Update: According to Reuters: "The proposal was withdrawn shortly before a meeting of the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar on Friday, when it was slated to discuss the proposal." Unfortunately, the article suggests that the Council plans to reintroduce a modified plan at some future date.
It seems that the ABA Council on Legal Education has done the impossible, by garnering nearly universal agreement among law professors across schools, subject matters, and ideologies, that their latest proposed rule is really, really bad. I blogged about the proposal earlier, here. Here's criticism (many calling for an end to the ABA's accreditation role) from Gerard Magliocca (The ABA Gets An F), Brian Leiter (ABA Council on Legal Education ignores critics, offers no substantive responses, and says "full speed ahead" with disrupting legal education at most of the nation's law schools), Josh Blackman (The ABA Disregards Law School Objections, Mandates 12 Credits of Experiential Learning), and Dan Rodriguez (The ABA Council is playing a game of chicken).
Coincidentally (or probably not), Adam Chilton (University of Chicago – Law School), Peter A. Joy (Washington University in St. Louis – School of Law), and Kyle Rozema (Northwestern University – Pritzker School of Law) posted within a few days this draft paper to SSRN. From the paper:
[W]e exploit the considerable differences in the prevalence of experiential offerings across law schools that existed before the ABA reform. In particular, we leverage the fact that some schools already had large numbers of filled experiential positions, while others had relatively few. Comparing the schools that likely witnessed the largest and smallest effects of the reform in a difference-in-differences research design, we find no evidence that the reform affected bar passage rates, employment in JD-advantage jobs, employment in jobs requiring a law license, or law schools’ net tuition.
Obviously timely, given the proposal. And here's the abstract:
The Evolution of Experiential Legal Education
Adam Chilton
University of Chicago – Law SchoolPeter A. Joy
Washington University in St. Louis – School of LawKyle Rozema
Northwestern University – Pritzker School of LawDate Written: August 21, 2025
Abstract
To help bridge the gap between legal education and legal practice, in 2014 the American Bar Association adopted a requirement that law students take at least six credits of "experiential" courses. Despite limited research on the effects of this reform, the ABA is currently considering a new reform that would require law students to take twice as many experiential credits to graduate. We provide new evidence for this debate by studying the evolution of experiential legal education and the impacts of the 2014 reform. We compile data reported by law schools to the ABA to document a dramatic rise in the number of experiential opportunities available to students even before the reform, and we find no evidence that the reform improved bar passage rates or employment outcomes. However, we also find no evidence that the reform increased tuition. We then use transcript data from one law school to study how the 2014 reform impacted students' course selections. We find evidence suggesting that the reform expanded access to clinics primarily to students least inclined to benefit from them but without displacing students most inclined to benefit from them.