Dan J. Freehling, Deputy Consultant on Legal Education, ABA Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, gave a fascinating talk today at the The Future of Law Libraries Symposium on several possible reforms being considered by an Accreditation Policy Task Force.  The task force will be making its recommendations in June 2007.  Among the areas under study are whether the ABA standards should:

• Shift from detailed standards to more general standards to encourage more creativity, experimentation, and flexibility (e.g., require only that a law library be "adequate to support a sound program of legal education").
• Focus more on outputs (e.g., testing legal research skills on the bar exam) rather than on inputs.
• Drop the requirement that one person on the seven-person accreditation teams be a law librarian.
• Get out of the business of telling law schools what they can and cannot do regarding terms and conditions of employment (e.g., faculty status of library directors, at-will employment of personnel).
• Drop volume counts and focus exclusively on title counts.
• Permit schools to focus entirely on teaching and eschew faculty scholarship.

Dan presented two interesting data points:

1. Law schools currently spend $400 million – $600 million on their law libraries.  Dan asked whether law schools are getting their money’s worth.  The librarians’ answer:  yes!
2. What portion of a law school’s legal education program is contributed by law libraries?  The librarians’ answer:  30% – 50%.

What is a law library’s contribution to the scholarship, teaching, and service mission of law schools
	100%
	90%
	80%
	70%
	60%
	50%
	40%
	30%
	20%
	10%
	0%
Free polls from Pollhost.com