I’ve wondered about this in the past, but a recent thread brought up a situation where a student consulted an attorney and asked for advice as to the scope of a university policy and whether or not the student could or could not do something (in this case, not report an accusation) without “breaking the rules”. Unfortunately, in this case, the student didn’t fare so well as the university didn’t buy the student’s defense and expelled them.
To what extent are there attorneys or other advice and/or representation professionals who advise students on the scope of school rules and help them defend themselves against internal organizational procedures by advising on what to say and not say to the Dean or Honor Court, by advising on what procedures to follow such as when to appeal or whether to ask for a hearing by the Dean or by the whole Faculty Board, by appearing on the student’s behalf and quoting policy back, etc.?
For example, is there someone with real qualifications (formal or informal) who will give you real advice (and is in danger of malpractice accusations if they are grossly wrong) if you ask them “I’m a student at Podunk U. Here’s the Student Handbook. On page 56, under ‘Cheating and other forms of Academic Misconduct’ it say that ‘It is Cheating to turn in a paper that you didn’t write and claim it is your own work.’ On page 95, it says that ‘The Discussion Board on the Main Quad may be used for general notices.’ Seems to me that I could take a paper my sister wrote, label it ‘robert_columbia’s submission for Advanced Hyperbolic Topology 532’ rather than ‘by robert_columbia’, then tack a note to the Discussion Board saying that I just submitted sis’s paper. In that case, the element of ‘claim it is your own work’ would not be present and I would not be guilty of Cheating because I did disclose my non-authorship to the school pursuant to its own procedures, even though I know that the school typically does not have the time to review all postings and typically has janitors tear them down every week. It’s not my fault if the school ignores the truth. Is this right?”
I don’t know about college, but there are certainly lawyers who specialize in school disciplinary matters and/or special educated issues. I certainly remember meeting some when I was a teacher.
My father is a law school professor. He has served on numerous disciplinary committees where he has been involved in making these types of decisions. He’s also represented a number of student and faculty members who were brought up before these types of committees, not just within the law school, but in various other parts of the university. He’s about as expert as you can get in the disciplinary rules for his particular university, and well-grounded in the law and interpretion of the rules as well. I know that he is frequently consulted by students facing disciplinary procedures. I think someone in this position, who works for the university and has served on disciplinary committees, whether or not he is actually an attorney, is probably going to be able to give the best advice.
The example given in the OP sounds very similar to some of the situations in which my father has given advice.
Interesting. Were these attorneys hired by the school or by parents to advise or represent with respect to external, regular legal issues, e.g. to advise the school on how severe Little Suzie can be punished without violating child protection laws of general effect in the jurisdiction, or to help the parent sue the school in regular District Court, or were these attorneys involved in analyzing school rulebooks and operating in school-based hearing settings?
e.g.
“Pursuant to West River Middle School Policy #4, section A, subparagraph j, I demand a personal statement from the faculty member who claims to have witnessed the alleged dress code violation.” … “as you can see, Mr. Principal, the witness to the incident claimed that they did not see the alleged violation but was told secondhand by Little Billy that Little Suzie was topless on the morning of September 21 in front of Building 2. No faculty member witnessed it. According to West River Middle School Policy #7, section S, subparagraph f, a middle school student’s accusation against a fellow student cannot stand alone to establish guilt, corroboration is required from another student or a faculty member or other adult, unless the accusing student is reporting “abuse” as that term is defined in West River Middle School Policy #8, secton B, subparagraph e, and, in all cases involving an accusation of “abuse”, the burden of proof to establish the subparagraph e elements of abuse all fall on the accuser. Let me remind you that persuant to Policy #3, Section M, subparagraph t, there is a time limit of 4 weeks from the date that a disciplinary writeup slip was submitted to the Principal to the final date that new evidence can be admitted. Unless you can bring Billy here by next Tuesday and have him testify to facts establishing “abuse”, you must dismiss the case.”
I’m not a lawyer, but I’m gonna bet you won’t find one who tells you such a slithery ruse will get you off the hook. Are you seriously contemplating a scheme like this? If you wrote a bad check to the school and put a Post-It on the bulletin board saying the check was bad, do you think that should fly, too?
It’s not the same as the situation referred to in the OP but I did a Google search for “academic dishonesty legal advice” and found websites for lawyers who do such work. At least one of them mentioned that he was a graduate of a particular school and was familiar with it. My guess is that’s how such things work; the lawyer is a graduate of a particular university and is intimately familiar with the code of conduct there. I doubt any one school has enough cases that a lawyer could devote his/her entire practice to it, but it might be one part of his/her practice.
I’m pretty sure that’s just an example and not something robert_columbia is actually considering. If memory serves, he is not a current student.
However, while I can see attorneys consulting on certain matters, I have a feeling that since university rules are not legal rules as such, they basically have unlimited power to enforce them as a dictatorship, so bringing a lawyer to your student court meeting will be ultimately useless because they can ignore all of said lawyer’s silver tongued prose and do as they please.
Between that, and the stereotype that students are always broke, I can’t see this because an active law practice. A side business, as noted above, sure, but not full-time.
No, not personally. In ages past I would typically “ignore” the rulebook because I understood that everything it it was more or less standard and banned obviously improper acts such as using crib notes, submitting your sister’s paper, or bribing a janitor to sneak into the teacher’s desk and change the answers on your completed but as-yet ungraded test, and if you weren’t involved in this stuff, you were fine. However, I recently took a class where the instructor actually wanted us to write a brief paper on “Integrity” and how we intend to meet the requirements set out in the student handbook and syllabus, and I spent some time citing various sections and explaining what steps I planed to take to not violate this section or that section. That made me really think about the exact wording of policies and how they might not mesh exactly with my general moral compass as to what is acceptable behavior in a general, default context.
However, my moral compass seems to indicate that if a law student, who is supposed to be becoming an expert in understanding the nuances of rules and regulations and their interpretation, finds a loophole in the school rules that enables them to meet the letter of the policies while evading their intent (e.g. that the student actually write a paper, disclose relevant facts, etc.) is demonstrating that they are thinking like a lawyer and it would be morally unjust to punish them for doing what the school has been teaching them to do.
This is a big area in special education as many students with disabilities get worked over by the system. There are some education specialist that do advocate work since advocates do not have to be an attorney. I myself had to advocate for my son and I treated it like working with a client going to the meeting and afterwards laying out for the district the ten violations of Federal law they made in his 504 eligibility meeting.
Oh, some “Employee Handbooks” issued to workers are a gem in this regard. I’ve seen a handbook that described a complex progressive discipline infrastructure that laid out certain “offenses” such as falsifying company paperwork, excessive lateness, and bad body odor and explained how an oral warning could become a written warning, then a suspension without pay, then termination, but at the end of all that, there was an escape clause providing that the company was not bound by the defined offenses or the progressive discipline procedure, but could discipline an employee for any reason it felt appropriate and issue whatever penalty it deemed appropriate, up to and including termination. A whole lot of nothing. The entire handbook was like that, statements of ideal situations and how the writer thinks things ought to be run, but that the company has no obligations to treat you according to these rules, it can assign whatever work it wants, change policies on the fly, send you to Death Valley to deliver a shipment of empty boxes, then fire you for not smiling in your official employee photo, something you were never warned about.
The school district had lawyers and there were parents who had lawyers, so both sides I guess.
I remember being told by a school district lawyer as my team (group of junior high teachers) were waiting to go into a parent meeting something to he affect that the school board was not going to court with these people no matter what, and if they had to get rid of one of us t prevent it, they would. I was a fourth year teacher, so very newly tenured, but two of the others were first-year teachers. We just sat there and let the parents rail at us, then we were excused.
A state school could face due process issues when disciplining a student, depending on the circumstances. Also, their are a myriad of ADA, Title IX, etc., issues that can arise regardless of whether the school is public or private. None of these protections be superseded by university rules.
Well, a company can fire you for any reason or no reason, so long as it’s not illegal discrimination. However, if you file for unemployment benefits and you were fired for reasons that violate your company’s written policies, the unemployment office is probably going to say you were fired without cause and grant you the benefits.
Having served on faculty disciplinary committees too many times, I’d say the OP has things kind of backwards. In my experience those committees bend over backwards to try not to impose the harshest punishment – particularly if the student seems remorseful. When you get a strictly legal argument “See I obeyed the letter of the law” while knowingly flaunting the spirit of the law, the student will tend to come out of the proceedings worse off.
I suspect a lawyer would only help if the offense was also illegal so the student might face criminal sanctions as well.
I don’t think lawyers are supposed to think this way. They may need to find loopholes to close them, but if they are trying to evade the intent of law, I think that might be criminal, and is at least improper lawyer behavior.
Any lawyers here? Are you allowed to evade the intents of laws or help clients do so?