Faculty Evaluation

State Bar rules require evaluation of faculty members. PCL asks faculty members to submit a periodical Self-Evaluation Form to the Administrator, who will provide a copy to the FCC. A State Bar rule, Guideline 4.7, states: “Faculty members must continually strive to improve their teaching skills and expertise in the subject(s) they teach. Faculty members are expected to keep informed of changes in the law and include in their course(s) a discussion of recent significant statutory changes and case law developments.”

Faculty members are also evaluated by their students at the end of each course on a form provided by the FCC. These forms are maintained by the Administrator, who submits copies to the FCC. Also, the FCC evaluates all faculty members during each course, and the FCC may enlist persons who are not on the FCC to perform evaluations, if they are faculty or former faculty of any law school, alumni of PCL, present or retired members of the judiciary, or practicing or retired attorneys. Pursuant to State Bar rules: the criteria for evaluation are:

(A) The faculty member's education, knowledge, and experience in the subject matter;

(B) The faculty member's competence in the classroom or in other instructional activities;

(C) The faculty member's teaching skills given the technology and methodology used in instruction, and the quality of participatory experiences employed;

(D) The faculty member's organization of the course as demonstrated by outlines or syllabi;

(E) The quality, nature, and type of examinations, and other assignments and the quality of grading;

(F) The relation between the field of instruction and the area of specialization, if any, of the faculty member in private practice; and

(G) The years of experience, both in teaching and in practice. All evaluators must submit their completed evaluations to the Administrator, who must place them in the files of the respective Instructors.

Evaluators are requested to submit their completed evaluations to the Administrator on the day they complete them, but no later than the last day of the academic quarter during which the evaluation was done. The evaluators, other than the student evaluators, must review of the materials used in faculty member’s the course, examinations given, and the extent to which examinations and grading standards provide a reasonably accurate appraisal of each student's ability, and must set out their findings on those subjects in their written evaluations. PCL must use its Student Information System to generate comparisons of course grades with examination scores in like subjects, to be used by the evaluators as some indication of the quality of instruction, examinations, and grading standards.