When Michigan State University head lawyer Robert Noto — under fire for his leadership in the Larry Nassar sexual assaults scandal — retired in February, he did so with a generous payout worth more than $430,000, reports the Detroit Free Press. That’s more than a year’s salary for Noto.

Noto, who had been with the university since 1995, resigned about a month after MSU Trustee Brian Mosallam called for his immediate resignation.

Reporter David Jesse writes that Noto received:

• Six months of his $403,100 annual salary. That’s $201,550.
• Payment for 151 unused vacation days. That’s $234,110.
• The use of an university-owned car through Sept. 5. He also gets computer support from the university for the same time period.

Read the Free Press article.

A Savannah Law School student has sued school officials for fraud and breach of trust duties stemming from their decision to prematurely close the school in May, which she said will deprive her of the chance to become a lawyer, reports the Savannah Morning News.

The plaintiff, Jordan Crewe, alleged the school’s pending closure results “at least in part from the defendants’ mismanagement of funding for the law school.” In the suit, she also contended the defendants “established Savannah Law School to obtain federal student loan money while aiming long-term to make a profit by flipping the property.”

Reporter Jan Skutch writes that the defendants in the suit are Savannah Law School, John Marshall Law School and John Marshall University, Savannah Law School Associate Dean Keith Harrison and Michael Markovitz, law school board member and treasurer.

Crewe has completed three of the four years needed to obtain a law degree from the school.

Read the Morning News article.

The American Bar Association has published bar exam pass rates for all law schools in the United States, indicating those rates ranging from 98.58  percent to 26.53 percent.

Above the Law offers some comment on the ratings, along with a peek at the best and worst on the list. (The ABA has made available for downloading an Excel spreadsheet listing all the schools’ rates.)

The University of Chicago Law School tops the list with a first-time pass rate better than 98 percent. At the other end of the scale is the Arizona Summit Law School with a rate of 26.53 percent.

Read the Above the Law article.

Yale Law School
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Above the Law has posted a leaked preview of U.S. News & World Report‘s U.S. law school rankings, from Yale University at number one to a six-way tie for spot number 74.

“The biggest winners here were Pepperdine, Denver, Miami, and Villanova, each gaining 12 places in the rankings,” writes Staci Zaretsky. “The biggest losers in this segment of the rankings were Utah and Rutgers, with 10- and 12-spot drops, respectively.”

Rounding out the top five, behind Yale, are Stanford, Harvard, University of Chicago, and Columbia.

The University of California-Berkeley cracked the top 10 by moving up three spots from last year’s list.

Read the Above the Law article.

Michigan State University Trustee Brian Mosallam is calling for the resignation of Bob Noto, the school’s vice president for legal affairs and general counsel, in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal, reports The Detroit News.

The university issued two reports on the allegations of Nassar misconduct involving girls and young women he treated when he was a team physician.

Reporter Kim Kozlowski writes: “Both reports cleared Nassar, but the unabridged report that recently surfaced and was marked confidential showed that Nassar was a liability to the university and ‘is exposing patients to unnecessary trauma based on the possibility of perceived inappropriate sexual misconduct.'”

Read the Detroit News article.

Former lawyer Brian Cuban writes that his 1992 arrest for driving while intoxicated should have been a learning experience, but the only lesson he learned at the time was that it would be better to take cabs to and from his drinking spots.

In a post on Above the Law, Cuban describes the humiliation he felt when he was hauled to a Dallas jail, followed by relief when his case was dismissed because the arresting officer didn’t show up for the trial.

“I high-tailed it out of the courthouse,” he writes. “No thought about how I’d gotten to that point. No thought of being in desperate need of treatment. Just relief that I had dodged a bullet. No hard consequences other than the few grand I gave my lawyer and getting my car out of impoundment.”

But the continuing slide into addiction would carry consequences he didn’t envision.

Read the Above the Law article.

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Times Higher Education has posted its latest rankings of the world’s 100 top law schools, and five American universities are in the top 10.

Leading the list is Duke University, followed by Stanford and Yale.

The highest ranking non-U.S. law school is the University of Cambridge in the UK, at number 5.

Thirty American law schools made the list, while the United Kingdom had 23. Other countries with schools in the top 100 were Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Read the article.

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Bloomberg is reporting that top-tier college basketball programs were thrown into turmoil Tuesday as federal prosecutors unveiled criminal charges against 10 coaches, managers, financial advisers and representatives of sportswear companies including Adidas AG, accusing them of making illicit payments to cash in on the vast riches generated at the sport’s highest levels.

“The alleged schemes include illicit payoffs to steer young athletes to powerhouse schools and into clothing contracts and financial advisory deals,” write Christian Berthelsen and Bob Van Voris. “Among those charged were current and former coaching staff members at Oklahoma State University, the University of Arizona, the University of Southern California and the University of South Carolina.”

The case followed allegations that an executive at an apparel company bribed students to attend universities where the company sponsored athletic programs.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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In another attempt to change the admissions process at the University of Texas at Austin, a group — led by a man who unsuccessfully sued the university previously over its admissions process — has filed a lawsuit claiming UT violates state law by using race and ethnic considerations as factors in its admissions, according to a post on the website of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

Edward Blum’s nonprofit organization, Students for Fair Admissions, says UT gives African-American and Hispanic candidates preference over white and Asian applicants.

Lynn Pinker Cox & Hurst partner Shonn Brown says this latest attempt is a step backward.

“The University of Texas still struggles to obtain a diverse student population,” Shonn says. “It proceeds under an admissions policy that has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Blum’s group and its actions seek to return to the ‘days of old’ and if put into place would likely take UT backwards in its attempts to utilize additional across-the-board process that assists in increasing diversity in the UT student population.”

Two weeks before it was set to take effect, the Department of Education has stopped the implementation of a rule designed to hold for-profit colleges accountable for marketing claims about employment rates for graduates. Had the Borrower Defense to Repayment rule taken effect, for-profit colleges would have had to prove their programs led to the “gainful employment” of graduates or risk the loss of federal aid, according to a post by Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

“There is no doubt that the student loan bubble may burst in the near future due to the crushing amount of student loan debt resulting from the skyrocketing costs of attendance combined with the limited availability of jobs upon graduation,” says Dallas bankruptcy attorney Aaron Gottlieb of Godwin Bowman & Martinez.

“However, some responsibility must still remain with the student loan borrower to carefully choose which colleges and programs to attend. If a for-profit school provides the student an education and degree for which the student paid tuition, then a ‘gainful employment’ requirement following graduation seems to be too broad a brush to wield in determining whether the for-profit school made a material misrepresentation.

“In fact, several lawsuits have been dismissed over the past five to 10 years on the basis of student borrowers’ reliance on publications such as U.S. News & World Report, which listed inaccurate employment rates of graduates. The courts have consistently considered this information mere ‘puffery,’ rather than any sort of guarantee. I fail to see the difference between touting ‘employment rates,’ and promising ‘gainful employment.’ They appear, from my perspective, to be one and the same.”

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Above the Law has released its updated statistics on law school employment outcomes, which are entirely outcome-based — by how well their students do upon graduating.

“These are the only rankings to incorporate the latest ABA employment data concerning the class of 2016,” according to the introduction to the rankings. “The premise underlying our approach to ranking schools remains the same: that given the steep cost of law school and the new normal of the legal job market, potential students should prioritize their future employment prospects over all other factors in deciding whether and where to attend law school.”

This year’s rankings of the top 50 law schools saw Yale fall from number 1 in 2016 to number 3. Stanford moved up from the second slot to the top this year.

Some other schools had big changes, with William & Mary Law School dropping 18 places.

See Above the Law’s top 50 rankings.

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Generally speaking, law schools with low acceptance rates masterfully weathered the storm over the past decade, keeping their standards high, writes Staci Zaretsky for Above the Law.

This came during a time when applications plummeted and entering students’ qualifications sank, while law schools with high acceptance rates fared quite poorly, admitting almost anyone who applied in an effort to keep the lights on, she adds.

Her article covers the release of some data from U.S. News, which compiled statistics showing acceptance rates for American law schools.

The school with the lowest acceptance rate is Yale Law School, with 9.5 percent of its applicants gaining entry. At the other end of the list is Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School, which saw 85.8 percent of its applicants getting into class.

Read the Above the Law article.

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Above the Bar reported recently that Florida’s bar passage rate was an abysmal 57.7 percent for the February exam, but now they can report that another state has taken over the uncoveted distinction of having the worst exam results in the U.S.: Mississippi.

“Few things are certain in this life, but one of them is that Mississippi will find a way to be worse at everything,” writes Joe Patrice. “After Florida posted a 57.7 percent passage rate for the February exam, Mississippi pulled up and delivered a glorious 36 percent passage rate.”

Patrice puts much of the blame for falling passage rates on declining rates at schools across the country. “While many have begun the process of course correction — bringing in smaller, more credentialed classes — we’ve still got a few more years of this trend ahead of us,” he writes.

Read the Above the Law article.

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Mark Lanier

Trial lawyer Mark Lanier was not looking for new cases when two Idaho attorneys called him earlier this year with an appeal to what he described as his “core sense of right and wrong,” according to a post on the website of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

The Androvett post continues:

The always-busy Houston lawyer recently earned a $1 billion  product liability verdict against J&J and is gearing up for numerous other trials. But when he heard more about the case involving Antwon McDaniel, a developmentally disabled teen who was bullied and raped at a rural Idaho high school, the decision to join the legal team was an easy one.

“It’s outrageous. It’s horrible,” Mr. Lanier told the Magic Valley Times-News. “As a lawyer, if I can help in a case like this and I don’t, they ought to take away my bar card.”

The federal lawsuit, filed last year, claims that the individually named school board trustees, administrators, teachers and coaches of the Dietrich School District chose to ignore the ongoing physical and mental abuse being suffered by Antwon McDaniel, effectively depriving him of his constitutional rights. The racially motivated violence inflicted on the now 19-year-old Mr. McDaniel, who is black, included anal rape with a coat hanger by several white football teammates in 2015. Criminal cases stemming from the locker room attack have all been resolved, but the civil lawsuit seeking $10 million is ongoing, with the next hearing set for May 9. Trial dates have not yet been scheduled.

Mr. Lanier described his decision to join the lawsuit in an interview with the Times-News:

“My goal is to make sure no student in Idaho or anywhere else has this problem again,” [Mr. Lanier] said. “We need to do something to protect our children who don’t fit in, aren’t the right color, aren’t the right religion and don’t fit that model profile. There’s a chance to do something here.”

There were three main motivating factors, Mr. Lanier said. The need for the school district to be responsible; the “egregiousness of it all”; and because he “cares deeply about racial issues.”

“America is at a place where we have to find a way to be accepting of people of different race, religion, gender, or even political affiliation,” Mr. Lanier said.

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Former Trump University students who claimed a share of the $25 million settlement that Donald Trump agreed to shortly after he was elected president will recover 80 percent of the money they spent on the real-estate seminars, according to a Bloomberg Law article.

Plaintiffs claimed the university made false promises of riches and instant success. Trump fought the allegations for years but finally agreed to the deal.

“A total of 2,471 claims seeking $21.3 million in refunds had already been verified, according to the filing. With hundreds of claims still being reviewed, the lawyers expect that refund requests will rise to $25 million,” writes Bloomberg’s Edvard Pettersson.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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Cornell ranked first in a recent report that looked at salaries of recent law graduates, according to a Bloomberg Law article.

Online loan refinancing company Social Finance, Inc. ranked law schools according to which touted the highest salaried graduates.

“Cornell Law School ranked No. 1 for graduates with the highest salaries, averaging $183,377 in salary, with an average debt load of $148,443,” Bloomberg reported.

Two New York university law schools rounded out the top three: Columbia and New York University.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Days before President-elect Donald Trump was to take the oath to uphold the Constitution, he followed through on a more painful obligation: coughing up $25 million to settle litigation over his defunct Trump University real estate seminar program, reports Politico.

Josh Gerstein reports that Trump University — now known as the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative — transferred the funds Tuesday night, according to two sources involved. The settlement provides enough money pay back about half of the funds paid by students for the seminars.

“Last March, Trump vowed not to settle the long-running litigation — two federal class-action fraud lawsuits and a parallel state court action brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.” writes Gerstein. “The suits accused Trump U. of deceiving students by falsely claiming that Trump knew the instructors and that the school was an accredited university.”

Read the Politico article.

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The San Diego Union-Tribune has been tracking the epic class action litigation against Donald Trump and his defunct Trump University, presenting an inside look at the legal maneuvers, the document leaks, the economic and emotional pain suffered by plaintiffs, and the eventual settlement with the future president of the United States.

Reporter Kristina Davis writes that the Trump University lawsuit landed at Zeldes Haeggquist & Eck, a small downtown San Diego law firm, the way so many cases do — with a phone call.

“The class-action lawsuit she filed against Donald Trump and his defunct Trump University became a centerpiece of the presidential campaign, featured in debates and on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ The end result: a $25 million settlement by the president-elect for thousands of former students 6½ years later,” writes Davis.

The attorneys’ big break came when some former Trump University employees leaked playbooks and scripts used by instructors.

Read the Union-Tribune article.

Reuters is reporting that President-elect Donald Trump is nearing a settlement of about $20 million in fraud lawsuits relating to Trump University, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Some former students of the now-defunct school claim they were they were lured by false promises into paying up to $35,000 to learn Trump’s real estate investing “secrets” from his “hand-picked” instructors.

Reporter Karen Freifeld writes that sources tell her there are three lawsuits relating to Trump University: two class actions in California and a case brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. All would be covered in the possible settlement. One of the cases, in U.S. District Court in San Diego, is scheduled to begin Nov. 28.

Read the Reuters article.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel

The U.S. judge overseeing a lawsuit against President-elect Donald Trump and his Trump University told both sides they would be wise to settle the case “given all else that’s involved,” Reuters reports.

In the suit, some former students claim they were they were lured by false promises to pay up to $35,000 to learn Trump’s real estate investing “secrets” from his “hand-picked” instructors.

The statement by U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel came after he had tentatively rejected a bid by Trump to keep some statements from the presidential campaign out of the fraud trial.

“Trump owned 92 percent of Trump University and had control over all major decisions, the students’ court papers say. The president-elect denies the allegations and has argued that he relied on others to manage the business,” according to the report by Dan Levine and Karen Freifeld.

Read the Reuters article.