University at Buffalo Student Defense Lawyer
Most University at Buffalo students who contact me have just received a letter: an academic integrity charge, a student conduct referral, a Title IX notice, or word from a professional program that academic standing or professionalism is in question. UB is a large public research university with an academic health center attached, which means it runs several separate discipline systems at once — and the one you are in determines the deadline, the decision-maker, and how much help I am allowed to give.
Overview
Because UB is part of the State University of New York, the Fourteenth Amendment applies. Under Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), a disciplinary suspension requires notice and a real opportunity to respond, and longer separations require more. The limit on that principle is Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978): decisions the university can fairly call academic receive far more deference than disciplinary findings, which is why the label on your case is worth contesting when it is wrong. UB is also bound by its own published procedures, and New York’s Article 78 review is the state-court route for challenging a final university determination — on a short clock. The public-institution framework is set out on the due process at public institutions page.
Where UB cases come from
The volume comes from large courses where similarity software and AI-detection tools generate integrity referrals, often on nothing more than a score. The higher-stakes files come from the health-sciences side. UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences runs its own promotion and professionalism review, and the University at Buffalo School of Law — the only law school in the SUNY system — applies its own academic standing rules. A finding in those programs follows the student into residency applications or bar character-and-fitness review. Those matters run through medical school dismissal and remediation and law school dismissal and academic standing. Conduct charges arising from housing, student organizations, and off-campus incidents round out the docket.
Which process you are in matters
UB routes integrity allegations, conduct charges, Title IX complaints, and academic standing decisions through different tracks, each with its own procedures and appeal windows. A dismissal that is disciplinary in substance but carries an academic label deserves scrutiny on that basis alone, because the academic label buys the university deference it may not have earned. Identify your track before you write anything: academic integrity, student conduct, Title IX, or academic dismissal.
What to do first
Pull the current version of the code or policy cited in your letter from UB’s own site rather than relying on a summary, including this one. Read your syllabus alongside it — a syllabus that permitted collaboration or editing assistance can answer an allegation outright. Then calendar the deadline in writing, request your file, and preserve your drafting history, messages, and notes before they are gone. Do not sit for an interview until you understand what the university claims to have; a statement given blind is how a defensible case becomes a difficult one.
What I can help with
- Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
- Preparing your account, your documents, and your questions
- Testing whether UB followed its own published procedures
- Scrutinizing software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
- 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 tracks 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 takes.
Common questions
Can a lawyer speak at a UB hearing?
It depends on the track and the current policy. Where counsel cannot participate, the work shifts to the file and the written submission — which is where most of these cases are won or lost anyway.
Will an integrity finding appear on my transcript?
That depends on the sanction and the notation rules in effect. Separately, transfer, graduate, and licensing applications often ask about findings whether or not anything shows on the transcript, so the disclosure question is not the same as the transcript question.
I was dismissed from a UB graduate or professional program. Is that a discipline case?
Usually it is framed as academic, which changes the standard of review. The response is to test whether the program followed its own progression rules and whether the record supports the stated reason — and to negotiate the language that will be disclosed later. A flat-fee record review is how I usually start.
Nearby New York schools: SUNY Upstate Medical University, University of Rochester, and Syracuse University. The full list is on the New York 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 New York; New York 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.