Boston University Student Defense Lawyer
Boston University is large enough, and layered enough, that the first useful question in any case is not what happened but which BU you are dealing with. An undergraduate integrity allegation in the College of Arts and Sciences, a professionalism referral at the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, an academic standing decision at the School of Law, and a clinical failure in a health sciences program run under different rules, before different bodies, with different consequences.
Overview
BU is a private university in Boston, so there is no constitutional due process claim: the Fourteenth Amendment reaches state action, and BU is not the state. The governing relationship is contractual. The student handbook, the academic conduct code of your school or college, the catalog, and the program handbook are the promises BU made about how it would treat a matter like yours, and the case is built on whether it kept them. That framework is on the breach of contract against universities page.
Private status does not remove federal law. Title IX, Section 504, the ADA, and FERPA reach BU because it receives federal funding, and those obligations run independently of the handbook. The strongest cases usually sit where the two diverge — where the school followed its own rules but not the federal standard, or wrote a rule it then declined to follow.
Where BU cases come from
Undergraduate academic conduct allegations arrive in volume from large courses using similarity and AI-detection screening, and from group work where the collaboration rules were never written down. Conduct matters run the usual range of alcohol, housing, and organizational discipline. The professional schools are where the stakes change. The Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and the Goldman School of Dental Medicine generate promotions, remediation, and professionalism decisions that follow a student into residency and licensure. The School of Law generates academic standing and conduct matters that a bar character and fitness committee will read. Sargent College and the university’s other clinical programs generate placement and evaluation failures that put licensure eligibility at risk.
Which process you are in matters
An academic conduct committee, a school-level academic standing or promotions committee, the university Title IX process, and a professionalism review are separate systems with separate deadlines and separate decision-makers, and a professional student can be in more than one at once. Answering the wrong one first is costly, because a statement given in the lighter process becomes evidence in the heavier one. Identify your track: academic misconduct, Title IX, professionalism and fitness, or academic dismissal and suspension.
What to do first
Pull the governing document from BU’s own site — the academic conduct code of your specific school or college, or your program handbook, not a general university statement — and use the edition in effect for your cohort. Do not rely on a summary, including this one; BU’s schools revise these documents on their own schedules. Read the syllabus or course policy alongside it, because a syllabus that permitted collaboration, editing help, or tool use can dispose of an allegation immediately.
Then calendar the deadline in writing, request your file, and preserve drafts, version history, messages, and notes before they are gone. Do not sit for an interview until you understand what the university claims to have. A separate charge for dishonesty during the process is common in these systems and is frequently easier to prove than the underlying allegation.
What I can help with
- Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
- Helping you prepare your account, your documents, and your questions
- Testing whether BU followed its own published procedures
- Scrutinizing software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
- Assisting with the written response and appeal, to the extent the policy permits
- Serving as your advisor where the process allows it
- Negotiating sanction terms, notations, and disclosure language
What a lawyer may actually do in your case depends on that school’s policy. Some processes allow counsel to participate, some allow a non-participating advisor, and some allow no outside person at all. Reading the current policy is the first step, and it determines what form the assistance can take.
Common questions
I am at the medical, dental, or law school. How is that different?
The audience changes. Professionalism and academic standing language in a professional program travels into the dean’s letter or MSPE, into residency and clerkship applications, into bar character and fitness review, and into initial licensure. The response has to be written for those later readers rather than only for the committee in front of you. See medical school dismissal and remediation and law school dismissal and academic standing.
Can a lawyer come to my BU hearing?
It depends on the process and the current policy of the school within the university handling your case. Some tracks permit an advisor of choice who may be an attorney, some permit an advisor who may not speak, and some permit none. Where counsel cannot participate, the work shifts to the file and the written submission, which is where most of these cases are decided in any event.
The charge is based on a similarity or AI-detection report. Is that enough?
Standing alone it should not be, and the response has to engage the specific output rather than deny the conclusion. These tools produce a statistical result, not a finding of copying, and they react to template language, permitted reuse, technical writing conventions, and non-native English phrasing. Your own drafting record is usually the strongest answer.
Other Massachusetts schools: Northeastern, Boston College, Harvard, and Tufts. The full list is on the Massachusetts student defense index.
This is general information about the matters I handle and the law that applies to them. It is not legal advice about your situation, and the law in this area can change. For advice on your matter, start with the Full Read + Game Plan — your entire file read, straight answers, and exactly what to do next, in what order.
This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.
Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is admitted in Florida and its federal courts, not in Massachusetts; Massachusetts matters are handled through the framework described on the nationwide practice page — federal-law assessment, campus-process support where the school’s policy permits an advisor, and association with local counsel or pro hac vice admission where required.