Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2017
Abstract
In March 2014, the American Bar Association (ABA) voted to leave Accreditation Standard 405 undisturbed.” The ABA’s decision required law schools to continue to grant tenure to traditional law faculty, yet permitted them to continue to deny tenure to clinical and legal writing faculty. At the same time, recognizing the need for increased professional skills training, the ABA voted to increase the number of experiential credits law students must complete from one to six. As explained to the ABA Council in advance, these two decisions work together to increase the demands on skills faculty, who are predominantly female, yet keep them at a lower professional status with less security of position. And it is not clear that law schools are hiring additional, full-time skills faculty to meet these demands.
During the six years of review and debate that led to the 2014 vote, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) urged the ABA Council to continue to require tenure to ensure academic freedom. Along with the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA), they further urged the Council to adopt a standard that would not discriminate against full-time faculty on the basis of subject matter. The only proposal the Standards Review Committee made that came close to the joint recommendations was Alternative C. Although it did not require tenure, Alternative C proposed that law schools accord all full-time faculty members the same rights as other full-time faculty “irrespective of a full-time faculty member’s academic field or teaching methodology.” The Council rejected Alternative C and chose not to publish it for notice and comment.
Regrettably, the long and tortured history of Standard 405 suggests that the vision of equal opportunity for all law faculty—traditional, clinical, legal writing, academic support, and teaching librarians—is not going to be realized anytime soon. The highest and best security of position most professional skills faculty can likely hope for in the near future is that embodied in current Standard 405(c). Thus, law schools’ adherence to established best practices is necessary if “reasonably similar to tenure” is to mean something for those who struggle to and ultimately achieve 405(c) status.
Publication Citation
Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 66, Issue, 3 Pp. 566-574.
Scholarly Commons Citation
Tiscione, Kristen K., "“Best Practices”: A Giant Step Toward Ensuring Compliance With ABA Standard 405(c), a Small Yet Important Step Toward Addressing Gender Discrimination in the Legal Academy" (2017). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2617.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2617