Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaboom
Unaccredited California law schools are regulated by the California Bar. They are unaccredited in name only. In reality they must meet the rigorous standards of one of our nation's toughest bar.
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There are basically three kinds of law schools in California.
http://www.calbar.ca.gov/state/calba...=10115&id=5128
First, there are the ones that are accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA). The ABA is recognized as an accreditor by the Dept of Education/CHEA. More importantly, ABA accreditation is recognized by (and often required by) bar admissions people nationwide. All of California's more prestigious law schools are ABA.
Second, there are a set of California law schools that aren't accredited by the ABA but are accredited by the Committee of Bar Examiners of the California State Bar. Several of these also have regional accreditation, which doesn't mean a whole lot for bar admission but might satisfy some states' degree-use laws.
The California Bar Examiners treat these Calbar schools as accredited, but other states' bars don't. Since the California Bar Association isn't a Dept. of Education/CHEA recognized accreditor, telling other people that you have a Calbar accredited degree might conceivably be a criminal act in a few states if there isn't some other recognized accreditation. (It's hard to imagine anyone actually being prosecuted for it though, unless they were illegally practicing law or something.)
Here in California, these Calbar accredited schools are typically perceived as being lesser law schools and their graduates' poorer performance on the bar exam tends to bear it out. It's pretty much accepted that Calbar is less demanding than the ABA, which is why weaker or less-well-funded lawschools oftentimes opt for it.
Finally, I need to point out that neither the ABA or the California Bar Association are currently willing to accredit DL law programs. All ABA and Calbar accredited lawschools are B&M classroom-based.
And third, there are the fully unaccredited California lawschools. That's unaccredited in the legal-profession sense, since a couple of these schools (Concord and Taft) do have DETC accreditation. DETC presumably satisfies degree-use laws in Oregon or wherever, even if they wouldn't get their holders admitted to the bar. So somebody could say that they have a non-bar JD without having Oregon SWAT breaking down their door, wrestling them to the floor and cuffing them. Most of the nonaccredited California lawschools don't have any accreditation though.
The California Bar Examiners treat all of the California DL lawschools as unaccredited, whether or not they are DETC, since they are neither ABA or Calbar accredited. That means that their students have to satisfy additional requirements such as the first year law student's baby-bar exam.
It's true that the California Bar Association does have the authority to regulate these unaccredited schools, but it's pretty minimal. There have been California "lawschools" that essentially consisted of a single attorney teaching most everything for example. The unaccredited schools have reputations here in California ranging from interesting and reasonably legitimate (if proletarian) such as (DETC-accredited and fairly big-budget) Concord, down to a constantly changing array of small obscure low-end things that border on being mills.