What sort of qualifications do you need to get your job?
For many of us, further education is an essential prerequisite to getting our next job — whether it’s a short course, retraining in a new field, or gathering valuable contacts within industries to help us score that next opportunity.
The sheer variety of qualifications available often presents difficulties for recruiters and hiring professionals — with many courses not publicly identifying the standards students are taught. This can be risky in fields such as law, where recruiters are looking for graduates with a wide breadth and depth of legal knowledge that comes with accreditation.
To address deficiencies in law school education and training, the American Bar Association (ABA) has recently proposed changes to learning standards, aiming to provide a common standard for legal qualifications across America. This will mean that whether students are enrolled in an online law degree, in person program, or anything in between, all law schools will have the same obligations to adhere to. Let’s explore how the ABA’s changes will impact law schools and how they will improve the training of the next generation of legal professionals.
Why is accreditation important?
It’s essential to recognize that while universities and colleges provide qualifications, industry member bodies generally regulate accreditation. This is because specialty organizations often have extensive experience working with groups within their industry and are best placed to provide advice on the standards required for graduates to succeed within their particular industry profession.
While accreditation and certification are different, changes to accreditation impact certification, and feedback from certification can help drive changes to accreditation processes. As a result, education providers must keep a close eye on changing standards to ensure that their courses remain in line with certification requirements. This is similar to how a high school teacher may need to tailor classes to stay in line with shifts in the Common Core Standards.
The American Bar Association has been setting certification guidelines for legal professionals and has been tasked by the Department of Education to provide accreditation for law schools since the end of the 19th century. As society has changed, the standards for certification have also shifted to set a highly qualified, contemporary standard expected from legal professionals across the United States.
How will the changes affect qualifications?
The accreditation changes announced impact several areas of legal education, including learning outcomes, student learning assessment, methods for ongoing review of legal education programs, and faculty members' roles in delivering coursework.
The proposed changes are not intended to come into effect immediately. They will need to be signed off by the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates, who will meet in Phoenix, Arizona, in February 2025 to discuss and potentially sign off on the changes. If the changes are passed, they are expected to begin to phase into law schools from 2026 onwards.
Changes to learning outcomes aim to improve transparency by specifying that law schools must describe the knowledge, skills, or competencies a student can demonstrate upon completing the qualification. This helps students in many ways, notably by assisting recent graduates in connecting the legal education they have been taught with the key indicators often stated in legal position descriptions.
Changes to student learning assessment ensure that students have adequate feedback as they progress through a legal course. Feedback is a critical part of learning, and changes to assessment ensure that a law student receives feedback throughout their law school journey to see how they’re performing in line with academic outcomes, rather than simply relying on a single exam or end-of-year assessment to understand their progress.
Finally, changes to teaching faculty participation encourage a greater focus on using full-time faculty to provide continuity and consistency for a law student’s legal education rather than relying on seasonal or casual lecturers to lead legal discourse. This helps ensure that faculty is actively and extensively engaged in developing their legal peers.
The benefits of consistency
By changing student learning outcomes standards in tandem with changes to assessment and outcomes, the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education is aiming high — aspiring to improve the quality and consistency of legal accreditation at law schools across the United States.
In recent years, metrics that compare law schools have been derided as ineffective tools for student choice. This can mean that, in some cases, a student can choose a law school without being aware of what it teaches, how relevant it is to career prospects, or what services may be available to help them if they’re having trouble.
By providing consistency amongst law qualifications, universities could find themselves ranked amongst their peers. Students could quickly identify if the subject matter taught at a particular college could help them reach their career goals and assist in the education journey.
Extensive data suggests that students are likely to perform better when material is taught by experienced teachers rather than by inexperienced substitute lecturers. By implementing these changes, students should graduate from law school with the skills necessary to thrive in any legal role and the soft skills required to identify how their qualifications will help them land work in the legal profession.
Criticism of the changes
While many responses to the proposed changes have been positive, there have also been critics. When the proposed changes were put out for public comment in April, a coalition of 76 law deans, cosigned by the American Association of Law Libraries, wrote a public comment warning that the changes to learning outcomes could potentially harm legal education in the United States.
In the public letter, the American Bar Association is accused of trying to exercise greater regulatory control over law schools and the academic qualification process. The letter partly argues that uniformity in legal education could be damaging — not just for those learning but for the legal system more broadly.
The proposed changes to learning outcomes present an interesting challenge for the ABA. Can an accreditation body balance the needs of students with the needs of schools? Has the body overstepped its mandate to provide teaching guidelines for law schools? As stated above, the changes are yet to be signed off, so only time will tell.