![handle is hein.journals/proflw20 and id is 1 raw text is: The ABA's Excellent and Inevitable Journey to
Incorporating Professionalism in Law School
Accreditation Standards
Amy Timmer and John Berry
Law schools shape the minds and hearts of
their graduates in enduring ways.
Carnegie Foundation's Educating Lawyers'
I. The ABA's Opportunity to Formalize
the Essential Role of Law Schools in
Inculcating Professionalism
The American Bar Association's Accredita-
tion Standards Review Committee2 is
half-way into a three-year review of the ABA
Standards for Approval of Law Schools3 intend-
ing to ensure that the standards reflect the best
current judgment about the minimum program of
legal education that should be required for the J.D.
degree.' In both the communications of ABA
representatives, and in the proverbial writing on the
wall, the apparent message is that professionalism
inculcation-efforts by law schools to provide a
comprehensive and continual exposure to, teaching
about, and submersion in concepts of professional-
ism that will help law students develop their own
professional identities-may be added to those
standards and subsequently required of law schools.
In the lead article of the ABA's own Section of
Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar's publi-
cation, Syllabus, the current Chair of the Standards
Review Committee says the following about what all
accredited law schools ought to be doing:
[A]ll accredited law schools share a com-
mon overarching mission that accreditation
reviews attempt to ... advance and promote.
Amy Timmer is Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Students and Profes-
sionalism at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. John T. Berry is Director
of the Legal Division of The Florida Bar and the former Chair of the ABA
Standing Committee on Professionalism.
In American legal education, a commonly
embraced and overarching mission would be
stated something like this: To educate men and
women for entry into and ethical participation in
the legal profession5
Meeting an objective of ethical participation in the
legal profession may, thankfully, require significantly
more of law schools in the area of student professional
development than the current standards require. The
ABA's current objective pertaining to the program
of legal education is stated this way: A law school
shall maintain an educational program that prepares
its students for admission to the bar, and effective and
responsible participation in the legal profession.6
Replacing effective and responsible with ethical in
regard to participation in the legal profession indicates
a real shift toward requiring broader education in ethics
and professionalism than that required by the current
standards.7
The Chair hints at what may come when he gives
a nod to what he calls a somewhat more elegant
attempt at an overarching mission statement, proffered
by one member of his committee, that echoes the
concept of professional identity, a phrase repeatedly
employed and polished by the authors of the recent
Carnegie Report on Educating Lawyers8 (hereinafter
Carnegie Report or Carnegie), and says, An ap-
proved law school must have a program of instruction
which will develop the cognitive, performance, and
professional identity competencies that the profession
and the public expect of a lawyer and member of the
legal profession.
While the ABA has long required law schools to
offer training in legal ethics through instruction in mat-
ters such as the Model Rules of Professional Conduct,
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