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accreditation
A year ago, I wrote a post on a then-proposed alteration to one of the ABA's accreditation standards. The effect of the interpretation change has since been moderated by the ABA after much complaint, and the actual impact is likely to be much less pronounced. Nonetheless, the post continues to be the single most popular on the site.
I only mention this because of an interesting comment posted today:
yea, the whittie law schools make it -- while the others that give minorities a chance like WSU fail.
Racist pig!
Now, I assume "whittie" is "whitey." I first read it to be Whittier, which was, of course, heavily impacted. I'll suggest the poster probably doesn't belong in law school anywhere. Others will have more choices, and the actual interpretation was nowhere near as harsh.
The National Law Journal reports that the ABA is likely to approve the interpretation changes to rule 301(a) I previously wrote about:
Amid pressure from the U.S. Department of Education, the American Bar Association is poised to tighten a rule that requires law schools to show that they are graduating students who can pass the bar exam.
The ABA is expected to approve the controversial measure at its meeting in Los Angeles from Feb. 6 through Feb. 12, when its House of Delegates will consider a recommendation from the ABA's legal education section.
There have been no changes to the proposed interpretation, so far as I can tell. As a result, I post now only to update the table with 2007 numbers. Not much that is news here, other than to note Golden Gate University spent the year out of the danger zone.
| School | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
| CalWestern | 63.58% | 66.17% | 54.77% | 61.25% | 68.51% | 69.20% |
| Chapman | 64.58% | 58.82% | 62.22% | 60.48% | 60.13% | 69.94% |
| GGU | 51.61% | 39.00% | 30.34% | 43.50% | 55.17% | 68.40% |
| Hastings | 76.55% | 77.51% | 78.45% | 83.69% | 83.38% | 80.00% |
| Loyola | 67.62% | 68.87% | 66.21% | 72.32% | 73.73% | 77.63% |
| McGeorge | 67.63% | 67.91% | 68.16% | 63.36% | 73.12% | 72.76% |
| Pepperdine | 59.14% | 69.94% | 73.61% | 72.94% | 83.96% | 77.42% |
| SCU | 67.80% | 67.29% | 63.37% | 65.26% | 78.11% | 75.10% |
| Southwestern | 67.82% | 56.25% | 56.19% | 66.55% | 65.77% | 63.37% |
| Stanford | 85.44% | 92.00% | 89.80% | 88.51% | 87.85% | 94.44% |
| TJSL | 46.15% | 47.47% | 40.00% | 36.99% | 50.00% | 57.79% |
| UCB | 85.09% | 90.45% | 86.17% | 84.77% | 84.91% | 82.38% |
| UCD | 74.51% | 80.52% | 74.42% | 73.81% | 74.71% | 83.33% |
| UCLA | 91.82% | 89.08% | 86.41% | 87.45% | 85.66% | 85.11% |
| USC | 80.23% | 80.65% | 78.61% | 81.91% | 85.42% | 87.73% |
| USD | 72.94% | 81.10% | 68.12% | 79.92% | 78.20% | 76.79% |
| USF | 64.24% | 64.94% | 64.40% | 73.71% | 72.90% | 82.98% |
| Whittier | 41.18% | 29.65% | 38.13% | 38.89% | 55.51% | 50.85% |
| WSU | 43.33% | 44.34% | 45.54% | 26.32% | 28.87% | 37.78% |
| ABA Rate | 67.94% | 68.19% | 66.24% | 67.45% | 70.31% | 71.15% |
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...
Update: 2007 numbers here.
One of the most critical things law schools face, should a school choose to face it, is the American Bar Association's accreditation process. There are 196 ABA-approved law schools in the country. In order to gain approval, law schools must meet a number of standards. Some of these standards address number of class hours, full-time faculty, etc. Others address student quality, or, perhaps more accurately, the level of quality of the law school education based on student metrics. A huge metric is Standard 301(a):
(a) A law school shall maintain an educational program that prepares its students for admission to the bar, and effective and responsible participation in the legal profession.
On June 19, 2007, the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar introduced a new, much tougher, interpretation of standard 301(a). After considerable back-and-forth, the current ratified recommendation could have substantial impact on law schools in California.
This is not a complete description of the new requirements; that can be found in the documents. Some of this information is not readily available. However, the primary metric, bar passage rate, is made available by the California State Bar. And so, for current, fully approved schools, the new interpretation would roughly require the following for continued approval:
- Over the preceding five years of bar exam administrations, the first-time bar exam pass rate of each law school must meet a state-based rate for at least 3 of those years.
- The principal state-based rate is the bar passage rate of first-time bar exam takers who have graduated from ABA-approved law schools minus 10%. That is, schools must have a bar passage rate no more than 10 percentage points below the state average in 3 of the preceding 5 years.
I began wondering about what impact would this have on current ABA-accredited schools in California. More importantly, I wondered how bad the ripple effect of schools dropping out of the approved list could be moving up the chain.
The end result: As many as five current ABA-approved law schools could lose their accreditations. Four schools (Golden Gate University School of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Whittier Law School, and Western State University College of Law) would immediately fail to meet this standard:
| School | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 |
| CalWestern | 63.58% | 66.17% | 54.77% | 61.25% | 68.51% |
| Chapman | 64.58% | 58.82% | 62.22% | 60.48% | 60.13% |
| GGU | 51.61% | 39.00% | 30.34% | 43.50% | 55.17% |
| Hastings | 76.55% | 77.51% | 78.45% | 83.69% | 83.38% |
| Loyola | 67.62% | 68.87% | 66.21% | 72.32% | 73.73% |
| McGeorge | 67.63% | 67.91% | 68.16% | 63.36% | 73.12% |
| Pepperdine | 59.14% | 69.94% | 73.61% | 72.94% | 83.96% |
| SCU | 67.80% | 67.29% | 63.37% | 65.26% | 78.11% |
| Southwestern | 67.82% | 56.25% | 56.19% | 66.55% | 65.77% |
| Stanford | 85.44% | 92.00% | 89.80% | 88.51% | 87.85% |
| TJSL | 46.15% | 47.47% | 40.00% | 36.99% | 50.00% |
| UCB | 85.09% | 90.45% | 86.17% | 84.77% | 84.91% |
| UCD | 74.51% | 80.52% | 74.42% | 73.81% | 74.71% |
| UCLA | 91.82% | 89.08% | 86.41% | 87.45% | 85.66% |
| USC | 80.23% | 80.65% | 78.61% | 81.91% | 85.42% |
| USD | 72.94% | 81.10% | 68.12% | 79.92% | 78.20% |
| USF | 64.24% | 64.94% | 64.40% | 73.71% | 72.90% |
| Whittier | 41.18% | 29.65% | 38.13% | 38.89% | 55.51% |
| WSU | 43.33% | 44.34% | 45.54% | 26.32% | 28.87% |
| ABA Rate | 67.94% | 68.19% | 66.24% | 67.45% | 70.31% |
But the fallout may be greater. The loss of those schools bumps the ABA passage rate up, which causes some collateral damage, taking out Chapman University School of Law:
| School | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 |
| CalWestern | 63.58% | 66.17% | 54.77% | 61.25% | 68.51% |
| Chapman | 64.58% | 58.82% | 62.22% | 60.48% | 60.13% |
| GGU | 51.61% | 39.00% | 30.34% | 43.50% | 55.17% |
| Hastings | 76.55% | 77.51% | 78.45% | 83.69% | 83.38% |
| Loyola | 67.62% | 68.87% | 66.21% | 72.32% | 73.73% |
| McGeorge | 67.63% | 67.91% | 68.16% | 63.36% | 73.12% |
| Pepperdine | 59.14% | 69.94% | 73.61% | 72.94% | 83.96% |
| SCU | 67.80% | 67.29% | 63.37% | 65.26% | 78.11% |
| Southwestern | 67.82% | 56.25% | 56.19% | 66.55% | 65.77% |
| Stanford | 85.44% | 92.00% | 89.80% | 88.51% | 87.85% |
| TJSL | 46.15% | 47.47% | 40.00% | 36.99% | 50.00% |
| UCB | 85.09% | 90.45% | 86.17% | 84.77% | 84.91% |
| UCD | 74.51% | 80.52% | 74.42% | 73.81% | 74.71% |
| UCLA | 91.82% | 89.08% | 86.41% | 87.45% | 85.66% |
| USC | 80.23% | 80.65% | 78.61% | 81.91% | 85.42% |
| USD | 72.94% | 81.10% | 68.12% | 79.92% | 78.20% |
| USF | 64.24% | 64.94% | 64.40% | 73.71% | 72.90% |
| Whittier | 41.18% | 29.65% | 38.13% | 38.89% | 55.51% |
| WSU | 43.33% | 44.34% | 45.54% | 26.32% | 28.87% |
| ABA Rate | 70.28% | 71.31% | 69.40% | 70.96% | 73.37% |
It's not hard to imagine a series of upcoming lawsuits, as well as some of these schools turning into clones of the non-ABA-approved law schools in California, which tend to focus largely on teaching to the bar exam. Things could get very messy.
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