Changes may come for future ABA accreditation

Printer-friendly versionAn American Bar Association panel stated this week that law schools of the future will be judged not by what they teach but by what the students know and understand when they graduate; this, in turn, has generated a collective “hallelujah” from law student bloggers and law professors alike.  Previously, law schools have tended to put more emphasis on what is taught, leaving little room to gauge what the students actually take away from their experiences.  This has garnered complaints for years over the fact that law students didn’t gain many “real world” applications from studying strictly by the books. However, perhaps it is a little soon for the celebration.  The writers at The Shark blog point out that new accreditations mean a rampant effort by universities to meet these standards—the cost of education rises with the need for more staff and better buildings.  This could ultimately lead to an increase in problems law schools are already faced with: limited enrollment of low-income and minority students, innovation being stifled in order to meet all the standards, and waiting through the process of the ABA accreditation standards review. -Caryn Back to Equal Justice Works Blog