The accreditation process of the American Bar Association (ABA) Accreditation Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is extensive, time-consuming, and costly. Figuring out how to correctly report various items is not always easy. The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) plays a role in the accreditation process. An AALS reporter is appointed to serve on the site inspection team and prepares a report in connection with the inspection of the law school. The Membership Review Committee reviews the reports.

The accreditation and reaccreditation process requires law schools to provide a wealth of information, including an extensive Site Evaluation Questionnaire and evaluative Self Study of the law school. A team of administrators, professors (usually including a clinical professor, professor, and law librarian), lawyers, and judges conduct a site inspection requiring a visit to the law school over four days with class visits, meetings with staff, faculty, students, and campus leaders, review of financial information, evaluation of the facilities, including the law library, and more.

Schools get much valuable feedback from the accreditation process. Some of is re-affirming and some is critical. Now on a ten year cycle, the reaccreditation process forces law schools to stop, think, and explain what they are doing to an outside group of legal education professionals, all with very different perspectives. In theory, the process helps schools be the best that they can be.

I have served on an ABA committee involving accreditation and the AALS Membership Review Committee. I also have served on a site inspection team. As Dean, I experienced two ABA site inspections. Our law school received some helpful feedback. Still, it was truly a labor-intensive, costly, and exhausting — and, at times nerve-wracking — process. I have described to others the process as similar to “kicking the tires” of a car for possible purchase. After the kick, the tire may be fine but it still got kicked! I generally agree with my colleague (and a former dean) Vik Amar who wrote a few years back about the good, bad, and the ugly about the accreditation process.

All this talk of AI and my various recent experiences with the accreditation process got me thinking. How much of the accreditation process could be made more efficient and cheaper through the use of AI? I find it hard to see all of the accreditation process replaced by AI. Still, there might be ways to effectively employ it to save time and money, hours, and frustration. Just food for thought (at least for me).