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ABA seeks to salvage law school hands-on learning proposal amid pushback from deans
Aug 18 (Reuters) - The American Bar Association is taking steps to appease critics of a proposal that would double law students' required number of hands-on learning credits with several concessions meant to make the plan more palatable.
The modified proposal, however, is still likely to face opposition from critics who have accused the ABA of exerting too much control over law school curriculum and driving up the cost of a law degree.
The ABA's revised proposal, opens new tab, released Aug. 15, would still require law students to take 12 credits of clinics, externships or simulation courses that aim to recreate real legal work — up from the current six credits. But it offers more ways to obtain the required credits and delays implementation of the revised accreditation standard to give law schools more time to expand their experiential course offerings.
The new proposal would let law students obtain three of the credits during their first year — which was prohibited in the original plan. They could also receive partial experiential credit for regular courses that include some hands-on elements, such as simulated client work or drafting transactional or litigation documents. The new proposal also delays implementation of the change from 2030 to no earlier than 2032.
ABA's managing director of accreditation and legal education, Jennifer Rosato Perea, declined Monday to comment on the latest proposal.
Opponents of the initial proposal — including many deans of ABA accredited law schools — wrote in public comments that the ABA had not provided enough evidence that the higher experiential credit requirement would benefit students and said that the requirement would be costly for schools. Some critics said it would be especially onerous for part-time students with day jobs or complained that the implementation period was too short.
Supporters, including many clinical legal professors and others who teach experiential courses, countered that the change is necessary to produce practice-ready new attorneys and that concerns like cost and flexibility were overblown.
Gautam Hans, a clinical professor at Cornell Law School and a proponent of doubling the experiential requirements, said Monday that he's 'cautiously optimistic' about the revised proposal and was pleased that the new version was only 'slightly changed' from the original.
But Northwestern Pritzker School of Law professor Daniel Rodriguez said the revisions are unlikely to win over critics like himself who believe the ABA is going too far in dictating curriculum without providing adequate data to justify the proposed changes.
"There is a conspicuous lack of what we might call evidence-based analysis in the council's work," Rodriguez said.
The ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is slated to discuss the updated proposal Friday, when it could approve a second round of public comment before making any final decision.
Read more:
ABA's plan to double hands-on credits for law students is rife with flaws, deans say
ABA plan to boost law students' hands-on experience spurs criticism about accreditor overreach
