The American Bar Association Council on Legal Education is moving toward an outcome-based model of accreditation. This aligns with a broader reorientation in educational oversight across many fields.
When properly tailored to local circumstances, metrics such as retention, bar passage, and employment hold law schools accountable for achieving their missions of educating future lawyers. Accreditors then encourage schools to innovate and distinguish themselves in how they achieve these and other goals.
As part of this focus on outcomes, the ABA council has called for public comments on whether to repeal Standard 503, which requires almost all applicants for J.D. programs to submit standardized test scores. The standard has been in effect for more than 50 years.
Test scores measure one dimension of incoming students, before they even begin law school. This backward-looking factor does not measure how well a school achieves its mission of educating students and launching their careers in law.
The 503-testing mandate has reinforced a cramped view of legal excellence. The LSAT and the GRE have been validated based on their ability to predict first-year grades, but are not known to predict other important attributes of great...
An AI-manipulated video has circulated online with a false claim that it was used in a CNN report on a senior Indian military official dancing with another officer's wife. A search on the US broadc...