Law Schools

ABA Is Still Cracking Down On Law Schools That Admit Students Who Seem Incapable Of Graduating, Passing Bar Exam

Which law schools will be the next to face the ABA’s wrath?

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The American Bar Association is on a roll this week. Shortly after announcing that Lincoln Memorial’s Duncan School of Law wasn’t keeping up with certain accreditation standards comes notice that yet another law school finds itself “significantly out of compliance” with important accreditation standards.

The institution that finds itself in trouble with the ABA today is Golden Gate University School of Law. As reported by the ABA Journal, Golden Gate is out of compliance with several accreditation standards. Specifically, Golden Gate was found to be in violation of Standard 501(b) and Interpretations 501-1, 501-2 and 501-3, which require that law schools have “[s]ound admissions policies and practices,” do not have “cumulative non-transfer attrition rate above 20 percent for a class,” and admit only applicants who “appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar,” have suitable “academic and admission test credentials.”

More than 30 percent of Golden Gate’s first-year class left the school through non-academic attrition in 2017, and only 48.86 percent of Golden Gate graduates who took the bar exam for the first time in 2017 passed. Here are the entering student admissions profiles for Golden Gate since 2010. As you can see, students’ LSAT scores have gotten lower and lower in the wake of the recession:

Golden Gate must submit a report on its progress to the ABA by January 15, 2019, and appear before the accreditation committee in May 2019 for a hearing. If the law school’s report demonstrates compliance with the accreditation standards its run afoul of, the hearing may be canceled.

Which law schools will be the next to face the ABA’s wrath? There are more than a handful of schools that could use the possible loss of accreditation as an incentive to improve the quality of their entering classes, and thus, the lives of their graduates. Only time will tell which law schools are on the chopping block.

Golden Gate does not meet admissions standard, says ABA accreditation committee [ABA Journal]

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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