Two chapters of changes in law school accreditation standards have been approved by a committee of the ABA, according to the ABA Journal. One of the chapters deals with admission policies and practices and the other deals with organization and administration.
One of the changes would keep a limited version of the Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools’ requirement that first-year applicants must take a valid admissions test.
The committee, the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar’s Standards Review Committee, is currently working to overhaul standards. It has also debated the merits of the LSAT requirement.
The committee recently met in St. Louis and voted to keep the requirement in the version it is going to send to its governing council. Any and all changes in the standards have to be approved by the governing council. The committee will also forward an alternate version of the standard that would get rid of the LSAT requirement to the governing council.
The governing council meets in Tempe, Arizona from March 15-16, which is when the recommendations will be presented for preliminary approval. The committee is going to ask the governing council to postpone its final approval of the changes until it completes its review of the standards. The committee hopes to have this completed by the time the year ends.