Imagine a law school that produces nearly 500% more graduates than the local market needs, and a bar passage rate that fluctuates between 21% and 7%.
Give them some provisional ABA accreditation, right?
Not so fast. This marginally ABA-worthy school is the Law Development Centre in Kampala, Uganda, where a law degree is a one year postgraduate program.
The LDC has come under fire in recent years for producing sub-standard graduates.
The problem stems from undergraduate programs in law in Uganda, where for years students had been producing substandard theses. So, what was Uganda's response? Higher admissions requires for the LDC? Or for undergrad? Nope. More mentoring of students? Nope. A longer legal program to make up for undergraduate shortcomings? No way, Mugabe! (We know, he's Zimbabwean, but it rhymes so well.)
They got rid of the writing requirement.
That's right. Students were doing so badly that standards had to be dropped. Apparently war isn't our only export!
Naturally when standards dropped, lower quality students were graduating and going on to the LDC. Those lower quality students would then get their law degree, but were unable to pass the...
Wait a sec. The LDC is Uganda's only law school. If they have such a small number of students passing the bar, then that has to mean...
Mother of God. There's a real quality floor, not merely a comparative one, thus protecting the public from sub-standard attorneys and also protecting the profession from a flood of new lawyers. It doesn't matter how many seats the LDC fills, the profession isn't lowering its standards.
