I previously blogged a Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed, Are Colleges (And Law Schools) Getting Disability Accommodations All Wrong?. In March, the Wall Street Journal’s Jillian Lederman published an opinion piece, Disabilities Act Becomes a License to Cheat, which generated letters to the editor with the headline A License to Cheat in Law-School Classrooms. Ms. Lederman’s latest piece, How Cheating Spreads at Law Schools, addresses the testing accommodation issue at Pepperdine Caruso Law and other law schools across the country.  The conversation should continue on how law schools maintain academic excellence and support all students, including students with documented disabilities in compliance with the law.

I include excerpts from Ms. Lederman’s opinion piece below:

Wall Street Journal, How Cheating Spreads at Law Schools:

According to multiple Pepperdine students, more than a third of the school’s law students receive testing accommodations, the most common of which is extended time. They report that the school’s administration confirmed this statistic at a town hall last year and noted that it’s comparable to that of many other law schools. The school declined in a written statement to comment on the numbers and said that there are multiple reasons students may be absent from exam rooms. It acknowledged that it is “aware of public information indicating a substantial increase in disability accommodations in recent years in undergraduate programs, standardized testing, and law schools in California and across the country.”

Law schools don’t disclose their rates of accommodations, but a 2023 Oregon Law Review paper reports data on public law schools obtained through state public-records laws. As of 2021—before the post-Covid rise in disability accommodations—the accommodations rates were 21.3% at the University of California, Hastings (now UC Law San Francisco) and 25.5% at UC Irvine. Private law schools like Pepperdine aren’t subject to public-records laws. …

Pepperdine students say many of their classmates who ranked near the top of the class, made it onto the law review, and secured competitive jobs at major law firms received extended time on tests. The university denied that students with disabilities are disproportionately represented in these groups.

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