In my popular post on the proposed new ABA standard 301(a) interpretation, a couple of the comments on my post came down fairly hard against the schools that are threatened by the ABA standard. In those places where the post was posted, some of the commentary has been much more animated. I didn't add much of my own perspectives to the post; that really wasn't my intent.

Today, a new post from what has become a low traffic blawg spawned me to write some more. Eve-Marie wrote A Friend’s Story:

Please read this Woman’s Day article. It’s about a friend of mine.

We need a lot more lawyers like her, and a lot less of the other kind.

She's right, of course. The legal profession (probably any profession) can use people like Claudia Rodriguez. It's a good story, and I recommend it.

What does this have to do with the proposed ABA standard interpretation? Well, Whittier, along with a handful of other law schools, might not survive it. What the story makes clear is that there may very well need to be a place where hard working students can go to get a legal education. Maybe the ABA needs to do more of what it's been doing -- regulating the quality of education -- rather than what the Department of Education seems to want it to do, which is regulating bar passage rates.

Stories of unlikely attorneys abound, and many would not have ever had the chance were it not for the existence of schools that could take a chance on their low numbers. Large chunks of my classmates won't pass the bar exam on the first try. Should the school, then, be preventing those folks from having a shot? How would we determine who they are?

I understand both arguments. On one hand, it's important that people in a program that is accredited to train them to be lawyers should be able to pass the single-most important exam that a lawyer must take. How can the accrediting body possibly be serious accrediting a program that can't accomplish that goal reliably? On the other hand...