AALS criticizes ABA proposed law school accreditation standards

The AALS - the Association of American Law Schools - is the trade organization of America's accredited law schools.  It is dominated, of course, by the tenured faculty who have a vote in the law school governance scheme prescribed by the American Bar Association's Section on Legal Education.  Graduation from an ABA accredted law school is a prerequisite to admission to the bar in most states.  The ABA's Standards Review Committee has proposed changes that allow greater discretion to law schools in faculty governance schemes, and include a more elastic definition of what it means to be a full-time faculty member.

The AALS, in a strongly worded 10 page letter to the ABA, has criticized the  proposed revisions in the ABA committee reports on outcome measures, security of position, and transparency.  The law school leaders fear a de-emphasis on LSAT scores, a weakening of the power and security of tenured faculty, and a departure from the teach and research orientation of full-time faculty.  The ABA proposal, in the AALS view, leaves a lot of room for full-time faculty to be teachers but not scholars.


I don't have an informed position on all of this, but I have, of course, an orientation.  It is this:  LSAT score as a shortcut predictor of academic success is a strong measure; as a measure of success and skill as a lawyer it is a far weaker predictor.  Faculty tenure is important.  It protects freedom of inquiry.  And seniority generally serves skill; but the present upstairs-downstairs system devalues practical skills because clinical faculty generally work on five year contracts, unlike the tenure during good behaviour security of the "academic" full-time faculty - who generally have had only a glancing brush with the practice of law.  


Full-time work as a teacher is important.  I adhere to the 1 - 8 hours per week norm for non-law school work.  Much of that is public service as a member of the NJ Law Journal Editorial Board and the NJ Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics.  The balance - consulting as an expert witness, occasional ghost-writing of briefs in my specialty, etc. is valuable as a link to the world of practice in which I was immersed for 30 years.  But more than that would impede substantially the job of staying tolerably current in the wide array of subjects I teach (though all are quite closely related - torts, products liability, remedies, professional responsibility).


As one who had to "make payroll" for 30 years I am sympathetic to management prerogatives, but recognize that employment security is key to career satisfaction, intellectual autonomy, and devotion to the central task of law school: teaching students to be good lawyers.