ABA Loosening Restrictions on Online Course Credit Limits Due to Coronavirus
Barry Currier, who heads up the ABA's law school accreditation efforts, discusses how its oversight is changing amid the mass move to online law classes.
March 13, 2020 at 01:00 AM
6 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Law.com
In less than a week, more than a quarter of U.S. law schools have suspended in-person classes and moved classes online, or have announced plans to do so in the coming weeks in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.
But the American Bar Association's law school accreditation rules limit the number of course credits law students may receive online, and the rush to shift classes online has created plenty of confusion and questions over whether those distance education classes will count toward the minimum 83 credits that Juris Doctor students must complete to graduate. Under the ABA rules, no more than a third of a student's credits may be earned via distance education classes. And first-year law students may take no more than 10 credits online. Classes count as distance education if more than a third of the instruction is delivered online—which will most likely apply to any classes transitioning online this week and next week.
The ABA in late February issued a guidance memo on emergency and disaster operations that makes clear that law schools have some latitude to adopt temporary changes to their educational program that may fall outside of the current accreditation standards. Law.com caught up Thursday with Barry Currier, the ABA's managing director for accreditation and legal education, to clarify how the accreditor is approaching the changes schools are making in response to the coronavirus, particularly regarding the move to online classes. Currier said that it's the responsibility of individual law schools to determine the right responses for their own circumstances, and that legal educators will have to live with a certain amount of ambiguity during this emergency period. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Law.com: I think the question foremost on the minds of students and law school administrators is whether credits earned through these newly online classes will count toward their J.D.s. What clarity can you offer them?
Barry Currier: It's the school's responsibility to operate in compliance with the standards. That has been amplified by the guidance memo. We think that guidance memo gives schools ample room to make accommodations that should allow for a considerable amount of online teaching. Schools are free to do that within the language of the guidance memo.
To clarify that point, the ABA hasn't waived the distance education standard, correct?
Well, the standards haven't changed, but the school can do what the guidance memo tells them they can do. If you look at that memo, you'll find room in there to believe you can give more online credits than the standard allows because of the emergency or disaster that is the pandemic. As long as you do it in a way that's consistent with the guidance memo, you will be fine. No student has ever had his or her degree refused or revoked because the ABA Council found a school to be operating outside of the standards. Our jurisdiction is over the school that issues the degree. It's not over the student. If a school operates a program consistent with the directions given in the guidance memo, then the school will be OK and the credits awarded to the students will be OK.
So, every school that has said it's going online all the way through the end of the semester should be fine, right?
As long as they do it in a way that's consistent with the guidance memo. We're not going to come in and adjudicate that in the moment. The schools have to make these decisions on the fly and the guidance memo gives them discretion to do that. The chances that we are going to go back and tell them they have to revoke the credits is very low. In an emergency, we have to trust the schools to do the right thing.
So schools don't need to come to the ABA for permission to move fully online. They can go ahead and do what they deem necessary taking into account the guidance memo. Is that right?
The guidance memo not only allows them to do that—it's what it tells them to do.
Are you still getting lots of questions and communications from law schools right now?
Yes, we are getting them. Our answer is, "Read the guidance memo and do what you think is reasonable." I don't have the authority to make accreditation decisions. Those are up to the [Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar]. The council meets quarterly. If [section administrators] start reading every memo and giving schools feedback on whether it is or is not appropriate, we are exceeding our authority. We are telling schools that they are to make an emergency plan that is appropriate given all the guidance in that memo. We may ask some questions next year about the accommodations they made.
But you, as the ABA, aren't auditing these online classes. You are trusting schools to ensure they are up to the standards and requirements under the guidance memo?
Correct. If it's unreasonable, they will have to deal with whatever sanctions or penalties come after the fact. But the students aren't the ones at risk in those discussions. The schools are.
Will the shift to online classes this semester constrain the ability of students to take more online credits down the road given the one-third online limit?
That's a good question. If students switch to online now and that uses up some of the credits students make take the year after, that's a question that I suppose remains to be answered. Maybe a school at that point asks for a variance to give students more credits online. I don't know what the council will say about that.
Any thoughts on how to translate clinics to the online sphere?
The course objectives may need to change. The classroom instruction portion is easy to move online. If the clinic is in an office that is closed for the rest of the semester, well, that's a problem. Schools are coming up with various ways of dealing with the problem—switching them to different clinics, providing options to write reflective papers on their experience to date. They are finding other ways to make sure the work students are doing is equivalent, even if the work is different than what the student expected when they signed up.
How well prepared are law schools, on the whole, to quickly move fully online?
For a month? They are pretty well prepared. And they are so much better prepared than they were a few years ago.
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