The Reality of the New ABA Standard 301-6: This is Not Your Grandfather's Law School

The law school experience is no longer your grandfather's law school. I'm sure every potential law student has read or has seen the movie version of the 1970's novel, The Paper Chase. If you remember, Professor Kingsfield's contract classes at Harvard sparked lively classroom debates and challenged the students, but the twist at the end of the novel is that he didn't know the names of the students or even recognized the protagonist. For him, the class was only a group of people, simply names on a paper. In today's new reality, law schools will have to move past the academic exercise and look at more practical ways for their students to pass the bar.

The new ABA standard 301-6 sets the stage for law schools to put up or shut up. ABA standard 301-6, passed in February 2008, mandates all law students from all jurisdictions pass the bar exam at a rate of 75% or that law student's school will be held in non-compliance thereby jeopardizing their ABA accreditation status.

It will be a new awakening for professors who wish to remain in their ivory towers, like Professor Kingsfield. The standard for assessing the effect to which a law school complies with 301-6 is the rigors of its academic programs and, most importantly, the bar pass rates of its graduates. Can both the academic exercise of law school combined with the practicalities of getting the students to pass the bar at a 75% pass rate co-exist?