Following up on my previous posts:
University of Texas Civitas Institute Symposium, Texas and the Future of Legal Education
- Barry Currier (Former Managing Director, ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar), Comments on Texas and Florida Courts Studying Continued Reliance on the ABA Law School Accreditation Process
We appreciate the Court’s commitment to high-quality, cost-effective legal education, and to expanding access to legal services for Texans. We share those goals and offer our collective perspective as educators, administrators, and stakeholders deeply invested in the success of Texas’s legal system, Texas’s law schools, and its future lawyers.
ABA Accreditation, While Imperfect, Provides a Proven Standard of Quality
We strongly support continued reliance on ABA accreditation for Texas law schools and licensure eligibility. ABA accreditation provides a nationally recognized framework for quality assurance and transparency; portability of licensure through recognition of ABA accreditation by all 50 states, which is critical for graduates' career flexibility; consumer protections and public accountability through disclosure standards; and a baseline of educational quality that correlates with higher bar passage rates and better employment outcomes. Abandonment of ABA accreditation would require the Court, or a designee, to define its own standards and review process for Texas’s ten law schools, as there is no single regional accreditor under which all ten schools operate. …
ABA Data Used to Inform U.S. News Rankings
As a result of sixty-two out of 194 law schools boycotting the U.S. News Law School rankings in 2023, U.S. News now relies on publicly available information, mostly from the ABA 509 data annual collection, to inform its rankings. The overwhelming percentage of the metrics relied on in the rankings (absent the Peer and Lawyer/Judges Assessment scores) are derived from ABA data collection. Without ABA accreditation and the mandatory reporting it requires, it will be more complicated, if not impossible, for U.S. News to adequately and fairly rank the ten Texas law schools. This could create challenges to the competitiveness of Texas law schools nationally, and make it more difficult for prospective students to compare institutions. …
ABA accreditation has served Texas—and the nation—well for over a century and provided effective accreditation for Texas law schools for decades. The system is not static, but dynamic and open to thoughtful evolution. We ask the Court to reaffirm its commitment to this national standard, while working with stakeholders to refine and improve legal education and its accreditation. The undersigned Texas law school deans offer their time and effort to work with the Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Board of Law Examiners to find solutions to the most pressing complaints of the Court regarding the ABA’s current accreditation standards.
To deviate from national accreditation is likely to reverse decades of progress in measuring the excellence of legal education and providing transparency for consumers, lower Texas law schools’ employment rates, impede Texas law schools’ ability to enroll talented students, harm Texas law schools’ national reputations, and ultimately may reduce the quality and accessibility of legal services at a pivotal point of the state’s economic and population growth.
Signatories: Leonard Baynes (Houston), McKen Carrington (Texas Southern), Jeremy Counseller (Baylor), Felecia Epps (UNT Dallas), Jason Nance (SMU), Jack Nowlin (Texas Tech), Patricia Roberts (St. Mary’s), and Jeff Rensberger & Rey Valencia (South Texas)
Josh Blackman (South Texas; Google Scholar), Comment to the Texas Supreme Court On Whether To "Reduce Or End" Reliance on the American Bar Association:
Admittedly, my views about the ABA are out of sync with those of most law professors and deans in Texas. I submit this minority report quite deliberately. The Supreme Court's order invited "comments on this topic from the Texas Board of Law Examiners, the Texas law school deans, the bar, and the public." With respect, I think this order lists the relevant constituencies backwards. The Supreme Court's authority to regulate the legal profession is premised on serving the public interest. And the interests of law school deans, in particular, are not always consonant with the public interest.
A simple example illustrates this point. Were the Supreme Court to end its reliance on the American Bar Association, the most immediate practical effect would be on portability: Students who graduate from Texas law schools that are not ABA accredited may not be eligible to sit for bar exams in other states. To law school deans, this outcome would be an anathema. How can elite law schools thrive without recruiting top students who will not stay in Texas? Of course, Texas could still allow students who graduate from law schools in other states to sit for the Texas Bar exam. And nothing would prevent elite law schools from voluntarily undergoing ABA accreditation. The theoretical problem is limited to students who graduate from non-elite Texas law schools who seek to leave our state.
I think the public would ask a reasonable question: Why should the state adopt rules to benefit people who have no interest in serving Texans? Herein lies the disconnect. Two decades ago, Justice Clarence Thomas lamented that the University of Michigan Law School was little more than "a waystation for the rest of the country's lawyers, rather than a training ground for those who will remain in Michigan." Thomas, as usual, was right. He questioned UM's "decision to be an elite institution [that] does little to advance the welfare of the people of Michigan or any cognizable interest of the State of Michigan." What is good for Texas is not necessarily good for the University of Texas, and vice versa.
In June, I helped to organize a symposium hosted by the Civitas Institute about Texas and the Future of Legal Education. This conversation advanced a range of criticisms about the ABA's role. I think each essay, which I've appended to this comment, is worth studying. But here, I urge the Court to consider the broader interest of the public, and not simply the concerns of entrenched regulated entities. There is no demonstrable connection between the ABA's onerous regulations and "promoting high-quality and cost-effective legal education." In the past decade, the Supreme Court of Texas erred by adopting the Uniform Bar Exam and joining the NextGen Bar Exam—decisions that were part of the conveyor belt towards nationwide portability. In that process, the Supreme Court has neglected the teaching of Texas law and flattened federalism. The time is now ripe for the Supreme Court to change course. If portability is so important, there are other ways to accomplish this end than through the ABA's byzantine regime.
Update: Comment by University of Texas Dean Bobby Chesney
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