The U.S. Department of Education has postponed its review of the authority vested in the American Bar Association to accredit law schools in order to pursue an investigation into allegations against the association, according to a letter it sent to the association last month.
The bar association has attracted scrutiny over its requirements that law schools prove they are taking concrete steps to diversify their pools of students and faculty members, and that their graduates meet certain passage rates on bar examinations. Critics say that those requirements are ambiguous, and that the diversity mandate could conflict with bans on affirmative action that have been enacted in some states.
Last June, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings asked the bar association to document how it applies its diversity requirements (The Chronicle, July 2, 2007). That request followed a decision by the department, in December 2006, to approve just an 18-month extension of the bar association’s authority to accredit law schools, rather than the usual five years given to accreditors (The Chronicle, December 5, 2006).
Now the Education Department says it needs more time to digest the “great volume of documents” the bar association has provided in response to Secretary Spellings’s request. The department’s letter also cites unspecified “allegations raised” by the Thomas M. Cooley Law School, as well as by Wallace D. Riley, a past president of the American Bar Association, as reasons to postpone the review. The department sent copies of the comments from the law school and Mr. Riley to the association.
Instead of reviewing the bar association’s accrediting powers next month, the department will wait until December to review the matter, and will investigate the outside comments using the thousands of pages of documents the association has provided. In the meantime, the association will maintain its current recognition from the Education Department.
If the bar association is stripped of its ability to accredit law schools by the Education Department, that step could jeopardize some schools’ access to federal student aid. Most law schools are part of larger institutions that are accredited by other groups, but a handful of free-standing law schools are accredited only by the bar association. The association is the sole accreditor of American law schools.
Hulett H. Askew, who directs the section of the American Bar Association that handles accreditation issues, said his office “looks forward to continuing to demonstrate its commitment to responsibly fulfilling its mission to approve law schools.” The Department of Education declined to comment on its investigation.