A week ago, Above the Law gathered a choir, incense, and candles, and gave praise to the kind lord and preached the good word. It had nothing to do with Jesus, but rather the American Bar Association’s announcement that the ABA is in the middle of a review of law school accreditation criteria. The big news?
The most significant change in the Standards for Approval of Law Schools is likely to be a move away from evaluating law schools on the basis of criteria that measure “input”—such things as faculty size, budget and physical plant. Instead, the Legal Education Section would evaluate law schools more heavily on the basis of “outcome” measures. The essential difference is that outcome measures would focus on what students actually take away from their educational experience at a particular law school rather than what the school teaches, and how, explained E. Christopher Johnson Jr.
This is extraordinary news. To be clear, most of the cynical criticisms are right: this is going to take years to do the review, the criteria have to be adopted, wake me when there’s real change. But the fact that the ABA is even considering that there needs to be a major change in how law schools are evaluated is good news, worthy of the praise that Above the Law has heaped on this news.
One big question is whether the real change that the cynics are waiting for will include fewer law schools. Anecdotal evidence suggests that law schools are graduating lots of J.D.s, but are struggling to graduate practicing lawyers, in two ways. Graduates from law school are struggling to find legal employment (and that was before the economy went to hell), and graduates from law school aren’t prepared to practice.
Outcome-based review criteria will have to include employment numbers as a major factor. Which means a couple things. First, we’ll finally get true employment numbers, not employment numbers buoyed by “research fellowships.” But more importantly, perhaps accreditation will be used to find law schools that are preparing lawyers, not just churning out J.D.s, and align the number of them with market demand.
I believe this will lead to less law schools and smaller law schools, which ultimately is a good thing. The Shark noted how accreditation criteria now drives up the cost of a legal eduction; schools need to keep expanding and hiring staff to keep up. To meet that cost, schools need to bring in a lot of tuition dollars. Add to that the fact that law schools, with each 1L professor typically teaching 50-100 students, are seen as cash cows for universities. So we have news like the fact that Cooley is opening another campus to add to the 1200 J.D.s they pump out each year.
So in the hopefully-not-to-distant future, a school like Cooley will not need to prove that they can house, feed, and entertain 3600 students, but that they can give each of those students a useful education and a pretty good shot at a job. And if Cooley cannot, they should not be allowed to keep the badge of ABA accreditation.
What do you think? Do the new accreditation criteria make sense? Will it lead to fewer and/or smaller law schools? Let’s us know below.
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p style=”clear: both”>In this post: Sweeping Accreditation Review May Prompt ‘Sea Change’ in Law School Evals [ABA Journal] (via Above the Law) ABA’s accreditation review process may signal it’s finally heeding criticism. [The Shark] Great News! Cooley Is Opening Another Law School Campus. Yay! [Above the Law]
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