Deans & Legal Education
A Selected Bibliography

Accreditation Issues

Ronald A. Cass, So, Why Do You Want to Be a Lawyer? What the ABA, the AALA, and US News Don’t Know That We Do, 31 U. Tol. L. Rev. 573 (2000).
The author briefly critiques the accuracy and usefulness of both the U.S. News rankings and ABA and AALS standards tools for assessing and ensuring the quality of legal education.

R. Lawrence Dessem, The ABA/AALS Sabbatical Site Inspection: Strangers in a Strange Land, 37 U. Tol. L. Rev. 37 (2005).
Most law school deans will host a sabbatical site inspection of their law school by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).  Many will serve as a representative on a team inspecting another school.  The author discusses these site visits from the dean’s perspective.

Jon M. Garon, Take Back the Night: Why an Association of Regional Law Schools Will Return Core Values to Legal Education and Provide an Alternative to Tiered Rankings, 38 U. Tol. L. Rev. 517 (2007).
The author argues that despite the success of legal education in American, the system is on a path to ruin because of the confluence of American Bar Association accreditation, U.S. News and World Report influence, and Association of American Law School’s hegemony.  Students have too few price choices and far too much debt while the public has legal services that are too expensive to provide representation for a significant portion of the population.

Richardson R. Lynn, Who Moved Your Cheese? Confessions of a Rat, 35 U. Tol. L. Rev. 131 (2003).
The author discusses how to prepare for and survive an ABA site visit.

Parnham H. Williams, To Be Or Not To Be, 37 U. Tol. L. Rev. 195 (2005).
The author relates a tale of ABA accreditation in California.