The American Bar Association’s legal education council voted Friday to loosen national accreditation requirements governing who teaches first-year law students, how schools deliver instruction and when they can admit applicants without a bachelor’s degree. The changes require concurrence from the ABA’s House of Delegates, which is expected to consider them in February, Reuters reported.

The vote concerns the standards schools must meet to receive and retain approval from the council. The ABA’s meeting materials place the proposals within an ongoing review of those standards. The changes would give schools greater discretion over staffing and program design. Whether that discretion translates into lower student costs or different courses would depend on decisions at individual schools.

Schools would have more flexibility in first-year staffing

The council voted to remove a requirement that nearly all first-year instruction be provided by full-time faculty. The current standards define the requirements under which schools operate while the revision goes through the approval process. Removing the staffing requirement would allow a school to use more adjunct instructors in the first year if it chose to do so. It would not require a school to change its faculty mix.

Critics of the existing accreditation rules have argued that they prescribe too much about how schools operate and can increase costs, Reuters reported. A legal analysis published before Friday’s meeting identified the first-year requirement as one of the items the council had put out for comment. Any effect on tuition would depend on whether schools change staffing and what they do with any savings. Friday’s vote gives no estimate of how many schools would alter their staffing.

Credit rules and admissions would also change

The council also voted to reduce the number of credit hours that must come from regularly scheduled classes or direct faculty instruction, according to Reuters. The change would give schools more room to structure coursework after the first year, including in part-time programs and field placements. The proposal concerns the mix of instruction that can satisfy the standard. It leaves schools to decide which courses or experiences to offer.

A separate proposal would expand discretion to admit candidates without a four-year degree when their experience, ability and other qualifications demonstrate that they are prepared for legal study. That would change the conditions under which schools can consider applicants whose education does not follow the usual path. The proposal does not settle what evidence a school might find persuasive in an individual application. Schools would need to explain their admissions policies to applicants if the change takes effect.

Federal recognition is a separate decision

The vote comes as the U.S. Department of Education considers whether the council should retain federal recognition as a law school accreditor. Department staff concluded in August that the council was not sufficiently independent from the wider ABA, Reuters reported. A final decision was still pending Friday. That review concerns the status of the accrediting body, while the council vote concerns the standards it administers.

Recognition also has a framework beyond this individual review. A recently published federal rule revises the Education Department’s broader policies for recognizing accrediting agencies and is scheduled to take effect in July 2027. The department said it sought to reduce prescriptive requirements while focusing on student achievement and oversight. The timing and scope of that rule are distinct from the steps the ABA council took Friday, so one development does not determine the outcome of the other.

The ABA’s standards book and the federal recognition rules are aimed at different readers. The former tells law schools what an accreditor expects of them. The latter tells accrediting agencies what they must do to obtain and keep federal recognition. A revision at one level can change the environment in which the other operates, but a vote on faculty, credits or admissions standards cannot resolve the department’s review.

Students will see changes only as schools adopt them

Accreditation matters to students because it can affect eligibility to take a bar examination. The ABA’s accreditation guidance says all states recognize graduation from a council-accredited school as meeting the legal education requirement to sit for the bar. Requirements can vary among jurisdictions in other respects. Applicants weighing an offer from a law school need to know both its accreditation status and the requirements of the jurisdiction where they intend to practice.

The next milestone for Friday’s package is the House of Delegates. If the proposals are approved, schools can decide how they want to use the additional flexibility. The practical measures to watch would include who teaches required courses, which field experiences count toward graduation and how schools assess candidates without bachelor’s degrees. Until those decisions are made, the council’s vote establishes a possible change in what schools are allowed to do and leaves the effects on individual students open until the schools publish their updated requirements.