AALS Leader Says National Law Accreditation is Vital as States Consider Alternatives
– As states reconsider the American Bar Association’s role in accrediting law schools, Kellye Y. Testy, CEO and executive director of the Association of American Law Schools, maintained that a national system remains essential to legal education.
“First and foremost, I think it’s critical to continue to have a national accreditor,” said Testy. “We can talk a lot about what the standards for that might be. But having a national accreditor is very valuable because it’s both efficient and fair. It’s efficient and fair to schools because schools need to be focused on providing education. It’s fair to students; students make an important investment in law school.”
Testy noted that while state supreme courts are the ultimately responsible for accrediting law schools, a national framework allows courts to devote more of their time and resources to resolving the many disputes and legal issues they face.
Her remarks came during “A Conversation on the Accreditation of American Law Schools,” a June 29 virtual program hosted by the Houston Bar Association through a platform provided by Troutman Pepper Locke. University of Houston Law Center Dean Leonard M. Baynes moderated the discussion, which examined accreditation developments in Texas, Alabama, Florida, Ohio, and Tennessee as well as broader questions facing legal education.
The Status of ABA Law School Accreditation in Alabama, Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas
Baynes provided a synopsis of recent Texas Supreme Court rulings on accreditation, plus recognized that eight of the 10 deans of Texas law schools submitted joint comments recommending that Texas retain ABA accreditation. The Texas Supreme Court issued an order in January 2026 which ended the state’s delegation to the ABA Council, thus ending its reliance on the Council for law school accreditation. The court ultimately established its own list of law schools from which graduates of those schools could practice law in the state. This decision made Texas the first state to break with the ABA Council law school oversight. This change, however, has caused no immediate disruptions, since the current list of approved law schools remains the same as under the ABA Council.
Panelist Haider Ala Hamoudi is dean and a professor of law at the University of Cincinnati, Donald P. Klekamp College of Law. He spoke about some of the changes happening on the Ohio law school front, which he said is similar in some ways to what is happening in Texas, although there are some “interesting discrepancies.”
“The main change is to replace the words ‘American Bar Association’ with ‘an accrediting agency recognized by the United States Department of Education’ or ‘a state accrediting agency subject to the guidelines established by the Supreme Court of Ohio.’ In order to be admitted to the practice of law in the state of Ohio, you have to be 21, have a bachelor’s degree, and have a JD or an LLB from a law school that was approved by, instead of the ABA, by an accrediting agency recognized by the DOE or a state accrediting agency subject to the guidelines established.” This is still only a proposal, and a state accrediting agency committee has been formed.
Dean and Professor of Law Blake Hudson with Samford University Cumberland School of Law indicated Alabama took a structurally different approach to the same underlying questions in discussion.
“The Alabama Supreme Court amended Rules 3 and 4 governing bar admission, effective Jan. 1, 2027,” he said. “It really didn’t change much; it just listed five Alabama law schools by name with no reference to ABA accreditation at all.” The two other law schools without ABA accreditation, Birmingham School or Law and Miles Law School, were not affected by the change and have been producing bar-eligible graduates for years. The old rule made eligibility of three accredited schools derivative of their ABA status.
Matthew Lyon, vice president and dean of Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law, offered insight on the status of accreditation in Tennessee. There are five ABA-accredited and one state-accredited school in Tennessee.
The fundamental issue in Tennessee is “access to justice and rural legal deserts. Individuals in rural areas are unable to get legal services in growing numbers.” The Tennessee Supreme Court, after reviewing recommendations gleaned from public comments, reasserted its inherent authority over the practice of law and the admission of lawyers to the bar in order to address this need of representation. All six law school deans recommended continued ABA accreditation based on the need of portability and other factors.
Florida State University College of Law Dean Erin O’Hara O’Connor was a member of a working group investigating alternative pathways in establishing legal careers outside the requirement of graduation from an ABA-accredited law school.
“At the end of the day, what Florida did rather than require anyone that was sitting for the bar graduate from an ABA-accredited law school, the rules were changed in Florida for two possibilities: a graduate can sit for the bar exam if the law school was provisionally approved by a programmatic accrediting agency recognized by the DOE or approved by an institutional accrediting agency recognized by the US DOE.”
The Institutional Perspective on ABA Law School Accreditation
The first panelist with input to the discussion represented the ABA itself.
Daniel R. Thies, chair of the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, as well as a shareholder in the firm Webber & Thies PC, examined a bit of ABA accreditation history.
“If you look historically at the period of 1984 to 2019, if you look at how different states handled law school accreditation, there were actually 39 states plus the District of Columbia that allowed at least one alternative educational pathway other than graduation from a Council-accredited school. We just have a little more attention on these alternatives now,” Thies said.
“The Council’s been doing this [accreditation] for a hundred years now. Throughout that entire period, states have been able to innovate and try other things outside of the Council process. This is a positive feature of our system, it allows new ideas to be tried out, there is a lot of flexibility.”
Fiona Trevelyan, president and CEO of the National Association for Law Placement Foundation, concluded this portion of the discussion with data on the current climate for early-stage lawyers and law students.
With data collected from lawyers three years post-graduation, the importance of mobility and portability in early-stage careers proved to be key considerations.
“Approximately 40 percent of graduates reported they had already had two jobs and an additional 25 percent reported they had three or more positions at this early stage of their careers. What were the reasons for this high level of mobility? We consistently see about 15 percent of recent graduates report that relocation was the prime driver for a professional shift. Compensation is the leading driver.” Trevelyan also noted debt load played a role in such decision.
Critique of ABA Law School Accreditation
Removal of the 206 Diversity Standard
Dean and Professor of Law Erwin Chemerinsky with the University of California, Berkeley School of Law addressed the ABA Council’s proposed repeal of Standard 206, which concerns diversity.
Standard 206 is a Standard that law schools have an obligation to take steps to enhance access to the legal profession to ensure their environments enable a full opportunity to study law for all who attend.
“I believe all law schools, regardless of their size, regardless of their geography, need to take steps to make sure that legal education is accessible to all.” He quoted a foundation for Standard 206, which says, in part, “Consistent with sound legal education policy and standards, a law school shall demonstrate by concrete action, a commitment to diversity and inclusion by providing full opportunities for the study of law and entry to the profession by members of underrepresented groups, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, and a commitment of a student body that is diverse in regard to gender, race, and ethnicity.”
Dennis Patterson, professor of law and philosophy and co-director of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the Rutgers University School of Law provided another perspective.
He defended the “thoroughly implausible proposition that the ABA might actually be helping legal education with the abandonment of Standard 206. For some time, American law schools have pursued admission policies that aim to broaden access for historically underrepresented groups. In doing so, differences in academic indicators like LSAT scores and GPAs across groups have sometimes been evident. Whether these practices ultimately benefit students is an important and complex question.”
Antitrust Concerns
In a spirited point-counterpoint dialogue, two panelists took turns addressing the potential of antitrust potential in relying solely on ABA accreditation.
Darren Bush is a professor of law at UHLC. He began with a broad overview of antitrust considerations. He noted that antitrust enforcement against the ABA was not about ABA’s position as a monopolist accreditor, but rather in terms of ABA being in an agreement with member schools in restraint of trade in barring new entrant schools and other issues.
“The problem with the ABA in terms of past encounters with antitrust is not so much a monopoly problem, but in coordination. When you look at the Justice Department’s consent decree in 1995 alleging group boycott of schools that failed to achieve the ABA standards, and when that consent decree barred fixing faculty salaries, (or) refusing to accredit schools simply because they are for-profit, those were coordination kinds of issues” between the ABA and member schools, he said.
Harry First is a professor of law emeritus at the New York University School of Law. He countered his colleague’s points of view.
“Antitrust issues and antitrust liabilities have not necessarily been a partisan issue, but it has been a legal issue that cuts across administrations. The 1996 Justice Department suit [against the ABA] was brought by the Clinton administration, the same Justice Department that two years later brought suit against Microsoft for monopolizing the personal computer operating system market. This is a serious antitrust issue for people to keep in mind.”
Other Issues
Todd J. Clark, dean and professor of law at Widener University, Delaware Law School, made his views on ABA accreditation clear.
“In my view, the Council standards are far too detailed and intrusive in how law schools operate. In doing so, they make law schools more homogeneous, more expensive, and they erect unnecessary barriers to new law schools where many needed innovations and access can come from. Accreditation is supposed to be about minimum standards, not best practices. They’re intended to establish a floor, meaning things that are agreed upon are so important that no law school will be allowed to deviate from without losing its accreditation. Accreditation is about adequacy, not excellence or making the world a better place.”
David Yellen is dean emeritus and professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law and member of the Special Advisory Committee of the ABA Council, Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. He explained some of the factors that went into the working group involved in the deep examination of the ABA Council and accreditation.
“There was some concern about the composition of the Council as it is presently operated. One of the concerns was that there was significant representation by deans and law professors (compared to only two members of the court system). That results in what some perceive as capture, where the rules and standards are really designed to protect professionalism among those within the law school and to protect the institution of tenure, as opposed to focusing on protecting students and doing things that inure to the benefit the public.”
