Over the last decade, AALS has kept law school leadership, faculty, and staff informed with its weekly Legal Education News Digest and Blogs Digest. Sign up to receive these digests by email.
To keep the legal education community up to date, AALS collects articles on policy changes, new programs, collaborations between schools, faculty accomplishments, awards, clinical activities, and impactful research. You can share news and updates with the editors of the weekly digest here. With the launch of our online platform LENS, we will be sharing a weekly roundup of legal education news, highlighting the most important stories.
Here are a few articles of note from the past week:
AALS has released the results of its Law Student Pro Bono Hours Report tracking pro bono contributions from the class of 2024. Eighty-two law schools reported 18,929 graduates contributed more than 4.7 million hours of pro bono service at an estimated $157 million in value. (AALS LENS,Law.com, Law360)
The ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar has voted to suspend the enforcement of the law school diversity rule for accreditation. The decision comes in response to executive orders aiming to end DEI efforts in higher education. The ABA initially suspended the rule in February 2025, and the extension will suspend the rule until August 2026. (Reuters)
The California State Bar has announced that they will use the multistate bar exam for July examinees after a challenging rollout of a new exam in February. They have also announced that they will adjust scores for the February exam to account for the issues faced by test takers. (Reuters)
Law School Dean Moves and Hires
Adam Chilton named dean of University of Chicago Law. (UChicago News)
University of Washington Law launches health law and policy program. (National Jurist)
Higher Education
The federal government has announced that they will freeze more than $2 billion in federal funding for Harvard University. The announcement comes as Harvard University has publicly refused to meet a list of demands sent to them by the US Education Department. (Reuters)
A survey conducted by AP and NORC found that more than half of Americans disapprove of the White House’s current handling of higher education. The survey also found that more Americans oppose than support pulling college funding based on their compliance to presidential orders. (AP News)
BACK