A student and faculty collaboration has led to several proposed changes to LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center curriculum.Proposed amendments include lowering the graduation requirement from 97 to 94 hours, standardizing the grading system and merging two upper class “basket” requirements into a single 15-hour requirement.The Long Range Planning Committee, the faculty committee conducting a self-study this year before the school undergoes reaccreditation by the American Bar Association, also plans to propose lowering the credit-hour length from 60 to 50 minutes, making anonymous grading of exams mandatory, offering a two-year plan of courses and modifying the current attendance policy. Law Center Chancellor Jack Weiss said he hopes to get the changes approved at the Board of Supervisors meeting in December. “It takes a while to interest people in change,” Weiss saidScott Sternberg, Student Bar Association president, said his organization has pushed for these reforms “for years.”The SBA submitted a “White Paper” to the committee detailing many of the needs being addressed, he said. Lowering the required amount of hours will effectively eliminate the summer school requirement for law students, Weiss said. Though summer programs will still be available, students will no longer be required to take a seventh semester, he said.Not having to take summer classes will allow students to begin interning earlier, Sternberg said. The low median GPA at the Law Center was a top concern in the White Paper, he said.”All we really did was level the playing field,” Sternberg said. At LSU, a third-year student in the top 10 percent has an average GPA of 3.268, while at comparable law schools, the median GPA is between 3.6 and 3.7. Though class ranks are also important, some companies have a minimum cut-off GPA before they will interview a potential applicant, Sternberg said. “It’s a good thing to have us on par with other schools,” said Dennis Harper, first-year law student.Employers who aren’t familiar with the school may ignore LSU applicants because of their comparatively lower GPAs, he said. “I became aware during my first year that our grading system was out of sync with the rest of the law school world,” said Weiss, who has been chancellor since 2007. Because grades measure relative performance, it’s important they are comparable to other law institutions, Weiss said. Merging the two basket requirements will give students more flexibility to specialize in either civil or international law, rather than requiring them to take a set amount of hours in each, Sternberg said.Professors have been very supportive of the changes, said Jonathan Brehm, first-year law student. —-Contact Olga Kourilova at [email protected]