Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

6-16-2008

SSRN Discipline

Legal Scholarship Network; Education Research Network; Education by Discipline eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Public Law & Legal Theory; EduRN Subject Matter eJournals; Humanities Network; IRPN Subject Matter eJournals; Innovation Areas eJournals; Political Science Network; Innovation Research & Policy Network

Abstract

The value of clinical legal education courses and the faculty teaching those courses has long been contested A focal point for this opposition has been resistance to the American Bar Association ABA accreditation standard that requires law schools to establish longterm employment relationships with clinical faculty and provide them with a meaningful voice in law school governance By integrating clinical faculty into law schools the ABA aims to advance the value of clinical legal education and the professional skills and values it promotes In the decades since the ABA created the first clinical faculty standard clinical legal education in the United States has developed as pedagogy and the number of clinical faculty has greatly increased Despite these trends a recent decision by the ABA Accreditation Committee approving shortterm contracts and the denial of meaningful participation in faculty governance for clinical faculty demonstrates that the debate over the appropriate status continues In this debate there is often little or no mention of the history of the accreditation standard in question perhaps because no historical account of its evolution exists In this article the authors fill that gap in the literature by tracing the evolution of the ABA standard concerning clinical faculty statusThe article begins with a discussion of the role of the ABA in legal education and a brief history of the development of clinical legal education It then discusses the events leading up to the initial adoption in 1984 of a standard addressing clinical faculty and to the strengthening of the standard in 1996 The authors conclude by addressing changes to the standard in 2005 and how those changes have revived the debate over the status of clinical faculty By surfacing the historical debates and the evolution of the standard for clinical faculty the article provides the basis for reasoned informed decisions by the ABA and the legal academy concerning the value of clinical legal education and the role of clinical faculty in law schools

Download

Share

COinS