Get It ON Suffolk!
I am rooting so hard for Suffolk this next week. You should too. It is such a great place to be.
I just learned that next week the American Bar Association/Association of American Law Schools Site Team will be visiting Suffolk to work on accreditation. I also just learned that they will be visiting classrooms to see how good the in class discussion is. It is crazy that I heard this on the same day that our wonderful Dean Nelson sent out an email explaining why we were ranked the way that we were in the U.S. News Law School Rankings.
Dean Nelson basically said that we were ranked that way (listed alphabetically below the 145th school) because of factors that are essential to what actually makes our school good. Our size, our commitment to access as established by our long standing night school, and the exceptional regional legal market saturation our graduates have accomplished can actually work against us. I don’t feel positive about the the metric that U.S. News uses, but it’s cool, cause Suffolk students love Suffolk. The legal market might be looking up pretty soon here, and the student body has changed a lot for the better in recent years. We are probably going to be fine with or without U.S. News’ help. I agree with Dean Nelson that it is very exciting to be at Suffolk these days.
There is a metric, on the other hand, that we should all care about. All academies of higher learning, and especially law schools, need to be accredited. Law Schools go through a special process. Unlike undergraduate colleges which are accredited by one of many possible accreditation associations, law schools are accredited by two groups working in tendem; the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools.
Why should you care about this? Why is it significant that they will be coming into classes? You should care because they are judging your school by a metric that does matter. Virtually every state requires that you get an ABA accredited school to educate you before letting you sit for the bar. It is a huge deal that these people are coming into classes next week because if you sound like an idiot in class, or the entire class is acting like they came to law school to avoid questions from the professor, it could have a negative impact on a vital process that our school goes through every so often.
So read up this week. Be prepared in class. Dress nicely. Don’t swear in the lobby. Do something exceptional in front of any random strangers you may see in the building next week. Do it so that we stand out a little. We are being judged on whether our collective personal quality is of a level such that we deserve to call ourselves lawyers. Do not let yourself slack just because there is a week between memo time and the race to finals. Be the exceptional people that we all know we are next week. Get inspired by the love of academia that brought you to Law School.
Suffolk Love!
