Embattled Thomas Jefferson law school moving out of its building

Less than eight years after moving into a sparkling new building in downtown San Diego, the embattled Thomas Jefferson School of Law announced Tuesday it is moving out to help cut costs.

The planned transition this summer to a sharply reduced amount of space in a different part of downtown also comes as the financially challenged school is seeking to drastically downsize its first-year class.

Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson’s current location at 1155 Island Ave., which the school sold to bondholders in 2014 amid difficulties repaying $127 million in debt, has been sold again. As a result, the school has managed to eliminate the related long-term debt, said Joan Bullock, Thomas Jefferson’s dean and president.

The school will also be paying far less in rent for 50,000 square feet of Class A-space at 701 B St. than it has leasing the 117,000-square-foot building constructed specifically for Thomas Jefferson.

“It makes sense to re-allocate our resources more to our students than to our facilities,” Bullock said.

The school remains on the U.S. Department of Education’s “heightened cash monitoring” list. The federal list says the school is on it due to “financial responsibility” concerns.

The American Bar Association also placed Thomas Jefferson on probation last year. The ABA’s legal education council wrote that its decision stemmed from concerns about the school’s “present and anticipated financial resources, admissions practices, academic program, and bar passage outcomes.”

Bullock said an ABA site visit took place this spring, and she expects an ABA committee to discuss the school at a meeting in the fall.

“We are doing everything we can to bring ourselves into compliance,” she said.

Derek T. Muller, a professor at Pepperdine University School of Law, said moving to a smaller location “would obviously make sense” from a cost perspective for Thomas Jefferson.

“Indeed, there’s a parallel: the announcement that Savannah Law [School] was closing seemed to be driven by the fact that the land/property of the school was too valuable to keep and was going to be sold,” he wrote in an email.

Bullock said Thomas Jefferson’s downsizing plans are moving forward on the student front as well. The fall 2018 incoming class is expected to have around 70 students, she said, down from more than 200 students in recent years.

As far back as 2011, the year the Island Avenue building opened, the school enrolled 440 first-year students. Bullock said that building was designed for about 1,100 students overall while the school now has a student body of less than 500, a number that will be decreasing further.

Many of the school’s graduates have struggled to pass the bar exam and secure legal jobs in recent years.

“Improving the quality of the class, and therefore improving the bar pass rate, is essential to Thomas Jefferson’s future success,” Muller said. “Shrinking the first-year class makes it that much easier.”

Thomas Jefferson already made faculty and staff cuts this year, some voluntary, according to Bullock. She did not identify the scale of the reductions, but said no more are planned for the upcoming year.

“As we have a smaller student body, we are contracting in terms of our staff and faculty,” Bullock said.

The reduced overhead and footprint will allow the law school to provide more money for student scholarships, she said. Students will also benefit from the school’s new location closer to the new San Diego County Superior Court, as well as the federal court and 4th District Court of Appeal, Bullock said.