Filing a disciplinary misconduct appeal at UC-Riverside is serious business. You’ve already been found responsible for an offense and issued a sanction. This is your last chance to challenge the verdict and get justice. You don’t want to try to handle the situation by yourself.

Luckily, you don’t have to. Whatever your situation, the LLF National Law Firm is always on your side and ready to help. Our Student Defense Team has worked with hundreds of students just like you, protecting them from all types of misconduct charges. We know UC-Riverside’s procedures, including how to file appeals, and we can walk you through the process from start to finish.

It’s important you act quickly, though. UCR allows you just fifteen days from the end of your hearing to file your appeal. Call the LLF National Law Firm today at 888-535-3686, or use our online questionnaire to tell us more about your situation.

The Appeals Process at UC-Riverside

The steps to the appeals process are actually pretty straightforward.

  • You write the appeal itself. This is the tricky bit, and we talk about it in more detail below.
  • You address your appeal to the Dean of Students.
  • You file your appeal within the fifteen-day window that begins after your hearing.
  • The Dean assigns the case to an Appeals Officer.
  • The Appeals Officer reviews the appeal and issues a decision within twenty days of filing.

You write, you file, you wait. Simple, right? Well, not exactly.

Drafting Your Appeal

The real work is involved in drafting the appeal. It’s not just that you need a compelling case and clear evidence, though you do. It’s not just that you need to put your case in clear, unimpeachable language, though you do. The tough part of an appeal has to do with reorienting your thinking.

You are not trying to prove your innocence. That issue has already been decided, and an appeal is not a second opportunity to make your case. An appeal is a check on the system, a last chance for UC-Riverside to ensure the disciplinary system is working fairly. And that’s the issue at stake: fairness.

“Grounds” for appeal must concern the way you were treated during the investigation and hearing. Instead of arguing for your innocence, you’re arguing that the university denied you a fair opportunity to defend yourself. There are just four options.

  • Some new evidence has come to light since the end of your hearing. That evidence might have changed the outcome, but you didn’t have the chance to present it because it hadn’t yet been discovered.
  • The university committed some procedural error like denying a witness the opportunity to give testimony. This error was significant enough that it may have affected the hearing outcome.
  • Decision-makers misinterpreted university policy to such a degree that it places the hearing outcome in some doubt.
  • You’ve been assigned a disciplinary sanction that is far more severe than your offense warrants.

Your LLF National Law Firm attorney can go over the record of the original hearing with you and identify any possible grounds for an appeal. They’ll also work with you to establish clear evidence supporting those grounds.

Keep in mind, however, that you’ll face some additional challenges. You may have faced an entire committee of decision-makers during your hearing. Now, a single university official has sole authority to decide your future. You won’t have a chance to address this official, to make any kind of personal plea, cross-examine witnesses, or even clear up any confusion about your arguments. Everything about your case must be contained in your written appeal.

It’s also important to remember that a successful appeal won’t be the end of your case. The Appeals Officer can’t overturn the hearing outcome. They can reduce the terms of your sanction, or they can order a new hearing. That means starting over again at square one. Of course, they can also decide to deny your appeal entirely.

In fact, many students are so intimidated by the appeals process that they simply accept their punishment and move on, even if they know they are entirely innocent. To win, it feels like you have to scale a mountain, and once you do, you have to scale another one by mounting a brand-new defense at yet another hearing.

You absolutely can scale these mountains, though. The thing is, there’s every possibility that UC-Riverside did make a mistake in your case. It happens all the time. When faculty, students, and administrators are placed in charge of justice, there’s really no telling how things may turn out. Math professors are great at math, but far less so at judicial procedure.

Their mistakes are your opportunity to get justice. We can help you make the most of that opportunity.

Direct Negotiations

There is yet one more reason to trust your case to the LLF National Law Firm rather than some other firm. We’re among the only firms in the country working exclusively in the field of student rights, and that gives us some significant advantages when it comes to defending student clients.

One of the most important of these is our relationship with Offices of General Counsel around the country.

OGC are attorneys hired by colleges and universities to provide them with legal advice on a wide range of issues. OGC protects schools from legal fines and lawsuits, and its word carries enormous weight with presidents and provosts.

In the past, we have been able to use our relationships with these officials to convince university administrators to negotiate fair settlements in misconduct cases, even for students who have lost their appeals. This could mean a lighter sanction. It could mean getting the offense removed from your transcript. On occasion, we have even managed to convince administrators to overturn responsible verdicts altogether.

What Can We Do For You?

Whether you’re entirely innocent or simply looking to get fair treatment from the University of California-Riverside, you owe it to yourself to continue the fight. We’re here and ready to help. We’ll guide you through the entire appeals process, make sure you put forward your very strongest arguments, and guarantee the university respects your rights.

As we said in the beginning, though, you cannot afford to wait. There are deadlines for filing your appeal. Get started now. Contact the LLF National Law Firm at 888-535-3686 or use our online form.

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