Debate Over ABA Lawyer Accreditation Intensifies as US States Push for Reform

With three states sidelining the American Bar Association (ABA) in lawyer licensing over the past year and more poised to follow, ABA defenders on Monday warned that ending reliance on the organisation’s law school oversight would hurt students, graduates, law schools and states by forcing them to navigate a national patchwork of attorney admission rules and driving up accreditation costs.

ABA accreditation is both efficient and fair to students, said Association of American Law Schools executive director Kellye Testy during a three-hour online discussion convened by the Houston Bar Association. Law schools benefit from a single set of rules and one body monitoring compliance, while students are assured of a high-quality legal education, Testy said. Several speakers said graduates of non-ABA-accredited law schools pass the bar exam at significantly lower rates.

“We’re in a place where it makes much more sense to reform rather than reject,” Testy said.

ABA critics counter that the organisation’s law school rules are too lengthy and too focused on faculty needs, and that its efforts to promote diversity and inclusion have undermined academic freedom and campus free speech.

The ABA’s rules “make law schools more homogeneous, more expensive, and they erect unnecessary barriers to new law schools,” said University of Miami law professor and panellist David Yellen.

Law school accreditation has become a flashpoint since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Trump last year threatened to revoke the ABA’s status as the federally recognised accreditor of law schools, citing what he called its “unlawful ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ requirements”. The rule requires schools to demonstrate their commitment to diversity in recruitment, admissions and student programming.

The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which oversees accreditation, has put the diversity rule on hold and has recommended eliminating it, despite calls from some legal educators to retain or strengthen it.

Meanwhile, state supreme courts in Texas, Florida and Alabama have modified their attorney admission rules to either remove graduation from an ABA-accredited law school as a requirement to sit the bar exam, or to expand eligibility to schools recognised by a different accreditor. Ohio and Tennessee are considering similar moves.

ABA Council chair Daniel Thies said the council spends between $5 million and $6 million annually on law school oversight, and that it would be expensive for states to duplicate that work while shifting the financial burden to taxpayers. Many states have experimented with licensing non-ABA law graduates, but none of those approaches have gained widespread traction, Thies said.

“We’re not perfect,” he said. “But ultimately, the ABA is the process and the structure that has worked.”

 

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