ABA Accreditation of Law Schools: Mend it, Don't End it

The full-throated assault on university accreditation, which sweeps up law schools into the vortex is disturbing, disruptive, and fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and structure of accreditation in process. This observation begins with a key caveat, and that is this: Many elements of contemporary law school accreditation have been poorly constructed and implemented in ways that are cross ways with the well-being of law schools in this era. Many of us have made this point before, me most recently in connection with the ill-advised effort of the ABA Legal Education section to dig in on the diversity mandate, when a good off-ramp was presented to them, but rejected under the influence of a cadre of deans. But that, as we say, is presently water under the bridge. The more essential point is that the attack on accreditation reflects a misguided attack on a system that has as its core aspiration the protection of the public and the improvement of law school performance. We can and should interrogate the system in place about how it constructs its policies and systems, but we should not throw out the baby and the bathwater.

Three overarching observations:

First, the basic endeavor of law school accreditation is to ensure not uniformity, but basic standards that ensure that a law graduate will come to the bar with the appropriate education, from a professional group of individuals (the “faculty”) who are properly trained and incentivized to teach students the fundamentals necessary to at least begin their professional journey as new lawyers. Added to this are a myriad of requirements that are designed to ensure that wherever a law student goes to school, there is a floor that ensures that they have resources and opportunities to learn. Having been at more than a hundred law schools, in accreditation visits and workshop presentations and informal meetings, I can say that American legal education should be admired for presenting a foundational, indeed impressive structure of education, one that by and large has very smart, very accomplished teachers working with eager, prepared students on the common endeavor of learning law, the basics, the theories, the applied, the experiential. In 2025, American legal education should take a victory lap for its success, its tenaciousness, its creativity, and its overall intention to support its students in his quest to educate the next generation of lawyers. Compare it to models in other countries, compare it to other fields, and I would insist that it stacks up rather well.

Second, accreditation policies are designed to weed out the bad apples, the subpar practices, and the money-driven efforts that would, in the absence of regulation, prey on young people who seek opportunity and the brass ring of a legal credential. Seasoned veterans in the profession have seen bad practices in and around the educational ecosystem. Diminish regulation and the sharks will circle the waters. Many predators will fashion a “law school” and will collect fees and act in ways that we would, in retrospect, see as squalid and infuriating. Can anyone doubt that nature, abhorring a vacuum, will witness the back-of-the-bus bench law schools? And what will stand in the way of such feeble attempts at “innovation?”

Third and finally, law school accreditation should and can bring meaningful peer review to the process of examining and evaluating law schools. To be clear, this is where the present structure of accreditation needs much improvement. After all, we have a decent-sized army of professionals, including not only academics, but practicing lawyers and judges, at the ready to lend their time and expertise to advise law schools about how best to improve their curriculum and to refocus objectives that will ensure that law schools will train well the next generation of lawyers. These are folks who, channeling their inner Wayne Gretzky, show law schools how their success rests on their ability to find where the puck is next going, not where it is now. If the ABA accreditation structure would redouble its efforts to improve the process of pure peer review – that is to say, configure their systems to give law school administrators and faculty the benefit of their wisdom and experience – we would have, as we do now on a medium-sized scale, great benefits on offer to law schools, benefits furnished by those who are in the best position to teach and mentor deans, faculty and others in a position of leadership.

All of these salutary goals are undermined by efforts to toss out the present accreditation system, flawed to be sure, but capable of improvement and success. Weaponizing anti-DEI strategies and cherry-picking examples of accreditation gone awry teaches exactly the wrong lesson. Law school accreditation 2025 version can best be summarized by a poster that hangs in my law school faculty lounge: Mend it, don’t end it. The ill-considered substitutes which states such as Texas and Florida are lurching toward will not fit the bill, at least not with a coherent theory and practical approach to what is expected to replace the current regime of ABA accreditation. There seems precious little in what these (well-meaning) lawyers and judges are considering which would be an improvement on present accreditation modalities, even accounting for the deficiencies in current polices and performance. And if the unsuspecting public in these and other states imagine that the welfare of individuals in need and want of legal services will be better off with the wild wild west of accreditation lite than they have another think coming.

A better law school accreditation system is available if we take the initiative to design it. It is in the hands of able, experienced, and diligent individuals – motivated greatly by the myriad external attacks by folks who simply do not have the best interests of our law schools at heart. We must undertake serious reforms and then give these reforms a decent chance to succeed. Meanwhile, let’s pause the destructive force of those who will not understand the complexities of our present condition and cannot provide any reasonable substitute.