After this post, I will probably sit alone at the next conference lunch, assuming that I’m not relegated to the Group W bench. I’m going to admit to something that faculty members are not supposed to acknowledge — I like accreditation self-study.
To start, please note how I phrased that: I like self-study, not self-studies. For me, the 200± page document entitled “self-study” is as interesting as a book listing the greatest Yankee players of all time (I live in Boston). It is the process of self-study that I appreciate.
Many of us, when we teach our soon to be attorneys, encourage them to develop self-critical attributes. We want them to be able to evaluate their own performance in a constant attempt to improve. For those of us behind the lectern who have also spent time in the courtroom, we know how important this is. It doesn’t matter how many cases you’ve tried, it is always possible to get better. If you don’t pay attention to what you are doing during each trial, there is no way to make the next attempt better; indeed, it is likely to be worse.
Most of us, as we teach, are self-critical of the job we are doing. Teaching, like trial work, requires a set of skills that can always be improved. No class session is ever perfect; there is always a way to make the materials more understandable or to reach one more student.
It is far harder to make an institution become self-critical, but it is just as important. It is possible, for example, for all of the professors at a law school to be extraordinary teachers, but for the school to still fail its students. The school as a whole, after all, needs to make sure that the education it provides is balanced (I teach I.P. law, but recognize that there are topics outside of I.P. that are important, too) and connected with current legal needs (anyone taught bridle path law recently?).
The self-study process is a decent way to bring this self-critical evaluation to the entire program of the institution. I have now participated in five full or limited ABA self-studies (three at my current institution and two under its pre-U.Mass. identity) as well as three regional accrediting agency self-studies, From the best of these, the institution came out of the self-study process a much better institution than it was when it went into it. From the worst, nothing beyond communicating with the accrediting agency was gained.
Two of the ABA self-studies I worked on failed to provide the institution with a critical analysis of the program for similar reasons:
- The bigger mistake made in each self study was to put a single individual “in charge” of the process. To work, every important individual or group has to be called upon to evaluate what they are doing for the institution and how it achieves the goals established in the standards. By using an individual as a driving force, it became easy for everyone else to defer to that individual rather than facing the hard task of describing and justifying what was currently being done. “Group think” using committees and the like do not make the process easier, but they insure greater accuracy and institutional self-awareness.
- The somewhat smaller mistake in each was to start the process with an articulated goal to produce the self-study that the ABA “wanted to see.” For one of the problematic self-studies, this was interpreted as making the law school operate just like everyone else. Of course, no school is just like everyone else (nor should they be). By changing the school’s program to match this artificially constructed ideal, longer-term harm was done to the school, ultimately requiring many of the changes to be revoked. For the other end product-justified self-study, it ended up not accurately describing the school, consequently failing to achieve any goal set for it.
The other self-studies in which I have participated, on the other hand, worked on multiple levels. In each of them, pretty much everyone on the faculty and staff had a role in determining what was going to be said (and even how it was going to be said). The program then being offered was examined to determine if standard compliance was being achieved. Where it wasn’t changes were made, but more importantly, the suitability of everything that was being done was reevaluated. As a practical matter, as many changes were made because we identified a problematic area as for accreditation rule compliance.
So if you are so lucky and your school is about to be revisited by the ABA (seven is a lucky number, after all), seize the opportunity and participate eagerly. Your students will thank you.
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