Golden Gate Law students, alums, race to court to keep school open
“The court hearing is set for Sept. 13, but I plan to request to have the date shortened,” Ryan Griffith, attorney for the alums and students, and an adjunct professor at and graduate of the Golden Gate University School of Law, told the ABA Journal via email. (Photo by Burntorange72, CC-BY-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
When Yvonne Ulibarri was looking for a part-time law school program in 2021, the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based special education English teacher made a spreadsheet of options that would allow her to keep her day job.
Then from out of nowhere, she received an email from the Golden Gate University School of Law, encouraging her to apply to the diverse San Francisco-based school’s JD Flex Program.
The hybrid program was just what she needed. Ulibarri, the first in her family to aim to be a lawyer, could fly directly from Albuquerque to San Francisco every other weekend on Friday after teaching for the required in-person portion, then fly back home Sunday night. She could watch videos and do readings for the online portion.
Plus, it offered a “#MeToo” law class—exactly what she wanted to study, she says, after she endured harassment in her work as a paralegal for 32 years.
The law school, ranked as one of the most diverse in the U.S., quickly accepted her application and offered a $15,000 scholarship for her first year. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be wonderful,’” Ulibarri says.
And for the first two years of the four-year program, it was.
Then rumors started that the school was closing. “I really tried not to pay attention to it,” she says.
But when a Nov. 30 email blast from university officials discontinuing the JD program arrived just as finals started, she couldn’t ignore it. She believes that the stress stemming from the uncertainty of how she would finish her law degree after three years of study and $143,000 in tuition payments to Golden Gate Law caused her to get sick with psoriasis flares and a case of shingles during finals.
“Just the anxiety, the stress level—I mean, physically, mentally, emotionally,” she says. “It was incredibly draining.”
Asking—again
In February, a group of alums and students including Ulibarri filed a lawsuit accusing the university and its president of unlawful business practices as well as demanding the school to stay open.
But on July 30, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer denied it. His order, however, states the plaintiffs had not sufficiently backed up their claims that Golden Gate Law violated its obligations to students but could file an amendment.
So on Aug. 7, the plaintiffs did just that, filing an amended complaint, asking same the court—again—to keep the 123-year-old law school open and prevent current law students from transferring to the University of San Francisco School of Law and Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. They filed an injunction motion on Aug. 13.
“The court hearing is set for Sept. 13, but I plan to request to have the date shortened,” Ryan Griffith, attorney for the alums and students, and an adjunct professor at and graduate of Golden Gate Law, told the ABA Journal via email. “The plan is to file the first amended complaint, then go in ex parte [this] week for a temporary restraining order in hopes of preserving the status quo of keeping everyone in Golden Gate,” he says.
Griffith acknowledges that time is running out. Classes start August 19 at both Mitchell Hamline and University of San Francisco law schools, where the Golden Gate Law students are encouraged to transfer, and Golden Gate University’s first day of classes for its other programs is Sept. 8.
Still, he says there is lack of clarity on the school’s teach-out program, which had been rejected by the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar a week before the email blast. Ultimately, the ABA approved an amended plan in February.
“As I understand it, the plan is full-time students are going to USF and the part-time students will go to Mitchell Hamline; but as far as I know, nobody has seen an actual plan,” Griffith says. “I do not think anyone really knows.” The ABA approval states it “will not disclose the details of the teach-out plan to the public.”
Danielle Morvan is a plaintiff who lives in Portland, Oregon. In 2022, Morvan was offered a seat at Lewis & Clark Law School, she says, but the nearby school had offered only a partial scholarship. (Photo courtesy of Golden Gate University)
‘Several schemes’
The complaint alleges that “several schemes” by David Fike, the Golden Gate University president, and other officials saddled the program with $60 million in loans as it reduced the full-time law school class from more than 100 students to fewer than 30.
According to the complaint, “At the time Fike entered these loans, he knew or should have known that there was no likelihood that the university would be able to pay them back if it reduced the student body and revenue streams from tuition.”
The university has not provided key financial information to students, Griffith says. As rumors of financial struggles swirled, Fike attended a Zoom meeting in September 2023 with the students and alumni association who demanded seeing details of the university’s debt.
“Fike claimed he would provide the information, but then his ‘computer froze,’” the complaint alleges. It goes on to say, “At the time of this filing, many months later, Fike has still not produced the information.”
Griffith remains puzzled by the school’s finances. “The actual law school is not closing down, but they are just not offering law degrees,” he says. “I’m not sure how that works.”
Fike “was not qualified” to lead through the financial crisis, according to the complaint. Letters of no confidence by several colleges within the university against Fike in 2019 were submitted as evidence.
The filing cites GGU’s offer of free tuition in 2022 to all incoming full-time, in-person law students, who are especially hurt by the school’s closing.
“It is simply astonishing that the university could promote free tuition for its students and then run out of money before those students finish their degrees,” the complaint alleges.
Danielle Morvan, a plaintiff who lives in Portland, Oregon, was one of those students.
In 2022, Morvan was offered a seat at Lewis & Clark Law School, she says, but the nearby school had offered only a partial scholarship.
She was worried about finances after taking out student loans for undergraduate and master’s degrees. After her Golden Gate Law application was accepted, the first-generation law student received a letter stating she was a Presidential Scholar, entitling her to a full-tuition scholarship worth $153,000.
“It’s unlikely for students of color to get full-ride scholarships to law school,” says Morvan, who is Black. “So when that happened, I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing. What are the chances? I get to pursue this new career path and just enjoy it.’”
Holding onto hope
With days to go before classes start at the other schools, Griffith, an in-house counsel for Bay Area Receivership Group, cites the Western State College of Law in Orange County, California, as an example of a similar problem handled properly by university leadership. Its parent company had been placed in federal receivership, but the school continued to provide classes.
While Griffith believes a court-appointed receiver could save Golden Gate Law, he admits that move would be premature at this point.
Fike did not respond to ABA Journal emails. Rene I. Gamboa, Robert J. Flemming III and Mark S. Posard of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani in San Francisco, Golden Gate Law’s counsel, also did not respond to the Journal’s emails.
“It’s a 1,200-attorney firm, which I’m sure it’s not cheap,” Griffith says of Gordon Rees. “[The school is] claiming they’re out of money, so it seems odd that they have money to hire this huge law firm.”
Still, Griffith holds onto hope.
“If our requests are granted, we will have to work to make a schedule and get classes going at GGU,” he says. “I believe discovery will uncover substantial malfeasance, which will be appropriate for a receivership over the school. Then I will seek a receivership over the entire school in the coming months.”
If the petition is denied, the JD program will remain closed.
Meanwhile, students are preparing to move on. Mitchell Hamline anticipates. According to Ally Roeker, Mitchell Hamline’s assistant director of communications, that school anticipates 48 Golden Gate Law transferees.
Morvan won’t be joining them. She plans to become an environmental lawyer, but Mitchell Hamline doesn’t offer courses she’s interested in taking.
That means going to Lewis & Clark Law full time and forfeiting the scholarship from Golden Gate Law that would have transferred to the Minnesota school. “It’s not even worth a free education for me,” she says.
She is still in conversations with Lewis & Clark Law about financial aid options but is aware she may need to take out loans.
“If knew this was going to be the fate, I would have saved myself the years of confusion and mental distress and just said, “I’ll take the partial scholarship for my first year at Lewis & Clark and just see what happens in the second and third year,’” Morvan adds.
For part-time law students, transferring to the Minnesota school’s blended-learning program typically requires being on campus at least one week each semester. That’s a burden for Ulibarri, who would need to take unpaid time off from her full-time teaching job, she says.
Mitchell Hamline officials are working with Golden Gate Law students to create an individualized graduation plan and various options including entirely online courses to finish their degrees, Roeker says.
Ulibarri will taking only online classes at Mitchell Hamline this fall and is still figuring things out with the Minnesota school for classes beyond that, she says. But she really wishes could complete her studies in San Francisco.
“It’s much more important for me that we get that education that we thought we were going to get,” Ulibarri says.
Morvan, still angry with Golden Gate University administration, agrees. “I entrusted my dreams to you all. And you just handled them flagrantly,” she says. “You just threw them away.”
