Looking for equal treatment in law school education

In Texas, it’s easy to find a blatant case of unequal treatment between brick-and-mortar law schools and those that offer a fully online legal curriculum. Just compare St. Mary’s School of Law in San Antonio and Concord Law School at Purdue University Global in Los Angeles.

Concord is an online education pioneer, established in 1998 as the nation’s first fully online law school. Concord is fully accredited by the State Bar of California, and the National Higher Learning Commission. Concord has produced qualified attorneys for almost 25 years. Even so, Concord has been largely ignored by the American Bar Association (ABA) because of its fully online curriculum.

In contrast, St. Mary’s has only five years of experience offering online courses. Yet, it is the first law school to have a fully online Juris Doctor (JD) program accredited by the ABA.

The Texas BLE rules create confusion

This bias extends beyond St. Mary’s. Texas relies on the ABA. The ABA gave its 196 accredited law schools permission to offer fully online courses during the Covid-19 pandemic. This year, the ABA still allows 140 law schools to use online courses to provide up to one-third of the credit hours required for a JD.

In other words, it’s OK with the ABA if its accredited institutions offer online law courses, while it ignores Concord and other affordable, convenient online alternatives to brick-and-mortar.

It’s a Catch-22 situation for the ABA to allow its accredited institutions to offer online law school courses, while not allowing fully online law schools to become accredited. It strains the bounds of logic and fairness, especially in light of the selective St. Mary’s accreditation.

The rules state that if an accredited JD is substantially the same as an ABA school, it can be accepted by waiver for admission. A Concord JD exceeds the ABA requirement. Yet Texas retains its bias regarding ABA approval.

Why does St. Mary’s get a pass?

It’s not a coincidence that St. Mary’s is located in Texas, which only allows graduates of ABA-accredited law schools to qualify for the state bar exam.

In the state of Texas, a high-quality, online-only education is inadequate in order to practice law – unless you’re one of 700 law students at St. Mary’s. At the very least, this is a clear sign of protectionism for Texas law schools.

What makes online-only education so important?

The reasoning also ignores the growing popularity of online-only higher education.

·        The Harvard Business Review acknowledges that the traditional higher education model is under pressure from online options.

·        According to the Brookings Institution, the pandemic demonstrated that the quality of live online instruction often rivals – or even exceeds – the quality of an in-person class.

·        The average cost of tuition at a traditional law school is $45,844 a year, according to educationdata.org. Compare that with Concord’s average annual tuition of $12,420.

When the ban on distance learning was created, the Texas Supreme Court had no way to anticipate how important online education would become. It’s time for Texas to get into the 21st Century. Sign a petition to support fairness for online learning, not only for law school students but for any higher education institution.