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July 13, 2006
Books v. Electronic Access in Law School Accreditation
I was struck by this reason given in press reports of the ABA's decision to defer accreditation of the new Charleston School of Law.
The ABA did not give the two-year-old school provisional accreditation last month as it had expected. Instead, the only accrediting body for U.S. law schools asked the new Charleston school for more information about its: governance, library resources and diversity....
Addressing the ABA’s third area of concern — its reliance on electronic library resources — Gershon said the school has spent $10,000 to purchase bound copies of the legal codes of several states to satisfy the ABA.
Can that really be right -- with full electronic access to state codes, does a law school's accreditation (or re-accreditation, for that matter) really turn on spending tens of thousands of dollars on bound copies of state codes? See the relevant Standards for Approval of Law Schools:
Standard 606. COLLECTION (a) The law library shall provide a core collection of essential materials accessible in the law library.
Interpretation 606-5: A law library core collection shall include the following:
(2) all federal codes and session laws, and at least one current annotated code for each state;
Interpretation 606-2: The appropriate mixture of collection formats depends on the needs of the library and its clientele. A collection that consists of a single format may violate Standard 606.
Another press report notes that "The ABA wants the school to balance its investment in virtual resources with traditional paper."
July 13, 2006 in Law School | Permalink
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Comments
This seems reasonable in that not all law firms and especially solo practitioners have unlimitted access to electronic documents (as is the case now in law school). Although I do almost all of my work online, I do appreciate the fact that I have access to paper resources so as to become familiar with them.
A compromoise by the ABA could be to only require access to paper annotated statutes for the surrounding states around the law school but not all 50. Even for a national law school, this would still expose the student to a fair amount of paper resources.
Posted by: RichardZ.com | Jul 13, 2006 1:48:52 PM
I must say that the ABA slammed Whittier College School of Law (my alma mater) a few years ago. They encouraged Whittier to move from Los Angeles proper to Orange County. Whittier did. However, when Whittier's bar pass rates declined, apparently largely as a result of the administrative/student body disruption caused by the move, the ABA threw them into a probationary status. Thanks a lot for your support, ABA...
Posted by: Larry | Jul 13, 2006 3:08:51 PM
What a backward view the ABA takes. Electronic document access and court filing is here in a big way. And the ABA can't turn back the hands of time.
ABA concerns over lawyers and others who don't have access to electronic documents would be better served by a rule requiring law libraries to provide a certain amount of free computer access to patrons who lack their own.
Posted by: Jake | Jul 13, 2006 7:48:15 PM
I am surprised this law school didn't see this coming. To date, ABA has only given lip service to being format neutral when it comes to what the Association considers an academic law library's core collection; print remains first amoung equals.
With respect to the ownership v. access issue, the school to watch will be Drexel.
Posted by: Joe | Jul 13, 2006 7:51:56 PM
Change comes verrrry slowly to the ABA. The move toward true "format-neutral" standards is inevitable -- we just need to do away with the second sentence of Interpretation 606-2. Big change is coming to law libraries, and this is just that awkward stage when the profession is coming to an acceptance of that fact.
Posted by: Gail | Jul 14, 2006 10:57:40 AM
