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Policy and Advocacy Legal Education Bar Preparation Letter to Legislator
Policy and Advocacy Legal Education Bar Preparation Letter to Legislator

AccessLex Comments on Florida Law School Accreditation and Bar Admission

AccessLex Institute® is pleased for the opportunity to offer this comment in response to the Supreme Court of Florida’s January 15, 2026 order ending the sole accrediting authority of the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (Council). AccessLex is a nonprofit organization with a mission focused on “empowering the next generation of lawyers.” We fulfill this mission by working to maximize legal education access, affordability, and value, assisting talented, purpose-driven students in finding their path from aspiring lawyer to fulfilled professional.

We expect that the Court’s decision to recognize new law school accreditors will spur the entry of new legal education providers into the nation’s third largest legal education market. And we further expect that these providers will primarily serve aspiring lawyers for whom studying at one of the state’s 12 Council-approved law schools is infeasible or impossible. These students will disproportionately embody “non-traditional” characteristics, rendering their ultimate pursuit of bar admission an opportunity to broaden access to competent and ethical legal services for Floridians. Accreditor oversight of the new law schools should ensure that their existence in the state is rooted in earnest opportunity and not exploitation.

Florida will join five other states that recognize non-Council accreditors.1 In those states, non-Council law schools tend to yield low academic completion and bar passage outcomes. Data from California provide useful illustrations. That state has 22 law schools accredited by the state bar and 17 approved by the Council.2 A 2022 study found that the state-accredited schools had first-year attrition rates of 42%, more than five times the eight percent rate among Council-approved schools.3 First-time bar passage rate among the state-accredited schools was 37%, compared to 83% among Council-approved schools.4 

Distilling these trends yields a sobering suggestion. Out of every 100 students who begin their studies at state-accredited schools in California, only about 21 go on to graduate and pass the state’s bar exam on the first attempt, versus 76 out of every 100 students at Council-approved schools. Similar trends are seen in the other states that recognize more than one law school accreditor. 

Less favorable outcomes are to be expected among non-Council-approved schools, given the populations they serve. This reality increases the imperative that oversight is oriented towards the fundamental goal of providing viable pathways to the legal profession. Accreditation standards should focus on the substantive alignment of curricula to the bar exam and the real-world practice of law. Standards should also emphasize that robust student support services (e.g., academic, bar prep, mental health) are what distinguishes opportunity from exploitation.

The prospect of low bar exam passage rates should be particularly concerning to the Court. Each failed exam attempt further inhibits the ability of graduates to launch their careers, build financial stability, and begin their service to the people of Florida. The financial harm of bar exam failure, considering the upfront investments in the law degree, would be especially acute among graduates of non-Council schools. Accreditors could provide some oversight, like setting minimum bar exam pass rates, but only the Court is empowered to ensure that the exam does not unduly harm graduates from non-Council schools.

Access to sufficient financial resources is a critical bar exam performance factor. Bar candidates who can afford to engage in more than two months of focused study, without having to undertake employment or navigate financial distress, are most likely to pass. In a 2021 study of bar takers in New York State, AccessLex researchers concluded that “[t]he key ingredient to … bar passage is extensive time dedicated to bar exam preparation.”5 This largely obvious point rested on an underappreciated premise. The amount of time a bar candidate spent studying was less a reflection of motivation and discipline and more a reflection of life circumstances.

Bar preparation is expensive. Bar prep courses and supplementary tools typically run into the thousands of dollars. But the most significant costs often take the form of foregone employment income during the bar prep period. Optimal exam performance requires the equivalent of 10 full-time work weeks of intense, largely undistracted study.6 All conventional advice discourages employment during the prep period. In the New York bar exam study, the more candidates engaged in employment, the less likely they were to pass on the first attempt.7 The data was clear. 

Unfortunately for some candidates, losing 10 weeks of income is simply not an option. Other candidates of meager means may choose to forgo income but face the prospect of disruptive financial distress. One New York bar taker stated: “Finances were my biggest challenge. At times, I did not have enough money to eat.”8 This candidate failed the exam.

Graduates of non-Council schools will disproportionately face this challenge. As a result, many will be excluded from the profession based on factors detached from their ability to practice law competently and ethically. The Court’s goal of “promot[ing] access to high-quality, affordable legal education” invariably extends to promoting access to the practice of law. Therefore, the Court should adopt additional methods for assessing whether a bar candidate possesses minimum competence to practice law. 

Several states allow bar candidates to demonstrate minimum competence through methods other than a bar exam.9 Common methods include supervised practice and curricular portfolio assessments. Both methods require candidates to undertake stipulated lawyerly tasks under the structured supervision of licensed attorneys or law professors. During the period of supervision, candidates must demonstrate minimum competence. The processes are carried out through productive collaborations between bar regulators, law schools, and the legal profession. Supervising attorneys and professors provide initial oversight, with bar regulators being responsible for final certification. Compared to bar exams, these methods assess minimum competence more directly and over extended periods. They can also help reduce incidences of bar candidates being judged incompetent, when they are simply unable to bear the immense costs of adequate exam preparation.

The Court’s decision to recognize new law school accreditors represents an opportunity to broaden access to justice in Florida. It also comes with the almost certain prospect of higher rates of academic and bar exam failure among aspiring lawyers. Accreditors can play important roles in holding schools accountable to educational best practices and outcomes goals. But the Court is positioned to be most impactful, aligning the bar admission process with the new legal education paradigm it has introduced.

1 Alabama, California, Massachusetts, and Tennessee have non-ABA accredited law schools. Texas removed its ABA-accreditation requirement in 2026, but all Texas law schools are still currently ABA-accredited. See Eligibility for Admission by Examination, ALA. STATE BAR, https://admissions.alabar.org/eligibility-for-admission-by-examination (last visited Mar. 10, 2026); Law Schools Directory, STATE BAR OF CAL., https://www.calbar.ca.gov/admissions/law-schools/law-schools-directory (last visited Mar. 10, 2026); Supreme Jud. Ct. R. 3:01 § 3.1.3 (2018) (Massachusetts); Tenn. Supreme Ct. R. 7 § 2.02 (2023); Stephanie Gleason, Texas Supreme Court Takes Over Law School Accreditation From ABA, BLOOMBERG L. (Jan. 6, 2026), https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/texas-supreme-court-takes-over-law-school-accreditation-from-aba.
2 See Law Schools Directory, STATE BAR OF CAL., https://www.calbar.ca.gov/admissions/law-schools/law-schools-directory (last visited Mar. 9, 2026). The state also has eight unaccredited law schools whose graduates are nonetheless eligible to seek bar admission.
3 STATE BAR OF CAL., 2023 CALIFORNIA ACCREDITED AND REGISTERED UNACCREDITED LAW SCHOOL PERFORMANCE REPORT 42 (June 14, 2024), https://www.calbar.ca.gov/sites/default/files/portals/0/documents/reports/2024/2023-California-Accredited-and-Registered-Unaccredited-Law-School-Performance-Report.pdf; Profile of California Law Schools: Law School Attrition, STATE BAR OF CAL., https://publications.calbar.ca.gov/law-school-profile/law-school-attrition (last visited Mar. 9, 2026).
4 Profile of California Law Schools: California Bar Exam Pass Rates, STATE BAR OF CAL., https://publications.calbar.ca.gov/law-school-profile/california-bar-exam-pass-rates (last visited Mar. 9, 2026)
5 N.Y. STATE BD. OF L. EXAM’RS & ACCESSLEX INST., ANALYZING FIRST-TIME BAR EXAM PASSAGE ON THE UBE IN NEW YORK STATE 2 (2021), https://arc.accesslex.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=research.
6 See id. at 11–12.
7Id. at 15.
8Id. at 5.
9 Six states currently offer non-exam pathways to licensure: Oregon (supervised practice), Utah (supervised practice), Arizona (supervised practice), South Dakota (supervised practice), New Hampshire (curricular), and Wisconsin (diploma privilege). See Supervised Practice Portfolio Examination, OR. STATE BAR, https://www.osbar.org/sppe (last visited Mar. 9, 2026); Two Pathways: One Standard of Excellence, UTAH STATE BAR, https://www.utahbar.org/alternate-pathway/ (last visited Mar. 9, 2026); Arizona Lawyer Apprentice Program, ARIZ. JUD. BRANCH, https://www.azcourts.gov/cld/Arizona-Lawyer-Apprentice-Program (last visited Mar. 9, 2026); Press Release, South Dakota Supreme Court, Supreme Court Adopts Public Service Pathway to Bar Admissions Pilot Program Rules (Feb. 21, 2025), https://ujs.sd.gov/ujs-news/supreme-court-adopts-public-service-pathway-to-bar-admission-pilot-program-rules/; Admission by Successful Completion of DWS Program, N.H. JUD. BRANCH, https://www.courts.nh.gov/lawyers/nh-bar-admissions/admission-successful-completion-dws-program (last visited Mar. 9, 2026); Admission to the State Bar of Wisconsin, WIS. CT. SYS., https://www.wicourts.gov/services/attorney/bar.htm (last visited Mar. 9, 2026). The Washington Supreme Court has adopted, in concept, a supervised practice pathway, but has not yet implemented it. New Licensing Pathways, WASH. STATE BAR ASS’N (July 23, 2025), https://www.wsba.org/for-legal-professionals/join-the-legal-profession-nwa/lawyers/pathways.

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