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student conduct violations shanlon wu

A Mother and Father’s Day Letter About Student Conduct Violations

By college student defense
  “Is it too late?”   All too often, I get this question from a parent whose college student son or daughter has already been suspended or expelled for a Title IX violation, plagiarism accusation, or other student conduct code or academic honor code violation.  While it might seem obvious that a lawyer is needed if your son or daughter is accused of campus sexual assault or cheating, the reality is both students and families forego getting college student defense legal advice.  Why?  Here are some of the reasons parents and students give for failing to seek legal advice for a university discipline hearing: We Thought the School Would Be Fair Fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, but consider this:  fair “trials,” “legal proceedings,” and “investigations” are conducted by lawyers, judges (who are lawyers) and professional criminal investigators (police and other law enforcement).  These professionals have…
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The Education of a College Student Defense Attorney—Chapter 2

By college student defense
The First Case: Parallel Proceedings My first college student defense client was a university student who had been arrested for assaulting a taxicab driver. To my surprise, the case quickly evolved into a “parallel proceedings” case. I had been familiar with parallel proceedings in the context of white-collar defense where a corporate executive or a corporation can face simultaneous criminal and civil investigations—with a fraud case, for example, being investigated criminally by the United States Department of Justice and, simultaneously, being investigated civilly by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). I did not expect, however, the same situation to occur in what originally appeared to be a straightforward criminal defense case. The criminal charge for my student defense client was “simple assault.” As a misdemeanor, simple assault carries a maximum jail sentence of no more than six months, though that would rarely be imposed on a first-time offender like my client. The university student conduct code violation allegation that followed…
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shan wu defending college students college student defense attorney shanlon wu

The Education of a College Student Defense Attorney | Chapter 1

By college student defense
I am a college student defense attorney. My clients are college and university students accused of violating their school’s conduct and academic honor codes, students who require criminal defense against the criminal charges that often arise with school conduct violations, and students who need help bringing complaints either in the university system or the criminal justice system. My team and I are good at what we do. In 2015, we won every campus sexual assault defense case we undertook. And campus sexual assault cases are very difficult cases to win. Ask around. But it’s been an education. And an evolution. I started out on the other side—as a prosecutor. For eleven years, I served as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., where I tried and investigated cases ranging from shoplifting to political corruption. For a number of those years, I specialized in prosecuting sex crimes against adults and children. My…
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