La Verne Reapplication: Hints in Accreditation Committee Memo to Senator Grassley?

In ABA Responds to Senator Grassley, I noted that the ABA had sent Senator Grassley a memo from the Accreditation Committee.  One of the issues bothering Senator Grassley was the ABA's supervision of law-school practices. In Questions 19 and 20 the Senator asked:

19. Has the American Bar Association ever revoked provisional or full accreditation during the last 20 years?
20. If so, how many law schools lost their provisional or full accreditation? (p. 4 of Senator Grassley's letter)

The Accreditation Committee's responded:

Since 1990, two law schools have lost their provisional approval status.

1. In August 2004, Western State University College of Law relinquished its provisional approval; it subsequently applied for provisional approval in the fall of 2004 and was granted provisional approval in 2005.

2. In June 2011, the University of La Verne College of Law was not granted full approval; the school did not file an appeal and was automatically removed from the list of law schools approved by the American Bar Association on July 14, 2011. (p. 5 of Accreditation Committee Memorandum.)

What the Accreditation did not note was that, as I have already discussed, the Council allowed La Verne to reapply for provisional accreditation immediately, and La Verne plans to reapply this Fall.  While Western State gave up its provisional accreditation in August 2004, it reapplied for provisional accreditation in that Fall, and was granted it in 2005.

The Rules for Procedure for Approval of Law Schools, provide that, in the case of either a withdrawal (Rule 11(a)) or a denial (Rule 11(b)) of an application for full approval, the law school may not reapply for at least ten months, but that the Chair of Council may waive the waiting period "for good cause shown."  The waiting period was waived for both Western State and La Verne.  Allowing time for a new inspection, Western State received provisional approval almost immediately.  Will the same thing happen to La Verne?

In the Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools Western State's entry was flagged as "provisional" in the 2010 edition, but not in the 2011 edition. That means that Western State received full approval sometime between July 2009 and June 2010.

Comments

[Alfred Brophy]

I am surprised to learn that since 1990 only two schools have lost provisional accreditation (and apparently none have lost full accreditation). But by focusing only on who's lost accreditation, perhaps, we miss an important factor -- who's been excluded from even provisional accreditation. Do you know of any data on which schools have applied for provisional accreditation and not received it?

Also, Gary, I find these arguments about accreditation pointing in all sorts of directions. The above the law post you link to in your previous post quite clearly wants fewer law schools and fewer graduates. They're concerned about restricting competition (or perhaps I should phrase this more positively, they're concerned with preventing prospective students from paying for an expensive education). But by restricting the number of schools -- and particularly by focusing on HBCU law schools, which seem to have pretty reasonably tuition -- we're running the risk of increasing the cost of law school for those who attend.