Law Professors Ask ABA To Shelve Bar Passage Accreditation Requirement During Pandemic

Karen Sloan (Law.com), Law Professors Ask ABA to Shelve Bar Passage Rule During Pandemic:

A law professor group has renewed calls for the American Bar Association to suspend enforcement of its bar passage standard for law schools, arguing that the bar exam is in disarray amid COVID-19 and that schools should not be held to the same measures during the pandemic.

The Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), in a letter to the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, argues that the current bar passage standard is unworkable at a time when states are taking divergent approaches to attorney licensing. Some have adopted emergency diploma privileges that allow law graduates to skip the test, others are administering abbreviated online tests, and some are sticking with a traditional two-day, in person exam. ...

The bar passage standard—called Standard 316—requires that at least 75% of a law school’s graduates pass the bar within two years. If they miss that mark, they risk losing their ABA accreditation.