America's Law Schools In Revolt

A committee of the American Bar Association has come up with the unthinkable: how about we rate law schools based on what students learn to prepare them for practicing law? This is CRAZY, according to everyone who runs a law school. There are at least three arguments against this being presented now, none of which are well, uh, argued. First: it seems to be that “this is a very bad time,” what with lawyer unemployment running rampant. (Yes, why would we want schools to have evaluation when the provenance of a law degree actually may begin to matter in hiring? Oh right, for value for employers in hiring-and value for students in choosing a school.) And here is Yale Law School’s new dean on the matter: “It is worth pausing to ask how the proponents of outcome measures can be so very confident that the actual performance of tasks deemed essential for the practice of law can be identified, measured, and evaluated.” That’s still not an argument against “outcome measures”-that’s an argument for useful outcome measures! Also there is a crowd that says “diversity efforts” will suffer, because law schools are currently serving “minority” students poorly by allowing them to have lower bar passage rates. So maybe if they start treating and preparing their students-of-diversity (ahem) better, maybe they’ll take responsibility for that.