Best Practices for Legal Education

 As most of you already know, the ABA Standards Review Committee (SRC), the body that proposes changes to the law school accreditation standards for action by the ABA Council on Legal Education, is holding its next  public forum in Chicago during the morning of Saturday, April 2, 2011.   The SRC is actively considering issues concerning legal education broadly,  student learning outcomes,  faculty status, governance and security of position.   The SRC invited interested parties to submit written requests to speak and accepted my request for time to address the committee on April 2nd.

The SRC has released a new draft of the proposed Standards in preparation for the upcoming forum.  I now invite all of you readers to comment or e-mail me mlync@albanylaw.edu your thoughts on the current draft which you can read by clicking onto the Albany Law teaching center site, www.teachinglawstudents.com.  Earlier posts about earlier drafts including Professor Brill’s position on tenure, Professor Stuckey and Neumann’s thoughts, and CLEA’s Postion can be found right here on the Best Practices blog.

Although the current proposals include adjustments in response to earlier critiques, they continue to make faculty  tenure an optional requirement.   It will take careful reading to figure out how the learning outcomes part, plus the academic freedom, faculty governance and security of position portions all fit together.   I still have some unanswered bottomline questions under the new draft :  Will all  law students  have met and worked with a real live client before graduation?  Will those students have recieved feedback and assessment of their performance and learned skills to  improve  based on that experience and to seek assistance for their experiential deficits?

Please let me know your analysis of the current proposals and please try to join me in Chicago at

WHAT: ABA Standards Review Committee Meeting;

WHEN: April 2, 2011 at 9:00 a.m.

WHERE: HOTEL 71

71 East Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60601
Phone: 312-346-7100
Fax: 1-312-346-1740

A block of rooms at the Hotel 71 has been set aside for attendees by SALT

Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Upcoming Events |