ABA Considers Accrediting Exclusively Online Law Schools

[Jonathan Whatley]

The ABA’s [American Bar Association’s] Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar voted Friday to gather public comments on proposed changes to its standards that would enable new and existing law schools with no physical campus to apply for accreditation.

Only law schools with brick-and-mortar locations are currently eligible for ABA accreditation. The ABA has allowed a growing number of those schools to offer fully or mostly online Juris Doctor programs alongside their residential ones, but fully online schools have remained ineligible to apply for the ABA’s stamp of approval.

Daniel Thies, chairperson of the ABA Council’s Strategic Review Committee, on Friday called the proposal to accredit online law schools a “significant change” that could help lower the cost of a legal education. He noted that online J.D. programs offered by ABA-accredited law schools generally charge the same tuition for online and residential students.

Likely, that’s because they’re all offered by brick-and-mortar law schools that have all the same expenses associated with brick-and-mortar law schools,” Thies said. […]

Thies suggested that some traditional law schools may object to the change for fear of added competition. But longstanding perceptions that distance education is lower quality than in-person teaching have diminished significantly following the rapid shift to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, several ABA council members said Friday.

Online law schools could win ABA blessing in major policy shift (Karen Sloan, Reuters, November 20, 2023)

[ashkir]

so they're thinking of whether or not to join the 21st century?