The Workgroup on the Role of the American Bar Association in Bar Admission Requirements submitted its final report to the Florida Supreme Court on Oct. 27, suggesting a dozen potential alternatives to the regulatory framework for admission in the state.
The court established the six-member work group in March to propose options for admission, including variations that would end exclusive reliance on the American Bar Association’s accreditation authority and the requirement to graduate from an ABA-accredited law school to sit for the Florida Bar exam.
The executive summary states that “on the pro side, proponents of the status quo argue that ABA accreditation safeguards a baseline of educational quality and support.”
They point to ABA accreditation standards that require law schools to maintain adequate financial resources, faculty, curriculum, student support services and library and facility resources.
Advocates also contend that the standards promote consumer protection, accountability and transparency by imposing Bar passage expectations, regulating admissions and requiring public disclosures to protect students from predatory or low-quality programs, the summary states.
Critics of the ABA argue that while some standards serve legitimate purposes, others extend beyond baseline adequacy and reflect the accreditation council’s conception of best practices and educational policies. Detractors say the standards are ill-conceived and stifle competition, innovation and access while intruding on law schools’ self-governance and imposing ideological mandates.
Critics also contend that ABA accreditation is a poor indicator of educational quality because it emphasizes inputs, such as facilities or library size, rather than outcomes. In addition, they say the accreditation process is inflexible and costly, both in administrative time and in money, while offering little connection to the results of legal education, the summary states.
With these pros and cons in mind, and as directed by the court, the work group presented 12 alternatives, including alternatives that would end reliance on the ABA.
The alternatives included nine within the court’s constitutional authority to implement on its own and three that would require collaboration with external entities.
The alternatives within the court’s authority include changes to broader structural reforms and removing the accreditation requirement altogether. The court also could establish its own approval mechanism, either by authorizing law schools individually or by adopting a defined set of standards with which schools must comply.
The court could create a comprehensive state accreditation system, modeled on California’s, that incorporates inspections, reporting and other oversight.
Another option is for the court to authorize an apprenticeship path or expand Florida’s existing limited exceptions to eligibility.
The alternatives that require collaboration with external entities include working with the ABA council to revise its governance and standards, pursuing the council’s decoupling from the ABA to strengthen its independence and joining with other state supreme courts to establish a new accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
The summary says that most of the alternatives are intended to reduce Florida’s near-exclusive reliance on the ABA while promoting flexibility, innovation, access and accountability in legal education. Some could evolve into complete substitutes for ABA accreditation, and they may also lend themselves to a “cafeteria-plan approach” in which elements from different options are combined. Several remain conceptual and would require further analysis and the development of implementation steps by subject matter experts if pursued.
The summary states that consistent with its charge, the work group presents the approaches as possible alternatives for the court’s consideration, not as recommendations.
Over the past six months, the work group held seven meetings, invited public comments, reviewed publicly available research, data and opinion pieces, and gathered insights from the Florida Board of Bar Examiners, Bar associations, the U.S. Department of Education and the ABA’s Council as well as legal practitioners, judges, law school administrators, faculty and students.
The court is not required to take any action on the report and there is no timeline for its consideration.