The Standards Review Committee of the ABA Legal Ed Council wants what it wants. And what it wants is a substantial increase in the experiential learning credits required of law students to graduate. Despite a flurry of comments objecting to this proposal — a few of which were especially powerful in exposing the lack of any serious evidence supporting the case for this major expansion — the Committee has come back with a proposal that largely mirrors what it had previously sent out for comment. As a matter of raw authority, neither the law schools nor the big ABA nor, to get to the point of all this, any external public organization can rein in the Council if it determines that this requirement should go forward.
However, there is a possible obstacle to the Council’s effort to run roughshod over the diverse constituencies who have expressed doubts about the wisdom of this proposal, a proposal that will certainly impose burdens of time and treasure at a moment in which the state of legal education and the legal profession in the U.S. is in serious flux. That obstacle comes from state bar authorities, a few of which have already expressed grave concern with the overbearing character of ABA accreditation — although, to be clear, not necessarily to this proposal. Such authorities could well step in and make crystal clear that law graduates seeking admission to the bar in their states would not be obstructed in their quest by the fact that they graduated from a law school which has not met these new requirements. Reflect on this for a sec. It is well within the discretion of these authorities to undertake on behalf of law graduates what we might call a partial rebellion. That is to say that they might leave the ABA’s accrediting power mostly intact, but decide that law schools may graduate students who are fully qualified for admission to the bar even if these same law schools have provided a curriculum that is not fully standards-compliant. From my perspective, this is not the general situation we should want. I have said in the past that the right pathway is a “mend it, not end it” strategy, with the Section through its Council listening closely to concerns expressed from myriad stakeholders, rethinking some of its more burdensome, and ill-supported standards, and working to adapt its approach in order to provide a 21st century structure that meets the needs of law schools, students, and the profession.
But the experiential learning debacle reveals a Council that defiantly declines to listen to their constituents, including the deans, and is steadfastly unwilling to do the kind of learning and innovating that the times are demanding. In this game of chicken, it is not clear that their authority will survive this latest scuffle. Indeed, it perhaps out not to survive wholly intact. The experiential learning proposal is a really bad idea whose time has not at all come. And it reflects a breathtaking stubbornness on the part of the folks in the room where it happens.
Responding to the Texas Supreme Court’s request for comments on their ongoing process of rethinking the role of the ABA in accrediting law schools in the state of Texas, the dean of the University of Texas Law School, Bobby Chesney, wrote a remarkably thoughtful and far-sighted letter to the court in which he suggested that the court might well think hard and creatively about what a post-ABA accreditation regime would look like. Dean Chesney is careful in not advocating that the ABA’s accreditation role be displaced, but he does note some of the ambient criticisms of the ABA’s unwavering focus on inputs rather than outcomes, including the objections to the experiential learning proposal. He notes wisely how the present turbulence in the legal profession, wrought by changes in technology, the pressing access to justice crisis, and other pressures, ought to cause some ambitious fresh thinking — thinking that may well lead to major change in how this states and others might reform the accreditation system. The trick in accreditation, Chesney writes, “is to carry out this screening without unduly suppressing innovation, imposing unwarranted conformity, or driving up educational costs unnecessarily. Efforts to ensure adequate law school quality, in other words, need to be balanced with appreciation for those risks.” Bluntly noting that the ABA’s current approach might not appreciate adequately these risks, he concludes that “a well-designed alternative pathway should turn on an intentionally-parsimonious set of benchmarks for baseline adequacy, thus leaving maximum room for innovation. If well chosen, those benchmarks might actually be relatively administrable.” And he ends with a truly imaginative nod to a possible future: “[I]t would be fascinating to see what might arise should the Court reopen such a pathway given the current climate of innovation, change, and cost concerns.”
Fascinating indeed. Through its defiance, the ABA Council has, in its ham-handed handling of the experiential learning requirement, perhaps pushed the door open to this possible future — and not merely in the great state of Texas
Posted by Dan Rodriguez on August 20, 2025 at 05:32 PM
Comments
The problem with appealing to state bars is: “asking students to have more practical experience” sounds like the sort of thing that non-professors would be more likely than not to support.
Posted by: Michael Evan Lewyn | Aug 29, 2025 12:50:23 PM