ABA Accreditation Committee

The law school is growing.

The school's only good argument is that the ABA is bad at its job.

The ABA is going after poorly performing law schools and more may be in the crosshairs.

Finally! The ABA tries to do something about the continued abysmal bar passage rates around the country.

* “NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Dem Senate candidate and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland: Scalia’s death ‘happened at a good time.'” [Instapundit]

* A Skull and Bones society for top NYC law firms? Professor Rick Swedloff discusses a secretive group whose membership includes some of Biglaw’s biggest names. [SSRN]

* A notable new petition (filed by Professor Orin Kerr and Marcia Hofmann) in a high-profile appeal about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Donald Trump’s infamous “Second Amendment” quip is protected by the First Amendment — but just barely, according to Professor Noah Feldman. [Bloomberg View via How Appealing]

* Jury consultant Roy Futterman of DOAR wonders: is concern about prejudicing jurors actually driving them to using the internet for decision-making? [Big Law Business]

* Could the ABA someday lose its power to accredit law schools? Steven J. Harper thinks its day of reckoning is coming closer. [The Belly of the Beast]

* Five years later, and one of them enrolled at Yale Law, the kids of Tiger Mom, Amy Chua, plan to raise their own children the same way. [Today]

* Rome self-censors for a state visit from Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. How, exactly, was this a good idea? [Popehat]

* Should the ABA change accreditation standards to prevent students with little chance of actually passing the bar examination from attending law school in the first place? [TaxProf Blog]

* Missouri paid its executioners $250,000 in cash. That doesn’t seem shady AT ALL. [BuzzFeed]

* The whole Ammon Bundy debacle is teaching people damn the consequences. [Lawyers, Guns and Money]

* If you need to scale a courthouse in order to get a selfie with lady liberty, just don’t do it, you could wind up in jail. [KWTX]

* What does Rudy Giuliani really think about Preet Bharara? Plus why he loves being a lawyer. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=9yGt3MF4Sn4

Sooner or later -- probably sooner -- this is an issue that this law school will have to come to grips with.

What is to be done about low bar exam passage rates at historically black law schools?

Calling a law school's accreditation into question is really just a "minor mistake"...

Umass Law moves one step closer to accreditation...

It's not clear the ABA can pass the LSAT. Their logical reasoning for picking a new legal education czar seems weak.

We’ve previously written about all of the problems that have befallen Duncan School of Law’s hopes for provisional accreditation by the American Bar Association. With motions pending in Duncan Law’s antitrust lawsuit against the ABA, perhaps the school thought that it could enjoy a momentary respite from all of the negative media attention it’s been […]

Is it right for a law school to send its students to tolerance camp? Mandatory tolerance camp? Mandatory tolerance camp, where unexcused absences will result in an intolerant notation placed in students’ permanent records? When I came across the story of a state law school holding a “mandatory” diversity seminar that students were required to […]

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.” In contrast, Thomas Jefferson School of Law does not tremble before the toothless authority of the ABA. In fact, the school feels free to respond to utter institutional FAIL with peevish blame-shifting. Either […]

* The recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the CFPB could get tricky — not because Republicans are outraged by recess appointments (much like Democrats are outraged by obstructionist filibusters), but because Congress isn’t technically in recess, due to the sham sessions Congress has been running. [WSJ Law Blog] * Milbank, if you’re going […]

Over the weekend, the New York Times unleashed a feature article about the role of the American Bar Association in keeping the cost of legal education absurdly high. The school profiled in that article was Duncan Law School, which was seeking provisional accreditation from the ABA. The article came out in print on Sunday. Everybody talked about it on Monday. And today, on Tuesday, the ABA denied Duncan its provisional accreditation....

I’m really enjoying the newfound interest from the New York Times about the state of legal education. Times reporter David Segal seems genuinely interested in recording the growing tragedy of American law schools. Concern from mainstream media is great, but the proposed solutions are a little bit scary. Last month, Segal Slate explored the possibility […]

Critics of the current legal-education model, including my colleague Elie Mystal, have accused the American Bar Association of failing to uphold sufficiently stringent accreditation standards. ABA-accredited law schools proliferate, even though thousands of law school graduates find themselves unemployed or underemployed. The ABA was recently chided by the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and […]

Boasting four campuses and more than 15,000 graduates in Michigan isn't enough for Thomas M. Cooley Law School. The nation's #2 law school needs MOAR CAMPUSES (and unemployed graduates). So, yet another Cooley Law campus will soon be invading a state near you on the east coast....

About a week ago, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to the American Bar Association, essentially asking the organization to explain its lack of institutional control over law schools. Well, the ABA has now responded. If you’ve been following the ABA closely, you’re not going to be surprised by the response. It’s the usual […]