SYRACUSE — The Syracuse University College of Law is offering what it says is the “first live” online juris doctor (J.D.), or law-degree, program.

The Chicago, Illinois–based American Bar Association granted the school a variance to allow the online program, Syracuse announced on Feb. 26.

The organization granted the variance in February, says Nina Kohn, law professor and associate dean for research and online education at the Syracuse University College of Law. Kohn spoke with CNYBJ on March 8.

The program will offer “real-time and self-paced” online classes; on-campus residential classes; and experiential-learning opportunities for students who would “normally not be able to attend law school due to family and job responsibilities or geographic constraints,” according to a school news release.

“It may be because they can’t commit to staying in one place for three years, as is common with members of the military and their partners,” says Kohn.

The Syracuse law school plans to accept applications during the current semester and enroll the first class in January 2019. After the inaugural January 2019 matriculation, online cohorts of students will matriculate every August, similar to its residential program, which serves students who are taking classes at Dineen Hall, home of the Syracuse College of Law.

Students in the online program will be taking the same classes required of the residential students and will be held to the same academic standards, says Kohn. “We’ll use the same admissions criteria,” she adds.

The online law-degree program will be a three-and-one-third year program involving 10 semesters, continuing year-round. It differs from the residential program, which is typically a three-year, six-semester program with breaks in the summer, according to Kohn. 

About the variance

When asked to explain the need for the variance, Kohn notes that the American Bar Association is the accreditor of law schools. It has a series of rules about what law schools can and cannot do. 

Its current rules “dramatically” limit the amount of education that a law school can offer online. What Syracuse had to do to offer this program as an accredited law-school program was to convince the Bar Association to grant it a variance, which is an exception from the rules. 

“We had to convince them that the program we are offering was sufficiently rigorous and compelling that they should make an exception and allow us to run it, even though it is not consistent with their current rules,” says Kohn. 

Planning the program

The Syracuse online program is the result of a multi-year process and careful deliberation by the faculty. “It was a long process,” says Kohn.

Multiple faculty committees worked on this program, from the initial deliberation on whether to pursue it in the first place, to the general curricular framework, to specific course content.

The College of Law is working with the Syracuse University Center for Online and Digital Learning, which is playing a “critical role” in providing the instructional design and technological support needed for the program.

When asked about skepticism in the legal community about the online program, Kohn replies, “This is an ongoing process. What lawyers are trained to do is be critical thinkers and to ask tough questions. If lawyers weren’t asking tough questions of the program, that would be surprising and frankly concerning.” 

Syracuse talked with the bar, alumni, students, faculty at Syracuse and elsewhere, informing them about the program. 

“At the end of the day, I think what will be important for the bar to understand is that this is a traditional law-school curriculum,” says Kohn.

Clients of the Bonadio Group now can get consulting services and software systems that enable them to “improve employee engagement and increase business results.” 

The new offering is the result of a joint venture between Rochester–based Bonadio and Brand Integrity, another Rochester firm that offers employee-engagement software and consulting services, the Bonadio Group said in a news release.

Bonadio, which has significant operations in Syracuse and Utica, describes itself as upstate New York’s “largest independent provider of accounting, consulting, and financial services.”

In their daily accounting, auditing, and consulting work, Bonadio client-service staff will assess clients’ needs for improvements in culture, which can be “directly linked” to the financial performance of an organization, per the release.

The new venture started Dec. 1, 2017, says Bruce Zicari, managing partner of the Bonadio Group’s Rochester office, who spoke with CNYBJ on March 9.

“It’s a totally separate, legal entity,” he says. “It’s a separate LLC that is partially owned by Brand Integrity and partially owned by Bonadio & Co., our accounting firm.”

The firms are marketing the service as Brand Integrity.

Kathryn Aspromonti, VP of enterprise solutions at Brand Integrity, leads the effort, and the partners and principals at Bonadio comprise the sales force, according to Zicari.

When asked about the cost for the service, Zicari declined to provide a specific dollar amount, noting that it’s “based on the size” of a given company.

The relationship 

The Bonadio Group has worked with Brand Integrity “for the last eight years,” using its employee-recognition software platform as well as their client-satisfaction software platform, says Zicari. 

Bonadio has completed about a dozen acquisitions in the last 15 years. In doing so, Zicari says it’s been “very important” that the firm make sure its clients are happy but also to “protect our culture and monitor our culture and perpetuate the culture we have” and that’s what Brand Integrity does.

“They’ve done such a great job for us that we thought it was a great service, a great value add to offer to our clients. That’s why we teamed up and did a joint venture,” he adds.

The two firms began thinking about the venture over the last year, Zicari notes. Bonadio started referring some of its clients to Brand Integrity and they “were very thankful.” 

“That’s when we really thought … maybe this is something that we should more officially [work on] together and provide to our clients in a very formal way,” he adds. 

About the software

Zicari describes it as a software platform an employee can use to recognize a co-worker “for doing good things on a day-to-day basis.” 

“If I have somebody that helped me on one of my jobs, and they did a great job, I would recognize them on this software,” he explains. 

Employees can click on an icon on their desk-top computer or cellular device and tell a story about how somebody helped them, and how what they did affected the client or other people at the firm and how it relates to the firm’s “core values and our purpose.” 

“It’s a way to recognize people and give them a pat on the back and say good job in front of all their peers,” says Zicari. “It kind of furthers the culture.” 

Brand Integrity’s software platform provides business leaders with a “comprehensive” overview of a company’s performance. It combines predictive data from employee surveys, customer loyalty scores, and employee-recognition activity to allow leaders to see the full picture of organizational performance. Clients can choose which aspects of the integrated platform they want to use in order to meet their goals. 

The drive to track employee engagement has become “increasingly important,” according to the Bonadio news release. 

As workplace-culture studies have demonstrated, when employees are “engaged in work and believe their contributions make a difference to the success of the company, they feel a stronger connection with a company, resulting in higher productivity, less turnover, higher profits and overall greater shareholder returns.”      

Broome County Executive Jason Garnar issued a two-sentence reply: “It is clear New York City has no intent to stop sending people to Broome County through this cynical and illegal program. We will see them in court.”

The dispute arose several weeks ago when social-service workers noticed a pattern of families applying for aid saying they didn’t need help with housing, says Broome County Social Services Commissioner Nancy Williams. The new applicants told workers their rent in Broome County was being paid for a year by the New York City HRA under a Special One Time Assistance (SOTA) program.

Williams tells CNYBJ that New York City wasn’t following its own rules for the program that is covering rent. According to a fact sheet from New York City, SOTA is supposed to be reserved for recipients who are working or generating enough income to make future rent payments

None of the people who moved to Broome County had a job, says Broome County Assistant Attorney Howard Schultz. One person did have a job while in New York City, he says, but quit it to move to Broome County.

Another two-person family is receiving rent for a year in Broome County despite the fact that they were sanctioned while in New York City for not taking part in required job programs, Schultz says.

Not only were the families moved here despite laws forbidding it, social-service agencies also were not told about pre-existing problems, Shultz says. A family sent to Broome County had child-welfare issues in the past and no one notified Broome County officials so they could follow up and make sure the two children involved were receiving proper care, he reports. Workers in Broome County only learned about it when they investigated. “We looked it up in the system,” Schultz says.

“Broome County believes New York City HRA’s actions are in direct contradiction to New York State Social Services Law Section 148, which requires New York City to provide assistance and care for their residents,” Schultz says.

It’s not just illegal, he says, it’s criminal. “It’s a misdemeanor to transfer homeless people in need to another place.”

Every community has a homeless problem, Schultz says, and that’s why state laws prevent one place from sending its homeless residents elsewhere. “New York State law protects us from that gaming of the system.”

Schultz and Williams stress that Broome County provides for those in need. Schultz makes the point that dislocating families from New York City to Broome County makes it harder for children to succeed in school — and if they need to be relocated back to the Big Apple when the rent money is gone, it will make things worse still.

A 3½-hour drive from New York City, Broome County has much lower rents. In Broome County, fair market monthly rents average just over $600 for a one-bedroom apartment, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The same figure for New York County (Manhattan) is $1,558 a month. For the year’s rent paid by HRA, that represents a cost difference of nearly $12,000.

New York City pays even more for space in homeless shelters, Williams says. 

Schultz says he is asking New York City to stop the program immediately and reimburse Broome for the expenses it has incurred caring for people who, by law, are supposed to be cared for by New York City.

A county spokesperson says no court action has been taken, but the county is continuing to research the matter. 

ONONDAGA — U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) came to town recently to call attention to a U.S. Department of Education policy that he says is preventing students from getting financial-aid data they need to give private-scholarship providers for payments.

The policy is blocking organizations like Say Yes to Education from getting “critical” student financial-aid data “in a timely fashion,” even with the student’s authorization, Schumer’s office said in a news release issued March 19.

Schumer is calling for U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to change the policy.

Say Yes to Education is a New York City–based nonprofit education foundation that seeks to increase high school and college graduation rates for urban youth by offering financial and other assistance. Say Yes Syracuse is the local chapter.

Speaking at Onondaga Community College (OCC) on March 19, Schumer noted that the policy could delay Say Yes scholarship payments if the organization doesn’t get the data it needs from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

“The Department of Education announced a new policy that makes it much harder for students to access the data,” Schumer said in his remarks at OCC. “If they can’t access the data, they don’t get their scholarship money and they may drop out.”

With delayed payments, Syracuse students would face “steep” late fees or delayed enrollment for failing to pay their full tuition.

Thousands of Central New York students rely on scholarship money from Say Yes to cover school expenses and that Say Yes calculates the amount of funding a student receives using FAFSA data. 

Schumer points the finger at DeVos, contending she “seems to have it in for any program that’s a success.”

The Democrat has written a letter to DeVos outlining his concern about the policy. Schumer’s office included the letter in the news release his office issued Monday.

“If we let this stand, they’ll make it worse and worse and worse. And this is bad enough because it makes it harder for students to apply. Students don’t get their funds in a timely way and many of they will have to drop out,” said Schumer.

CNYBJ contacted the U.S. Department of Education, seeking comment on Schumer’s letter and criticism, but the department, didn’t respond by press time on March 20.

Prior to the change, Say Yes worked with the various colleges and universities to secure the data, according to Schumer. 

“The Department of Education should just back off these new changes and go to the old way. We don’t need legislation. They can just do it on their own,” said Schumer.

“All we’re asking here is simply that the federal government continues to partner with us in this effort. Say Yes in a national model. It is something we take a lot of pride in and it has given thousands of students in the city of Syracuse opportunities where they previously didn’t exist,” Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh added in his remarks during the event at OCC.

The first Say Yes city-wide chapter was piloted in Syracuse, beginning in 2009 and the second followed in Buffalo four years later. Since 2009, Say Yes Syracuse has helped more than 3,800 Syracuse City School District (SCSD) graduates attend college, increasing SCSD’s college attendance rate more than 33 percent, Schumer’s office said.