Should Texas allow unaccredited law schools?

[Esq]

There is a bill in the Texas legislature that would allow graduates of unaccredited law schools to sit for the Texas Bar.  State Rep. Robert Talton, an attorney, authored H.B. 826, which would mandate the Texas Supreme Court to adopt rules allowing attorneys whose law degrees came from study by correspondence to sit for the Texas exam, if the graduates have passed another state's bar exam and they are licensed in another state to practice law. According to Talton's bill, the distance-learning law school graduates could be admitted to Texas law practice if the graduates pass the Texas bar exam.

[dave303]

Absolutely not, these schools just rob students who have big dreams and poor academic credentials, the state of texas doesn't need to lend them any credit. Unaccredited schools in CA have the lowest rates of bar passage. Students get in huge debt going to some worthless unaccredited school and then get out with nothing but a huge loan and no chance of a decent job.

[BoscoBreaux]

Absolutely not, these schools just rob students who have big dreams and poor academic credentials, the state of texas doesn't need to lend them any credit. Unaccredited schools in CA have the lowest rates of bar passage. Students get in huge debt going to some worthless unaccredited school and then get out with nothing but a huge loan and no chance of a decent job.

I think they should be able to take the bar, and become lawyers. I live in California, and know many members of the CA State Bar, some who have gone to unaccredited schools. Are they competition for ABA accredited graduates? Not really, given that a very small percentage actually pass the bar. Those who do have a stigma that no ABA accredited graduate has, so don't sweat it. I know of two persons who went to non-accredited schools: one was a doctor who didn't want to close his rural practice (he was a physician) to attend school, and the other simply could not get loans to go to school (he had a big mortgage, and credit problems in the past.) But, both passed the bar and are very good lawyers. If you can pass the California bar, you deserve to be a lawyer regardless of what school you went to--its brutal.  Perhaps the answer, if competency is an issue, is to make the bar exam tougher in some states.  I do, however, have problems with non-accredited schools denying the true odds of bar passage, but that shouldn't have impact on those who want to take the bar, and who can pass it.