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By Sara Merken

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REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

Florida has become the second U.S. state to reduce its reliance on the American Bar Association to determine graduates of which law school can become lawyers, following Texas.

The Supreme Court of Florida said in an opinion that it was replacing the ABA as the “sole accrediting agency” for law schools whose graduates may take the state’s bar exam, which is a requirement to practice in the state. The Supreme Court of Texas finalized a similar plan last week. Ohio and Tennessee are also reviewing their ABA requirements.

The states' moves to shrink the ABA's oversight come amid a wider conflict between the ABA and President Trump’s administration, though the ABA’s law school accreditation arm operates independently from the larger ABA.

Read more from Karen Sloan.

Two pending shareholder lawsuits with billions of dollars at stake could make it more difficult for investors to bring class actions as courts wrangle with the scope of a decade-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The looming question in class actions against Ohio utility FirstEnergy and aircraft maker Boeing is whether the plaintiffs provided enough information at the outset about how they’ll calculate damages to support proceeding as a class. The answer could reshape the securities litigation playbook, Jenna Greene writes in On the Case.

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