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By Susannah Pollvogt

On November 4, the ABA¹ released a for the Standard 315 Report. The template sheds light on what will be required of law schools to comply with the new standards.

For an explanation of all of the new standards related to learning outcomes and assessment, see my prior blog posts here, here, and here. The recently released template ultimately addresses all the changes but is most immediately responsive to Standards 315 and 204.

Standard 315 requires a law school to conduct “an ongoing evaluation of the efficacy of its program of legal education ... in achieving its programmatic learning outcomes.” This includes evaluating whether individual course learning outcomes are advancing this effort.

Standard 204 requires a law school to assemble information related to this evaluation into a report in conjunction with the law school’s once-every-10-years ABA site visit. This is referred to as a “Standard 315 report.”

The draft template lists 10 components of the Standard 315 report and includes a list of required attachments. The template primarily focuses on evaluation of programmatic and course learning outcomes, although it also addresses requirements related to formative assessments. The latter will be the subject of a separate future blog post.

Following are the salient features of the template. I have consolidated and organized them somewhat differently to make them a bit more digestible.

Law schools are required to:

1. Identify their programmatic learning outcomes (PLOs).
   1. This is a low lift because most law schools already have their PLOs published on their website.
   2. Law schools may want to revisit their PLOs if several years have passed since their adoption, they are too many in number such that assessment of all of them will be excessively burdensome, or they are of a nature such that they will be difficult to assess.
   3. In addition, the standards and the template anticipate that a law school has collected information about "developments in legal practice" and incorporated them into their PLOs; this may provide an independent basis for revisiting them.
2. Explain the process for assessing PLOs as well as the process for assessing course learning outcomes (CLOs).
   1. The language of assessment can be a little confusing, but what is meant here is that law schools should analyze whether students are attaining the competencies identified in the law school’s PLOs and CLOs.
   2. In conjunction with this, law schools should also review whether different sections of the same required course have adopted a core set of common CLOs.
3. Describe how the law school has used the information gathered to make changes to the program of legal education.
   1. In assessment literature, this is known as “closing the loop.” We don’t gather and analyze assessment data for its own sake; we do so to make improvements to the curriculum, teaching, and learning.
   2. This includes reflecting on whether the PLOs and CLOs themselves are appropriate for the institution given the information gathered about student attainment.

In terms of attachments to the Standard 315 report, the template anticipates that schools will provide:

1. A curriculum map or comparable document
2. An assessment plan
3. A document indicating that CLOs in the required curriculum are aligned with PLOs related to professional skills, bar admission requirements, and/or the law school’s mission

For schools with site visits coming up in the next few years, the draft template provides helpful guidance on what type of information the school should be gathering and how that information will be presented. At the same time, the thought of collecting and analyzing this information may seem overwhelming.

As a reminder, I am available to assist with all phases of this process — from mapping the curriculum to designing an assessment plan to assisting in assembling the Standard 315 report.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any of this further.