FEATURED
Change will reduce tuition costs, increase number of lawyers, expert says
The Tennessee Supreme Court finalized a decision this month to loosen the state’s reliance on the American Bar Association after years of treating it as the sole accreditor for law schools, making room for other accreditors to get involved.
The decision replaces the requirement that future lawyers attend an “ABA-accredited law school” with broader language mandating only a “law school accredited by an Approved Accreditor.”
Tennessee is now the fifth Republican state to open accreditation, following Alabama, Ohio, Florida, and Texas.
The ABA remains an approved accreditor in Tennessee, meaning its graduates remain fully eligible to sit for the state’s bar exam.
Chair of the Accreditation Council Carla Pratt told The College Fix that the ABA “deeply values its long-standing partnership with the Tennessee Supreme Court and respects the state’s authority over legal education and bar admissions.”
“We are pleased that the partnership will continue—just as it has—with the Court’s recognition of the Council as an Approved Accreditor,” she said.
Pratt added that the ABA looks forward to working with the court “to support solutions that protect Tennessee consumers, lower barriers for students, and foster innovation, while maintaining the strong nationwide degree portability that Tennessee law graduates deserve.”
Reached for a comment, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Supreme Court told The College Fix that the court does not comment on administrative rule changes.
The Beacon Center of Tennessee’s Vice President of Legal Affairs Wen Fa told The College Fix the decision will have a positive impact and reduce the cost of education.
He said that previous antitrust litigation and a 2006 finding that the ABA violated a consent decree have led to concerns that the association holds a monopoly over law schools, driving up tuition for aspiring lawyers.
“Law schools, a lot of law schools, are very expensive, and costs have gone up exponentially in just the last 10 to 20 years, so we believe this will have a positive change,” Fa said.
Addressing concerns about the quality of attorneys, Fa said the change will not force “anybody to get a lawyer they don’t want to get.”
Instead, he argued the previous restrictions caused more harm by creating legal shortages that left about 80 percent of legal needs unmet.
“And while there are legal aid organizations, they can only take so many cases, and they have a defined and limited scope. I believe the numbers are something about half of the people who reach out to legal aid organizations in Tennessee get turned down,” he said.
Fa argued the change will address this issue and increase the number of lawyers.
“This is the marketplace. This is the free market. This is, what I believe, makes America America: our free market economy,” Fa said.
“So I think this will be a huge win for the right to earn an honest living, and not to have this government red tape in the way of someone otherwise qualified to provide legal services,” he told The Fix.
The Trump administration pushed for the change in a public comment submitted by the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, urging the Tennessee Supreme Court to end the ABA’s exclusive accrediting status in order to foster competition and lower tuition.
“…the ABA standards for law school accreditation impose an elitist model of legal education, driving up the cost of legal education and thereby limiting the supply of lawyers,” the comment states.
The American Bar Association has been under harsh scrutiny for its diversity, equity and inclusion standard, also known as Standard 206, by the Trump administration and the Department of Education.
The association suspended the rule in 2025 after President Trump signed an executive order to “end illegal DEI discrimination,” The College Fix previously reported.
But concerns still remain.
Even after Standard 206 was suspended, Defending Education found that of the nearly 200 law schools accredited by the ABA, “62 appear to still require students to complete DEI-related coursework or programming in order to graduate.”
“In addition, 72 law schools appear to maintain DEI offices—or rebranded versions of them—that remain in operation,” the watchdog group warned.
