For more than four decades, a single private trade association in Chicago, the American Bar Association (ABA), has decided who is allowed to become a lawyer in nearly every state. That’s because nearly every state, including Louisiana, relies on the ABA to determine which law schools meet their standards. Almost all states require future lawyers to attend an ABA accredited law school to be considered for bar membership. Louisiana Supreme Court Rule XVII provides no other path. The ABA’s rules are set largely by law school faculty and administrators – those with the most to gain from keeping the supply of lawyers low and the cost of a legal education high.
The standards reflect exactly that. The ABA’s rules require physical libraries that offer little value in an era of online research, cap online coursework, and impose an 83-credit-hour minimum that locks nearly every school into a three-year tuition model. Each rule raises the price of becoming a lawyer with no clear connection to whether a graduate becomes an effective lawyer.
The consequences are not abstract here. Rural parishes, particularly in northeast Louisiana, face documented legal deserts. Graduates carrying six-figure debt are drawn toward higher-paying urban practices, not toward the communities where the need is greatest.
Other states have recognized the harm limiting accreditation to the ABA has on the legal profession-and those who rely on it-and have taken action. Texas and Florida ended their exclusive reliance on the ABA in January 2026. Alabama opened its bar to non-ABA graduates in April. Tennessee is weighing the same question after the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice urged the state to reduce its reliance on the ABA, and Ohio is studying its accreditation process. The federal government is actively funding new accreditors to compete with the ABA.
The arguments for keeping the ABA in charge sounds reasonable at first. Accreditation guarantees a floor of quality, it lets graduates practice in any state, and it protects clients from lawyers who are not ready to serve them. These objections do not withstand scrutiny. Will quality suffer? No. The bar exam, however flawed, is the profession’s actual quality screen, and every graduate must pass it. State bar associations require applicants to undergo character and fitness screenings to filter out those who cannot meet the standards that protect the public. Deciding who may practice law in Louisiana is its Supreme Court’s prerogative, not a Chicago trade association’s. Concerns about portability and the absence of a competing accreditor shrink with every state that reforms, and no competitor will emerge so long as every state requires the ABA.
The solution is straightforward. The Louisiana Supreme Court can reclaim its own authority, as Texas did, and define an approved school on outcome-based terms grounded in bar passage and employment rather than library square footage. Every existing school stays approved. Nothing is taken away.
A measured first step is simple. The Court can solicit public comment, as Tennessee did in September 2025. The ABA’s monopoly will eventually break. The question is not whether it will. It is whether Louisiana will help shape what comes next.
