ABA offers law school consumer data in easy-to-use online format

Information reported by American Bar Association-approved law schools is now publicly available at no charge in online spreadsheets that enable easy searching, sorting, school-by-school comparisons and analysis, the ABA’s law school accrediting body announced today. The spreadsheets, developed by the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, will significantly improve the accessibility of information for prospective law students, pre-law advisors, media outlets and others who study and write about legal education.

Standard 509 of the ABA’s Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools requires law schools each year to disclose data in 11 categories, covering admissions, tuition and living costs, financial aid, class and faculty demographics, employment outcomes, bar passage and other areas. Schools are required to post their Standard 509 information reports on their websites. The ABA also posts each school’s report on the website of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. Previously, the section only posted school-by-school spreadsheets on employment outcomes data.

The new spreadsheets cover the years 2011 to 2014. The section plans to make additional years’ data available in Excel as time and staffing permit.

The spreadsheets, explanatory information and the ABA’s database of Standard 509 reports are available at www.abarequireddisclosures.org.

The council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar and its accreditation committee are recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the national accrediting agency for programs leading to the J.D. The section’s 14,000 members strive to improve legal education and lawyer licensing by fostering cooperation among legal educators, practitioners and judges through workshops, conferences and publications. The section also studies and makes recommendations for the improvement of the bar admission process.