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Law Schools

After Texas chief justice criticizes ABA, state supreme court reconsiders ABA accreditation for law schools

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 8, 2025, 3:54 pm CDT

The Texas Supreme Court is inviting comments on a requirement that law grads seeking bar admission in the state must have graduated from a law school accredited by the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.

In an April 4 order, the Texas Supreme Court requested feedback on whether to “reduce or end” reliance on the ABA as an accrediting agency and “alternatives the court should consider.”

The state supreme court is inviting comments from the Texas Board of Law Examiners, Texas law school deans, the bar and the public, the order said.

Law360 covered the story.

The Texas Supreme Court did not comment on the reason for its order. But Chief Justice James D. Blacklock criticized the ABA in his February State of the Judiciary address for “aggressively taking sides in the fight going on in Washington about the scope of the president’s executive power.”

ABA President Bill Bay has criticized the Trump administration’s “wholesale dismantling of departments and entities created by Congress,” as well as “efforts to dismiss employees with little regard for the law and protections they merit.”

The Texas Supreme Court’s order follows a similar move last month by Florida’s top court. It has created a subgroup to reconsider the requirement that law grads taking the Florida bar exam must have graduated from an ABA-accredited law school.

The Florida Supreme Court took action because of “reasonable questions” about an accreditation standard on diversity and “the ABA’s active political engagement,” according to a press release. The Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has suspended enforcement of its diversity standard as it works on revisions.

The Association of American Law Schools is making the case for national accreditation of law schools in an April 8 open letter that has also been submitted to working groups considering the accreditation issue in Texas and Florida.

Thirty-three law schools, most of them in California, don’t have ABA accreditation. Most have “extremely low bar exam pass rates, poor job outcomes and high attrition rates,” the letter said.

The letter said national accreditation is critical for ensuring “a minimum baseline of quality in legal education and practice.” Most states don’t have the resources to sufficiently evaluate law schools, and “piecemeal, fragmented or overlapping regulation would increase costs on law schools, their students and the profession,” the letter said.

Creating different barriers to a law license that vary by state would also hamper lawyer mobility and add to lawyer deserts, the letter said.

The letter also clarified that the ABA does not accredit law schools. Instead, that job is handled by the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, “a national accrediting entity that is separate and independent from the bar association.”

Jennifer L. Rosato Perea, the managing director accreditation and legal education for the ABA, issued a statement to the ABA Journal.

The council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar “understands the [Texas] Supreme Court’s need to thoughtfully consider the council’s continued role in accreditation and hear from a variety of perspectives to ensure that this accreditation continues to serve its admission requirements,” the statement said.

“The council’s primary purpose in accreditation has been and continues to be contributing meaningfully to the production of effective and ethical lawyers, as well as serving the interests of the public in Texas and all other states throughout the United States.”

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3. Trump order blocks public service loan forgiveness…

Education Law

Trump order blocks public service loan forgiveness for employees of ‘activist organizations’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 10, 2025, 11:18 am CDT

Employees of “activist organizations” that support activities with a “substantial illegal purpose” should no longer be eligible for a student loan forgiveness program for borrowers in public service jobs, according to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Friday.

The order and a White House fact sheet say illegal purposes include:

  • Aiding and abetting violations of immigration laws

  • Supporting gender-affirming care for minors (deemed to be “child abuse” in the order) or the transporting of minors “to so-called transgender sanctuary states”

  • Engaging in a pattern of aiding and abetting illegal discrimination

  • Supporting terrorism, including engaging in violence to influence the federal government

  • Engaging in a pattern of “public disruptions” that violate state tort laws, such as trespassing

According to the fact sheet, the executive order refocuses the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program “on its original intent of encouraging Americans to enter essential public service roles, such as nursing, rather than activist groups.”

The order directs the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education to carry out the directive, report the New York Times, NPR, USA Today, the Hill and the Washington Post.

The New York Times pointed out that the Trump administration has previously described diversity and inclusion initiatives as illegal discrimination and has described anti-Israel protests as terrorism.

“The Trump administration has taken a broad view of what it considers to be support of illegal activities,” the newspaper reports.

The ABA’s full time-employees are currently allowed to participate in the program, which offers loan forgiveness for those who make monthly payments on direct federal student loans for 10 years while working full time in qualified public service jobs.

The ABA was deemed to be a qualified public service organization, which entitled its employees to participate in the program, as a result of a 2020 settlement in a lawsuit by the ABA and four lawyers. The ABA had sued after the Education Department decided in 2016 that its employees were no longer eligible to participate in the program that began in 2007.

Before former President Joe Biden took office, the PSLF program had forgiven debt to just 7,000 borrowers, according to the White House fact sheet. While Biden was in office, the program “ballooned” to wipe out student debt for more than 1 million borrowers, the fact sheet says.

The Washington Post noted that the loan forgiveness order may not take effect immediately.

“Education Secretary Linda McMahon may need to convene a panel of experts for a negotiated rulemaking to change the criteria for qualifying employers and then invite the public to comment on any proposed revision,” the article says.

Or maybe not. Although such changes typically are enacted through a rulemaking process, the New York Times says, “the Trump administration has frequently acted in defiance of apparent legal limits—which is likely to set off waves of anxiety for those relying on the complex program.”

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3. Utah considers allowing law grads to choose…

Bar Exam

Utah considers allowing law grads to choose apprenticeship rather than bar exam

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 7, 2024, 1:21 pm CST

The Utah Supreme Court is seeking comment on a proposal to allow law grads to become lawyers without taking the bar exam.

The plan released Monday gives law graduates two options to obtain a law license: They can pass the bar exam, or they can complete “alternate path” requirements. Both options also require a passing score on the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam.

Those who choose the alternate path must have graduated from an ABA-accredited law school within the last five years, must have successfully completed several listed law school courses, and must complete 240 “supervised practice hours” under a supervising attorney.

The Utah Supreme Court is inviting comments through Dec. 19, Reuters reports. The state supreme court acted in response to a 2023 proposal of its Bar Admissions Working Group.

One of the working group members is Catherine Bramble, a professor at Brigham Young University’s law school. She told Reuters that she hopes that the alternate path program “could be implemented as soon as next summer.”

Other states with apprenticeship pathways are Oregon, Washington and Arizona, according to Reuters.

See also:

Examining the Bar: Should law grads need to pass the bar to practice? Some say there is a better way

Bar exam does little to ensure attorney competence, say lawyers in diploma privilege state

Judicial task force will take deep look at legal ed, bar admissions

Writing plays an expanding role in the evolving legal marketing world, and lawyers have much to learn. We must pivot to produce easily digestible content. To effectively market ourselves and our law firms to clients through law alerts, blogs or other methods, we must stop writing like lawyers and start writing like marketers, journalists or speechwriters.

Directions for doing so abound: Write for an audience of eighth graders, focus on SEO optimization, avoid citations, format with bullet points, etc.

These suggestions add value. That value is limited, however, by a foundational flaw. Advising lawyers to write simplistically and formulaically misses the mark. It fails to recognize that clients hire us because we are legal experts, not because we are marketing experts. When we oversimplify to improve marketability, we strip legal content of the nuance our clients and potential clients expect us to incorporate into our practice. With that in mind, there are several ways to integrate marketing guidance into our writing while still performing our roles as lawyers.

Legal writing training begins in law school, as ABA accreditation criteria includes faculty-supervised first-year and upper-class writing requirements. Many schools add more substantial demands, including writing major articles and papers with extensive one-on-one faculty supervision. Academic journal writing and editing is another format for jargon added to the mix. This education, built upon post-graduation at firms around the country, creates attorney writers.

Some are so well-trained that they cannot help themselves from placing errant commas where none belong or adding unnecessary modifiers for yet further clarification of a three-line email. Nor can they stop themselves from capitalizing the words “plaintiffs” or “defendants.” (Practical note: Capitalize parties in court documents, not articles or blogs.)

Gifted citation checkers, perhaps, many attorney writers are like classically trained chefs who struggle to make a simple grilled cheese sandwich. They command the capacity to communicate with complex legalese but cannot distill legal intricacies into plain English.

And that is where change is required. Taking into account our expertise and understanding of the law, we have to learn how to share our knowledge. That does not mean understating complexities or habitually circulating information following often inapplicable conventions. Instead, we should think through each communication—its intention, substance and implications—and plan accordingly.

Leverage marketing insights

Assuming that you share your legal knowledge and experience without oversimplification, advice from marketing experts—in-house at your firm or outside consultants—can be worthwhile and immensely useful. Here are a few ways to embrace marketing advice without leaving your legal training behind.

1. Show, don’t tell

This old writing adage rings true for lawyers. You cannot advertise yourself as an “expert” without violating professional ethics rules, so use your writing to show your expertise. Include legal jargon and explain it. Breaking down complex legislation or regulations into digestible content will demonstrate your mastery of the materials. For an extra challenge, show that mastery. Graphics, charts and flow diagrams double as effective ways to explain complexities and visual showcases of your expertise.

Publishing well-written, high-quality blogs and articles distinguishes you from your competitors. Many lawyers can summarize the Federal Trade Commission’s most recent rule banning most noncompetes. Still, it takes more experience to successfully address related, more complex questions: How does the rule impact forfeiture provisions and clawbacks—particularly related to ERISA plans? As part of the executive branch, does the FTC even have the constitutional authority to regulate contracts?

2. Use active voice

Passive voice is not a grammatical concern, but it complicates sentence structure and adds extra words. Compare these sentences:

  • “Passive voice is to be avoided by legal writers who wish to achieve success.”

  • “Successful legal writers avoid passive voice.”

All writers benefit from replacing a passive voice with an active one (most of the time), but this is a particularly useful tip for lawyers. To communicate effectively, we should focus on writing simpler sentences—in structure, not content.

The active voice conveys directness and strength, both of which clients and potential clients want to see in their lawyers. Limiting the passive voice will help you demonstrate those qualities in your writing.

According to Jessica Kaplan, we should think through each communication—its intention, substance and implications—and plan accordingly.

3. Know your audience

Clients hire lawyers who are well-prepared and considerate of their time. If you do not take the time to learn about your audience and write accordingly, you will have wasted your clients’ time.

If your distribution list includes primarily general counsels of national REITs, discuss important caselaw and address legal intricacies that they, as attorneys with expertise, will understand and appreciate. Provide links to cases, and consider addressing compelling arguments raised in concurring and dissenting opinions. They will likely appreciate the analysis and the mastery that you convey.

If you are writing for nonlawyers, engaging in esoteric legal analysis may be a waste of their time and yours. But do not treat your nonlawyer readers like they cannot understand legal issues. They can if you explain the issues well. It is your job to represent your clients’ interests, and educating them is an important aspect of that job.

Always use the correct legal terminology (including Latin words), and include definitions where necessary. Give your clients the credit they deserve for being intelligent and educated experts in their fields.

So write for eighth graders when preparing for middle school career day, but write for sophisticated real estate investors when explaining the implications of New York City’s rent regulation laws to institutional clients.

Do not keep a tally of SEO keywords when you write an explanation of the city’s updates to those regulations. While there is a possibility that discounting SEO may impact the analytics of your blog and your ability to reach those seeking content with Google searches (which should be explored further given Google’s March 2024 core update’s impact on SEO keywords—a subject for another column), you are writing to inform your clients. Producing helpful content geared toward those clients will make you a marketing success.

Circling back

In sum, identify your readership and understand the law to communicate effectively. Explain where appropriate but continue to write like a lawyer. And like a classically trained chef simplifying a grilled cheese sandwich, slightly alter the complexity of flavor based on ingredients and customer preferences. But do not use the microwave.

Jessica Kaplan is the founder of Legally Penned. A 2001 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, Kaplan is a litigator-turned-wordsmith providing content and editing services tailored specifically to lawyers and law firms.

Mind Your Business is a series of columns written by lawyers, legal professionals and others within the legal industry. The purpose of these columns is to offer practical guidance for attorneys on how to run their practices, provide information about the latest trends in legal technology and how it can help lawyers work more efficiently, and strategies for building a thriving business.

Interested in contributing a column? Send a query to [email protected].

This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.

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The Modern Law Library

NY law prof is calling on ‘Lawyer Nation’ to reform

By Lee Rawles

February 28, 2024, 8:44 am CST

Ray Brescia, a law professor at Albany Law School in New York, has taken a hard look at the country’s legal system in his new book, Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Brescia tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the efforts in the late 19th and early 20th century to exclude people from the legal profession who were not part of the dominant social class and how access-to-justice issues persist today as a result of some of those measures.

The early American Bar Association is one of the organizations that he names as a participant in the exclusionary efforts through its law school accreditation program, and he and Rawles discuss the ABA’s current efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion.

As someone who has worked in academia, the nonprofit world, legal aid organizations and as a clerk at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, he says he’s come across many people who care deeply and want the justice system to function better. But without fundamental changes to the ways that legal services are delivered, he does not think that the access-to-justice issues can be solved.

A large part of Brescia’s concern that he expresses in Lawyer Nation is for legal professionals themselves. Brescia says the mental illness and substance-use levels within the profession demonstrate that greater care has to be shown for lawyers’ well-being and work-life balance. He shares his advice for making the profession more sustainable for the incoming generation. He also discusses how law schools and legal education can change.

In This Podcast:

Ray Brescia

Ray Brescia is the Hon. Harold R. Tyler professor in law and technology at Albany Law School in New York. Before coming to Albany Law School, he was the associate director of the Urban Justice Center in New York. He also was an adjunct professor at New York Law School from 1997 to 2006. Before his work at the Urban Justice Center, he was a staff attorney at New Haven Legal Assistance and the Legal Aid Society of New York. Brescia also was law clerk to Senior U.S. District Judge Constance Baker Motley of the Southern District of New York. He is the author or editor of The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions, Crisis Lawyering: Effective Legal Advocacy in Emergency Situations, How Cities Will Save the World: Urban Innovation in the Face of Population Flows, Climate Change and Economic Inequality and Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession.