National Bar Official to Run Online Law SchoolNEW YORK
Kaplan Higher Education officials have announced that Barry Currier, a senior official with the American Bar Association (ABA), has been named dean of the Concord Law School, the nation’s only online law school. The appointment is effective June 1. Currently, Currier serves as the senior deputy for the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which is the recognized accrediting agency for legal education in the United States.
Since 2000, Currier, the former dean and professor at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, has served the ABA by handling issues of law school accreditation in the United States. In this role, he has been working with the committees of the council that draft, administer and apply the accreditation standards that the council adopts.
The current and founding dean of Concord Law School, Jack Goetz, has been named dean of Graduate Studies at Kaplan Higher Education Online, where he will coordinate the planning and development of online graduate programs, including the schools of business and education.
Under Goetz’s leadership, Concord has grown from 33 students in 1998, its inaugural year, to serve a student body of nearly 1,500 working professionals — placing it among the largest 10 percent of U.S. law schools. Concord’s student body is made up of working professionals, family caregivers and others whose circumstances prevent them from pursuing a legal education at a fixed facility law school. Forty-two percent of the students already hold advanced degrees.
“Barry Currier is one of the best known and most highly respected leaders in the law school world,” said Jeffrey Lewis, the dean of Saint Louis University School of Law and a former colleague of Currier’s.
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