New ABA Law School Accreditation Standards

The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has released their most recent modifications to the standards for accrediting law schools. Here is a link to their handy Explanations PDF. I found it easier to read and more useful for understanding the changes than their Overview document. You can get the full text of the Redline version (66 pages) which shows the original and changed text, as well as the Clean copy (42 pages), and all of these other documents and more, from this convenient page.

From the point of view of folks who have been involved in the discussions and sending in comments, the changes to the library standards are not a big surprise. Below are the revised standards affecting law school libraries.

Chapter 6, Library and Information Services
Std. 601, General Provisions There are four basic requirements for the library:
* provide support adequate to enable a law school to carry out its program of legal education,
* develop a responsive relationship with users,
* engage in planning and assessment, and
* implement technology when appropriate

and one requirement for the law school:
* provide sufficient financial resources for the library to fulfill its responsibilities

Std. 603, Library Director...
Std. 603(a) adds “providing information resources in appropriate formats to faculty and students” as one of the overall management responsibilities of the law library director.

Standard 603(c), the requirement that the law library director must have specific degrees for the position has been replaced with a requirement that the director must have “appropriate academic qualifications.” As in other provisions in the revised Standards, the Committee added the requirement that the director’s knowledge and experience must be “sufficient to support the program of legal education and to enable the law school to operate in compliance with the Standards."

Revised Interpretation 603-1 provides guidance for the Accreditation Committee by elaborating on how a law school could meet the Standard.The Standards Review Committee had recommended that the language of current Standard603(d), which states that “a law library director shall hold a law faculty appointment with security of faculty position,” be replaced in revised Standard 603(d) with the requirement that the law library director “shall hold appointment as a member of the law faculty with the rights and protections accorded to other members of the full-time faculty under Standard 405.” Based on the Council’s decision to make no change to current Standard 405,this revised change was also not approved.

Note from Betsy: Std. 405, mentioned above, is referring to the Committee's decision not to require tenure for full time teaching faculty. The Standard itself is titled Professional Environment, and includes many other details such as academic freedom, governance and due process. But in the context of the statement above, the reference is certainly to the Committee's decision about "security of position," or tenure. If the doctrinal faculty can't have a standard requiring tenure, the library directors shouldn't get a standard requiring it for them, was the decision, apparently. SIGH...

Revised Standard 604. PERSONNEL
The current Standard has been changed slightly to require a staff with expertise that will support the goals of the library and law school.

Revised Standard 605. SERVICES
No changes are recommended to the current Standard. The current Interpretation has been rewritten to better state how those services can be provided.

Revised Standard 606. COLLECTION
The revisions to current Standard 606 reflect the change from an emphasis on ownership of materials to providing reliable access to legal information. The revised Standard also links the choices of format and means of access to the needs of the institution. Revised Interpretation 606-2 elaborates on the definition of “reliable access” by providing ways to meet the Standard through ongoing access to databases or participation in a formal resource-sharing arrangement with other libraries.

The decoration for this post is rapper Lil Wayne's Law Library "Statutory Rape" which turned up when I looked for images of law libraries. Apparently Lil Wayne has spent some time in prison libraries and knows something about legal research, from a few posts I stumbled across, so the cover may be earned in more ways than one. I just wanted something other than the classic law school library, since that seems to be fading away... but I guess this is not the look most schools will be aiming for. For one thing, look at all those reporters on those shelves!

ABA won't be accrediting non-US law schools

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the ABA has turned down a request from the Peking University School of Transnational Law for accreditation. In the process, they made a policy decision not to begin accrediting non-US law schools.

ABA and NALP in Turf War

According to The National Law Journal, the ABA's new requirements that law schools report more details about graduate employment, which seemed like such a step toward honesty and transparency, has caused a turf battle with the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). (I believe this is Standard 509 (a), Basic Consumer Information, to be published in a fair and accurate manner reflective of actual practice. And an Interpretation 509(1), (8)"placement rates and bar passage data").

NALP says that this change interferes with their traditional, and more comprehensive collection of the same sort of information. And because the ABA is collecting information as part of the annual Questionnaire and the Self Study for re-accreditation or accreditation, the ABA is the question that law schools will answer most diligently, skimping on the NALP survey. NALP Executive Director James Leipold was also miffed, apparently, when the ABA announced the new rules without any notice to their sister organization, stepping all over NALP's toes. The ABA is also interfering with NALP's intellectual property, and Leipold is angry enough to threaten a suit. He claims that the ABA is using the same research and survey methods that NALP pioneered over the last 4 decades.

According the the National Law Journal article by Karen Sloan, that ABA's legal education consultant Bucky Askew explained the new changes to the accreditation rules,

"The bottom line is that the executive committee believes that because we are an accrediting body, we have to get the data directly from schools, not from a third party," Askew said. "There's a difference of opinion about that with NALP but, as the accreditor, we need to make certain that schools understand this is an accreditation issue."

The National Law Journal spoke to Prof. Bill Henderson of Indiana University, Bloomington, who thinks that the new development

will represent a major blow to NALP's ability to collect information and analyze the legal job market. Henderson has used NALP data extensively for his research on the legal industry.

"I think what's happening is a total disaster," he said. "Everything that we know about the industry on a systemic level is from NALP. The ABA won't crunch industry data the way NALP does. They won't have the will or the capacity."

The most logical solution, Henderson said, would be to create a joint NALP/ABA survey, which would allow both entities to exist and make clear that reporting is part of the law school accreditation process.

Anybody up for mediation?