Arkansas Law Schools Prepare to Go Largely Digital

Dean Margaret Sova McCabe has plans for the University of Arkansas School of Law.

In early May, the University of Arkansas School of Law began planning for the fall semester.

The administration and faculty realized “that this fall would be unusual, whether that’s from our face-to-face classes being socially distant or whether it’s the fact that we have more distance and remote learning,” said Dean Margaret Sova McCabe.

Law professors at the UA School of Law and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Bowen School of Law spent their summer vacations preparing for both in-person and online classes, a trend that could continue after the pandemic fades. “We’re not sticking our head in the sand,” McCabe said. “We know that the pandemic will have profound effects on all of us.”

Law students will have an option this fall of remote learning for all classes. Faculty members who also are at risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 can also choose to teach remotely in the fall, she said.

The Bowen School itself has been making changes to deal with the pandemic. It spent $300,000 upgrading infrastructure to have classes simultaneously online and with students in the classrooms this fall, Dean Theresa Beiner told Arkansas Business. She said the school used reserved funds to pay for the improvements, but it hopes to be reimbursed with federal stimulus money.

Students think that if their classes are online, school should be less expensive, Beiner said. But because the school didn’t have the infrastructure in place, putting classes online actually costs more, she said.

Theresa Beiner

The technology will allow professors to continue using the traditional Socratic method, which involves calling on students and peppering them with questions about facts in court cases. “So most professors have just adapted their Socratic method to the Zoom environment and are taking advantage of some of the things you can do in Zoom, like breakout rooms and polling,” Beiner said. “We’ve been working on how to enhance our online teaching all summer long.”

She said Bowen will have hybrid classes, with students attending class in person one day a week and online classes two days a week.

“We’re trying to be creative with how we’ve done things,” Beiner said. Classes also will have staggered start times, preventing people from jamming the school’s hallways. Masks will be required.

“We’re doing everything we can, but I think it’s still tough in school environments,” she said.

Law schools across the country haven’t offered many online classes because their accrediting agency, the American Bar Association, limits the number of online classes a school can offer.

To earn a law degree, students can take no more than one-third of their classes online. No law schools that provide a J.D. degree completely online are approved by the ABA, according to its website, although there are about eight or nine law schools that allow students to complete most of their law degree online.

Nevertheless, as a result of the pandemic, the ABA has been granting variances to law schools so the credits students earn during the pandemic don’t count toward the one-third credit limit.

The pandemic, however, might usher in changes in how law schools handle online classes after COVID-19.

“Legal education over the past few years has been increasingly examining the role of distance deviation in its programs,” McCabe said. As most law schools shifted to online learning in March, many found that they did a better job of distance education than they thought they would, she said.

“It’s very early though, right?” McCabe said. “I mean, we can’t really take the spring and say, ‘Hey, we’re good.’”

Beiner welcomes adding more online classes. She said she fields calls “all the time” from people who want to go to law school but live too far away to commute.

“So, you know, if we could have more online [law classes] and make it more available statewide, especially in places where there’s not enough lawyers, that would be great,” Beiner said. “So I see this as an opportunity.”