The Indiana Tech School of Law: Would the For Profit School Be Accredited by the American Bar Association?; Again, When is the Indiana State Bar Association Going to Weigh In?

A friend of mine, more knowledgeable than me about the subject, expressed doubts that an Indiana Tech Law School would be accredited by the American Bar Association. Without ABA accreditation, graduates of the Indiana Tech School of Law couldn't sit for the Indiana Bar exam.

I found this in an article from he Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette from February:

The American Bar Association has a rigorous accreditation process, McNamara said, and if a law school can successfully attain that, it would be worthwhile to the community.

The American Bar Association does not accredit many for-profit law schools, and no correspondence or online law schools are accredited. To get through that process, he said, requires a school to be up to the task of educating men and women to practice law.

Indiana Tech is a for-profit school, unlike the other state's universities which have law schools: Indiana University (campus in Bloomington and Indianapolis), Notre Dame and Valparaiso.  Indiana Tech focuses on business and engineering but now wants to get into the more profitable business of educating future unemployed and underemployed lawyers.  The school says its tuition will be $28,500 per student.

Indiana Tech says that its first class will be in 2013.  The school won't be accredited by then and may never get accreditation since the ABA doesn't like to accredit for-profit schools.

This is all about a for profit school taking advantage of naive young men and women who think a legal education is going to be the ticket to a high-paying job.  It is time that the Indiana State Bar Association get off its rear and take a stand on the need for this fifth law school in light of the saturation of attorneys in the job market.