Alumni want to help as NCCU law school faces admission-standards questions

DURHAM -- Alumni leaders started suspecting N.C. Central University’s law school might wind up in trouble with the American Bar Association when they saw last summer that slightly more than a third of the 2016-17 first-year class had washed out.

Now, they’re waiting to see how the school answers the ABA’s December demand for a report on admission standards, and how they can help it deal with the problem, said Greg Doucette, the Durham lawyer who’s president of the School of Law Alumni Association.

“Once we’ve got a handle on what’s actually taking place, and what the administration’s response is going to be, then we can figure out how best we can help,’ Doucette said. The association, which meets Saturday, has “the ability to effect tangible change” via fundraising to support the school or by lending a hand with things like student bar-exam prep, he said.

ABA accreditors ask law schools to “only admit applicants who appear capable of satisfactorily completing [a] program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.” The notice to NCCU doesn’t go into specific complaints, but outside observers have pointed to the “attrition” rate of first-year students and a low passing rate for graduates in recent state bar examinations.

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