ABA Legal Ed council will consider including alternative pathways to bar in accreditation standards
As alternative pathways to licensure emerge around the country, the standards committee of the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is suggesting revisions to law school accreditation standards to recognize the growing popularity of methods beyond taking an exam to join the bar.
In a Feb. 13 memo to the council, the committee suggests a way to “modernize” Standard 316, which now requires that 75% of a law school’s graduates in a calendar year who took the bar exam must pass it within two years to meet accreditation standards. The new suggested wording restates it as “satisfactory completion of an assessment of competency for licensure, such as a bar exam or other assessment recognized in the jurisdiction.”
Discussion of these changes are on the agenda for a quarterly council meeting Friday. If approved, the proposal will then be posted for notice and comments.
The new pathways, such as those established in recent years in Oregon, Washington, South Dakota, Utah and Nevada, allow graduates from ABA-accredited law schools to earn licensure through supervised practice or a combination of academic and work experience.
Diploma privilege in Wisconsin and the Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program in New Hampshire have been covered by the current standard, according to the memo.
The council’s proposed wording change is important because some law schools have worried how graduates pursuing an innovative pathway would be counted toward the council’s mandatory bar pass rate, says Deborah Jones Merritt, a licensure expert, a professor emerita at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and a 2025 ABA Journal Legal Rebel.
And it could encourage other states such as Minnesota to move forward on alternative pathway proposals, she says.
“The language they’ve proposed works well for encompassing pathways that exist or are being contemplated,” Merritt says.
The two-year window allows enough time for candidates in Nevada to complete all three components of its new staged pathway, she says. In addition, it would allow graduates to attempt Oregon’s Supervised Practice Portfolio Examination pathway, which averages 12 months, she says, or even to first attempt the traditional bar exam, and “if they’re not successful, to then complete the SPPE.”
The council’s consideration follows a 2025 report by the Committee on Legal Education and Admissions Reform, a group established by the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators focused on preparation of new lawyers.
“With the [Conference] of Chief Justices’ CLEAR report last summer and the ABA council adding this implementation step to its established policy, both heavyweights in the licensure arena have weighed in to support improved assessment of attorney competence,” says Joan Howarth, a professor emerita at the University of Nevada’s William S. Boyd School of Law, author of Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing and a 2025 Legal Rebel.
If the proposed changes to Standard 316 are approved, that would force changes to broaden language of Standard 509 to include mandatory reporting of data around all types of licensure outcomes, not just bar passage, according to the memo.
Even if this proposal is ultimately approved, alternative pathways have an additional hurdle to overcome—reciprocity, Merritt says.
“The new pathways are more comprehensive and rigorous than the [Uniform Bar Exam], so states should be willing to recognize graduates of those pathways,” she says.
See also:
Top judicial officials form workgroup studying law school accreditation
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