Smith Moore Leatherwood helps colleges and universities successfully address a variety of legal challenges. We strive to understand each school's unique goals and values so that we can better anticipate and address the issues affecting them.
Smith Moore Leatherwood serves as counsel to the Atlantic Coast Conference. In that capacity, we defended the ACC in litigation brought by several Big East universities seeking to challenge the ACC's decisions to expand its membership.
Several of our attorneys have served as higher education faculty members, administrators, or board members, and their insight enables us to address legal challenges from an insider's perspective. Smith Moore Leatherwood attorneys work with colleges, universities, athletics conferences and foundations and help them deal successfully with issues in areas such as:
- Academic freedom
- Accreditation
- Admissions
- Athletics
- Bayh-Dole Act
- Campus security
- Copyrights
- Corporate Governance
- Diversity and Multiculturalism
- Ethics in research and scholarship
- Faculty, staff, and student disabilities
- Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
- Financial Aid
- Honor codes, handbooks, and codes of student conduct
- Patents
- Planned/deferred giving
- Real estate
- Religious affiliations
- Student discipline
- Tax-exemption qualification
- Tax-exempt financing
- Technology Transfer and Licensing
- Tenure and faculty employment issues
- Title VII and Title IX compliance
- Trademarks