A License to Exploit Law Students?

Karen Sloan's article in today's (07/18/2011) National Law Journal, ABA again confronts the diversity dilemma (premium access may be required), discusses the proposed tightening of the Bar-passage benchmarks of Interpretation 301-6 of the ABA Standards.  In the article, a member of the 2010-2011 Standards Review Committee, Erica Moeser, President of the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), opines:

I see the current standard as a license to exploit students[.]

The attitude of Moeser, and others on the Standards Review Committee, aptly summarized in the title of an essay by Christian Day, now Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Syracuse, Law Schools Can Solve the "Bar Pass Problem"--"Do the Work!", 40 Cal W. L. Rev. 321 (2004). or, as Moeser puts it:

Some of the law schools that are on the cusp of an 80% bar-passage rate know that a lot more will be demanded of them in order to get their graduates to meet that.

The solution? Better academic support overall, including Bar-prep support. Given the current economic climate, and budget pressures on law schools, particularly public law schools, the money for that is going to come, if at all, from higher tuition.  Higher tuition poses a special threat to students at Historically Black Law Schools, many of whom are economically disadvantaged.

As the title suggests, Sloan's focus is the effect on diversity, particularly on Historically Black Law Schools.  As I discussed in Historically Black Law Schools and the ABA, and in my April 2011 comments to the ABA, Endangered: Historically Black Law Schools? (revised version, dated May 24, 2010), that is a concern I share.

Full disclosure: I am quoted in Sloan's article.

Comments

[Alfred Brophy]

Gary--for those of us (like me) who don't have premium access to the NLJ, would you tell us what you say in the article?

[Gary Rosin]

You've already read what I had to say. Apparently Karen Sloan follows The Faculty Lounge.