ABA Legal Ed council holds off on experiential learning recommendations
After pushback from many law school deans, the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar decided that it would take more time to reconsider tweaks to its proposed mandate to increase the number of hands-on learning credits from six to 12 at its quarterly meeting Friday in Chicago.
The motion to withdraw the proposal was passed during the meeting, which marked the first such gathering for several new council members, and gives “the committee time to discuss with our newly constituted members how we got to where we are, as well as whether we want to make any additional changes,” said Carla D. Pratt, chair of the Standards Committee, during the meeting.
In May, the council had initially proposed doubling the current number of required experiential credit hours via work in a clinic or a field placement involving working with a client, starting in 2030. The move would bring legal education requirements in line with other professions, such as medicine, dentistry and social work, according to the original proposal.
But after opposition from many law school deans during the 45-day notice and comment period, which generated 343 pages of comments, the council revised the proposal Aug. 15.
While the new proposal maintained doubling the required number of experiential learning credits, it allowed students to earn three credits during the 1L year and receive some experiential credits for courses with hands-on work, such as simulations. It also pushed back the start date of changes to no earlier than 2032.
People opposed to the original proposal suggested that changes to accreditation Standards 303, 304 and 311 would give the section unnecessary control over curriculum and increase tuition costs, among other concerns. Some stated that the original start date of 2030 was too soon.
One letter signed by 52 deans of ABA-accredited law schools requested that the council slow down and make incremental changes, arguing that law schools are already facing funding cuts and several other challenges, while other deans noted that part-time students who often work full time would struggle to meet the proposed requirements. Some have said the ABA should be setting best practices instead of mandating 12 credits.
Meanwhile, the Clinical Legal Education Association, the Society of American Law Teachers and Deborah Jones Merritt, a professor emerita at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, wrote in support of the increase. She is also a 2025 ABA Journal Legal Rebel.
“It is very hard to argue that a school conferring JD degrees based on less than 12 upper-level credits in experiential courses is offering a minimally qualified program of professional education,” wrote Merritt, the primary author of the Building a Better Bar study.
The current requirement, written into Standard 303(a)(3), was adopted in 2014 despite significant support at the time for mandating 12 to 15 credits, according to a May 2 memo to the council from the Standards Committee.
The required six experiential credits have scarcely made an impact on bar exam pass rates, according to the May memo.
The council has been mentioned in several executive orders, including an April 23 executive order taking aim at higher education accreditors and specifically referencing the council, as well as the ABA’s pending litigation against the Department of Justice.
The section’s council, a separate and independent entity from the bar association, is recognized by the Department of Education as the sole accrediting body for U.S. law schools. Most states require applicants of the state bar to be graduates of an ABA-accredited law school. Ohio, Texas and Florida are reconsidering those requirements.
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