaintiffs chose to attend Barry and its predecessor knowing that the school was unaccredited and knowing the risks involved in attending an unaccredited law school. Now, these plaintiffs want this court to relieve them of responsibility for their own decisions, even at the risk of creating chaos in the nationwide system of law school accreditation.”Of eight Barry law grads who shared their stories with the News, two are plaintiffs in the pending lawsuit. Most agreed they knew they were taking some risk attending a new law school that was not yet accredited, but they considered it an educated risk. They said they were drawn to Barry because of its location, its part-time student program that allowed them to work full-time, its impressive campus and faculty, and its ties to an established university in Miami. All insist with confidence that they gained an excellent legal education — and only wish they had the opportunity to put it to full use.Now, they await their fates as future lawyers, frustrated with what they view as the ABA’s long, confusing accreditation process that has put their careers on hold. They are dejected that they are stuck as paralegals and law clerks, with fading promises to be hired as associate lawyers, after spending years in school and so much money on tuition and fees at the private Catholic school that is more than $21,000 a year.For Carol Passman, a June 2000 Barry law grad, that burden translates into a $1,200-a-month loan payment she has trouble affording on her salary doing legal research, drafting, and secretarial work for a solo practitioner.“Last year, the balance due was $100,000. It’s scary. I’ve never even had a car payment,” said 30-year-old Passman.Because Barry was not an accredited school, she said, there were no low-interest government financial-aid loans. So she took out loans from First Union Bank and two other loan companies. Her decision to attend Barry, she said, rested on its policy to allow first-year students to work full-time while attending law school.She took the bar exam in February 2001, and the Florida Supreme Court ordered the results impounded and released only if Barry achieves accreditation within 12 months from graduation.“I still have hope, and I still have faith. Call me crazy. You spend that much time and money, you have to have hope, or you’d want to stay in bed all day,” Passman said.“I really can’t have a Plan B. I have borrowed all that I can borrow. There are people starting over at other schools. That’s not an option for me. I couldn’t get a new used car tomorrow. I’m in a financial debacle. My parents put up their house as collateral for my loan. I don’t have collateral. I don’t own my own home. My backup plan is I will be an eternal paralegal.”Passman commuted to Barry from Daytona Beach, a three-hour round trip, with Susie McCabe, who graduated from Barry School of Law in June 2000 and took the bar exam in February 2001.“It was frustration at first, but I have to admit I’m feeling more than frustration. I’m so angry at the process,” said 44-year-old McCabe, who is married, has three children ages 7, 13 and 20, and had hoped by now to be drawing a lawyer’s salary to help pay for her oldest daughter’s college tuition. It took five years to get her law degree as a part-time student in Barry’s charter class. She interned at the state attorney’s office in Daytona Beach and has a standing job offer as a prosecutor once she is licensed to practice.“Absolutely, I recognized there was a risk. But my feeling was this was a reasonable risk you assumed with a new law school, that the school would make efforts to get accredited. When I weighed that risk, I looked at the investment Barry had made in the Orlando community. This was not some fly-by-night school. Because they had invested so greatly in the physical plant, they were obviously serious about going for the accreditation,” McCabe said.“We had judges’ children enrolled, and attorneys’ wives and husbands enrolled. This was the school that the legal community fully expected to get accredited. If we were fooled, so were they.”McCabe counts herself among those losing faith in the ABA accreditation process.“I think our relief will come from the Florida Supreme Court with some kind of waiver of the rules,” McCabe said.That option was mentioned in the ABA’s response to the lawsuit: “.. . plaintiffs’ alleged injury is the result of the Florida Supreme Court’s bar admission requirements, not the ABA’s accreditation activities, which in any event are protected by the First Amendment and immune from antitrust liability.. . . In short, plaintiffs’ complaint is not with the ABA, but with the Florida Supreme Court, which sets the requirements for bar membership.”In his statement in the court case, John A. Sebert, consultant on legal education to the ABA and former dean and professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, pointed out that there are other legal career options for Barry’s stranded graduates.“Various states, such as California, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, and Virginia, allow non-ABA approved law schools to apply for approval for their graduates to take the bar. Barry officials informed the Council (of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar) that they were actively engaged in seeking such approvals from various states. In addition, graduates of Barry can apply for permission to take the Nevada bar exam, because the state of Nevada does not require graduation from an ABA-approved law school,” Sebert said in his affidavit in the court case.“Assuming that plaintiffs pass the Nevada bar, they also could seek to be admitted to practice in at least 15 different states, which either admit attorneys licensed in other states, condition such admission on various reciprocity agreements, or allow lawyers who have practiced a certain number of years to gain admission to the bar. Plaintiffs also could complete approved clerkships and then seek to take the bar of California or Washington, which allow graduates of unaccredited schools to qualify through clerkships. California also allows qualification via correspondence study. The options that each state authority prescribes for admission to the bar reflect the fact that the right to practice law is regulated by state authorities.”The idea of picking up and moving to Nevada comes as small comfort to 34-year-old Tom DeLattre, of Orlando, who wants to live and practice in Florida, where his wife was born and raised.With one of his three-month-old twins sleeping on his chest, DeLattre explained why he chose to attend Barry in 1996, the year he got married. The in-town location and ability to work his way through law school as a paralegal offered “a great opportunity to pursue being an attorney without disrupting my life. If it wasn’t for Barry, I wouldn’t be able to go to law school.. . . “For me, going to law school, being married and trying to have kids, for somebody to say one day, ‘Tom, I appreciate the effort. I appreciate the money you spent and the time away from your family. You finished with a 3.0 average. But I’m sorry. You can’t practice law in Florida.’ I just can’t believe that day will come,” DeLattre said, frustration seeping into his voice.“I think the ABA overstepped its bounds, and I think the state of Florida needs to step in and help their people. Whether they do or not, stay tuned.”A key hurdle to gaining accreditation, according to documents from the ABA, is that Barry has not established that it will be able to meet enrollment targets for Fall 2003 through Fall 2005 “without substantially reducing the academic qualifications of those entering classes. In addition, the school has not established that the university and the law school have the ability to commit financial resources adequate to sustain a sound program of legal education if it is unable to meet the aforementioned enrollment targets.”According to ABA documents in the court case, “Barry representatives conceded that, even if the school met the projections, the 2001 deficit would be $900,000. If the projections were not fully realized, the deficit could increase $1.6 million.”Barry School of Law Dean Stanley Talcott told the News: “We have a plan. So it is my conclusion that it is about their perception of the reality of the plan.. . . The only interpretation I can take away is they do not think we’re big enough to have a law school.”It hasn’t helped matters that the new state law school, Florida A&M University, will be located in Orlando, too, offering a much cheaper legal education.The ABA site team noted: “Barry personnel expressed expectations that because of its identity as a religously based university and its ability to recruit regionally and nationally based on its Catholic mission, the law school will be able to meet enrollment goals in numbers and quality in the face of a state-funded law school in the area. This, of course, remains to be seen.”Cesery Bullard, 32, graduated second in her law class at Barry and took the bar exam in February 2001.“It’s frustrating and disheartening to explain again and again that the reason we haven’t gotten accredited isn’t that we don’t deserve it on the merits,” said Bullard, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the ABA.“Before, I wasn’t familiar with the ABA process. Now, I could probably write a law review article on it. When I saw the facility and met with the dean and saw the professors they hired, it seemed to me that it was a quality institution. I naively, at that time, felt that if you build a school and attract good students and professors, you will be accredited. I never dreamed it would be this much of a political, and whatever else you want to call it, nightmare to get accreditation from the ABA.”After eight years as a paralegal, she is now a law clerk.“For me, going to work every day is so close to my dream, but not being able to touch it,” Bullard said.“I can’t go to hearings. I can’t go to depositions. I always have to put ‘law clerk’ on my letters. I try to stay positive. I do have a job in my field. I am doing well so far in my work. That makes me happy. I am setting a good example for my school. I try to do a good job, so when people say, ‘She went to Barry,’ I can hold my head high.”Scott Blaue, 35, another plaintiff in the lawsuit, graduated third in his class at Barry and served as editor-in-chief of Barry’s law review.“This was the founding law review. We built it. I put 15 to 20 hours per week in just on the law review,” said Blaue, “Before this, my exposure to law school was watching ‘Paper Chase.’ I’m better for it. It was a heck of a challenge, and we put out a very good product.”For Blaue, who works as a law clerk, going to law school was his second career after receiving his bachelor’s degree in exercise science, starting on the ground floor of HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital, and working his way up to occupational medical director.When he went to law school, his wife went back to work full-time as a nurse, and his parents helped both financially and by watching their three daughters — now 8, 5, and 2 ½.“The timing was right for me to make a change. I knew it was a gamble,” Blaue said. “But once I saw the facilities and talked to the administration and saw it was growing and everyone appeared committed to doing what they needed to do, I thought it was right. It was a risk, but an educated risk. The education has been fantastic. It’s something, at least, that will benefit me wherever I end up.“My employers have been very understanding. I’ve worked hard and done a good job for them. That’s justified my existence. I’m doing drafting and research and things along those lines. They’ve told me personally that my skills have far surpassed other law clerks and attorneys in the area. I don’t have a doubt that I was trained well enough. I think they feel the same way. I’m very anxious to get up and running, because this is quite a handicap.”Asked why he decided to become a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Blaue said: “When I made this decision to leave HealthSouth, I talked to persons I had done business with. One gentleman said to me: ‘The law is a noble profession for noble people.’ Not all are. I really felt that way. I always felt that up until the time we instituted the suit, I felt that nobility was present among that section of the profession responsible for accreditation. After seeing and reading and knowing the situation and what has happened, I became unsure that was the case and that the right thing was going to end up being done.. . . I am losing hope that doing all that is asked of you is going to be enough.“What I hope is that, regardless of how it turns out for Barry, that the members of The Florida Bar gain some insight into this body that we’ve delegated these accreditation duties to. I feel it’s appropriate as a state to act.”Even as a little boy, Rodd Michael Santomauro knew he wanted to practice law. At Coral Springs High, he did debate and moot court and went on to compete in the national championships. As a devout Catholic, he chose to attend Barry University in Miami, where he took honors pre-law classes. When his dad got a job in Orlando, he chose Barry’s new law school, so he could live at home while working his way through legal studies as a paralegal.“I took out loans of $70,000, plus interest. If I stretch it out over 20 years, it’s over $100,000,” Santomauro said. “It’s a little frustrating. Starting next month, I will be an adjunct professor at Florida Metropolitan teaching procedure. I can teach the law, but I can’t practice it.”The 30-year-old who graduated in Barry’s first class said he felt very honored to receive the Dean’s Achievement Award.“I try to give the ABA the benefit of the doubt. But the bottom line is I have read all the documents in the federal lawsuit. I have searched high and low and tried to reason with what the ABA is doing. The problem I have now is they are jeopardizing our promising young careers, and quite frankly, ruining our futures,” Santomauro said.“The main thing is I really want to help people. I’ve thought about it and prayed about it for years. In junior high and high school, my teachers wrote in my yearbook: ‘You’ll be a great lawyer.’ Here it is 16 years later, and trying to be the first lawyer in the family, I took out loans and hawked my possessions, and still live with my parents, all to be a lawyer. And I should be a lawyer today.”His boss, firm partner Gray Camfield, would be more than happy to promote him from paralegal to associate lawyer.“He does an absolutely excellent job,” Camfield said. “I can’t say enough about his abilities. He will be a superior lawyer, if he can just get his license.. . . It is tragic when you see someone of his caliber. We hope and pray that his dream to become a lawyer will come true for him.”Sherri McVay, a June 2001 graduate, said she will repeat law school somewhere else if that’s what it takes for her to be able to practice.“Originally, I said I am too old to start over,” said 38-year-old McVay. “But my husband and my mother have said, ‘You’ve wanted this for so long, and it’s been such a dream, you should start over.’”She’s not sorry for her time at Barry, though, where her leadership skills blossomed serving as student body president, founder of the Women Lawyers Association, founder and dean of the international legal fraternity Delta Theta Phi, and executive officer of the moot court board. She was honored as best oralist at the 2000-2001 National Women Lawyers Association Moot Court Competition, where Barry teams finished third and fourth.While she currently is taking classes to prepare for taking the bar exam, hope is wearing thin that her law degree from Barry will lead to a license to practice law.“Unfortunately, it’s a trick bag. It’s a continued level of frustration. I hate to say doom and gloom, but at every turn, we seem to face a new obstacle,” she said.When Barry University President Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin addressed the Barry law students, McVay recalled, she always said, “You are worthy to be lawyers.”“I used to think, ‘worthy, is that the right word?’ But that does ring true. We are worthy. All we want to do is prove to the attorneys in the state of Florida that we can be viable attorneys and make a contribution to the legal community. Let us show you how good we are. That’s all we’re asking.”
Budding legal careers put on hold: Barry University graduates await their fate
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