The Task Force has released a draft report with proposed reforms to law school pricing, accreditation, and licensing. The accompanying press release is here. In August, the Task Force released a working paper, which addressed similar issues.
My understanding is that the new document differs from the original working paper in the following respects:
- It no longer speaks in terms of Specific Standards and Interpretations that are potentially modifiable; rather, it says more strongly that those Standards and Interpretations should be eliminated or substantially liberalized (page 29).
- It mentions the need to provide additional consumer information to prospective students (page 30).
- It strengthens the recommendation to the courts and regulators to reduce the amount of law study required to be eligible to sit for the bar – changing the language from "seriously consider" to "construct and evaluate proposals" (page 31).
- It adds a recommendation regarding the construction and evaluation of proposals to reduce the amount of undergraduate study required (page 31).
- It recommends that law faculty support law schools in the implemention of the recommendations addressed to the law schools (page 32).
- There is a separate statement by Task Force member Nancy Rogers at the end.
I've compared the two documents to make the changes easier to spot. (The pink highlighted text shows where text has been replaced; the blue highlighted text shows new additions. The color coding can be hard to follow depending on what Reader you use, but you can see what each color represents by scrolling over the popup comment boxes.)
You can read more about the draft report in the ABA Journal and Wall Street Journal.
Update: I see that John Steele also posted about this topic below.