Ohio Plans Lawyer Admission Overhaul, Curbing ABA’s Role in Accreditation

Ohio is poised to drop its requirement that lawyers graduate from an American Bar Association (ABA)-accredited law school, joining other Republican-led states amid a backlash against the ABA’s oversight of legal education under the Trump administration.

The Supreme Court of Ohio said that it has directed the court’s top administrator to develop the state’s own law school accreditation process and has invited public comments on proposed changes to admissions rules that would remove specific references to the ABA.

If adopted, Ohio would become the fourth Republican-controlled state in recent months to eliminate or relax reliance on the ABA’s national accreditation system, following Florida, Texas and Alabama. Tennessee is also considering a similar move.

Six of Ohio’s seven elected justices are Republicans. The state currently has nine ABA-accredited law schools.

Washington State this month also opened its lawyer licensing process to certain graduates of non-ABA-accredited law schools. However, officials there said the change had been in development for years and was not intended to undermine the ABA’s role in legal education oversight.

Daniel Thies, chair of the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, said ABA accreditation remains the “gold standard” for law schools. He added that state-level accreditation working “in parallel” with ABA recognition would preserve the national system while allowing states to pursue their own policy objectives and maintain the portability of law degrees from Council-accredited institutions.

The ABA’s accreditation role has come under scrutiny from President Donald Trump’s Republican administration over its diversity and inclusion requirement for law schools, which critics have described as unlawful. The ABA voted to remove the rule earlier this month.

The Ohio proposal follows the state’s Supreme Court convening an advisory committee in July to review its law school accreditation process, citing the need to ensure “excellence and innovation”.

Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy said the committee’s proposal represents a “new pathway” for attorney admission in the state. “We remain committed to supporting our law schools and ensuring their perspectives are reflected in this process,” she said in a statement on Thursday.

Under the proposed changes, references to the ABA would be replaced with “an accrediting agency recognised by the United States Department of Education or a state accrediting agency subject to the guidelines established by the Supreme Court of Ohio”.

Graduates of ABA-accredited law schools would remain eligible for admission in Ohio. The ABA remains the federally recognised accreditor of US law schools. However, graduates of schools meeting Ohio’s forthcoming standards would also become eligible.

Opponents of moves away from ABA accreditation have warned that a patchwork of state-level admission rules could disadvantage law graduates and make it harder to transfer qualifications between states.

The public comment period on the Ohio proposal closes on July 10.

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