A lot of digital ink has been spent over the past several months about how the legal profession could change for the better because of COVID-19. Indeed, virtual court conferences, work-from-home policies, and other practices adopted during the pandemic can make attorneys more efficient at serving clients. I myself have published a few articles on how the legal industry can change for the better because of how we dealt with the challenges posed by COVID-19. In a similar vein, law schools have also had to adapt in order to contend with the ongoing pandemic, and law schools should learn from recent experiences in order to permanently improve.
Online Law Schools
Even though online colleges have been operating for decades, online law schools are not a major part of legal education. The main reason why online law schools have never taken off is because the American Bar Association has traditionally taken a dim view of schools that exclusively operate online. After a very rudimentary amount of research, I was unable to find an online-only school that has full accreditation by the American Bar Association, although it appears as if some hybrid programs have been accredited.
Accreditation by the American Bar Association is extremely important for law schools. Bar candidates in many states cannot sit for the bar examination unless they graduate from a law school that is accredited by the American Bar Association. As a result, unless law schools get the approval of the American Bar Association, they cannot operate as a steppingstone for students to begin careers as attorneys, which is the number one reason why people attend law school. Of course, there are some good reasons why the American Bar Association has traditionally looked down upon online law schools, since the value of courses offered at these schools may come into question, and the on-campus connection may be important to law students. However, the restrictions on online law schools may just as easily be explained as a way to decrease the number of people entering the practice of law.
Nevertheless, pretty much every law school in the country has become an online law school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, nearly every law school in the United States held classes online for the remainder of the most recent semester, and many plan on doing so for the upcoming semester. Surely this experience demonstrates that law schools can operate in an online environment, and the American Bar Association should give serious consideration to sanctioning online-only law schools. Such law schools are also presumably cheaper than traditional bricks-and-mortar institutions, so permitting online law schools to exist would give students the option to complete their degrees on their own terms and likely at a cheaper rate than traditional schools.
Attendance Policies
When I attended law school, many of my courses had an attendance policy. This meant that if a law student failed to show up in class a certain number of times, their grades could suffer. I am not sure if this was a school requirement or a requirement of some professors, but I always thought it was strange that attendance would factor into grades. It seemed to me that grades should reflect one’s actual acuity at the course and not something as arbitrary as filling a seat in class. This is even more true with massive lecture classes with over a hundred students in which there is not much interaction among students.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown that law school courses can continue even if students and professors are not physically present in class. As a result, law schools should expand policies that allow students to use remote means to virtually participate in classes after the pandemic subsides. This would assist students who are sick, traveling for job interviews, or find themselves in many other situations that make it difficult for them to appear in class. Law students are often extremely busy with externships, clinics, and other pursuits that do not fit neatly into an academic schedule, and law schools should encourage these pursuits by empowering students to attend courses virtually if needed.
As a corollary to this point, law schools should expand the availability of recorded lectures. A law school I attended recorded all lectures so that people could view them if unable to be present in class. However, if I remember correctly, students needed to specially apply for permission to view these recordings. Now that law schools have learned how to operate with videoconferencing technology, law schools should record more lectures for the convenience of students and make these recordings freely available.
All told, law schools have an incredibly difficult job operating during the pandemic, and many institutions have adopted innovative measures to contend with COVID-19. Law schools can learn from these lessons to make permanent improvements to legal education.
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.