The Little School That Could

Call it the law school of hard knocks.

Its students are cops and construction workers, paralegals and probation officers, homemakers and school teachers. A disenchanted doctor here, a corporate executive there.

The 170-student Ventura College of Law is where the frustrated and ambitious go at midlife for a new start, or for a leg up in a career that needs a boost.

Typically, they are 37 years old, work full time and are raising families. To that they add the long hours of night law school and weekend study.

More than half eventually drop out as nerves fray, marriages falter or they lose their will to carry on under such a burden.

“This is not the Harvard Law School. This is the antithesis of the ‘Paper Chase,’ ” explained the law school’s chief administrator, Dean Donald A. Bright, himself a Harvard law graduate.

“More so than the young students who go to law school with their parents’ checkbooks,” Bright said, “these people do a day’s work, grab a bologna sandwich or wipe a baby’s bottom, and then come here. And they do that for four years. . . . It takes an enormous sacrifice. It’s brutal.”

But the survivors are so steeled through this trial by fire and fatigue that they have become some of the top lawyers and judges in this county.

Not many years ago, the same tiny law school--tucked away on a back street in Ventura--was sometimes the object of derision in news articles. “They likened it to the Mickey Mouse of law schools,” said Municipal Court Judge Edward F. Brodie, a 1980 graduate.

The school also was taken over temporarily in 1986 by the state attorney general’s office, which claimed a former dean had mismanaged funds. But since a new administration was installed, the school has enhanced its stature through the deeds of its graduates.

Its alumni, more than 500 strong, stand out among the county’s foremost prosecutors and defense attorneys. One is the president of the community college board. Another was mayor of Ventura and a third is a Santa Paula councilwoman. The new chairwoman of the Republican Party in Ventura County also is a graduate.

During the last two months alone, Gov. Pete Wilson appointed two graduates to judgeships, bringing to four the number of alumni on the municipal and superior courts of Ventura County.

“But for the Ventura College of Law I absolutely would not have had this opportunity,” said new Municipal Court Judge Rebecca S. Riley, 49, a onetime Camarillo real estate broker who switched careers 11 years ago. “I would not have been an attorney or a judge. I had two small children at home and needed to continue to work to bring in an income.”

Riley’s story--and that of the three other local judges--Brodie, David W. Long and Colleen Toy White--are typical of those who have successfully juggled families and careers with the demands of the Ventura College of Law.

Ventura lawyer Andrew Wolf, who taught three of the four judges as students, sees a common trait among them and many other students at the college: “They all have tenacity.”

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White, 51, now the law college’s president and something of a school icon, was a single mother with two children and $800 in her pocket when she graduated. Long was an insurance claims adjuster looking for a change. And Brodie was a California Highway Patrol sergeant searching for a new challenge.

“For me it was literally the opportunity of a lifetime,” said White, a teen-age wife and mother who earned her high school diploma as an adult. “It’s not even a dream come true because I never expected to be able to get a law degree and have a wonderful career.”

White and Long still have not graduated from a four-year university, holding community college degrees instead. And to this day, the law school does not require a four-year degree for admission, although nearly all of its students have one.

Indeed, Bright said, the law school exists not to pluck the best young students out of fine universities, but to give determined local residents a shot at more fulfilling lives.

“Opportunity is the key phrase here,” he said.

Part of the school’s allure is cost. Many students working to support a family can still scrape together $5,000 a year for tuition, fees and books. Or at least float a loan.

By comparison, such costs total about $10,000 a year at the La Verne University law school campus in Woodland Hills--the closest state-accredited competitor to Ventura--and $10,000 at UCLA and $22,000 at USC.

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Founded in 1969, the Ventura College of Law is one of 35 night law schools around the state that meet the needs of students who have neither the money nor the opportunity to be full-time students taught by full-time faculty in a school recognized by the American Bar Assn.

The Ventura College of Law falls into the top tier of 16 night schools that are sanctioned by the State Bar of California, but not by the ABA.

The second tier of 19 schools has neither state nor national accreditation. It includes the 50-student, 9-year-old Southern California Institute of Law in Ventura, which has received preliminary state accreditation.

These night schools produce about one of every 10 new lawyers in the state.

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Many of them, in fact, give relatively short shrift to the theory of law and focus primarily on teaching students to pass the State Bar examination so they can work as lawyers.

Ventura College of Law remains heavy on theory, as do most large ABA-accredited schools.

“We’re very definitely not a bar preparation law school,” Bright said. “We’re more of a traditional theoretical law school.”

But courses at the Ventura campus are increasingly practical as well. Nearly two dozen students a year serve internships in local law offices, including those of the district attorney and public defender, state and federal courts and law firms that help poor people and senior citizens.

Its students pass the bar exam on their first try at a rate above the average for night schools--53% of graduates over the last five years compared to 51% for comparable schools. But that compares to an 82% average pass rate on the first try at ABA-accredited schools. And the percent of students passing at the Ventura campus has fallen slightly in recent years.

While first-time pass rates are the usual standard for comparisons, officials report that 82% of Ventura’s graduates eventually pass the bar.

Yet, one criticism of students, past and present, is that the college should better prepare them for the crucial bar examination.

Santa Paula Councilwoman Laura Flores Espinosa, 41, a researcher in the district attorney’s office, said she has made good use of her law degree, but has not passed the bar exam in two tries.

“I would like the more intense bar review--in the practical writing of bar exams,” she said. “If I was a young student fresh out of undergraduate school . . . I think I would choose a larger school that had the mock court and journal review. I think all of that enhances our ability to pass the bar exam.”

Cindy Pandolfi, 40, a third-year student and small business owner, said she is impressed with the quality of her legal education, but would like to see more bar preparation.

“Students say, ‘Why won’t you help us pass?’ ” she said. “But some professors won’t do a review. It’s a lawyer thing. They don’t want to dilute the ranks. They’re not going to put stuff on a silver platter. Part of law school is making you work for it.”

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Bright, appointed dean five months ago after a career as a corporate attorney for Arco, said that boosting the bar passage rate is one of his prime objectives.

“The writing skills are really where I’m focusing first,” he said, “because a lot of our students are 20 years out of college and have jobs where they don’t write. They’re at some disadvantage over someone who has just taken English composition three years ago.”

Another big difference between Ventura College of Law and larger, more prestigious schools is its dropout rate.

Of the Ventura school’s class of 1994, for example, 86 students enrolled in 1990 but only 36 graduated, an attrition rate of 58%.

Officials at some other law schools were astounded by such numbers.

“So they take the [students’] money and then fail them?” commented Liz Cheadle, dean of students at the UCLA School of Law. Entrance requirements are high at UCLA and just 2% of students drop out there, she said.

However, Bright said that such conclusions do not address the fundamental differences between the circumstances of students at his school and those at colleges such as UCLA.

“This isn’t about flunking out,” he said. “The vast majority of our attrition rate is because people have personal problems and can’t finish school.

“If you take the same UCLA law student and get them a job eight hours a day and they have to take care of a family of four and a sick grandmother, then you’d see how many people were there after three years,” he said.

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Supporters say the strength of Ventura College of Law is its ties to the community.

Most of its two dozen faculty members are prominent local attorneys. Four are local judges--Herbert Curtis III, Arturo F. Gutierrez, Steven Hintz and John R. Smiley. Hundreds of its graduates work locally.

And the school’s law clinic--run in cooperation with the Ventura County Bar Assn.--provides legal advice for people who could not afford it otherwise. The clinic is one of only two in California run by a law school, officials said.

“The test of a school like this is not just to produce lawyers, but to enrich the community. And that’s what we’ve done,” said Camarillo attorney Tessie Houser, 58, who entered the Ventura law school at age 40, with four children still at home.

Now she helps oversee the Tuesday night legal clinic, where law students counsel families on matters such as divorce, child custody and bankruptcy.

One recent evening, as 13 law students huddled with families at cafeteria-style tables around a large hall, Houser roamed the room.

At the end of one table, Denis Alexandroff, a 40-year-old law student with piercing eyes, talked with a large, confused man about his tangled financial problems.

“He’s extremely bright, yet very tuned into people,” Houser said of the fourth-year student. “It seems like every semester we have one or two who are really tuned in.”

Born in Iran of a Russian immigrant father, Alexandroff has been a commercial airline pilot nearly all his adult life. He also owns a sand-and-gravel hauling business. But he is more interested in law.

“I don’t think I’ll ever make as much [money] lawyering. But I like this,” he said. “I always wanted to do this.”

A resident of the San Fernando Valley, he said he ended up taking law courses in Ventura because the school was more geared toward adults.

“My brother’s a lawyer in Los Angeles. And he went to a more prestigious school, so I was skeptical,” Alexandroff said. “But I am thrilled with this school. The program is terrific. The professors are excellent.”

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None of the law school’s instructors are full-time academicians, a potential failing for a school of higher learning. But students say their part-time teachers bring to class real-life expertise.

Instruction includes mock trails. And lesson plans are sprinkled with real situations from Ventura County lawsuits.

Bespectacled David Harrell, a private attorney from Ventura, teaches trial advocacy to fourth-year students. One recent evening he hammered home 10 basic arguments lawyers can use to ask a judge to reconsider a decision.

But he cautioned: “I once saw a lawyer try all 10. He got nailed. You better know what you’re doing. Make sure you’re just not doing it to stick your tongue out at the judge.”

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Harrell’s students range in age from their 20s to about 60. Their dress is generally casual, some T-shirts but some business suits as well. A few laptop computers are used to tap out notes, but most students still scribble in the margins. And as is the case with the school overall, about half of the students are women.

Near the back of Harrell’s class, Bob Wright--a big, flat-topped, slump-shouldered man in Levis--listened intently. But with only two weeks of classes remaining, his focus had shifted to the bar exam in February, and the end of his four-year law school ordeal.

Wright, 43, a house framer from Ojai, said he is only now beginning to return to the rhythms of his life before law school.

“I was able to go hunting this fall for the first time in 3 1/2 years. I took my 9-year-old son,” he said. “But the stresses are incredible. All of this has really taken a toll in all the missed soccer games and the missed PTA. The kids tend to understand, but you don’t really know.”

Down the hall from Harrell’s class, Deputy Public Defender Gary Windom, a student favorite, mixed criminal law with humor.

As he explained types of theft, he focused on both the intent of a thief and the action of a crime victim.

“Let’s talk about moms,” he said. “Moms always get screwed.”

But in Windom’s hypothetical, mom is a co-conspirator. She temporarily transfers title of her house to her child to shield it from taxes. The child won’t give it back. Mom complains to authorities.

But since Mom was trying to defraud the IRS: “The law says, ‘un huh.’ And Mom’s out of her house. Not a good thing.”

First-year student Katharine Turner, 25, is impressed by Windom and the other teachers she has had so far. “They’re just so passionate about what they do.”

Turner, a legal secretary, waitress and mother of a 6-year-old, acknowledged: “I’m one of those hanging in there by my fingernails. But I know I’ll make it. There is light, and I’m aiming toward that light.”

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Teaching another class is Municipal Court Judge John R. Smiley, recently chosen Instructor of the Year. Glasses on his nose, shirt sleeves rolled up, a beeper on his belt and loafers on his feet, Smiley lectures on the nuances of community property.

In a running joke, he noted that he’s had experience divvying up such property. “You don’t know my ex-wife,” he grinned.

At other times he exhorted his students to “talk like lawyers” by using the terminology of the legal profession. Smiley, a teacher at the college since 1986, said he has to fight himself to continually demand that students do their best, because he knows the pressures they are under when they come to class.

“I can’t go lightly,” he said. “It’s not fair to them. They’re competing with students throughout the state. And if they do not pass the bar exam they are precluded from doing what they want to do most.”

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Just what opportunities await Ventura College of Law students after they pass the bar is another question.

The school’s official catalog warns prospective students that many states outside California allow only graduates of American Bar Assn. schools to practice law.

And law school officials readily admit that students who want to work outside of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties--where a sister campus is located--should perhaps consider a legal education elsewhere.

“But that’s not the goal of the vast majority who come here,” Bright said. “They don’t want to go to Los Angeles or San Francisco and practice law. They would love to stay [here] and practice law and be of service to the community.”

Prospects are promising locally. Alumni can list classmates who have made marks here, both in public office and civic leadership.

Barbara Derryberry is a former community college chancellor. Timothy Hirshberg still heads the Ventura County Community College Board of Trustees. Dennis Orrock was Ventura’s mayor. Karen Kurta was selected last summer to run the Republican Party’s local arm.

And in the offices of the district attorney and public defender, those who hire say Ventura law students hold their own with graduates of the best large law schools.

“Some of the finest lawyers in this office went to the Ventura College of Law,” Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman said.

At one time Clayman, a graduate of UCLA law, said he strongly favored young lawyers from big schools. But then he noticed that most of the lawyers he admired were self-made and from little-known law schools.

Now 10 of the 40 lawyers in his office are from the Ventura College of Law. Clayman’s “dream team” in last year’s Mark Scott Thornton murder case--Howard Asher and Susan Olson--both graduated from the local school.

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And one of Clayman’s top two assistants, Duane Dammeyer, is an alumnus as well.

Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley, who oversees the training of law school interns, said that students from the Ventura campus rank with the best.

“If I had to point to the very best handful of students that I’ve ever taught or supervised, I could tell you that three of five would be from the Ventura College of Law,” Farley said. “And I’ve had them from USC and Harvard and Cornell.”

Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, who recruits heavily from major law schools nationwide, has 13 deputies from the Ventura college or its Santa Barbara campus on his staff of about 100 lawyers. Two of his five top deputies--Jeff Bennett and Lela Henke-Dobroth--are alumni.

“They are very hard working. They receive good training. And they compete very well,” Bradbury said.

“Obviously, they’re not receiving the same quality of education as if they were at Harvard or Michigan or Stanford or Hastings,” he said. “But they get a good solid education, and the difference is life experience.”

Cindy Pandolfi, the student who runs a Simi Valley company that negotiates physicians’ contracts with insurance companies, said she has no qualms about her legal education in Ventura.

“The bottom line is that it really doesn’t matter where you get your legal education. Lincoln did it by firelight. It’s the person that matters,” she said, “the personal drive.”