U of Austin Won’t Seek ABA Accreditation for Legal Program

The University of Austin, a five-year-old institution founded by CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss and others, says it won’t seek the American Bar Association Accreditation Council’s recognition for its legal program.

UATX, which first accepted students in fall 2024, doesn’t yet have institutional accreditation, though it’s seeking it.

The institution’s announcement comes after the Education Department recommended last month that the ABA Council lose federal recognition to accredit law schools, meaning its accreditation wouldn’t unlock federal student aid for those schools. Some Republican-controlled states have also targeted the ABA Council, which has received criticism for its past support of diversity, equity and inclusion. Earlier this year, the Texas Supreme Court allowed lawyers who haven’t graduated from ABA Council–accredited schools to practice in the state.

In a lengthy Substack post Thursday, UATX General Counsel Adam Biggs condemned the ABA.

“The ABA is a private trade association that has spent seventy years making sure no one builds a law school that doesn’t conform to its exact vision for legal education,” Biggs wrote, adding that the “model it enforces is expensive and outdated, and it stifles anyone who tries to build something different.”

He said UATX will partner with the conservative Federalist Society in its undergraduate legal education, supporting courses “that go further into the Constitution’s text, history, and tradition, taught by judges, practicing lawyers, and scholars.”

He criticized ABA standards in detail, including requirements for tenured positions. He said the standards also “make creating [legal] clinics largely unavoidable.”

“Students working real cases sounds good, in the abstract,” Biggs wrote. “Yet it is the most expensive way to teach anything. A professor teaching Property reaches hundreds of students. A clinical professor works with about eight.”

He further blamed the “ABA-enforced pipeline” for left-leaning faculty and student bodies at law schools and said the legal clinics themselves overwhelmingly support left-leaning causes. He denounced a “grievance-based study of the law [that] undermines the pursuit of truth and instills the belief that the Constitution and our republic are obstacles to be torn down.”

Attacking the cost of legal education, he also said, “Someone called to serve ordinary Americans and work in public-interest law shouldn’t have to abandon that calling because only a large-firm salary can service the loans.”

In an emailed statement, Melissa Hart, chair of the ABA Council, said it accredits law schools “with a wide range of missions and perspectives” that “innovate in all aspects of their program, setting minimum standards that lead to strong outcomes.”

“States also recognize other law schools that—for a variety of reasons—do not choose to pursue Council accreditation. That system of combining national accreditation, which ensures degree portability, with parallel pathways to practice has worked well for many years, and it will continue to as the University of Austin builds its program,” she said.