A panel appointed by Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos Muniz issued a report this week that offered a series of possible ideas for moving away from what it described as the American Bar Association’s “near monopoly” on accrediting law schools.
In most cases, Florida requires people to graduate from accredited law schools to be eligible to take the bar exam to practice law. The American Bar Association has served as the accreditor for decades.
The report, issued Monday, said supporters of keeping the current system “argue that ABA accreditation safeguards a baseline of educational quality and support.” But the report said critics contend standards set by an ABA council are “ill-conceived, stifling competition, innovation and access, while intruding on law schools’ self-governance and imposing ideological mandates.”
One of the issues has been whether the ABA accreditation process is trying to require diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at law schools — a hot-button topic for political conservatives in Florida and other states.
“If the ABA ever existed as an important non-partisan organization that could be entrusted to ensure technical excellence in American legal education, those days have sadly long since passed,” Florida Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a July 30 letter to members of the state panel. “The ABA is now a brazenly political operation that seeks to impose its woke ideology on aspiring lawyers.”
The panel, formally known as Workgroup on the Role of the American Bar Association in Bar Admission Requirements, did not issue recommendations in the report. But it included 12 possible “alternatives” that the Supreme Court could consider.
Examples of those alternatives:
— The Supreme Court could end the requirement that people graduate from accredited law schools to take the bar exam. “Under this approach, graduation from any law school would be sufficient, with the character and fitness review and the bar examination serving as the primary measures of an applicant’s readiness to practice law,” the report said.
— The Supreme Court could approve law schools, similar to an approach being taken in Texas. “As in Texas, the court could initially approve all law schools currently approved by the ABA,” the report said. “It could also establish a process for considering requests from law schools not accredited by the ABA to be added to the approved list. That process could condition approval on law school-specific benchmarks, such as bar passage rates, employment outcomes, or other measures.”
— The Supreme Court could create a “path to bar exam eligibility through the completion of an apprenticeship program,” the report said. Other states have such programs, including some that do not require attending law school before entering apprenticeships. “All the programs emphasize a structured, multi-year course of study during the apprenticeship designed to approximate the doctrinal instruction of a law school curriculum,” the report said.
— The Supreme Court could join with courts in other states to create an accrediting agency. “The governing body of this agency would consist of representatives appointed by the participating courts, ensuring direct court oversight of both the content of accreditation standards and their administration,” the report said. “This structure would enable the courts to establish an accreditation system aligned with their priorities and limited to standards that principally focus on the quality of legal education.”
The panel, however, cautioned that the possible alternatives likely would require keeping a role for ABA accreditation. For example, it said graduates of Florida law schools that were not accredited by the ABA might be ineligible for admission to practice in other states.
The report said “there are obvious impediments to completely and immediately displacing the ABA. Most notably, many law students want national degree portability, which means that law schools must consider bar exam eligibility rules across the country. And, while some jurisdictions are considering moving away from relying on the ABA as the sole law school accreditor, currently most jurisdictions, like Florida, require graduation from an ABA-accredited law school in their bar exam eligibility rules subject to limited exceptions.”
The panel, appointed by Muniz in March, was made up of six members, including former Chief Justice Ricky Polston and U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor.
The law-school accreditation issue has come amid other efforts targeting longstanding accreditation processes for Florida universities. State higher-education officials this summer approved forming an accreditation body with five other states. The new agency would be an alternative to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, a longtime accrediting agency that has clashed with Florida education leaders in recent years.
