The Department of Justice has threatened the American Bar Association with an antitrust investigation over its accreditation standards governing adjunct faculty compensation and employment practices at law schools nationwide.
The threat represents a significant escalation in the Trump administration's regulatory posture toward the ABA's accrediting authority. The DOJ claims that certain ABA standards restricting how law schools deploy adjunct professors may violate Section 1 and Section 2 of the Sherman Act by limiting competition among institutions and artificially constraining the labor market for legal educators.
The ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar sets binding accreditation requirements for all 196 ABA-approved law schools in the United States. These standards govern curriculum, faculty credentials, student enrollment, bar passage rates, and employment outcomes. Schools that fail to meet standards risk losing accreditation, which effectively ends their ability to operate. This creates enforcement leverage that regulators view with suspicion under antitrust law.
At issue are provisions addressing the role and utilization of adjunct instructors. The ABA has historically required that full-time faculty teach the core curriculum and maintain minimum ratios relative to student populations. The stated rationale involves educational quality and student access to experienced teachers. The DOJ contends these provisions operate as an anticompetitive restraint that artificially elevates compensation demands for full-time professors while excluding cost-effective adjunct labor from core instruction.
Law schools have increasingly hired adjuncts to teach doctrinal courses, seminars, and skills training. Adjuncts typically earn between 2,000 and 5,000 dollars per course, compared to six-figure salaries for tenured or tenure-track faculty. Restricting adjunct deployment theoretically inflates overall instructional costs and forces schools to hire more expensive permanent faculty.
The threat arrives after the ABA softened its diversity accreditation standards in 2024 and 2025 in response to pressure from the Trump administration and conservative legal organizations challenging race-conscious admissions policies. The DOJ's latest challenge suggests the administration intends to use antitrust enforcement as a tool to reshape law school operations and labor practices beyond the diversity context.
The ABA accreditation system has faced periodic antitrust challenges since the 1990s. In 2000, the DOJ reached a settlement with the ABA regarding its peer review processes and faculty hiring standards. That consent decree imposed ongoing reporting requirements and restrictions on the Association's ability to enforce certain accreditation provisions. The current threat potentially reopens questions about the scope of the ABA's delegated authority to set binding educational standards.
For law schools, the adjunct dispute has direct operational implications. Loosening restrictions on adjunct teaching would lower instructional costs and allow greater workforce flexibility. However, it could also reduce employment stability for legal academics and potentially compress wages across the profession.
The ABA has not publicly conceded to the DOJ's demands. However, the history of antitrust enforcement against professional licensing bodies and accreditors suggests the Association faces genuine litigation risk if it does not modify its standards.
This development reflects broader Trump administration strategy targeting professional self-regulation across multiple sectors. The administration views accreditation standards as anticompetitive restraints deserving antitrust scrutiny, regardless of their educational justification.