Law Deans Oppose Proposal To Accredit Online Law Schools

Reuters, Law Deans Oppose Proposal to Accredit Online Law Schools:

Deans from 26 law schools have asked the American Bar Association to pull back on a proposal to extend its seal of approval to fully online law schools, saying more employment and bar pass data for graduates of online and hybrid programs is needed before making the change.

In a public comment on the proposal, deans including those from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law; the University of Houston Law Center; and Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law wrote that the arm of the ABA that oversees law schools hasn’t made clear why it should modify its longstanding policy of accrediting only law schools with a brick-and-mortar location. The public comment period opened Jan. 23 and ended March 25.

Law.com, Support for ABA Proposal to Accredit Fully Online Law Schools Wanes:

The council has considered and approved “carefully tailored proposals by existing law schools to use online education to expand access to the communities they serve,” and the approach has enabled a “variety of creative and novel programs around the country,” according to the deans’ comment, which is signed by Mark Alexander, dean of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law; Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law; Danielle Conway, dean of Penn State Dickinson Law; Melanie Jacobs, dean of Louis D. Brandeis School of Law; David Moore, dean of Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School; and 21 other deans from schools across the country.

They wrote that the council has not articulated a rationale for departing from the current practice or identified the problem that the proposed revisions to Standard 102 and 306 are intended to solve, and they requested that the council allow for further discussion of their intended impact and permit additional data collection from the existing online J.D. programs to inform the analysis of whether the revisions will advance the Council’s intended goals.