Did Indiana Lower the Bar Sit for Bar Exam? Supreme Court's 2024 Rule Change Sparks Debate and Cries for Investigation of CJ Rush's Conflicts of Interest with Purdue

Lowered bar for bar -- harder landing!

For generations, Indiana required applicants seeking admission to the practice of law to graduate from an American Bar Association-accredited law school. That requirement changed on July 1, 2024, when the Indiana Supreme Court amended Admission and Discipline Rule 13 to permit certain graduates of non-ABA-accredited law schools, specifically Purdue Global's flopping online law school, to seek waivers allowing them to sit for the Indiana bar examination. Remember Loretta Rush's connections to Purdue and Mitch Daniels who she interviewed months before he took a job at Purdue and he appointed her to the Supreme Court of Indiana (SCOIN).

Supporters called the change innovative, regulations that attract lawyers, provide a check on the absolute power of the SCOIN under 2017 adobted Rule 23, which leaves no room for justice and has weaponized legal ethics cases against good lawyers, making their children and critics called it something else entirely:

A lowering of standards at a time when public confidence in the legal profession is already declining, unaffordable and a virtual desert that Rush created and now claims to be addressing as the solution.

A Solution Looking for a Problem?

Chief Justice Loretta Rush and other supporters have repeatedly pointed to Indiana's attorney shortage and the existence of so-called "legal deserts" in rural counties as justification for broadening access to legal education and licensure. Purdue Global itself has touted the rule change as helping address the shortage of lawyers in Indiana.

But critics ask an obvious question:

Will producing more lawyers necessarily produce better legal representation?

Indiana already graduates hundreds of lawyers each year from respected ABA-accredited institutions:

• Indiana University Maurer School of Law

• Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law

• Notre Dame Law School

  
  

The problem may not be a lack of lawyers.

It may instead be a lack of incentives for lawyers to practice in rural communities, increasing student debt, regulatory burdens, and declining economics of small-town legal practice.

Changing educational requirements may not solve any of those problems.

The ABA Requirement Existed for a Reason

For decades, ABA accreditation served as a national quality-control mechanism.

ABA standards examine:

• faculty qualifications,

• admissions practices,

• academic rigor,

• student outcomes,

• bar passage rates,

• financial stability,

• experiential learning opportunities, and

• consumer protections.

  
  

Critics argue that removing the ABA requirement creates the risk that Indiana could become an experimental jurisdiction for educational models that have not yet demonstrated long-term success.

A veterans advocacy organization previously warned the Indiana Supreme Court that non-ABA schools with poor outcomes could use Indiana's rule change as a marketing tool despite uncertain long-term success rates.

The Purdue Global Question

Purdue Global Law School's early Indiana bar results have undoubtedly surprised many observers. Five graduates passed the February 2025 Indiana bar examination, producing a 100% pass rate. Eight graduates took the February 2026 exam, with six passing, for a 75% overall pass rate. Purdue has appropriately celebrated those results. Do unacredited law schools teach better than ABA-approved law school? Or do they teach to the test?

But critics caution against reading too much into these statistically invalid numbers, being a small sample set by definition. Five examinees. Then eight. That is not a statistically significant sample. If just one additional person had failed in February 2025, the pass rate would have fallen from 100% to 80%.

Law schools should not be judged solely on bar passage statistics.

Questions remain:

• Where are graduates employed?

• How many obtain long-term legal employment?

• How portable are their degrees? Can they work outside of Indiana?

• Will outcomes remain strong when class sizes increase?

• How will these graduates perform in practice ten years from now?

At present, no one knows.

Why the Rush Court's Decision Is Controversial

The irony is difficult to ignore.

For years, Indiana has witnessed:

• concerns about attorney discipline,

• complaints about judicial administration,

• declining public confidence in institutions,

• attorney shortages in rural counties,

• increasing self-represented litigants.

Rather than addressing some of those structural issues directly, critics argue that the Supreme Court instead chose to lower educational barriers.

To some observers, the message appears to be:

If Indiana lacks lawyers, simply create additional pathways into the profession and make to profession rewarding again by removing IOLTA laws which previously compensated lawyers interest on short term client deposit as perk of the career -- much like bankers make -- they call "gap." Broke, suicides rates, shorter life spans and ethics show trials and cancelling so many does not call "Hey you should be a lawyer in Indiana."

But critics argue that medicine, engineering, and accounting generally do not respond to professional shortages by weakening educational prerequisites. Why should law? Are bar dues dropping? Cut court costs and make judges work more, more like postal workers.

In Indiana law is not for the lawyers, or the citizenry, law is solely for the Supremes, the Judges, Universities like IU and PU, their law school deans and law professsors, and court administrators

Indiana Becomes an Outlier

Historically, Indiana was among the states insisting upon ABA-accredited legal education.

The 2024 rule change moved Indiana toward a more experimental model also being debated in other states.

Supporters view this as innovation.

Critics view it as risk.

Indiana's citizens depend upon competent lawyers for:

• criminal defense,

• family law,

• probate matters,

• business transactions,

• constitutional rights,

• property disputes. (all of which Rush calls lanes...stay in your lane, don't question her.)

The public deserves confidence that attorneys have received rigorous legal training and that the courts are operated for the people, not the powerful insiders making a fat living of it.

The Bigger Question

Perhaps the most uncomfortable question is this:

If Indiana's traditional law schools are supposedly producing too few lawyers, what does that say about the broader leadership of Indiana's legal system over the past decade?

Indiana ranks near the bottom nationally in lawyers per capita.

Rural counties continue struggling to attract attorneys.

Access-to-justice concerns remain severe.

Those problems largely developed during the same period in which Indiana's judicial leadership championed modernization and reform.

Has Indiana truly solved the attorney shortage?

Or has it simply lowered one of the barriers to entry?

Only time will tell. Frankly, an EO from the government should check a lot court abuse cases and rules.

For now, the Supreme Court's 2024 rule change represents one of the most consequential changes to legal education policy in Indiana in decades.

Whether it proves visionary—or a mistake—will likely not be known for many years.

But one thing is certain:

The debate over whether Indiana merely expanded opportunity or actually lowered the standards for admission to one of society's most important professions has only just begun.