CUNY a step ahead of the ABA

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’re well aware that the American Bar Association kicks off its  annual midyear meeting in Los Angeles today.  One very contentious item on the agenda: the ABA, which accredits law schools, is likely to enact a rule requiring law school to demonstrate, essentially,  that 75% of a its graduates have passed the bar.  Opponents of the proposal, including the Black Law Students Association, claim the measure disproportionately penalizes schools with higher minority enrollment.

The backstory here is the friction between Dubya’s Department of Education and the liberal ABA over the ABA's implementation of a stricter diversity-enrollment standard.  Last year, the department refused to extend the ABA's accrediting authority beyond June 2008.  The proposal is an effort to appease the department before they consider again the ABA’s accrediting authority in June.

TaxProf takes a look at the schools that are in danger of failing the proposed accreditation standard. 

One school that has working hard to get out of that group  is the Borough of Queens’ own CUNY School of Law.  On TaxProf’s chart, CUNY has a listed bar passage rate of  61.5% (and a minority student percentage of 31.5).  However, the school has trumpeted impressive recent gains in that area,

boasting a 79.1 % passage rate for first-time exam test-takers. (TaxProf included repeat exam takers.)  The school’s passage rate was an abysmal 50% as recently as five years ago.

                                                                                  -posted by brian