Accreditation of Law School
* Once again Chapman University law students have been disparaged in your newspaper because of inaccurate information in a press release by former Dean Jeremy Miller.
In your Jan. 30 and March 25 articles you cited the low pass rate on the California “baby bar” exam as the reason Chapman University’s School of Law did not receive American Bar Assn. accreditation. This information is false.
Nowhere in the action letter received by Dean Miller did the ABA list the low pass rate as a material factor for ABA accreditation denial. Miller is an ex-dean because he points fingers in the wrong direction.
Chapman law students did not perform well on the baby bar for two reasons: 1) The students were told by Miller that the baby bar was not important and that we did not need to pass because ABA would not consider the results. Consequently, few students took it seriously. 2) The California bar examiners predetermine the pass rates and even initiated a “scaled grading” to ensure these low pass rates. Without this newly conceived scaled grading, the pass rate would have been considerably higher.
I hope the new Chapman Law School dean is more responsible to his students than Miller was. And the California bar examiners should stop playing “52-card pickup” with law students’ futures.
LINDA NORCROSS
Dana Point
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