Legal education has been slow to embrace online learning, largely due to tight restrictions from the American Bar Association on how many classes students can take through distance education.

But the ABA appears poised to loosen the reins on online classes. The ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is considering a proposal that would double the number of credit hours J.D. students can take online—from 15 to as many as 30. It would also lift the existing ban on students taking online classes during their crucial first year.

“It's absolutely a step in the right direction,” said Jack Graves, director of digital learning at Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, which is launching a so-called hybrid J.D. program next year. “The biggie, of course, is allowing students to do part of it in the first year. That's a big change, and I think it's an important one. It recognizes the fact that online education, done right, is not necessarily inferior.”

The council voted on Feb. 9 to send the proposed change out for public notice and comment, and will hold a hearing on the matter April 12 in Washington. Should the council sign off on the proposal when it meets in May and the ABA's House of Delegates give its approval, the new rules could go into effect as early as August—in time for the upcoming academic year.

The ABA has been warming up to distance education in recent years. In 2013 it bumped up the number of credit hours allowed via online classes from 12 to 15, but retained the rule prohibiting online classes in the first year. (LL.M. programs and masters in law programs are not subject to the ABA's distance education limits, and online versions have proliferated over the past decade.)

The proposal now under consideration would allow as much as one-third of a student's coursework to be delivered fully online. Most law schools require between 86 and 90 credit hours to graduate, meaning students could take between 28 and 30 credit hours online. Additionally, all other classes may be as much as one-third online without counting toward the online credit hour limit. For example, they could feature online quizzes or videos in modest amounts without triggering the distance learning rule.

“There's an understanding among the council that even if a lot of schools aren't poised to jump into the distance learning waters today, there's more interest in using distance learning than there was a few years ago, and that our standards need to move along and continue to make space for schools to do a little bit more,” said Barry Currier, the ABA's managing director of accreditation and legal education.

But the council also wants to make clear that classes delivered online still must meet all the ABA rules, in terms of rigor and the level of interaction between students and the faculty and classmates, Currier added.

“There is substantial evidence outside of legal education—and growing evidence inside legal education—that distance learning, properly done, can be as effective or more effective in some cases than the more traditional classroom experience,” Currier said. “There is good distance learning and poor distance learning, just as there is good classroom teaching and poor classroom teaching.”

The most effective classes combine in-person and online elements in what is known as the hybrid model, Graves said.

But he acknowledged that not everyone in the legal academy is a believer in the quality of online education, and that some faculty will likely oppose raising the online credit hour limit.

“The people who won't like it are the ones who don't believe it works,” Graves said. “And the ones who don't believe it works are almost exclusively people who have never explored it.”

A handful of law schools have received variances from the ABA to exceed the existing online credit hour limits. Mitchell Hamline School of Law launched the first hybrid J.D. program in 2015, where students take most of their classes online then come to campus for several weeks for in-person coursework.

Loyola University Chicago School of Law and Seton Hall University School of Law both have part-time J.D. programs that incorporate online and weekend classes, and Southwestern Law School last August was awarded a variance to exceed the distance learning limit.

The council also granted a variance this month to Syracuse University College of Law, which announced plans in 2016 to launch an online J.D. program. The ABA denied the school's initial request for a variance, but the new approval means Syracuse can move forward with a planned launch in January 2019.

The program will combine live online lectures with self-paced online classes, several weeklong campus sessions and a legal externship, said Nina Kohn, associate dean for research at Syracuse. Students can complete their law degree over the course of 10 semesters.

“It's very exciting to have the opportunity to translate what we do as law professors into the online space,” Kohn said. “It's exciting to think about how we can make the residential program, which has been our hallmark and our strength, accessible to students who can't get to our campus.”

The University of Dayton School of Law also has a pending request for a variance to exceed the online class limit. ABA records show that the council has denied similar variance requests from the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law and Rutgers Law School in the past year.

“This really gives us a chance to do more with online and more with hybrids,” Graves said of the pending ABA proposal to allow for more online coursework. “It gives us more room to accommodate and provide access than the existing program.”