Speculation swirls over what law school accreditation might look like if states break away from ABA
Over past 52 years, the basic process for law schools across the country to receive accreditation from the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has been fairly predictable: The council reviews extensive written documentation and data, visits the site to determine whether all standards are met, and then votes yes or no.
But last week, Texas became the first state to officially cut ties with the section’s council, recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the sole accrediting body for domestic law schools.
Meanwhile, Florida’s leaders are pushing to follow suit, and two other states are considering similar moves. These moves have raised more questions than answers about what accreditation might look like and what the implications would be for law schools, law students and licensure.
“One of the things all these states have to ask is, ‘If not the ABA, then what?’” asks D. Benjamin Barros, the dean of the Stetson University College of Law in Florida.
“Is this going to be a situation where we have multiple accreditors in the field?” asks Elizabeth Kronk Warner, the dean of the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. “Or is it going to be a situation where they say you have to be accredited by this alternative? For me, that’s where the rubber meets the road.”
National accreditation aims to monitor the consistent quality of law schools nationally, and most states require bar applicants to the state bar to graduate from an ABA-accredited law school. That allows graduates from an ABA-accredited school to be mobile, able to take the bar exam, and, ultimately, practice in any state.
Political moves?
The ABA is nonpartisan, and the council acts separately and independently from the larger association. At a special meeting called for Jan. 16, the council will vote on a recommendation “to give the council more autonomy over its self-governance and more clearly separate the governance of the accreditation project and the section activities.” If approved, the ABA Board of Governors would first have to concur, and then the changes would be voted on by section membership at an August meeting.
But many see the breakaway moves in Texas, as well as the proposals in Florida, Tennessee and Ohio—all Republican-led states—as political, stemming from wider criticism of the ABA, which some say pushes a “progressive agenda.”
In December, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission gave its blessing to the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to keep all accrediting powers with the state supreme court.
That follows the Trump administration’s April 2025 executive order aimed at higher education accreditors—specifically referencing the council—and other criticism of the association at large.
Kellye Y. Testy is the Association of American Law Schools’ CEO and executive director. (Photo by Yosef Kalinko)
Reconsidering the council’s role might not stop with these four states.
“I do think that more states may go that direction,” says Kellye Y. Testy, the Association of American Law Schools’ CEO and executive director and a 2022 ABA Journal Legal Rebel. “The question is, how much of this is political posturing? We’re in a period where we don’t know.”
Council wars
The ABA council has no shortage of critics. Some have objected to its standard on racial equity, which was suspended until Aug. 31, 2026. Others have argued that the council’s accreditation standards overall are too expensive, specific and stringent, such as a proposal that would have doubled the number of mandatory experiential learning credits.
Concerning a possible new accreditation system, David H. Moore, the dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University in Utah, says some of the questions are meant for making sure that it “still allows innovation and addresses minimum standards, as opposed to homogenizing all the law schools.”
However, Daniel Thies, the chair of the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, pushed back on some of the criticism, calling them “misleading” in an opinion piece in Bloomberg Law. He noted that the council “prescribes less than one-fifth of the law school curriculum.”
“The council’s work ensures the transparency needed for consumer protection of prospective law students,” Thies wrote.
For its part, the council is taking a deep look at its standards, via a new advisory committee, including state supreme court justices and law school deans and professors.
“This process acknowledges recent calls to reduce burdens on law schools and will seek to preserve the baseline quality of education that the standards facilitate while allowing law schools to appropriately innovate,” wrote Jennifer L. Rosato Perea, managing director accreditation and legal education for the ABA.
Still, Austen Parrish, the president of the Association of American Law Schools, and Testy defend the need for a national accreditor.
“Fracturing the national law school accreditation system would be a critical mistake that would ultimately hurt the people most in need of legal services,” Parrish and Testy co-wrote in a Jan. 8 opinion piece in the National Law Review. “Piecemeal or overlapping regulation would raise costs for law schools, their students and the profession” as schools would be forced to meet state and national standards to stay competitive.
Instead, state supreme courts should collaborate with the council and the law schools to resolve concerns about specific accreditation standards, they wrote.
“People want to say I’m defending the ABA, and I’m not,” Testy says. “If anybody’s been on their case about a million things, it’s me. It’s so easy to overlook the value of something that’s been around a long time and to take it for granted.”
David H. Moore is the dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University in Utah. (Photo courtesy of Brigham Young University)
Need for portability
At risk is portability. Having a national accreditor makes it fairly efficient and easy, and lawyers want to have that mobility.
In 2024, more than 11,000 Uniform Bar Exam and nearly 400 Multistate Bar Exam scores were transferred by the National Conference of Bar Examiners to jurisdictions, according to a spokesperson for the NBCE.
“I’ve heard from recent graduates that portability is increasingly important in this age where so much happens digitally and virtually and more and more attorneys are working across state borders,” Warner says.
If even one state’s accreditation standards differ, it could trigger a domino effect that could reach nearly all U.S. law schools, which have to prep their graduates for any bar exam, sources say. It also could make law schools in breakaway states less desirable to students planning a career outside that state.
Florida’s and Texas’ courts have acknowledged that importance. But Texas’ order did not specify how portability would be accomplished, and Florida’s plans are in flux.
In October, a workgroup created by the Florida Supreme Court offered a dozen alternative methods to accredit law schools. Those include forming a new accrediting council in conjunction with other state supreme courts, collaborating with the ABA’s council to revise its accreditation standards, and requesting that the council be decoupled from the larger ABA.
It is not yet clear what those options might mean for the portability of Florida law degrees.
Considering options
Despite the lack of clarity on where the future of accreditation is headed, Florida, like Texas, continues to march forward and potentially away from the ABA. Meanwhile, those in legal education debate the merits of potential scenarios.
For instance, breakaway states could follow California’s setup, with three types of law schools: Some law schools are accredited by the ABA, some by the state, and some have no accreditation—yet all can take the state’s bar exam.
But only a few other states allow graduates of California’s state-accredited schools to be licensed, and the bar pass rate at non-ABA-accredited law schools is much lower, according to California’s state bar statistics.
States beyond the breakaways could start changing their rules and allow grads of schools accredited by groups other than the ABA to take their bar exam or to import scores from the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination.
Deborah Jones Merritt is a professor emerita at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. (Photo by Maddie McGarvey)
“There will be strong pressure from conservatives to do that—and there are probably some conservatives on every state supreme court,” wrote bar exam expert Deborah Jones Merritt, a professor emerita at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and a 2025 Legal Rebel, to the ABA Journal.
Others find that unlikely, especially in the jurisdictions testing the largest number of bar candidates.
“I can’t imagine New York, California and D.C. changing their state rules to accommodate that,” says Parrish, who’s also the dean at the University of California at Irvine School of Law.
Regional accreditors could be created.
“States may join together or have reciprocal arrangements, where Ohio recognizes Texas, Florida recognizes Ohio,” Testy says. “Some of that will be driven through political alliances.”
In July, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched the Commission for Public Higher Education, an accrediting partnership between the State University System of Florida and five other higher education bodies in the southern region. The commission will submit an application to the Department of Education to be recognized as an accreditor in 2027, according to its website.
Schools could maintain ABA accreditation, as well as pass a new accreditor’s standards, but that could be an expensive and time-consuming proposition.
“If Florida tomorrow said, ‘Sorry, schools, we are not going to accept ABA accreditation at all for a qualification for the Florida Bar,’ as a practical matter, the schools are still going to need to be ABA-accredited, so our students can take the bar in New York,” Barros says.
To date, no states have prohibited law schools from having ABA accreditation.
A new national accreditor could be formed. While Florida’s workgroup suggested that the council be divorced from the larger ABA, other groups might come forth.
Warner, who’s also the outgoing chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ Deans Steering Committee, says she has talked with a few national legal organizations that have expressed some interest in potentially taking on accreditation duties.
“There’s a lot of hesitation because it’s a very time-intensive, resource-intensive process to do correctly,” she says.
“Standing up an accrediting operation is no small matter,” Testy adds.
And it may be the law schools that pay the price, Barros says.
“The accreditation process is expensive, right? The ABA council has a lot of folks working for it,” he says. “We might end up having to pay for two accreditations through our accreditation dues.”
Time will tell
It will take time until things shake out, sources agree. Meanwhile, the Department of Education is conducting its five-year review of the council’s accrediting status, adding to uncertainty about the council. It’s a two-year process, culminating with a public hearing.
“That’s a pretty extensive process,” Testy says. “It’s going to be a year or more before we know much about that.”
Meanwhile, intermediate steps will have to be taken, sources say. For instance, the Texas Supreme Court released a list of approved law schools that mirrors the ABA council’s list of 196 approved schools, which some see as buying time.
“That’s actually pretty clever on their part, right?” Barros says. “It might be that they effectively grandfather everybody in.”
With the lack of clarity of the ultimate goal of a new accrediting system, Testy wonders whether the breakaway states are more bark than bite.
“Right now, there’s more of a desire to just say, ‘We want to leave ourselves room to say that the ABA is not exclusive in this state.’” she says. “It may be that it’s more of a statement than anything that has a direct impact.”
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