By Michael Hunter Schwartz from Washburn University School of Law
Mary Lynch, An Evaluation of Ten Concerns About Using Outcomes in Legal Education,William Mitchell Law Review [Read fulltext at SSRN]
Mary Lynch’s “An Evaluation of Ten Concerns About Using Outcomes in Legal Education” makes a compelling case for the many benefits of moving legal education accreditation to an outcomes-based model while addressing common misconceptions and misunderstandings about the goals of outcomes-based education. Using fundamental works in the outcomes assessment field, she tackles such common but false claims as the assertions that outcomes assessment is “anti-theoretical and anti-scholarly,” outcomes assessment impinges on academic freedom, and outcomes assessment will require law teachers to “teach to the test.” The result of this effort is a rational, thoughtful, convincing argument that outcomes assessment will improve legal education by leading law faculties to thoughtfully chose the outcomes they want their institutions to teach students and make curricular and teaching decisions based on standards and objective data rather than faculty preferences and unsupported beliefs.