Law School Loses First Accreditation Bid

ORANGE —  Chapman University’s fledgling law school has lost the first round in its bid for American Bar Assn. accreditation, a setback that prevents it from joining the ranks of the most respected law schools in the country.

A bar association committee this week notified the 2-year-old school, which lacks accreditation from any bar, that its curriculum and grading policies were not rigorous enough to meet ABA standards, university officials said Wednesday.

Had its application been approved, Chapman would have become the second ABA-approved school in the county, which until Whittier Law School in Los Angeles made plans to move to Costa Mesa in August, was the most populous area in the nation without a law school sanctioned by the organization.

Few schools earn ABA accreditation on the first attempt; it generally takes five to seven years from start-up to full ABA accreditation, according to the organization.

The ABA has accredited 180 law programs nationwide, including 12 in California and six in Los Angeles County. Accreditation would have allowed Chapman graduates to practice and earn licensing in any state and would have lent prestige to both the law school and the university.

Chapman, with 260 students and 17 faculty, does not have state bar accreditation either, which has posed an obstacle in recruiting faculty and students, said university Provost Harry Hamilton.

Without the state accreditation, which Chapman is now seeking, graduates of its first class in June 1998 would be able to take the bar exam and practice in California only if they had passed a “baby bar” exam in their freshman year. Their peers at accredited schools do not take that test.

University officials decided to go for ABA approval first because it is more highly regarded in legal circles and would mean automatic state bar accreditation. They said they plan to make improvements and ask the committee to reconsider its decision at an April meeting.

An ABA spokeswoman said she could not discuss Chapman’s case because the accreditation process is confidential.

University officials declined to release the ABA committee’s letter, received Monday, but Law School Dean Jeremy Miller said the complaints boiled down to questions about whether the school’s program is rigorous enough.

He noted that of the 175 first-year students who took the “baby bar,” only 14% passed, below the state average. But the majority of students maintain high grades.

“They see high grades and a low baby bar and it scares them in terms of rigor,” Miller said. “That’s what I felt from conversations with them. I do disagree with their decision. I think we earned approval. On the other hand, I can see where they would be concerned.”

The faculty will be devising ways to strengthen the curriculum, Miller said.

Also, in response to the committee’s suggestion, the school plans to tighten its academic probation and dismissal standards, which officials admit are lenient so as to keep students enrolled.

“Ours were a little different because our philosophy is we want to retain students until they demonstrate they cannot master the material,” said Hamilton, who was involved in seeking the ABA approval. “Many law schools want to get rid of students.”

Hamilton said the university did meet much of the other criteria for the approval, including “stial building resources, commitment from the university, hquality faculty, large library holdings [and] significant computer access to legal networks.”

The university is still planning a $15-million renovation of a former Orange Unified School District site for its law school, now housed in another campus building, he said.

Whittier Law School, an ABA-approved school for nearly 20 years, plans to move into its Costa Mesa headquarters by August. A first-year class made up mostly of Orange County residents has already begun instruction in a rented office in Irvine.