Lawyers Group Sued For Pressuring Schools

The Justice Department sued the American Bar Association on Tuesday, accusing the nation’s largest group of lawyers of misusing its accreditation powers to inflate the salaries of law school professors.

The Bar Association, without admitting wrongdoing, agreed to settle the civil suit by changing its process for determining whether law schools get the association’s prestigious stamp of approval. President George E. Bushnell Jr. said the settlement was made “to avoid chaotically disrupting a legal education system that is the model for much of the world.”

In a news conference announcing the suit and the settlement, deputy assistant Attorney General Joel Klein said the ABA pressured law schools to raise salaries to artificially high levels before their programs were accredited.