The legal profession talks a big game about access to justice, but that promise doesn’t mean much if the path to becoming a lawyer remains narrow, expensive, and opaque. That’s why the new preLaw Magazine Justice & Opportunity Honor Roll is worth a closer look. Instead of obsessing over the usual metrics — LSAT medians, employment stats, or prestige signaling — the list highlights law schools actually working to widen the pipeline into the profession through admissions innovation, affordability efforts, flexible program design, and meaningful support for students once they arrive. Because if the legal system is supposed to serve everyone, the profession itself needs to start looking a lot more like the communities it represents.
The Justice & Opportunity Honor Roll lists the law schools that are doing their best to expand access to legal education, highlighting schools that have created innovative pathways into the legal profession. Here’s the methodology that was used:
preLaw invited law schools to submit information about initiatives, partnerships or strategies that reflect the mission of expanding access to legal education. Schools were evaluated based on the scope and maturity of their efforts, including evidence of scale, longevity and measurable impact where available. Institutions designated as A demonstrate multiple, well-established access strategies that work together to lower barriers to entry and persistence. Schools recognized at the A- level meet the Honor Roll criteria through defined initiatives, with distinctions reflecting breadth and scale rather than quality. The Honor Roll is not a ranking, but a recognition of meaningful action at a moment when access pathways matter more than ever.
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Without further ado, according to preLaw magazine, these are the law schools that earned A grades for their efforts to expand access to legal education (listed in alphabetical order):
- CUNY School of Law
- Elon University
- Georgetown University
- Gonzaga University
- Lewis & Clark Law School
- Lincoln Memorial University
- Loyola University New Orleans
- Mitchell Hamline
- Purdue Global Law School
- Roger Williams University
- Seattle University
- South Texas Houston
- Southwestern Law School
- St. Mary’s University
- Suffolk University
- Touro Law
- University at Buffalo
- University of Arkansas at Little Rock
- University of Houston
- University of Tennessee
- Widener University Commonwealth
Click here to see the rest of the Honor Roll.
Congratulations to all of the law schools that made the cut for this important list.
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Law schools expanding access lead preLaw’s Justice & Opportunity Honor Roll [preLaw magazine / National Jurist]
Staci Zaretsky is the managing editor of Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.