By Prof. Ashley M. London & Victoria Mullaney

Gen Z law students take their seats in law schools across the country with less academic training in the humanities and ethics – and saddled with more real-world experiences of anti-ethical lawyer behavior without public consequence – than any prior generation. And the problem will likely not be acknowledged, addressed, or remedied in the near future.

Recently, the American Bar Association (ABA) Council for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar announced that its members voted to approve the elimination of Standard 206,¹ which requires schools to “demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion.”² This capitulation to the current administration’s demands to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities at academic institutions illustrates a problem that has plagued law schools behind the scenes for decades. While the ABA has historically sustained attacks from the U.S. Department of Justice for its alleged monopoly over the accreditation of law schools,³ perhaps none will prove more impactful to Gen Z than those challenges facing the ABA today.

Unlike earlier generations, Gen Z was born into a crisis of ethics nationally and globally. They come to law school with less of an underpinning in the humanities and display an ethical agnosticism. The rapid introduction of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), coupled with Gen Z’s constant digital engagement, bring additional challenges that must be addressed. Those Gen Z students who choose to attend law school arrive with a desire to shape the future, but are faced with high-profile examples of lawyers behaving unethically and suffering few, if any, disciplinary actions.

The systemic adulteration of legal ethics training began shortly after the ABA mandated Professional Responsibility courses be included in all law school curricula. The Watergate scandal of 1972-74 pushed the law school accreditor to include mandatory legal ethics courses for all students attending ABA-approved law schools.⁴ However, many professors resented this imposition and law schools treated the topic like an afterthought rather than a critical component of professional training for new lawyers. Today, Professional Responsibility courses are still largely regarded as the dogsbody of the curriculum and are increasingly used to house additional ABA requirements such as professional identity formation, cross-cultural competency, and leadership training – all within a 2 or 3 credit class.

In 1980, the ABA followed up on its mandate by working with the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) to get licensing bodies to require bar applicants to pass a two-hour test of ethical competency consisting of 60 multiple-choice questions presented in the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE).⁵ Students can take this examination while still in law school, and once completed, will have no other ethical training requirements except those imposed by jurisdictions as part of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits to maintain licensure. Passing scores on the MPRE range from a low of 75 in jurisdictions such as Alabama, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, to a score of 80 in states such as Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, and North Carolina, and a high of 86 in just two jurisdictions (California and Utah).⁶ These scores purportedly showing competence in legal ethics worthy of licensure are plainly setting low expectations considering the national mean scores from 2022 through 2026 stay consistently above a scaled score of 93.⁷ When licensing bodies relegate the measure of legal ethics competency to the indignity of a short, fill-in-the-bubble assessment, Gen Z law students will not take it seriously.

The de-emphasis of the importance of legal ethics training continues with the introduction of additional curricular demands made by the ABA that get shoehorned into Professional Responsibility courses – in part because the concepts align with the study of ethics and an examination of lawyerly responsibilities to clients and the courts. In 2022, the ABA revised Standard 303(b) to “provide substantial opportunities for training and education in bias, cross-cultural competency and racism as well as professional identity development.”⁸ It was a response to feedback from deans, faculty, and ABA affiliates who expressed an increased need for this kind of training in law schools.⁹ It was also an attempt to address the increased rates of substance abuse and mental health disorders that continue to plague both lawyers and law students.¹⁰

While important and necessary to Gen Z law students and the legal profession as a whole, this training must be included somewhere in the 83-90 credit hours law schools adhere to in order to confer a Juris Doctor degree.¹¹ With law schools today juggling the ABA demands of high bar passage rates, employment outcomes, and the rapid adoption of GAI tools in the law and legal education, resource consolidation is a natural response to fulfill additional accreditation requirements.

Indeed, Professional Responsibility courses provide a logical place for introducing aspiring lawyers to the cultural competency and professional identity training required by revised ABA Standard 303. But combining legal ethics with anti-racism and bias education fails to honor the importance of both by watering down two of the most urgent issues dogging the legal profession.¹² For example, the ABA adopted Model Rule 8.4(g) in 2016, proscribing discrimination and harassment by lawyers in their legal practice.¹³ Introduced in Professional Responsibility courses, a rule purportedly promoting a core professional value makes for a good segue into a discussion about anti-racism and personal bias and the roles these play in the justice system.¹⁴ But this single required course is not just tasked with instructing students on cultural competency concepts, and this alignment comes at a content cost for law professors constrained by limited credit hours. Other important legal ethics topics such as confidentiality, conflicts of interest, fees, communication, scope and allocation of authority, candor to the tribunal, and many more must be addressed in order for law students to pass the course, pass the MPRE, and most importantly learn the essential framework of ethical duties and responsibilities required of lawyers.

Professional Responsibility is one of the very few required courses in law school specifically tasked with requiring students to consider their own moral codes, values, and behaviors in the context of the ethical rules that bind lawyers legally and as part of an administrative law-like disciplinary system. However, an additional hindrance to meaningful ethics training in law schools is that Professional Responsibility courses focus solely on the ABA Model Rules and not the specific rules of professional conduct adopted by state jurisdictions where law schools will practice. While many jurisdictions have adopted the Model Rules almost verbatim, differences do exist, and lawyers will be disciplined based on jurisdiction-specific rules and not the model rules promulgated by the ABA. Therefore, students are inclined to treat these rules as advisory only, making the study of the model rules seem like more of a burden than a real benefit. Additionally, legal ethics questions most often exist in the grey, with very few of the ethical rules offering direct prohibitions or explicit permissions. Studies show that Gen Z would benefit more by studying an active model of legal ethics that is broadened to include lawyers from all parts of the profession.¹⁵

Substantial shifts in American culture that include a decline in the study of humanities and the rapid development of technology have left today’s largely Gen Z law student¹⁶ population with a lack of traditional scholastic exposure to nuanced philosophical issues involving ethics and morals.¹⁷ Studies show, for example, this generation believes what is right or wrong can change over time.¹⁸ Another recent study showed that Gen Z is more likely to evaluate situations based on self-chosen ethical principles, and that this generation may not “exhibit as homogenous ethical identity.”¹⁹ The meteoric rise of smartphone usage, social media, and generative artificial intelligence²⁰ means Gen Z law students have had unique exposure to the increased polarization of society, the age of post-truth politics,²¹ and the increasing number of popularized lawyers’ scandals. Comments made in June 2026 about Watergate from Yale Law graduate and Vice President JD Vance, “that if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” and, “the idea that it took down a presidency is crazy,”²² typify how far modern lawyers have departed from professional ethics principles. It is into a fractured and long-neglected space of devalued legal ethics training that Gen Z attends law schools.

If the institutions of learning, the ABA, and the licensing bodies do not appear to take legal ethics seriously by elevating its importance in law schools, and testing ethics via the MPRE is perfunctory, Gen Z law students are invited to deduce that ethical training is surplus to requirements to becoming a lawyer. Today, the legion of scandals involving lawyers makes Watergate seem modest by comparison. But outrageous ethical violations clarify the need for reform.

This blog is an excerpt from London and Mullaney’s 2026 article titled, “Ethics are so Mid: Gen Z and the Systemic Devaluation of Legal Ethics.

Footnotes

1. Emma Cueto and Andrea Keckley, ABA Law School Accrediting Arm Repeals Diversity Standard, Law360, Sept. 8, 2026. https://www.law360.com/articles/2522668/aba-law-school-accrediting-arm-repeals-diversity-standard↩︎

2. A.B.A, Diversity and Inclusion Standard 206 (2024). https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/standards/2024-2025/2024-2025-standards-chapter-2.pdf↩︎

3. U.S. v. American Bar Ass’n, 943 F. Supp. 436 (D.D.C. 1996). After it was denied provisional accreditation by the ABA, the Massachusetts School of Law also brought an antitrust action against the ABA as well as the Law School Admission Services, Law School Admission Council, the Association of American Law Schools, and others alleging anticompetitive practices. The district court granted the ABA’s motion for summary judgement. See also, Mass. Sch. of L. at Andover, Inc. v. Am. B. Ass’n, 937 F. Supp. 435 (E.D. Pa. 1996), aff’d, 107 F.3d 1026 (3d Cir. 1997).↩︎

4. A.B.A, Curriculum Standard 303 (a) (2025), “A law school shall offer a curriculum that requires each student to satisfactorily complete at least the following: (1) one course of at least two credit hours in professional responsibility that includes substantial instruction in rules of professional conduct, and the values and responsibilities of the legal profession and its members.”↩︎

5. NCBE Testing Milestones, Bar Examiner (2021), https://thebarexaminer.ncbex.org/article/summer-fall-2021/ncbe-testing-milestones/ ; National Conference of Bar Examiners, Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, National Conference of Bar Examiners, https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpre/about-mpre (last visited July 25, 2026). Developed and promulgated by the Wisconsin-based nonprofit organization the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), this exam tests knowledge of the American Bar Association (ABA) Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the ABA Code of Judicial Conduct. The exam initially rolled out to six jurisdictions across the country. Today, the MPRE is “required in all but two U.S. jurisdictions (Wisconsin and Puerto Rico).” Connecticut and New Jersey do not require a passing MPRE score, instead only requiring a passing law school grade in a Professional Responsibility course.↩︎

6. National Conference of Bar Examiners, The Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE), The Bar Examiner, https://thebarexaminer.ncbex.org/2023-statistics/the-multistate-professional-responsibility-examination-mpre/ (last visited July 26, 2026). Required scores as of 2023, according to the NCBE.↩︎

7. Press Release, National Conference of Bar Examiners, NCBE Releases National Mean for March 2026 MPRE (Apr. 28, 2026). The national mean score for the March 2026 MPRE was a robust 97.4. The exam is scaled from 50-150.↩︎

8. https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2021/05/law-school-standards/? login July 25, 2026.↩︎

9. Memorandum from the Standards Committee on Proposed Changes to Standards 205 and 206, 303, and 508, and 507 to the Council (May 7, 2021). https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/council_reports_and_resolutions/may21/21-may-standards-committee-memo-proposed-changes-with-appendix.pdf – pg. 7 Memorandum from Scott Bales Chair, ABA Council on Legal Educ. & Admissions to the Bar & William Adams, Managing Dir., Accreditation and Legal Educ. to Interested Persons Regarding ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure–Matters for Notice and Comment–Standards 303 and 508 and Rules 2 and 13 (Mar. 1, 2021)↩︎

10. Joshua Aaron Jones, Implementing ABA Standard 303(b)(3): Positive Legal Education Through A Community of Inquiry, 48 Vt. L. Rev., 564, 568 (2024) (citing Jordana Alter Confino, Where Are We on the Path to Law Student Well-Being?: Report on the ABA CoLAP Law Student Assistance Committee Law School Wellness Survey, 68 J. Legal. Educ. 650, 650 (2019)); Mental Health Information, ABA (last visited July 25, 2026), https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_students/resources/mental-health/information; Law Deans Clearinghouse for Mental Health, The Assoc. of Am L. Schs., https://www.aals.org/mental-health-clearinghouse (last visited July 25, 2026); Mike Robinson, 6 Law Student Mental Health Statistics, Clio, (Aug. 29, 2025), https://www.clio.com/blog/law-student-mental-health-statistics.↩︎

11. A.B.A, Academic Program and Academic Calendar Standard 311 (2025), https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/misc/legal_education/Standards/2018-2019ABAStandardsforApprovalofLawSchools/2018-2019-aba-standards-chapter3.pdf . Law schools shall require, as a condition for graduation, successful completion of a course of study of not fewer than 83 credit hours.↩︎

12. The authors make this point with a degree of hesitation during this time of federal and state challenges to efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are advocating that law schools take both legal ethics and cultural competency training seriously enough to include multiple required courses on the topics. Doing this would demonstrate to Gen Z students that these are serious matters worthy of in-depth study and reflection.↩︎

13. Model Rules of Prof’l Conduct r. 8.4 Misconduct (Am. Bar Ass’n 2025). https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_8_4_misconduct/↩︎

14. Model Rules of Prof’l Conduct r. 3.8 Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor (Am. Bar Ass’n 2025). ABA MR 3.8 Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor is one area where this topic fits especially well, and is covered in most Professional Responsibility textbooks.↩︎

15. Arda Yunita Subardi, Rugaiyah & Supadi, The Learning Preferences of Generation Z in Active Learning and Its Implications for Improving Educational Quality: A Perspective of Educational Management, 3(1) J. Ragam Pengabdian 765, 765 (2026).↩︎

16. Michael Dimock, Defining Generations: Where Millennials End and Generation Z Begins, Pew Research Center, (Jan. 17, 2019), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/ ; See Generation Z, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Generation-Z (last visited July 25, 2026); What is Gen Z?, McKinsey & Company, (Aug. 28, 2024), https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-gen-z; Generation Alpha, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, https://www.aecf.org/topics/generation-alpha (last visited July 25, 2026).↩︎

17. Nathan Heller, The End of the English Major, New Yorker (Feb. 27, 2023), https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/wp-provost/uploads/sites/3253/2023/03/The-EndoftheEnglishMajor-_NewYorker.pdf. Detailing the falling enrollment in traditional humanities courses and majors at major U.S. academic institutions even when the economy is doing well.↩︎

18. 5 Things You Need to Know About Gen Z, Barna, (Sept. 12, 2024), https://www.barna.com/research/gen-z-2024/ . Gen Z strongly agree that what is morally right or wrong can change over time based on society. There are some areas where Gen Z prioritize individual beliefs over absolute truths. See also, Neil Mahto, The Humanities are being neglected in American universities, Johns Hopkins Newsletter, (Mar. 14, 2024) https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2024/03/the-humanities-are-being-neglected-in-american-universities. Barraged with the concept of “useless college majors,” Gen Z has been guided away from the study of humanities and into STEM programs. Humanities includes studies of literature, philosophy, and gender studies, all rooted in moral and ethical theory and thinking. See also, Brendan Reim, The Decline and Fall of the Humanities, Heights Forum, (Sept. 13, 2024), https://heightsforum.org/article/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-humanities/.↩︎

19. James Weber, Discovering generation Z’s level of principled moral reasoning and assessing demographic variations. Bus. Ethics, the Env’t & Resp., 34, 951–63.↩︎

20. See generally, April L. Milburn-Knizner & Megan E.K. Montcalm, TL;DR: The Truth About Gen Z Law Students & Why They Need More, Not Less, 89 Alb. L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2026)↩︎

21. The Trends Shaping a Post-Truth Society, Barna, (Jan. 9, 2018), https://www.barna.com/research/truth-post-truth-society/. The term “post-truth” is increasingly used to describe the current political climate in the U.S. The term “fake news” is also a cultural phenomenon representing a decrease of public trust in institutions. See also, Bruce Ledewitz, The Resurrection of Trust in American Law and Public Discourse, Duquesne Law Review, Vol. 56, No. 2, 2018.↩︎

22. Lauren Gambino, JD Vance says Nixon’s Watergate scandal would be ’12-hour news story’ today, Guardian (Jun. 25, 2026, at 20:12 ET) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/25/jd-vance-watergate-richard-nixon; Charlie Borla, Vice President JD Vance says it’s ‘crazy Watergate led to a president’s downfall during a speech at the Nixon Library, Orange Cnty. Reg. (June 26, 2026, at 16:21 PT), https://www.ocregister.com/2026/06/26/vice-president-jd-vance-says-its-crazy-watergate-led-to-a-presidents-downfall-during-a-speech-at-the-nixon-library/.↩︎