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In Indiana, law school graduates have to graduate from American Bar Association-accredited law schools to take the state bar exam. But a proposed rule change, if approved, could open the bar exam to additional law school grads.
The proposal applies to Rules 6, 13 and 17.1 of the Indiana Rules for Admission to the Bar and the Discipline of Attorneys. One school, in particular, is pushing for the change: Concord Law School at Purdue University Global, an online-only school that’s not ABA-accredited but is fighting to let its graduates take the Indiana bar.
While the online law school is framing the debate as an access-to-justice issue, Indiana legal leaders are pushing back against the notion of allowing graduates of non-ABA-accredited schools to take the exam by raising quality concerns.
The proposal
Given that it’s an online program, Concord Law School is available to law students across the country. However, under current regulations, its graduates can only take the bar in California, where the school is based.
For years, Concord has been trying to change those regulations. Concord Dean and Vice President Martin Pritikin said the school has previously approached Connecticut and Arizona about opening their state bars to Concord grads, but both declined.
Even so, “I think the pandemic has put online learning front and center on a lot of people’s minds,” Pritikin said. “I think no one could really get their head around the idea that law school could be online back then. But now, given that every ABA law school in the country went online for at least a year during the pandemic, everybody understands that it’s possible.”
Even though it’s attached to the Purdue name, Concord Law doesn’t attract many Indiana students, Pritikin said. That’s because they can’t take the bar in the Hoosier State.
That would change under the proposed amendments to rules 6, 13 and 17.1.
Students from non-ABA-accredited schools could take the Indiana bar if their law school was accredited by one or more state, regional or national bodies that specifically accredit law schools. The school must also be operated by or affiliated with an Indiana-based educational institution whose legal education program/degree has been approved by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.
Purdue University submitted the requested rule change, citing the state’s lawyer shortage. The Indiana Supreme Court accepted comment through April 21 but had not yet issued a final order at Indiana Lawyer deadline.
Jennifer Ashley, a resident of the Owen County community of Coal City and a first-year student at Concord Law, said she would love to stay in Indiana. But if the proposed rule change doesn’t happen, then she and her family will have to move to California.
“If it’s allowed, I will practice in Indiana,” Ashley said. “Otherwise, our tax dollars that we put into this state will probably be forced to be put into another state because we would have to move so that I could practice. And I don’t want to uproot my family, but what choices do we have?”
Flexibility and access
Ashley said she chose Concord Law because of its flexibility, given that she’s a 48-year-old mother. Where she lives in Indiana, there isn’t a college campus within an hour’s drive.
“Even as a child, I spent 45 minutes in the morning riding a bus to school, another 45 minutes to come back home, and that was just grade school,” she said. “Colleges were even further away. I tried to attend in-person college and it’s great, but it just wasn’t doable.
“So I chose another career path, basically that I didn’t really want to take, for lack of accessibility,” she continued. “Now I’ve reached a point in my life where I found Purdue Global and this is attainable, it’s doable. So as an older adult, it just makes more sense.”
Pritikin said Concord Law’s mission is to provide access to students no matter where they are. The average age of Concord’s students is 43, he said, and most students are also working full-time jobs and taking care of their families.
That includes Dolan Williams, who worked a full-time job to take care of his wife and four kids while attending Concord Law.
“The idea of quitting my job and going to school full time in the day was possible but would have upended my life to such a degree that I just don’t know if it would have been feasible for me financially, practically speaking,” Williams said.
Williams was living in Arizona when he started taking classes at Concord Law, but he said he knew that if he wanted to practice, he would have to move. Indeed, he now lives and practices in San Diego.
In Indiana, Pritikin pointed to the lawyer shortage and the fact that the state lost a law school a few years ago with the closure of Valparaiso University School of Law.
“There’s an access to justice problem nationally, but the access to justice problem is often worse in rural areas,” Pritikin said. “The best way to get people to represent people as lawyers in rural areas is not to get lawyers to move to rural areas. The best way to get lawyers in rural areas is to make it easier for people who already live in rural areas to stay there while they’re going to law school or going online, stay there after they graduate, and they can just stay where they are and become lawyers and represent the people and the communities in which they already live.”
Opposition from Indiana lawyers
Countering those arguments, both the Indianapolis Bar Association and the Indiana State Bar Association submitted comments to the Indiana Supreme Court opposing the rule change.
ISBA President Amy Noe Dudas said the state bar received feedback from its members, who were generally in opposition to the proposal, although there was some support.
“I know that the intention behind it is to try to bring more lawyers into the state of Indiana — we do have a lawyer shortage in this state. There are some counties that have maybe one lawyer or two lawyers,” Dudas said.
However, the ISBA stance remains that only accredited law school graduates should take the state bar exam.
“I mean, the bottom line about at least the state bar’s opposition to the rule change is simply making sure that we’re confident in whatever accreditation process — and monitoring of that accreditation — that we’re confident in that process,” Dudas said. “We’ve been using the ABA process for all of these years, and if we were going to adopt our own accreditation process, fine, then we would know what it is. But it’s really a matter of knowing what accreditation process we’re adopting and how compliance is monitored.”
In a letter to the Supreme Court signed by Dudas, the ISBA said, “The best way to ensure quality and consistent legal education is through a reliable accreditation process. Indiana has no such independent process, nor does it have a body that evaluates the standards of non-ABA accreditation entities.”
Indianapolis Bar Association President Rebecca Geyer said the IndyBar board also opposes the rule change, pointing to Concord’s California bar pass rates and its dropout rate.
In a January 2023 “Annual Disclosure by California Accredited Law Schools” report, Concord Law reported that 58.5% of its students passed the California bar in the reporting period of Aug. 1, 2016-July 31, 2021, or during the February 2022 bar exam, if they graduated within 10 administrations of that bar exam.
That same report showed that 798 students were enrolled in the law school as of Sept. 15, 2022, including 583 first-year students, 122 second years, 53 third years and 40 fourth years. As of that same date, 161 students had left the J.D. program in the preceding 52 weeks either voluntarily or involuntarily, including transfers.
“There is concern about it overall,” Geyer said. “This wouldn’t set up law students for success.”
Both Christiana Ochoa and Karen Bravo, deans of the Indiana University Maurer and Robert H. McKinney schools of law, respectively, also submitted comments to the Indiana Supreme Court opposing the rule change.
“Given the wide disparity between the academic, social, and well-being support our schools offer and that offered by Concord, we are not surprised to learn of its high attrition and low bar-passage rates,” a letter to the Supreme Court, signed by the deans, said. “Perhaps this explains why, post-pandemic, (Law School Survey of Student Engagement) data shows that only 50% of law students chose to take even a single online class.”
Indiana isn’t the only state considering changing its bar exam rules.
Maine is considering a bill to allow those who have studied under an experienced lawyer for two years to take the bar exam. North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia and Oregon are also considering making changes to their bar exams.•
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