Student Misconduct Charges in the University of North Carolina System

UNC System Member Institutions

The University of North Carolina System, with its flagship UNC-Chapel Hill campus, is one of the nation's premier public university systems. The UNC System is, obviously, the state of North Carolina's public university system, composed of sixteen public colleges and universities within the state. Those UNC System schools include not only UNC-Chapel Hill but also UNC Charlotte, UNC Pembroke, UNC Wilmington, North Carolina State University, Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, Western Carolina University, Winston-Salem State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and North Carolina Central University. If you attend any of those schools, then you have the rights and responsibilities of a UNC System student. You are also part of a powerfully influential public university system.

UNC System Impact

If you attend a UNC System school, even one that has accused you of misconduct, you have reason to appreciate the UNC System's scope, reach, and impact. The UNC System has an enormous economic, social, cultural, and research impact within the region and significant impact nationally. The UNC System enrolls nearly 250,000 students, around 50,000 of whom graduate annually. The UNC System attracts a remarkable $1.5 billion in research grants and sponsored programs annually. In the most recent year for which statistics are available, UNC System research resulted in 126 new patents, 83 startup companies, and millions of dollars in licensing income to the System. All one hundred of North Carolina's counties benefit from the UNC System's impact. If you attend a UNC System school, then you are both contributing to and benefiting from that enormous impact.

UNC System Commitments

The UNC System defines its own distinct mission. That mission, though broad, influences both your UNC System education and the misconduct proceeding that you may face. The UNC System's mission is “to discover, create, transmit, and apply knowledge to address the needs of individuals and society.” The UNC System articulates its discovery mission into three components: instruction, research, and service outreach. Although these articulations of mission and vision are relatively new, the UNC System and its basic commitments are far from new. Indeed, the flagship University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, chartered in 1789, was the nation's first public university and only public university admitting students in the 18th century. When dealing with the UNC System, whether over misconduct charges or other matters, you face a proud, diverse, and tradition-laden institution.

UNC System Expectations

The UNC System's sixteen institutions include schools initially formed as high schools, technical colleges, teacher's colleges, agricultural schools, women's schools, and historically black colleges. That history makes the UNC System both rich and diverse in the expectations that its member schools have for the character, conduct, ethics, and development of its students. Students in professional programs at the prestigious UNC School of Medicine or UNC School of Law may face different expectations than students at practical and vocational programs at the land-grant North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College.

Yet each UNC System school shares basic expectations around student academic, behavioral, and sexual conduct, as that conduct impacts other students and the System's faculty and staff members and other constituents. You shouldn't expect to get away with anything at one UNC System school that you couldn't get away with at another. And you should also expect each UNC System school to offer reasonable student conduct codes and fundamentally fair disciplinary procedures. If you face misconduct charges at a UNC System school, then retain an expert academic administrative attorney to ensure that your school treats you fairly.

The Value of a UNC System Education

A UNC System education, whether in one of the System's professional or graduate schools, undergraduate programs, or technical colleges, can carry great economic, social, and personal value. A UNC System education can get a graduate a great job leading to a rewarding career. A UNC System education can also help students and graduates form strong, fruitful, and healthy social and professional networks. UNC System graduates include many famous and successful individuals, including superstar professional athletes, composers, authors, artists, physicians, judges, lawyers, scientists, journalists, governors, entertainers, actors and actresses, bankers, inventors, business leaders, and musicians. A UNC System education may not make you famous, but it should make you more employable, successful, stable, engaged, inspiring, and attractive.

Indeed, the value of a UNC System degree is not only in the job or network it gets you. It is also in developing the capacity to thrive in a rapidly changing world, to discover your place in that world, and to change that world. A UNC System degree can transform the graduate, even as it helps the graduate transform the world. You recognized those values when you decided to matriculate at a UNC System school. Don't give up your dreams simply because of the challenge of a misconduct proceeding. Instead, preserve your dreams. Retain an academic administrative attorney who can, through your misconduct proceeding, help you hold your UNC System school accountable to its promises.

The Cost of UNC System Discipline

Students who face misconduct charges at a UNC System school know that they face a lot of risk in their misconduct proceeding. To lose a misconduct proceeding and suffer discipline, such as suspension or even dismissal, is to lose the full or substantial value of a UNC System education. Even less-serious discipline like reprimand and probation can cost a student important educational opportunities like honors, awards, scholarships, internships, references, and recommendation letters, not to mention opportunities to enter graduate or professional school and to get jobs. Any finding of misconduct and any discipline, however minor or modest, risks costing a student many of the relationships and rewards for which the student matriculated into the UNC System.

The Peril of Self-Representation

The UNC System's regulation on the right to an attorney begins with a long statement on the educational value of a UNC System student not having an attorney assist the student through a misconduct proceeding. The UNC System's Board of Governors who adopted that regulation wants you to believe that you are better off on your own. You are not better off on your own. There is no such thing as self-representation. You don't have an attorney self to stand beside you. You are simply on your own. The UNC System's Board of Governors knows, as its regulation indirectly admits, that your school will have to spend more time and effort convicting you of wrongdoing if you retain a skilled academic administrative attorney to represent you. If your UNC System institution has charged you with misconduct, don't admit to misconduct that you did not commit. And don't ignore a UNC System misconduct charge or proceeding. But don't attempt to go it alone.

School Advisors

Your UNC System institution may offer you a free school advisor who can be a comfort to you in a time of stress. Doing so is another way of discouraging you from getting the expert academic administrative attorney help that you likely need. School advisors are not generally administrative attorneys. They may have, at best, limited knowledge of administrative laws, rules, and procedures. At worst, they simply have no business being involved in proceedings with so much potentially at stake for an accused student. Moreover, they have a conflict of interest when advising you because the school employs, supervises, and controls them. They may have the school's interest at heart when advising you, more so than your own interest. They are also not your committed attorney advocate. They likely have, at best, a limited educational role. A free school advisor does not get you the effective, skilled, and committed administrative attorney help that you need.

The Value of Academic Attorney Representation

Instead of representing yourself or relying on a school advisor, retain an expert academic administrative attorney. When you retain an academic administrative attorney, you gain the knowledge, skill, and commitment of the best professional available for the student misconduct defense field. When you retain national academic administrative attorney Joseph D. Lento, you also gain the representation, advocacy, and negotiation skills of a keen strategist who, over many years, has developed the most effective approach to resolving student misconduct cases promptly and successfully. Hundreds of college and university students nationwide have trusted Attorney Lento and the expert team at the Lento Law Firm with their misconduct defense, preserving their right to complete their higher education without ruinous discipline. Attorney Lento is available to represent you within the UNC System.

Academic Attorney Participation

The UNC System's regulation on the right to an attorney assures an accused student that the student may retain an attorney to participate fully in the misconduct proceeding, just as the student would participate: “an Advocate may fully participate in such procedures to the extent and in the same manner afforded to the student … he/she represents.” That assurance applies to any misconduct proceeding other than one before a Student Honor Court or for academic misconduct. But if the misconduct proceeding involves allegations that are also the subject of a criminal proceeding, then the student has the right to an attorney's full participation even in academic misconduct matters or student-decided matters. The UNC System regulation promising the right to an attorney's participation repeats and reinforces North Carolina General Statute Section 116-40.11 making the same assurances. You have a statutory and regulatory right to an attorney in many UNC System misconduct proceedings.

Limited Academic Attorney Participation

Under both the General Assembly statute and UNC System regulation, if only students are deciding your matter, or your matter solely involves academic misconduct, and your matter does not involve criminal charges, then your UNC System school may limit your attorney's participation in the actual hearing. But even in those cases, your attorney's review, advice, investigation, preparation, and communication with the school remains a critical right. Under the UNC System's regulation on the right to an attorney, your school must also provide you with notice of your right to an attorney:

Any student or Student Organization Accused of a Violation of a UNC constituent institution's Disciplinary or Conduct Rules shall be notified of the right to be represented by a licensed attorney or non-attorney advocate, if applicable. Such notice shall be transmitted in writing by the UNC constituent institution when the student or Student Organization is initially Accused of a Violation, as defined herein, or as soon as reasonably possible thereafter so that an Advocate may participate in any campus-based Disciplinary or Conduct Procedure as provided by this regulation.

Law Establishing the UNC System

North Carolina law establishes the UNC System. Chapter 116 of the North Carolina General Statutes states the UNC System's purpose, forms the System as a corporation, charges its Board of Governors with oversight, and names the System's sixteen member institutions. The North Carolina General Assembly elects twenty-four members of the UNC System Board of Governors, each to a four-year term. The UNC System Board of Governors relies on a UNC System president to carry out the Board's oversight duties over all UNC System member institutions. Section 116-14 of the North Carolina General Statutes authorize the UNC System president to act as chief executive and administrative officer. The UNC System student affairs administrators who charge student misconduct and control misconduct proceedings ultimately report to the UNC System president, who has lawful authority to institute misconduct proceedings.

UNC Board of Governors Policy Authority

North Carolina General Statutes Section 116-11 describes the Board of Governors' powers and duties, including to govern all member institutions through Board policies: “The Board of Governors shall be responsible for the general determination, control, supervision, management and governance of all affairs of the constituent institutions. For this purpose, the Board may adopt such policies and regulations as it may deem wise.” The UNC System Board of Governors has thus promulgated an elaborate Policy Manual and Code containing many parts, including a part on Student Conduct. If your UNC System school has charged you with misconduct, then those charges fall under the authorization of UNC System Board of Governors policies.

Due Process of Law in the UNC System

The state statutory origin and authority of the UNC System to govern student conduct makes UNC System student discipline a matter of state action. State action implicates the due process protections of the Constitution's 14th Amendment. Because you have property and liberty interests in earning your UNC System degree, in any disciplinary proceeding, the UNC System must guarantee you due process of law. Due process gives you important substantive rights and procedural advantages, including notice of the charges and evidence against you and an opportunity to contest charges and challenge the evidence in a fair hearing. Without due process, your UNC System school could do pretty much as it pleases. With due process and with an expert academic administrative attorney on your side, you can mount an effective defense to false, exaggerated, or unfair misconduct charges.

Misconduct Governance in the UNC System

The UNC System's Board of Governors hasn't written the student conduct codes for all sixteen of the System's member institutions. Instead, the Board of Governors has adopted a policy on minimum standards for student disciplinary proceedings. While the Board of Governors' policy doesn't provide all the details of your UNC System school's own student conduct codes, the Board of Governors' policy is still important to your success in defending and defeating misconduct charges. You and your retained academic administrative attorney can hold your UNC System school to providing at least the minimum procedures that the Board of Governors' policy guarantees. And those minimum procedures provide you with substantial protections. Retain national academic defense attorney Joseph D. Lento and the expert team at the Lento Law Firm to hold your UNC System school accountable to these minimum standards.

UNC System General Disciplinary Standards

The UNC System Board of Governors' policy on minimum standards for student disciplinary proceedings includes enough procedural protections to assure you of a reasonably fair investigation, hearing, and outcome, provided that you retain an expert academic administrative attorney to hold your UNC System school accountable to those standards. These minimum standards are not self-executing. You will likely need an expert attorney to ensure that your UNC System institution does as it should in your misconduct proceeding. The UNC System minimum standards include these important general rights and protections:

• Misconduct decisions that your school reaches must not be arbitrary or capricious, meaning that those decisions must have supporting evidence
• Misconduct proceedings must notify the accused student of the alleged wrongs and give the accused student a reasonable opportunity for a fair hearing
• Each UNC System institution must adopt a student conduct code that identifies violations and a range of sanctions

UNC System Minor Violations Standards

The UNC System Board of Governors' policy on minimum standards for student disciplinary proceedings sets more-detailed minimum standards for minor misconduct violations. A so-called minor violation is one in which neither suspension nor dismissal are potential sanctions. Keep in mind, though, that while UNC System policy labels as minor those violations that cannot result in suspension or dismissal, any finding of a violation, whether minor or serious, can substantially affect a student's rights and interests as to things like honors, awards, scholarships, internships, references, and recommendation letters. Don't take charges of so-called minor violations lightly. The UNC System minimum standards for minor violation proceedings include these important rights and protections:

• Only a designated university official may charge a student with a code violation, initiating a disciplinary proceeding, ensuring that the student is accountable only to the appropriate official
• The designated official must initiate the misconduct charge within a reasonable time after the misconduct complaint, ensuring that the student suffers no unreasonable delay in having to respond
• The school must notify the accused student in writing of the alleged violation, ensuring that the student can read and understand the charge, and share the charge with the student's retained attorney
• The notice to the accused student must include the hearing date, ensuring that the student has fair notice of when and where to appear to contest the charge
• The hearing date may not be within five days of when the student receives the notice, giving the student time to prepare and attend
• No hearing official having a conflict of interest or expressing a bias about the case may participate, ensuring that the accused student has a reasonably fair and impartial decision-maker
• The accused student may challenge hearing officials for conflicts of interest or bias, and an independent official will decide the challenge, ensuring that the accused student can hold the school accountable to its promise of fair decision-makers
• Any sanction must be within the ranges that the student conduct code specifies, ensuring that sanctions are not unduly harsh and punitive
• Any waiver of the accused student's rights must be in writing that the accused student signs, ensuring that the accused student does not inadvertently relinquish important rights
• The school must permit the accused student to present witness testimony and documents as evidence and raise defenses at the hearing, ensuring that the student has meaningful opportunities to defend
• The accused student has the right to be present for the entire hearing during all of the evidentiary presentation, ensuring that the accused student can respond to the evidence
• At the hearing's conclusion, the hearing official must determine whether the school has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that the student committed the offense charged
• The hearing official must base the decision solely on the evidence presented at the hearing or meeting, ensuring that no secret and unchallenged evidence influences the decision
• The hearing official must decide within no more than forty-five days after the hearing, ensuring that delays in deciding do not unduly prolong the matter
• The decision must summarize the evidence supporting it, ensuring that the accused student can review the rationale for the decision
• The hearing official must share the written decision with the accused student within ten days of the decision, ensuring that the student can timely review the decision with the student's retained attorney; and
• The school must provide at least one level of administrative appeal, and the decision must specify the accused student's appeal rights, ensuring that the student has a fair opportunity for an impartial review of the decision

UNC System Serious Violations Standards

The UNC System Board of Governors' policy on minimum standards for student disciplinary proceedings also sets minimum standards for serious misconduct violations. A serious violation is one in which either suspension or dismissal is a potential sanction. Suspension or dismissal can substantially affect important student rights and interests not only like honors, awards, scholarships, internships, references, and recommendation letters, but also jobs, careers, and graduate or professional education. Treat serious violations seriously by retaining an expert academic administrative attorney to make the best use of these minimum standards. These minimum standards are there for your protection. The UNC System minimum standards for serious violation proceedings include all of the above rights and protections for minor violation proceedings, with these modifications and additions:

• The school must give the student at least ten days, not just five days, between the notice of charges and the hearing on charges, allowing the student more time to prepare to respond to serious charges
• The notice of charges must include not only a specification of the violations but also “a brief recitation of the factual allegations supporting the charge,” giving the accused student helpful information about the incriminating evidence the student faces
• The school must allow the accused student reasonable extensions of time to prepare for the hearing
• If the accused student waives a hearing, then the discipline official accepting the waiver must ensure that the waiver was voluntary and that the charge has factual support, ensuring that no one coerces the student to waive rights and that the student doesn't admit to misconduct for which the school had no evidence
• The school must provide the accused student with an opportunity to review the evidence that the school intends to present at the hearing, enabling the student and the student's retained attorney to better prepare for the hearing
• The school must provide the student with a list of the school's witnesses before the hearing, enabling the student and retained an attorney to better prepare to cross-examine those witnesses
• The school must record the hearing and provide the student with a transcript if requested, enabling the student and retained attorney to review and challenge the hearing for error or lack of evidence
• The hearing official must allow the student to question witnesses against the student, enabling cross-examination to expose lies and inconsistencies
• Only the school's chancellor or vice-chancellor, not a lower hearing official, may decide to expel the accused student as a sanction

UNC System Misconduct Enforcement

The UNC System maintains an Office of Academic Affairs within which the System locates an Office of Student Affairs. The System's Office of Student Affairs works closely with each institution's student affairs officials to foster a system-wide approach to student disciplinary proceedings. That said, local officials at your UNC System school, not central System officials, will receive misconduct complaints, determine whether to proceed on those complaints, and conduct the disciplinary proceedings. The UNC-Chapel Hill Office of Student Affairs, responsible for misconduct charges and proceedings on that UNC System campus, is an example. To identify and communicate timely and appropriately with those local UNC college discipline officials, retain national academic defense attorney Joseph D. Lento and the expert team at the Lento Law Firm. Don't start off on the wrong foot. Put your best foot forward from the start by retaining attorney Lento.

UNC System Member Institution Conduct Codes

As briefly indicated above, each UNC System member school will likely have adopted its own student conduct codes. You will not find a single, detailed student conduct code at the UNC System level. Instead, you must look to your UNC System member institution for the details of the student conduct code with which your institution expects you to comply. Those codes vary in their details because of the varied histories, programs, and commitments of each member institution. But the codes also duplicate core academic, behavioral, and sexual prohibitions. Retain national academic defense attorney Joseph D. Lento and the expert team at the Lento Law Firm to locate, analyze, and review the student conduct codes applying to your student misconduct charges within the UNC System.

Example UNC System Campus Conduct Codes

The UNC-Chapel Hill student conduct codes are representative examples of the codes UNC System students find at other member institutions. UNC-Chapel Hill's conduct codes include an Instrument of Student Judicial Governance establishing academic and behavioral standards, the campus's Title IX sexual misconduct policy, and a separate Policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment, and Related Misconduct extending sexual misconduct and other protections beyond the scope of Title IX. Those codes together address the following behaviors:

• General requirements,including to obey and support the Honor Code, refrain from lying, cheating, or stealing, not to impair the welfare or the educational opportunities of others in the university community significantly, and refrain from conduct that impairs the capacity of university and associated personnel to perform their duties, manage resources, protect the safety and welfare of the university community
• Academic commitments, including to support academic integrity while refraining from all forms of academic dishonesty including plagiarism in the form of deliberate or reckless representation of another's words, thoughts, or ideas as one's own without attribution in connection with submission of academic work, falsification, fabrication, or misrepresentation of data or other information, unauthorized assistance or unauthorized collaboration in connection with academic work, cheating in the form of gaining or attempting to gain an undue advantage on examinations or other academic work, including using unauthorized materials and methods or representing another's work as one's own, violating procedures pertaining to the academic process, violating or subverting requirements governing administration of examinations or other academic assignments, compromising the security of examinations or academic assignments, submitting an assignment that is the same as or substantially similar to one's own previously submitted work without explicit authorization of the instructor, engaging in other actions that compromise the integrity of the grading or evaluation process, deliberately furnishing false information to members of the university community in connection with their efforts to prevent, investigate, or enforce university requirements regarding academic dishonesty, forging, falsifying, or misusing university documents, records, identification cards, computers, or other resources so as to violate requirements regarding academic dishonesty, violating other university policies designed to assure that academic work conforms to requirements relating to academic integrity, or assisting or aiding another to engage in acts of academic dishonesty
• Misconduct affecting persons prohibiting fighting or other conduct that unreasonably endangers or inflicts physical injury upon another, threats that involve violation of restraining orders or no-contact orders imposed by government or campus authorities, stalking, or other activities that create a reasonable apprehension of physical or emotional harm to an individual following a request or order to desist, hazing that causes or permits an individual to engage in activities that subject that individual or others to risks of physical injury, mental distress, or personal indignities of a highly offensive nature, in connection with recruitment, initiation, or continued membership in a society, fraternity or sorority, club, or similar organized group, possessing or carrying any weapon or dangerous substance, whether openly or concealed, unless expressly authorized by university policies, operating a motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol, drugs, or other substances, or in a reckless manner so as to create a significant threat to members of the university community, engaging in disorderly, obscene, or recklessly dangerous conduct affecting university interests, students or other personnel, illegally using, possessing, manufacturing, selling, or delivering a controlled substance as defined by state or federal laws or applicable policies of the university, illegally possessing with intent to manufacture, sell, or deliver a controlled substance as defined by state or federal laws or applicable university policies, engaging in violent, forceful, threatening, intimidating, or disruptive conduct, or inciting others to engage in such individual or collective conduct, engaging in conduct, or inciting others to engage in conduct that improperly restrains freedom of movement, speech, assembly, or access to premises or activities by any individual who is a member or guest of the university community or that interferes with that individual's performance of legitimate activities or duties within the university, engaging in conduct within a university classroom that substantially disrupts the academic environment, misrepresenting oneself as another or otherwise adversely interfering with their credit, academic standing, privacy or personal information, misusing, removing, tampering with, or otherwise making less effective, equipment used in improving or protecting the safety of members of the university community, or assisting or aiding another to engage in these prohibited acts
• Conduct affecting property, prohibiting stealing, destroying, damaging, or misusing property belonging to the university or another individual or entity, violating university policies regarding use or management of resources including but not limited to computers, electronic resources, library resources, equipment, or supplies, forging, falsifying, or misusing documents, records, identification cards, computers, data, library materials, or other resources created, maintained, or used by the university or members of the university community, trespassing upon housing units, offices, classrooms, laboratories, or other facilities or unauthorized intrusion into electronic records owned or managed by the university or another member of the university community, or assisting or aiding another to engage in these prohibited acts
• Conduct affecting the university's integrity, prohibiting knowingly abusing a position of trust or responsibility within the university community, disregarding the Honor Code, interfering with the Honor Code's judicial procedures, refusing to identify oneself to a university official in pursuit of their duty, refusal to appear before university officials or disciplinary bodies when directed to do so, lying to the Honor Court or judicial officials in the discharge of their duties, violating the terms of disciplinary proceedings or of any sanction imposed, using the name of the university or the names of members or organizations in the university community without authorization, knowingly misrepresenting academic standing, performance, or accomplishments to gain an undue advantage, knowingly violating officially adopted university policies designed to protect the integrity and welfare of the university and members of the campus community, deliberately furnishing false or misleading information to university personnel acting in the exercise of their official duties, or assisting or aiding another to engage in these prohibited acts
• Sexual misconduct, including prohibiting dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, non-consensual sexual contact, stalking, sexual exploitation, sexual harassment constituting unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person to be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to a university education program or activity, complicity in these prohibited acts, and retaliation for participating in a sexual misconduct proceeding

UNC System Misconduct Sanctions

The student conduct codes of each UNC System member institution determine the sanctions for student misconduct. The UNC System does not have a system-wide policy articulating the authorized misconduct sanctions. A student facing misconduct charges must instead look to the student's own UNC System school's conduct codes. For example, UNC-Chapel Hill's Instrument of Student Judicial Governance requires the Honor Code officials imposing sanctions to look to the gravity of the offense, the value of experiential learning, the equitable treatment of same or similar offenses, and other compelling circumstances to determine the appropriate sanction. Academic sanctions may then include a failing grade, extra assignment, or other flexible measures. Behavioral sanctions may include drug or alcohol counseling and education, extra projects, community service, no-contact orders, and restitution. Any misconduct may also warrant a written warning, loss of university privileges, disciplinary probation, suspension, or expulsion. UNC-Chapel Hill's Instrument of Student Judicial Governance further provides a chart and other details suggesting specific sanctions.

UNC System Misconduct Appeals

The UNC System Board of Governors' policy on minimum standards for student disciplinary proceedings guarantees that an accused student who loses a misconduct hearing and suffers a sanction has a right to appeal those decisions. Under the Board of Governors' policy, the school must provide at least one level of administrative appeal. The Board of Governors' policy requires the campus discipline officials to describe the accused student's appeal rights in the written decision. If you suffer discipline, then you should promptly know your appeal rights. An appeal gives you a fair opportunity for an impartial review of the adverse decision. Retain national academic administrative attorney Joseph D. Lento and the expert team at the Lento Law Firm to perfect your winning appeal. Don't attempt an appeal of a suspension or expulsion on your own without the expert advocacy a winning appeal typically requires.

Alternative Relief Within the UNC System

Even if you have already overlooked or lost an appeal, you may have other opportunities to reverse your discipline and recover your UNC System education. UNC System institutions like UNC-Chapel Hill typically maintain an Office of University Counsel and possibly other, similar oversight offices. Complaining to those offices on your own won't likely win you any special relief. But national academic administrative attorney Joseph D. Lento has helped students nationwide gain special administrative relief from those oversight offices or their retained outside counsel. Attorney Lento is available to you to determine whether such special relief is available to you at your UNC System member institution.

Premier Academic Defense Attorney Available

National academic administrative attorney Joseph D. Lento is available to help you at your UNC System member school. Retain an expert academic administrative attorney whom you can trust to help you. Your UNC System education is worth preserving. Don't give up your dream. Attorney Lento and the expert team at the Lento Law Firm have helped hundreds of students in North Carolina and nationwide defend and defeat college and university misconduct charges. Retain premier academic administrative attorney Joseph D. Lento and the expert team at the Lento Law Firm. Call 888-535-3686 to schedule a consultation or use the online service.