American Bar Association / ABA, Law Schools

ABA May Be Stripped Of Power To Accredit New Law Schools

The ABA's practices have finally struck a government agency as crazy.

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abaThere are currently more than 200 law schools in the United States with varying degrees of accreditation from the American Bar Association (200 fully accredited law schools, and 3 provisionally accredited law schools). Since the law school crisis began sometime between 2007 and 2008 — with tens of thousands of deeply indebted recent law school graduates unable to secure full-time, long-term employment as lawyers — the ABA has granted accreditation to 12 additional law schools and/or merged law schools. The fact that the ABA has continued to accredit law schools during this time of great upheaval in the world of legal education has seemed crazy to us for years, and as we mentioned earlier today, the ABA’s practices have finally struck a government agency as crazy.

As first reported by Inside Higher Ed, last week, the U.S. Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity recommended that the ABA be stripped of its ability to accredit new law schools for one year’s time.

Most notably, the panel on Wednesday rebuked the American Bar Association, in part for its lack of attention to student achievement.

The ABA accredits law schools, some of them freestanding institutions. NACIQI, after three contentious votes, recommended that the department suspend the association’s ability to accredit new members for a year. The panel said the ABA had failed to implement its student achievement standards and probationary sanctions, while also falling short on its audit process and analysis of graduates’ debt levels.

Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education, said the finding followed a department staff report that listed minor technical deficiencies with the association’s accrediting process.

Currier said the following in a written statement on behalf of the ABA: “The council believes that it is operating in compliance with the recognition criteria, but will make any changes to its accreditation standards and rules of procedures that are necessary to stay in good standing with NACIQI and the Department of Education.”

If the American Bar Association does, in fact, lose its ability to accredit law schools, even if only for one year’s time, we sadly cannot be sure about the true number of prospective law students that will have been saved from the perils of attending a newly accredited law school in these tough times for law school graduates; but, if even one prospective law student is spared, then NACIQI’s actions will not have been in vain.

Accreditor on Life Support [Inside Higher Ed]
Is the ABA on Verge of Losing Law School Accreditation? [Big Law Business]

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Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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