Supreme Court of Texas Removes ABA as "Final Say" on Accreditation

Texas "may consider, in the future, returning to greater reliance on a multistate accrediting entity other than the ABA should a suitable entity become available."

In September, the Supreme Court of Texas signaled that it would remove the American Bar Association as the "final say" on accreditation. After a comment period, SCOTX adopted its draft proposal without any revisions. In the short term, any school that is currently ABA-accredited will be accredited by SCOTX. Texas will soon adopt a new standard:

In Misc. Dkt. No. 25-9070, the Court advised that it intends to provide stability, certainty, and flexibility to currently approved law schools by guaranteeing ongoing approval to schools that satisfy a set of simple, objective, and ideologically neutral criteria using metrics no more onerous than those currently required by the ABA.

To be sure, schools can voluntarily maintain ABA accreditation. At least in the short term, I suspect most schools (including my own) will not change the status quo. But once the question of portability is worked out, schools may be more amenable to innovation. Indeed, SCOTX signaled that a multi-state accrediting entity other than the ABA may be in the works:

may consider, in the future, returning to greater reliance on a multistate accrediting entity other than the ABA should a suitable entity become available.

Cheers to the Supreme Court of Texas for taking this important step. And jeers to the ABA, an organization that regrettably squandered its good will and reputation.

I think back to the essay I wrote for the ABA Journal in April 2023, titled "The ABA needs ideological diversity to ensure its future." I concluded:

If the ABA does not arrest its progressive lurch, the organization risks its own obsolescence. Model Rules will not be adopted. Evaluations of judicial nominees will be ignored. The accreditation monopoly will cease. And so on. A decline in membership will be the least of the ABA's problems. The ABA can either adapt to a new political reality or fade away like the guilds of yore.

All is proceeding as I anticipated.

Comments

[Mark In Florida]

The Florida Supreme Court said ABA CLE programs would not be accepted in Florida because they require any CLE panel of 3 or more to have at least one minority member, whether or not that person knows anything about the subject.

[thesafesurfer]

Sound, common sense policy.

[Rossami]

Which do you think is "common sense" - the ABA policy on CLE panel membership or the FL SC decision (not really a policy) rejecting the ABA's policy?

[Reallynotbob]

Did the ABA drop that policy in 2022?

[David Nieporent]

All is proceeding as I anticipated.

It wouldn't be a Prof. Blackman post if the real topic of the post weren't Prof. Blackman.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

It wouldn't be a Josh Blackman post without meaningless insults posing as comments.

[John 4]

Are you Josh? Just wondering.

[thesafesurfer]

Another corrupt monopoly bites the dust. What a great day for Texas.

[ReaderY]

So now everyone with a policy disagreement from you is corrupt?

It’s like Woodrow Wilson’s promise to remove corruption from government. By “corruption” he meant “black people.”

[Incunabulum]

That is what you inferred - it is not what what implied.

[Stuart]

So, Diversity is a good thing?

[Longtobefree]

We no longer need accreditation organizations for any purpose.
The web now lets everyone know how well an institution performs.
Just go back to letting anyone take the bar exam, and if they pass, they get be a lawyer.

If they are good lawyers, they will thrive, if they are bad lawyers, no one will hire them, and they become Uber drivers.

Simple, direct, effective.

[ReaderY]

Slet’s just say the internet’s track record at providing accurate and reliable information, as distinct from uninformed and overdramatic opinions, has not been high.

[Rossami]

Granted about the internet. Despite that, it's still better than the track record of accreditation organizations. Longtobe is correct that whatever limited justification those accreditation organizations had has been undercut by the information-availability revolution enabled by the internet.

[John 4]

“Granted about the internet. Despite that, it's still better than the track record of accreditation organizations.”

People really just say stuff, don’t they? Good grief.

[Incunabulum]

Neither have accrediting and licensing agencies.

[Darwinnie]

This will Make Texas Great Again no doubt.

[Reallynotbob]

I would submit that the reason you can't see the defects in that proposition is the same reason we don't follow it.

[Reallynotbob]

Can someone explain to me what the problem is with the ABA accreditation standards as currently written?

I mean, setting aside dislike for the ABA in various policy areas, what is the problem with its law school accreditation standards?

[Rossami]

Read the prior articles. Others have said it better but the short version is that the ABA started adding standards that had nothing to do with the law or the competence of the lawyers being generated by the school. They inserted themselves into controversial political topics, then attempted to encode their own political position as school standards rather than as ongoing topics of debate.

To your larger question, though, accreditation standards should be highly suspect in the first place. Like all licensing regimes, they are far too susceptible to capture by industry insiders who exploit the licensing standards for anti-competitive rather than consumer-protection reasons. They had some justification when professional competency was high risk (e.g. doctors) and information on competence scarce. The internet has undercut the information scarcity argument and lawyers were never really high-risk professions.