John O. McGinnis (Northwestern), Deregulating Legal Education:
Nearly every law school in the country is effectively under the thumb of the American Bar Association (ABA). The ABA’s power rests on its role as the recognized accreditor for law schools through the federal Department of Education. This official endorsement effectively determines whether students can obtain federal loans and whether state courts or bar associations will grant those schools the stamp of approval. The ABA’s influence contributes to the high cost of legal education, stifles innovation, and often encourages left-liberal indoctrination in the profession.
Revoking the ABA’s authority to accredit law schools would break the ABA’s monopoly and encourage more diverse, less expensive pathways to legal practice. This measure would not only reduce many students’ tuition, but also spur institutions to compete on affordability and pedagogical creativity.
If the Department of Education rescinds the ABA’s accreditation authority, then, conservative states would likely adopt more flexible models that reduce both cost and dogmatic teaching, pressuring other states to follow suit. The result would be a more dynamic legal education marketplace, prompting law schools nationwide to offer innovative programs that better match the needs and budgets of students. Moreover, there is no need for the Education Department to use the ABA. To fulfill its function of protecting students from substandard law schools, it could simply use bar passage rates and employment rates of students who enroll as criteria for student-loan eligibility. …
Increasing Costs
One primary reason for runaway tuition is the ABA’s myriad accreditation standards that inflate institutional expenses. Note that these are expenses of a professional graduate school that come after already paying for an undergraduate education. Lawyers, operating through the ABA, have an incentive to sustain high barriers to entry. Steep costs help limit new entrants, shielding established lawyers from increased competition. Chief among these burdensome dictates are rules on teaching. Under Standard 404 for legal education, the ABA requires law schools to maintain a core of full-time faculty with tenure or “tenure-like” job security, compelling them to invest heavily in permanent staff. Because such faculty generally command higher salaries than adjuncts or practitioners, schools shoulder persistently large payroll obligations. The mandate for a full-time law librarian further elevates baseline costs, hampering schools interested in leaner, more cost-effective models. …
Stifling Innovation
A modern legal profession demands creative approaches to teaching and training, but ABA Standard 306 restricts a student’s distance education credits to no more than 50 percent of the total. By limiting the scope for online instruction, the ABA hinders institutions seeking to capitalize on technologies such as live-streamed lectures, interactive simulations, and asynchronous platforms. These digital tools have demonstrated significant promise for working adults, rural populations, and other underserved students who may struggle to attend traditional, on-site programs. Schools thus cannot pioneer fully online JD offerings that could broaden access and reduce costs. …
Promoting Left-Liberalism
Beyond using its monopoly power to inflate costs and suppress innovation for the sake of certain vested interests, the ABA actively endeavors to embed left-liberal ideological views in both the structure and delivery and legal education. Through Standard 206, which addresses diversity and inclusion, the ABA compels law schools to take “concrete action” to ensure representation of underrepresented groups—even in the face of the Supreme Court’s ruling in SFFA v. Harvard. The standard’s vague wording grants accreditation authorities ample room to pressure institutions to adopt policy changes aligned with a specific ideological agenda, including de facto quotas in admissions and faculty hiring. As this essay was going to press, the ABA “suspended” this requirement given the executive order requiring universities to end diversity initiatives under the threat of losing federal funds. But you can be sure that if the president’s order is enjoined in Court or repealed by a subsequent president, the ABA will put it back into effect an order that it refuses to repeal. …
The Trump administration now has an opportunity to unshackle legal education from ABA control and reshape the profession itself, loosening the grip of ideological gatekeepers that may make for a more left-liberal profession. By stripping the ABA of its accrediting authority, policymakers would empower states to design less strict requirements for becoming a lawyer. Freed from artificially imposed uniformity, law schools could better serve their varied student bodies, foster real pedagogical innovation, and lower tuition for aspiring lawyers.
This single act would advance the strong deregulatory agenda of the Trump administration. It would reorient the legal profession away from the control of a self-serving regulatory cartel toward a more open, affordable, and authentically pluralistic future—one that better aligns with the public interest rather than entrenched professional advantage.
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