Texas first state to end American bar association oversight of law schools | Hacker News Reader

Texas first state to end American bar association oversight of law schools

keranews.org

Texas and most other states should push for additional freedom in this space. Anyone who can pass the state's bar exam, should be allowed to practice law. Let the legal market sort out the rest from there.

California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington already allow people to practice law within their states without attending law school, but via "reading the law" type apprenticeships. Extending this nationally would benefit lawyers and the people who need them.

There's not a shortage of lawyers and Texas is not pushing for freedom. They're taking over accreditation so they can start bullying law schools the same way they have with undergraduate institutions like A&M.

This is likely the correct answer. The ABA really leads (somewhat indirectly) to three things:

1) A common moral and professional code

2) Credential portability through standards

3) A "minimum threshold" of competence

I suspect that it is the first thing that Texas objects to. There's probably a specific flavor of *-ism they want to allow their lawyers to practice. That said, you can already get into law via apprenticeship or reading in CA, VA, VT, WA. It's not the end of the world.

> I suspect that it is the first thing that Texas objects to.

Perhaps, but the piece they are actually acting directly against is the 2nd (perhaps the 3rd, but that is itself really part of the 2nd, rather than an independent thing.)

And the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and Model Code of Judicial Conduct—which presumably are largely what you are referring to by the first—are just what the names say: models; each jurisdiction adopts its own actual rules for these things.

> That said, you can already get into law via apprenticeship or reading in CA, VA, VT, WA.

And in at least some states, also through non-ABA law schools, though there may be additional state requirements in that case (which may also apply to the apprenticeship/reading—two different names for the same thing, not two different options—option where that is available in the same jurisdiction; e.g., in California the First Year Law Students exam is required for both those reading for the law and those attending non-ABA law schools.)

> each jurisdiction adopts its own actual rules for these things.

Sure, but because the schools must be ABA approved that means the ABA gets to decide that schools omitting those codes don't get approved... doesn't it? That was my assumption anyhow.

> which may also apply to the apprenticeship/reading—two different names for the same thing, not two different options

I never realized that. Thanks!

> There's not a shortage of lawyers

I spoke with a VP of a state bar association who described chronic, widespread lawyer shortages, constant attrition in the pool of eligible judicial appointees, a growing backlog of cases (compounded by the effects of COVID) with trial dates many years in the future, declining law school graduations, and declining projected law school enrollment. These conditions may not hold across every county and metro, but in a lot of places the system is buckling (citizens already waiting 5-6 years for a ruling on open-shut civil matters) because there’s so much more work than workers.

> There's not a shortage of lawyers and Texas is not pushing for freedom.

Exactly. Law isn't medicine, and there are so many law graduates that many of them can't even find work in the legal industry, and the earnings of many graduates are surprisingly low (the distribution is bimodal: https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib).

Unfortunately too many here will reflexively believe some libertarian narrative of "professional organization limiting supply to drive salaries up," even when it doesn't apply.

Arizona is the only state that artificially limits the number of lawyers it has. Every year they decide how many new ones they need, and that is exactly how many will pass the bar exam.

I don’t think that this has has had the effect of driving up salaries, however.

I disagree, in my opinion passing the bar exam is necessary but not nearly sufficient for competently practicing law.

The bar is an imperfect filter. One could study for the exam and pass and still be hugely deficient in ability as an attorney.

I would argue there's no exam that could replace the evaluative and experiential component of 3 years in law school, and accreditation helps enforce at least some standard of quality in the profession. More incompetent lawyers -> more wasteful behavior -> a more bloated and slower legal system -> worse outcomes for everyone.

I think reducing barriers to completing the legal education (part-time programs, lower cost, etc) are better avenues for increasing access.

Same for any profession.

I don’t have an opinion either way in this, but the legal profession seems like it suffers from some of the same issues that emergency healthcare does that makes licensing important.

It’s not something regular people are using consistently so they have researched the people in advance. They usually have to scramble when they need a lawyer. And it’s very hard for a lay person to identify whether a lawyer did a good job or not.

But even when it comes to bigger firms which do have the resources to find good lawyers, there’s a different advantage to heavy handed licensing. The fact that the law depends extremely heavily on lawyers being largely honest especially when it comes to stuff like discovery and maintaining confidentiality. Licensing is one of the strongest tools has to ensure that.

Licensing is the only tool to ensure that lawyers are honest in their dealings in things like discovery and confidentiality.

Agreed.

I'm currently looking to get a law degree and the education requirements are... silly. I've done a significant amount of law-and-law-accessories work over the past ten years and have had a nice career in sysadmin/sre/devops/ops work. Yet I need a(ny) bachelors to even get started and I don't even have an associates.

It truly feels like the only way forward is to waste several years of my life and exhaust myself to the bone to get a degree.

(WGU is awful and is not the answer here)

> I'm currently looking to get a law degree …

May I inquire why?

Masochism, or something like that :)

But more honestly, it comes from reflecting about the ways that knowledge gaps affect FOIA litigation/conversation/interpretation and the criminal litigation reporting/research/investigations I've done/beenapartof. A lot of law-and-law-accessories is learnable within context-and-scope, especially with attorneys to help interpret, but I would like to get past that point. It helps that it's all very interesting.. and people keep asking me when I'm going to become a lawyer, so, ope.

Godspeed!

How would "the legal market" sort out someone who repeatedly uses the legal system in bad faith but, because they're in Donald's orbit the only hope left of consequences is the threat of disbarment? It increasingly seems like the last line of defense of late.

It's not about removing the requirement of the bar exam, just who decides who can take it

> The Texas Supreme Court issued an order Tuesday finalizing a tentative September opinion, asserting the ABA should "no longer have the final say" on which law school graduates can take the bar exam — a requirement to becoming a licensed lawyer in each state.

This question is orthogonal to the question of whether ABA accreditation is beneficial.

Agree. Also, most JD programs in most states require a 4 year degree to enter.

That sounds like "a good idea" to a lot of people in the context of high school graduates. But for someone older who had a (let's say successful) career in the trades, or software engineering, without needing a 4 year degree.. It's a huge barrier to entry needing 4 years of college before even starting JD for those interested in law later in life.

This, and most law schools are businesses capturing student debt and too many law students foster a flawed perception of legal practice. There's a surplus of debt-laden law graduates who are unemployed, underemployed, or working in completely different fields. Transitioning to an apprenticeship styled career path would help solve the significant mismatching that's occurring. Too many people misspending their youth and incurring debt by falling for law school marketing ploys.

Turn Tier-1 law schools and state flagship law schools into legal scholarship graduate studies for people interested in pursuing highbrow judicial work.

> California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington already allow people to practice law within their states without attending law school, but via "reading the law" type apprenticeships.

Famously this is how Kim Kardashian tried to become an attorney without ever attending undergrad, let alone law school. However, to date she has not be able to pass the bar exam.

https://people.com/kim-kardashian-cries-has-mental-breakdown...

Her boyfriend already got a "My girl's a lawyer" tattoo though so hopefully she will pass on her next attempt! https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/kim-kardashian-pe...

There are already way too many attorneys, and way too many lawyers who can't even get jobs as attorneys, I'm not sure how letting anyone who takes the bar exam cosplay as an attorney will help things.

(I am not an attorney, or a lawyer, and I've never attended law school)

> Let the legal market sort out the rest from there.

This isn’t a field where supply demand free market economics should be the goal. Literal lives could be at stake. Should we also let surgery market sort itself out by allowing people to perform surgeries if they pass an exam?

You mean in Texas where they cap medical liability or somewhere with no limits of liability and insurance markets to determine relative costs of practicing while incompetent?

Fun fact: the reason bar associations exist is because people got tired of the free market free-for-all that existed before bar associations.

Law, like medicine, isn't something you want some rando handling. The free market is not a magical panacea. Rules are created for a reason, and that reason is usually grounded in human suffering.

IMHO, what determines if you're a lawyer or not should be completely test-based and not have anything to do with where you learned. There is a lot of gatekeeping going on with ABA to keep people from even taking the test.

There's more to being a lawyer than what can be measured on a test, just like any profession.

Not trying to support the ABA or not support the ABA, but I have experience with this type of issue in other areas and reducing qualifications purely to tests or other outcomes has its own set of issues.

In Switzerland even to get your driving licence you need the exams AND prove that you had at least that many (unsure about number) driving lessons with a driving school. I would think being a lawyer means more responsibility...

> being a lawyer means more responsibility...

I'm not so sure. People often trivialize the kinetic energy involved with driving. Yes, a bad lawyer can potentially cause an innocent to be punished if enough other checks and balances fail.

But being behind the wheel of a car is something else. Even a small passenger car is over a ton of metal moving at oftentimes high speeds. Most people don't seem to appreciate the sheer destructive capability driving gives someone.

This is not about the Bar exam (the test), this is about accreditation of law degrees. The issue is about here is about who determines whether a legal education is sufficient to trust that a lawyer who passes the test is prepared for practice. This issue is the opposite of being completely test-based. The ABA also creates the most common bar exam (the MBE or multistate bar exam) but some states like California use a different exam. The legal profession does not, but many have long argued should, have a practice requirement for independent licensure to practice.

It is akin to ABET (previously Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology) in engineering. having an ABET accredited engineering degree has long been a component (alongside testing and mentored practice) for being a licensed engineer who can stamp drawings (e.g., structural plans for buildings). There are two tests (FE and PE) but they are not created by ABET they are created by an organization called NCEES - The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying.

ABET and NCEES are different organizations, part of the confusion here is that ABA is both the accreditor and the tester in many states. The difference in path between accreditor -> testing -> licensure is:

ABA accredited degree -> ABA (MBE) or other (non-ABA) Bar exam -> Lawyer

ABET accredited degree -> FE exam (made by NCEES) -> mentored work experience -> PE exam (made by NCEES) -> Professional Engineer

The Texas bar exam already has a second day of testing, entirely on Texas oil and gas law. Everyone must pass it to practice law in Texas, even if you no intention to do anything related to oil and gas.

again, this change has nothing to do with the bar exam. It is who is allowed to take the bar exam.

Just curious... would you rely on a doctor that passed some tests rather than going to an accredited medical school?

If I had cancer, I definitely don't want an oncologist who learned from YouTube. And if I was on trial for murder, I wouldn't want a defense attorney who taught himself with ChatGPT.

I think every profession needs to evaluate what is necessary for a license to practice. I would agree to more reforms with the MD licensing requirements.

I also think we should be licensing law-enforcement and requiring them to have their own liability insurance.

Not sure if this is the first state. Many other states have state-only-accredited law school programs.

It’s interesting to see the contrast in sentiments here versus Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1q7mt5f/texas_becomes...

Trying to break out of the trade group monopoly won’t be easy and Texas graduates will get punished for it.

they aren't doing that...they are just changing who is in charge of the trade group.

It will come down to who has the most money for campaign contributions.

How does it work in the US ?.

Is a Texas qualified lawyer able to practice in another state with different laws - do you need to do a conversion course to get the proper accreditation since stuff like commercial law vary ?.

The lawyer would need to become a member of the other state's bar association. How to do so varies widely depending on existing state bar memberships and qualification criteria for the new membership; some states allow membership pretty much automatically if you have enough years of practice, and others may require state-specific exams or training.

Most (all?) states will also offer pro hac vice, meaning the lawyer can temporarily practice in that case only, typically after applying by way of motion, paying a fee (usually a couple hundred dollars or so) and having an associated local counsel, who is supposed to advise on local legal matters and oversee the foreign attorney (but often does neither).

Courts in many states will start rejecting pro hac requests as they approach the line of abuse, so the attorney will need to become a member of the state's bar.

While pro hac, the attorney generally will have at least the same ethical and competency obligations as any attorney regularly admitted to that state's bar.

1. get a waiver, usually after some time of practice (e.g. for the DC bar it's 3 years: https://admissions.dcappeals.gov/appinfo.action?id=200)

2. apply for reciprocity if that's an option

3. I understand that you can transfer between states with the same bar exam (mostly the so-called UBE states) as long as you pass the target states' admission score and any other qualification they require

4. pass the bar exam in each state

"Bar Reciprocity" or "Reciprocal Admission" lets a lawyer do something like move to a different state.

Example: Maine https://www.mainebar.org/page/ReciprocalAdmission

Texas State Bar is still a thing. This means that it has split from the American Bar Association, but the legal system of Texas is still part of the US Legal system.

> Texas State Bar is still a thing. This means that it has split from the American Bar Association, but the legal system of Texas is still part of the US Legal system.

Lawyer here, member of Texas and California bars. There seems to be a misunderstanding here:

1. A state bar is what a lawyer has to belong to in order to practice regularly in that state (with some exceptions, e.g., for federal-court practice). Example: To practice regularly in California, a lawyer must be a member of the State Bar of California. That normally requires passing a bar exam or (in some states if you're an experienced lawyer), getting in by "reciprocity."

AFAIK, every state bar is separately regulated by the highest court of the state (and, sometimes, by state statute). Example: The State Bar of Texas is subject to regulations promulgated by the Supreme Court of Texas.

2. In contrast, The ABA is a purely-voluntary private association of lawyers. A lawyer doesn't have to belong to the ABA in order to be a lawyer or practice law.

3. IIRC, the ABA's governing body includes liaisons from state bars. But AFAIK, there's never been any official governing connection between the ABA and any state bar.

4. The ABA's law-school accreditation standards [0] are a way for states to adopt uniform standards, thus avoiding the cost of developing individual standards (and of complying with a variety of standards). Those ABA standards are roughly analogous to national model building codes for plumbing, etc. — they're adopted by various jurisdictions but have little or no legal standing in any given jurisdiction unless adopted.

[0] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/accredita...

Lawyers are licensed in each state. Typically, only lawyers licensed in a state can practice law in the state. What exactly that means is fuzzy. Generally you need to be licensed in a state to appear in court in that state. Though for federal courts you can appear on a temporary basis in another state, usually if you’re working with another lawyer who is licensed in that state. But lawyers in one state typically can advise a client in that state about laws in another state—usually when the client’s activity is nationwide.

For clients with interstate business, they usually have a team of lawyers. A lawsuit being heard in Minnesota state court may primarily be handled by a big national firm with lawyers licensed in New York, with local lawyers licensed in Minnesota to handle filings and court appearances.

Accreditation and licensing are two very different things.

Today I learned that, in UK parlance, “Texas qualified” means “received a law degree in Texas” and not “Texas licensed.” Thanks for the clarification.

Afaik, you need to be licensed on each state you want to practice, and take the bar exam for that state.

For example, the LegalEagle youtuber always says he is licensed to practice law in specific states in his videos, here is his georgetown law profile with the states where he is allowed to practice:

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/devin-j-stone/

California Maryland New York Virginia District of Columbia (D.C.)

They need to do the same for medical schools, and especially for residency allocations.

I’m hesitant to agree offhand on accreditation, although you might be right. The residency system in its current form is terribly broken though. Something better needs to be available.

> They need to do the same for medical schools

I'm ignorant here. Why do you say this? From my admittedly uneducated viewpoint, having a board of some type makes sense because I don't care about the results of a test you took fifteen years ago. I care about how you behave today. I'm the case of lawyers, having the courts approve you makes some sense- they're all in the law system. Who would do this for doctors?

Having a diploma is well and good but it seems like we need continued governance and the ability to revoke your license if you're a screw up. It doesn't make much sense to me to have the body approving your immediate start at a practice be different from those that will review your continuation of that practice at a later date.

The issue is not for ongoing malpractices, it's mostly because the medical professional associations do a lot of gatekeeping to restrict the supply of healthcare professionals (and lobby Congress to restrict the number of training positions, known as residencies, to create artificial scarcity).

Can anyone more familiar with this speculate what the potential implications are?

“ The change means law school graduates who want to practice in Texas are no longer required to attend an ABA-accredited school. The power to approve those law schools now rests solely with the state's highest civil court.”

It’s for control, more precisely political control

Conversely, it's about the state of Texas asserting control over an unaccountable third party who does things that run counter to the interests of the State and people of Texas. If the state's highest civil court misbehaves, the people of Texas have recourse. If the ABA misbehaves, the people of Texas can do... nothing.

From my perspective, I'd rather have a body held accountable to the people over which they are wielding power. Sometimes government makes sense.

Texas is a state that do not pay their elected officials enough money to live off of. It is designed to support the wealth and not the poor. A wealth elected official does not need a second job but a poor one does.

This leads to disproportional balance in power between the working class and the wealth.

[0] https://salaries.texastribune.org/departments/house-of-repre...

> If the ABA misbehaves, the people of Texas can do... nothing.

That seems like a very interesting perspective to offer in response to an article about the government of Texas stripping the ABA of the ability to approve law schools.

While it's not obvious this action was in response to any particular misbehavior by the ABA, clearly the possibility of such action would serve as an accountability mechanism that offered recourse to the good people of Texas in the event of any misbehavior.

> If the ABA misbehaves, the people of Texas can do... nothing.

Nothing precludes suing the ABA, it's a professional association not magic pixie dust.

Struggling to understand here, what is this mystical malfeasance that the ABA has done?

All it does is set minimum standards for the state bar exams and publish best practices for state bar associations.

I want to agree with you, however, how do we guarantee that the people of Texas have recourse via their government? Didn't the Texas state government have national headlines recently to enact anti-democratic gerrymandering?

Correct, there is no recourse, they've used their 30 years of hard-core ideological Republican uni-party control to remove any possibility of opposition. Besides gerrymandering they're constantly attacking Houston's ability to self govern, kicking democrat voters off the rolls, making it harder for city residents to vote.

Does this mean a "No woke lawyers" rule in Texas? I'm asking in all seriousness, I could see such a rule happening.

Considering they explicitly cited DEI requirements as their impetus for change, this feels like a natural progression.

That’s exactly what the end goal is. It’ll only be a matter of time before Texas has schools that don’t even attempt to teach impartiality.

Correct it's part of a multi decade right wing effort to replace the ABA with the ideological Federalist Society. Trump's judges were the first that did not get ABA recommendations but were all Federalists. In Texas it seems more of a naked power grab. They want no ethics, no standards, no expertise, just raw political power.

“Replacing the ABA” implies that the ABA has some formal status to begin with. It doesn’t. The ABA is just a private organization.

The headline and the contents of the article make it quite clear that's not true.

> The Texas Supreme Court decided which law schools would satisfy law licensure requirements until 1983, when the court gave that responsibility to the ABA.

That doesn’t change the fact that the ABA is a private organization. The court shouldn’t have delegated a government function to a private body in the first place.

No one is contesting the private organization part. Just the wrong part of your post.

Your original post is premised on the implication that the ABA has some sort of public status. Otherwise, it makes no sense. It's like saying "there's a right wing effort to replace Coke with Pepsi." Okay, so what?

You said the ABA had no "formal status". That bit was very clearly incorrect, as Texas's Supreme Court just revoked that formal status.

(Incidentally, the original post about replacing the ABA wasn't mine, either.)

My point above is that the ABA is the same kind of thing as the Federalist Society. They’re both private organizations. The ABA isn’t some sort of quasi-public body.

The fact that the Texas Supreme Court previously relied on the ABA’s list of accredited schools doesn’t change what kind of thing the ABA is. In CS terms, the Texas Supreme Court rules just had a pointer to the ABA list. That doesn’t change the nature of the object to which it points.

If the ABA had no formal status then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. In fact, the Department of Education formally recognizes the ABA as the accrediting body since 1923. In fairness, conservatives are trying to get rid of the Department of Education as well.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170427221010/https://www2.ed.g...

I notice the ed.gov page has gone missing. I wonder why.

As the article clearly explains, the ABA had the formal status that the Texas Supreme Curt granted them in 1983. What we have now is a change of that policy, giving that power to a political body (an elected Supreme Court) without providing a reason. Doesn't feel like "small government" to me.

> The all-Republican court hasn't given a reason for initiating the change, but it came after months of conflict between President Donald Trump, the ABA and the broader legal community.

> Doesn't feel like "small government" to me.

The "small government" GOP was a mistaken detour of the late 20th century that died precisely because it was susceptible to stupid ideas like outsourcing a core government function--accreditation in a profession deeply intertwined with government itself--to private parties. Lincoln's GOP was not a small government party, and neither is Trump's GOP.

Its fascinating to watch you twist yourself into knots justifying all types of contradictory actions after they have happened. You are certainly committed to the bit. This is another case where you failed to do any research and are provably false. The Republican Party of Texas wrote an actual party platform in 2024 and limited government is an explicitly stated part of that platform. [0]

Since you brought up Trump, even though he isn't involved in this action. Here is a video of him from February 2025 stating that he is making government smaller. [1]

I'm sure you will come back with some new red herring, but the evidence is here for others to view.

[0] https://texasgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-RPT-Pla...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ucen_wGy2mY

You’re playing word games. The 2024 Texas GOP platform says: “Limiting government power to those items enumerated in the United States and Texas Constitutions.”

Limiting government power to enumerated areas is different than “small government.” The Texas constitution grants the legislature and the supreme court with power over judicial administration. That includes governing the practice of law in the courts of the state. There’s no enumerated powers problem with the Texas Supreme Court Court deciding what law schools qualify to be admitted to its own bar.

If you keep reading to point #9 on Constitutional Issues, they say "Limiting Overreaching State Government: We recognize that the sovereignty of this State and its citizenry has been imperiled and threatened by the ongoing overreach of state elected officials and agencies."

It's pretty clear that they only mean "overreach" where they don't politically agree. They are perfectly fine when the Governor overrides local rules and ordinances [0] [1] [2], because it furthers their political goals of consolidating power with the Executive rather than the stated goal of limiting government. This action expands the scope and role of government in Texan's lives, that is a fact.

> There’s no enumerated powers problem with the Texas Supreme Court Court deciding what law schools qualify to be admitted to its own bar.

No, it's a political powers problem, which is one of the main things they claim to be against increasing.

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/07/texas-republicans-ci...

[1] https://www.allensworthlaw.com/legal-updates/governor-overru...

[2] https://fedsoc.org/scdw/supreme-court-of-texas-holds-governo...

Lincoln’s gop was hated by conservatives and the south and loved by black people. The exact opposite of trump’s gop.

Republicans have never been about small government, they just use that as a talking point against the government when it’s providing nice things that benefit everyone (including liberals, which they would happily shoot their own foot off if it meant some shrapnel hit a liberal), and their base is too ignorant or evil to care.

This is a better article on the topic explaining that the ABA's requirements for different forms of diversity oppose the administration's ban on DEI. It also points out that this could lower the cost of law school by reducing superfluous requirements for law school accreditation.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/texas-becomes-first...

People arguing this is a first step in true reform fail to see what Texas has been doing, trying to return to the days of “Pappy” O’Daniel.

I suppose naked grifting is just the law of the land at this point and we should just all be gaslighted into accepting it as reform.

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