KU News Release

Mike Davis

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• School of Law

LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas School of Law professor has become the first member of the faculty elected to a council that sets standards for legal education at law schools across the nation.

Mike Davis, the Centennial Teaching Professor of Law, was one of four people elected to the Council of the American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. The election took place Aug. 14 during the section’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Davis will serve a three-year term, renewable once.

“It is very gratifying,” he said. “First, the election marks the culmination of an ABA career that spans three decades of site visits, major committee assignments and related work. Second, there are always important issues regarding legal education in America. No doubt it will be a great challenge, but at the moment I am simply pleased both personally and for the KU School of Law.”

The council is the ultimate regulatory authority for legal education in the United States, including accreditation standards and enforcement. It is composed of 15 members and five officers, with representatives from the bar, the bench, law school deans and faculty and nonlegal members at large. No more than half of the council can come from legal education.

Created in 1893, the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar was the first ABA section. The section’s council and Accreditation Committee are recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the national accrediting agency for programs leading to the law degree. All state supreme courts recognize ABA-approved law schools as meeting the legal education requirements to qualify for the bar examination; 46 states limit eligibility for bar admission to graduates of ABA-approved schools.

Davis is an honor graduate of Kansas State University and the University of Michigan Law School, where he served as an editor on the Michigan Law Review. He joined the KU law faculty in 1971. He received the Immel Award for Teaching Excellence in 1991 and was named Centennial Teaching Professor of Law in 1997. In addition to his faculty duties, Davis was university general counsel for six years and dean of the law school for nine. He was also interim dean from July 2005 to July 2006. He has been involved in many aspects of legal practice regionally and nationally and has served as chair of the ABA Standards and Accreditation committees. Davis was Of Counsel to the Kansas City law firm of Stinson Morrison Hecker from 1989 to 2009.