Bar committee considers uniform law school accreditation
standard, shorter exam
By Amy Yarbrough
Staff Writer
If a public forum held last month is any indication, the
State Bar committee charged with overseeing legal education and admitting new
lawyers can expect a fair amount of support as it moves forward with two key
proposals.
The Committee of Bar Examiners invited legal educators to
comment May 3 on proposals that would shorten the bar exam from three days to
two and require that unaccredited law schools earn their California accreditation.
The latter of the two proposals, which generated the greatest amount of
discussion, would also expand the accreditation rules to distance learning
schools, which teach students remotely through classes and lectures over the
Internet.
Greg Brandes, the dean of Concord Law School, a distance
learning school, urged the committee not to include a lot of requirements
specific to distance learning in the accreditation process. The 40-percent cumulative
bar passage rule already required of accredited schools should be enough to
ensure distance learning schools serve the public interest, he said.
“With that rule, which would now apply to those distance
learning who might become accredited under these proposals, you have assurance
that those schools will protect the public over time,” he said.
Mitchel Winick, dean of Monterey College of Law, said he and
many of the other California-accredited law school deans also favor a unified
set of accreditation rules, telling the committee, “You’re exactly on the right
track to that.”
“The idea of a multiple set of registrations and listings
leading to accreditation has always had the risk of being confusing to the
public, confusing to law students,” Winick said. “So count us in.”
Under the law school proposal being considered, all
unaccredited law schools registered in California would have to meet the
standards for accreditation within 10 years. The committee’s authority to
accredit law schools would also be expanded to distance learning schools.
Like the other California-accredited law school deans, Jane
Gamp of San Francisco Law School said she favors one set of accreditation rules
for distance and brick-and-mortar schools. But she said she was concerned about
when the 40-percent passage rate rule would go into effect and whether distance
learning schools would be able to call themselves provisionally accredited
before meeting the requirement.
“We would like the criteria to be that you have to be in
very close range to that or hit the 40 percent before you are able to call
yourself even provisionally accredited,” she said. “You have to be in the same
ballpark as the rest of us.”
Dean Barbieri, dean of John F. Kennedy University, was one
of the few participants at the May 3 forum to speak extensively on the committee’s
other proposal: shortening the bar exam from three days to two. A longtime
grader of the bar exam, Barbieri cautioned the committee against doing anything
that has a negative impact on the test, which he called “the best bar exam in
the country without a doubt.”
Specifically, Barbieri was concerned about the idea of
reducing the number of essay questions applicants have to complete, increasing
the weight of the multiple choice portion of the exam and reducing the length
of the one remaining performance test to make the exam fit within a two-day
window.
Admissions Director Gayle Murphy said many consider
California’s test to be the toughest in the country, not because of its length
but because it requires a higher score to pass. In addition, studies commissioned by the committee show that shortening the exam wouldn’t change
the outcome for most test-takers.