Legal News

ABA brings controversial topics to annual meeting in L.A.

By Jason Siegel

The American Bar Association is bringing controversial topics to their midyear meeting in Los Angeles Feb. 6-12 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel.

Among them are the EPA's challenge to California's climate change waiver, the rule of law in an increasingly multicultural society, legal remedies to subprime lending criss and a rule that would require law school to show they are graduating students who can pass the bar exam.

Schools would need to demonstrate that 75% of graduates passed the exam or that their pass rate was comparable to other local law schools if the latter rule is approved, The National Law Journal reports.

The ABA's House of Delegates will consider and vote on the matter on Feb. 11 at the James L. Knight Center on the hotel's 3rd floor. They'll also be voting on policy recommendations on immigration detention standards, state redistricting and legal safeguards for assisted reproductive technology at the meeting.

David Yellen, dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a member of the standards review committee of the ABA's legal education section, said it was "pretty likely" that the change would be approved.

The change will exacerbate the problem of decreasing minority enrollment in law schools, Eddie Koen Jr., national chairman of the Black Law Students Association, told the NLJ.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on February 04, 2008 (boomark / email).