By: Raymond Kayal
A Florida law student graduates in 2028 from a newly state-accredited law school. She studied hard, passed the Florida bar, and built the career she wanted. Until a New York firm extends an offer and she discovers her degree is not recognized. This scenario, currently unthinkable, becomes plausible under Florida’s recent departure from exclusive reliance on American Bar Association accreditation. Florida and Texas’s break from the ABA risks replicating the legal portability crisis that followed Brexit, where UK solicitors lost automatic practice rights across 27 EU jurisdictions overnight. This is not hypothetical; we have seen this story unfold before.
Florida and Texas Break from the ABA
In January 2026, the Florida Supreme Court ended the ABA’s status as the exclusive accreditor for purposes of Florida bar eligibility, joining Texas as only the second state to take this step. The stated rationale centered on objections to the ABA’s diversity standards and what Florida’s justices termed “its political engagement.” Ohio and Tennessee are reviewing similar moves, suggesting this may be the beginning of a broader fracture.
The core function being disregarded is portability. ABA accreditation has operated as a national passport. A degree from an ABA-accredited school generally qualifies graduates to satisfy the educational prerequisite to sit for the bar exam in most states. This system arose in the 1980s as law became an increasingly national practice, and widespread adoption of uniform accreditation standards offered consistency and mobility. State-only accreditation carries no such guarantee. Neither Florida nor Texas has negotiated reciprocity agreements with any other states, and legal education experts have warned that “piecemeal or overlapping regulation would raise costs for law schools, their students, and the profession.” The assumption appears to be that this portability issue will sort itself out. Brexit demonstrates it will not.
Brexit: What Happened to UK Lawyers
Before January 1, 2021, UK solicitors enjoyed seamless access to legal practice across the European Union. The EU Lawyers’ Services Directive (77/249/EEC) permitted UK lawyers to provide temporary legal services in any EU member state without registering with the local bar. The Lawyers’ Establishment Directive (98/5/EC) allowed permanent establishment in EU states after three years of practice. Mutual recognition meant no requalification was necessary. UK solicitors’ credentials traveled as freely as the solicitor did. EU legal professional privilege protected client communications in cross-border proceedings. This infrastructure took decades of multinational negotiation to build.
On January 1, 2021, automatic recognition vanished in an instant. UK lawyers became “third-country” lawyers (the same status as attorneys from non-EU nations). Instead of one EU framework, UK solicitors now face twenty-seven different national regulatory regimes. Each country sets its own rules for foreign lawyer practice, and the lost rights were substantial: temporary “fly-in, fly-out” practice without registration; the ability to advise on EU and host-state laws; EU legal professional privilege; and rights of audience before EU courts and tribunals. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement provided very little replacement: essentially just the right to advise on UK and public international law, subject to each state’s individual restrictions. “Fly-in, fly-out” practice rights granted under the Lawyers’ Services Directive came to an end.
The fallout was immediate. Law firms opened offices in Dublin, Frankfurt, Brussels, and Paris to maintain EU market access. Of the thirty-seven international law firms now with Dublin offices, more than half opened since 2020. Nearly three thousand UK solicitors registered with the Law Society of Ireland seeking dual qualification. That is, until Ireland closed this “backdoor” in November 2020, requiring actual practice (or intended practice) from an establishment in Ireland rather than mere registration. Junior lawyers found their career mobility greatly constrained. Costs flowed to clients through higher fees and restructuring expenses. Five years later, no comprehensive bilateral agreement has replaced what was lost. The lesson is clear: once fragmented, the legal profession is extraordinarily hard to reassemble.
The American Parallel
The portability issue facing Florida and Texas graduates is greater than it might appear. Under the current system, graduating from an ABA-accredited school generally permits sitting for a state’s bar exam by satisfying the educational prerequisite. Most states require graduation from an ABA-accredited school as a prerequisite to sit for the bar exam. If new state-only accredited schools emerge in Florida or Texas, their graduates likely cannot sit for the bar in other states, including New York and California. Unlike Brexit, this is not a foreign issue; this is domestic mobility within the United States. A Florida-trained lawyer could find herself locked into practicing only in Florida, her credentials stopping at the state border, much like UK solicitors’ credentials now stop at the English Channel.
Law students must choose between portable credentials from ABA schools and potentially cheaper state-accredited options. But these “cheaper” options may permanently close many career-altering doors. Law schools face pressure to maintain dual accreditation, increasing costs rather than reducing them. National firms may avoid hiring from non-ABA schools, making regional practice the ceiling rather than the floor. Reduced attorney mobility means less competition, potentially higher costs for clients, and difficulty staffing multi-state issues. The ABA has stated it is working to “preserve the portability of law school degrees throughout the country”; but that requires cooperation from Florida and Texas. Eight of Texas’s ten law school deans opposed the break. The president of the Association of American Law Schools warned of an “absolute mess” if accreditation fragments.
Why This Is Dangerous
Brexit demonstrates that professional credential frameworks, once fractured, do not naturally come back together. The UK has spent five years negotiating piecemeal deals with individual EU member states, achieving limited results. Florida and Texas are fragmenting the American legal system without building replacement infrastructure. There is no interstate compact under negotiation. There is no national accreditor being created. There is no mutual recognition agreement in development. As one expert noted, “standing up an accrediting operation is no small matter.”
The states appear to assume other jurisdictions will simply accept their graduates. Nothing compels New York or California to do so. This creates a two-tier system: graduates of legacy ABA schools retain full portability; graduates of new state-accredited schools do not. The data on unaccredited schools is shocking. Bar passage rates for graduates of unaccredited schools in California were eleven percentage points lower than for graduates of accredited schools. The political motivations for the break (opposition to DEI standards) may be satisfied, but the practical consequences fall on students who have no voice in that debate.
Conclusion
Return to our 2028 Florida graduate. She did everything right: chose a law school, studied hard, passed the bar. But because Florida exited the national accreditation system without negotiating portability, her career options are constrained in ways her predecessors never experienced. UK solicitors learned this lesson painfully after Brexit. Thousands restructured their careers. Firms relocated offices across continents. The legal profession is still adjusting five years later.
Florida and Texas have an opportunity UK did not: they can observe the consequences before they become irreversible. The question is, will they? For the students enrolling in Florida or Texas law schools today, that choice may define their careers. The window for action is now, before the first class graduates from a non-ABA school and discover, as UK solicitors did, that their credentials no longer travel.
