As it currently stands, 4-5,000 foreign-trained law graduates each year take the Bar exam in the US with most opting to sit exams for New York or California. Courses cost around £3,000 and pass rates are typically less than 40% for foreign applicants, so it’s an expensive and risky exercise. Given the numbers though, the American Bar Association (ABA) is considering accrediting foreign law schools to try to ensure that there is some consistency in entrants’ training.

With America having the ‘gold standard’ in legal education, they don’t want a bunch of cowboy foreign lawyers just sitting bar exams and diluting the quality on a state by state basis. So foreign law schools that come up to scratch may get ABA approval which would enable them to offer bar exams across different US states…

A committee of law professors, lawyers, judges and law deans said,”if we believe that the American legal education model is the ‘gold standard’ for legal education worldwide and that well-trained lawyers are critical to the global economy, then a willingness to expand accreditation to schools embracing the American model is an appropriate way to improve the training of lawyers globally and contribute to the modern economy and the international legal profession,” reports Legal Week.

No decision has yet been made but if the ABA goes ahead, the two obvious candidates for accreditation in the UK would be BPP and the College of Law (both already offer New York Bar training).

Like manna from marketing heaven.