Faculty Members Benefit From Assessing Other Schools

Why would USC law professors sacrifice three or four days from their busy teaching and scholarly schedules to visit another law school to analyze its strengths and weaknesses? Those who serve on American Bar Association re-accreditation evaluation teams will tell you that the benefits, to the host school as well as the members of the team, are well worth the effort.

Re-accreditation reviews involve intensive study prior to the visit, including reading hundreds of pages of documents prepared by the inspected school about its faculty, staff, students, curriculum, learning environment, and building. The site visit itself involves a rigorous schedule of meetings with members of the law school community and with other members of the team, culminating in a detailed written report. So why would a faculty member take on this additional burden? According to Associate Dean Steven Hinckley, site visits are all-around learning processes for faculty members who believe in advancing the quality of legal education. "For me, participating on ABA site inspection teams is a way of giving something back to the profession by helping other schools wrestle with the strengths and weaknesses of their programs. I have also found it to be an enlightening experience to work with others in the legal profession and learn more about what is going on at other schools. Inspectors truly are law school colleagues trying to fairly analyze other colleagues' operations, and we all learn something from the process."

The site inspection process, repeated every seven years for fully accredited schools, is meant to ensure that those schools continue to provide their students a quality education. Professor Pat Flynn observes, "We establish a higher threshold through the accreditation process, so even the lowest-ranked accredited schools should meet an acceptable standard." Former dean John Montgomery points out that the process benefits our school as well as the school being reviewed. "Participating is a good way to cross-pollinate. While brainstorming ideas to help other schools, it comes naturally to compare and contrast those ideas with your own school's standards."