The Antitrust Division of the Justice Department has compelled the American Bar Association to a consent decree filed in the Washington DC District Court. The ABA is banned from fixing faculty salaries, denying accreditation to and credit-transfer from for-profit schools. The ABA is required to reduce the 90% faculty makeup of the admissions and accreditation ABA group, and then study the other requirements it imposes on it's (then) 175 captive schools, such as student to faculty ratios, teaching loads, sabbaticals, bar prep courses, and facility and resource requirements.

The ABA methods are a soft-form of price fixing, and have been variously described as a cartel, costly, intrusive, inflexible, anti-innovative, diversity-discouraging, nest-feathering, and effectively excluding many working class students.

The ABA Accreditation is required in forty-two states, and offers a prestige which law students desire. The LSAT is also required by 175 schools, which brings fees abundantly to the LSAC, which is protected by non-profit status, controlled by the ABA. The accreditation of law schools by the ABA began in 1921.

Is the demand a created demand? The ABA put forth the usual argument that it's accreditation protects the public from the "fly-by-night law school".

The Justice Dept. said that the ABA requirements have little to do with the quality of academic excellence offered, and other accreditation professional groups might heed the "writing on the wall" . This represents a first instance of antitrust intervention in professional accreditation.